I dislike cryptocurrency, generally, but plenty of people hold their own keys. It's rarer, now, but that's because mass consumers are generally stupid, not because the technology is flawed. If you can do the correct thing, and you choose not to (or just are ignorant enough to not do the correct thing), it's kind of your fault.
I still think we should legislate it, but let's be honest: Most people who lose, here, kind of deserve it, for not doing the bare minimum of research.
This doesn't have much to do with people being stupid. If you want to trade more than once a month, you pretty much have to keep the funds on an exchange. Otherwise transfer fees would kill any profit you made. If you're not trading often, you may still want to take the risk due to free in-exchange transfers.
Sounds like the problem's with trading, rather than using it like currency. I've used it for legal, in-person transactions just fine. There are also decentralized exchanges, but the peanut gallery and the incompetent masses would hardly know about them.
Shockingly, "get rich quick" schemes are a bad idea. Who would have thought? Oh, wait. Everyone.
I still think most cryptocurrencies should be highly legislated, because most adults in society are more or less children who can't be trusted around shiny objects, but we should really stop pretending the problem is with the technology. It's with the users, trying to shoehorn it into a use-case it's unsuited for (get rich quick schemes).
> Sounds like the problem's with trading, rather than using it like currency.
The context here is an exchange limiting withdrawals, so... Yes, exactly?
Decentralised exchanges have massive fees in practice. If you want to buy in and cash out after a year, sure. But show me one that takes <0.1% for the whole transaction including transfer/signing fees and supports BTC.
That doesn't mean people aren't stupid, in contrast to what you implied in another comment. Unwittingly day-trading cryptocurrency is stupid, and the people who desire to do it are not very smart.
That said, I do know a decentralized exchange that fits your criteria. I'm not going to mention it, because I refuse to enable such incredibly harmful behavior.
i believe eth (just like bitcoin before) has chosen 2nd layers as a primary scaling solution. which obviously affects compatibility of code across different 2nd layers. basically we are talking about futures years ahead.
so, either trade on exchanges with Lighntning or pick the one at least in jurisdiction that gives you some kind of protection like if you held money for any other service / broker.
real crypto works just fine for millions. it is not problem of crypto that there are people falling for ponzis (not refering to Binance now). also, even quality of cefi exchanges like binance, coinbase, kraken, bitfinex has been outstanding in recent years so really, not sure what are we even talking about here. you get much more often blocked by credit card company or bank because of suspicious nonsense they dont explain.
sure they aren't the problem of crypto because they're a feature of the surrounding ecosystem not the underlying implementation, but when the ecosystem gains the reputation of a scam filled hellscape and most of the value and "use cases" is tied up in artificial hype - that has to pose some amount of worry in terms of future regulation and adoption does it not?
i really hate this analogy but if you want to avoid scams avoid internet. crypto, for whatever reason is treated as special while most are commited with all sorts of hacks or social engineering.
on the other hand i do recognize this is an issue but imo the only thing you can do is education. crypto has valid unique amazing usecases and it enables things that were not possible before.
I'm still waiting for the actual bitcoin infrastructure or algorithm to break. It's been 10 years and a trillion dollar network.
Just because exchanges fail, and there are shitloads of scams, doesn't mean the underlying technology isn't super interesting and can actually grow into something amazing in a few decades.
A few decades from now, the underlying technology will still be super interesting and will still have the potential to actually grow into something amazing in a few more decades.
I still think we should legislate it, but let's be honest: Most people who lose, here, kind of deserve it, for not doing the bare minimum of research.