| Crypto is increasingly looking like a Ponzi scheme to me. I know this is going to be an unpopular opinion on HN but it's no less true. The fact is that blockchain solves a problem for almost nobody. The primary use seems to be to avoid real or threatened government intervention. These uses are largely illegal, by definition (eg bypassing capital controls in China). Now you can argue the morality of such laws but that's irrelevant. Cyrptos have wildly failed as a "currency". Even so-called "stablecoins" just peg themselves directly or indirectly to fiat currencies so they're really just adding another point-of-failure. We should be calling them "cryptoassets" not "cryptocurrencies". As for escaping government seizures and the like, try telling that to Ross Ulbricht [1]. This year, China started to crack down on crypto mining [2]. The "security" of crypto is a myth. They can and have forked and have well-known weaknesses (eg 51% attack). I can't help but think of this [3] wrt security. Proof-of-work wastes a ton of energy for basically nothing and, just like China, countries will increasingly clamp down on this, especially as voters increasingly face rising energy costs. Proof-of-stake is basically a fantasy of how we'll solve PoW problems with a lot of hand-waving. It having not happened yet is pretty good evidence of this being a fantasy. All it really takes is for action by the US and/or EU to say something like "financial institutions who trade in cryptos lose access to the banking system" and the market implodes. Sure the government can't stop you adding more transactions to the blockchain but for what? If no one can take your "currency" what value does it have? Weirdly, crypto has seen the resurgence of gold bugs who have long held an irrational hatred for fiat currencies, completely with false claims in some cases (eg the US dollar was never 100% backed by gold, ever). Things like reversible transactions and the ability to print money are actually a feature not a negative as they're often portrayed. And even if you get past all this, you want users to securely manage a wallet when failure to do so means they could be irreversibly be robbed of their balance? Governments are slow to react and they tend to only react to things that become viewed as a threat. Crypto is so niche it's not a threat. But that doesn't mean the US government couldn't fatally wound the crypto market tomorrow if it chose to. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Ulbricht [2]: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/24/business/china-cryptocurr.... [3]: https://xkcd.com/538/ |
Defi, NFT, Crypto all have Ponzi features. The people who win are early investors and the ones who lose are those who are late to the game. So, we invent "new" schemes like NFT, Defi etc.
There is no product. Nobody uses Defi to "borrow". 99.999% of the people want to put their crypto in and magically get some crazy XY.ABC% APR on their crypto. Everything runs on greater fool theory.
When the bear market hits there will be a lot of bag holders wondering why the hell they paid $10k on a monkey pic with sunglasses and a cigar.
During the euphoria phase people act like they are misunderstood geniuses and people who rightly call this a ponzi scam are those who don't get "it"!