[pjkundert]

TradFi - Anyone can do it without permissions and lie, except regulations force accounting practices, revealing malfeasance.

DeFi - Anyone can do it without permissions, and everyone can see they didn't lie.

Crap-coin FTX Crypto Bros - Let's lie, do "TradFi" and call it "DeFi", comply with no regulations or accounting practices, and steal the Crypto. What could go wrong?

HN low-research "Eternal September" Bros: Told ya Crypto was all a scam, yer dumb!

[sangnoir]

You're No-true-Scottsman'ing DeFi by excluding FTX after the fact.

I posit there is no way to tell apart the "real" DeFi from the Crap-coins. If you can tell them apart, which tokens and/or exchanges will fail next, and when?

There's a pervasive aura of "secret knowledge" in crypto, where the in-group think of themselves as superior operators who scoff as the noobs get fleeced[1]; yet these suave traders continually fail to recognize peaks and troughs and trade accordingly.

1. Sometimes while trying to scam the noobs themselves. The whole "to the moon"/HODL/meme-stock episode was naked preying on unsophisticated traders/bag-holders

[pjkundert]

Pretty much everyone credible has been warning people to get off all exchanges, since well, forever. Because you can't (and shouldn't) "trust" someone. If you want to trust someone, go to a bank. This isn't really too much a matter of "secret knowledge", but historical fact. But, hope springs eternal.

And, self-referential Crap Coins (like Luna) are just, well, insane at first glance. Trust-based "Staking" for returns w/ no revenue model? Nuts! But, I've been modelling the behavior of wealth-backed currency systems for 15 years, so maybe it seemed obvious to me. I've been boring people to death with warnings about these for as long as they've existed. Again, this time it's different!

And, the risks to all but the absolutely largest PoW and PoS networks are well known (relatively trivial 51% attack, see OFAC "compliance" disaster). And to "permissioned" networks (XRP, etc.); perfect for CBDCs, for liberty not so much. And the list goes on...

So, spare me the "No True Scottsman" whitewash.

The signs were all there, and the warnings were blaring. Dedicated, competent and highly-funded attackers are at work. Central/commercial banks, Treasuries, etc. cannot abide any fire-exit that is not chained shut, for what's coming.

So, the stakes for attackers are high. The stakes for liberty-valuing citizens: even higher.

Buckle up.

[habinero]

> Central/commercial banks, Treasuries, etc. cannot abide any fire-exit that is not chained shut

Ok, then call it what it actually is: tax evasion, fraud, and laundering money.

You're getting caught up in an anti-government agenda and forgetting that's not a good thing to most people.

[pjkundert]

I think most reasonable people would agree that desiring the freedom to invest your personal wealth in non-government approved investments isn't "tax evasion, fraud and laundering money".

Isn't such a claim a bit ... bizarre?

[habinero]

No? "Non-government approved" either means "unregulated" or "illegal".

Unregulated financial speculation has a lot of issues. See: FTX and NFTs

[pjkundert]

So, no:

- savings in gold/silver bullion

- your sister's small business, back in the home country

I'm sorry; if your position basically makes ever free person a criminal, then perhaps it isn't them that are the problem?

[markdestouches]

It's not investment when there is no industry behind it. It's called speculation. Or gambling - for some people.

[RestlessMind]

> and forgetting that's not a good thing to most people.

you are living in a bubble to assume that governments are always good and anyone bucking their government is a bad actor. Try to learn more about Venezuela, Iran, Russia, North Korea or Syria. Or even truckers in Canada whose accounts were frozen because of peaceful protests.

At this point, the best thing for crypto would be for someone like Trump to freeze all the finances for some people like BLM protestors. Then perhaps people will get out of "ye subvert yer gubmint? ye traitor..." mindset.

[habinero]

This ridiculous straw man comes up all the time. Stop it. Nobody said "governments are always good" or denied that dictatorships exist.

The rest of this is pure irrational FUD. Democracies are not dictatorships.

A president doesn't have the legal authority to freeze finances like that. They are not a king.

[RestlessMind]

> The rest of this is pure irrational FUD. Democracies are not dictatorships.

Please get your facts straight. This happened in Canada, one of the supposedly best democracies out there

"The Attorney General of Ontario sought and was granted an Ontario Superior Court of Justice court order under Section 490.8 of the Criminal Code of Canada against GiveSendGo,[69] to freeze the funds collected from two campaigns, "Freedom Convoy 2022"—US$8.4 million and "Adopt-a-Trucker"—over $686,000,[73][74] and prohibit their distribution.[72][69] The court order binds "any and all parties with possession or control over these donations".[73] The Mareva injunction was issued on February 17 by Justice Calum MacLeod.[75] GiveSendGo funds go directly to campaign recipients such as The Freedom Convoy campaign, so Canadian banks cannot interfere. The largest donation, which was anonymous, as were six of the other top ten, was US$215,000.[74] The Canadian House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance (FINA) members, who are investigating Freedom Convoy's fundraising, voted on February 10 to include a study of the "rise of ideologically motivated extremism".[74] The FINA Committee invited GiveSendGo to testify.[74]

By February 19, at least 76 bank accounts linked to the protests totalling CA$3.2 million were frozen under the Emergencies Act.[76] Most accounts had been unfrozen by February 23.[77]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_convoy_protest

[dmitriid]

> Dedicated, competent and highly-funded attackers are at work. Central/commercial banks, Treasuries, etc. cannot abide any fire-exit

First-world tech bros drinking cool-aid and shoveling money by the truckload with zero understanding of finance, and in it just for scams, get rich schemes and money: check.

"It's a coordinated attack by the Big Money and State Actors" whine: also check.

> So, the stakes for attackers are high. The stakes for liberty-valuing citizens: even higher.

Spare us the bullshit.

"DeFi" is literally just currency speculation and flash loans, all of them happening with fantasy tokens. But it's a big circle jerk because blockchain and programs in esoteric programming languages on inefficient esoteric VMs (yes, that's what "smart" "contracts" are).

All of the crypto scams and failures are entirely on those in crypto space. No highly-funded attackers needed. You're busy doing it to yourselves.

[RestlessMind]

> You're No-true-Scottsman'ing DeFi by excluding FTX after the fact.

You are trying to fit the square peg of scam otherwise known as FTX into the round hole of DeFi. It was apparent since the day of its founding that FTX is not DeFi nor trustless.