That's really not it. I never bought in. I wouldn't mind some free money, but I have no regrets in never touching it. Even though there were some winners, it's still too risky for my taste. I'm not into gambling, or even investing for that matter, if there's a difference.
But I definitely got burned out on crypto stuff. I'm glad to have more bandwidth to hear about other stuff this year.
When there is a post about crypto do you comment silly things like how there is zero utility and it's all a scam?
I think not. In which case my comment isn't about you.
I agree the crypto hype was ridiculous and annoying. But reading the comments here you can tell some people get glee from seeing bad news about crypto.
Honestly, yeah. Until there are rigorous ways to enable consumer protections in crypto (I'm pretty sure this is theoretically intractable) then it's just a space for acammers where some legitimate transactions might occur for markets marginalized by traditional payment processors.
We don't need crypto. We certainly don't need the culture of cryptobros. We need to work on the social progress of the systems we have in place that, you know, have consumer protections.
> Everyone who loves seeing bad news about crypto really just wishes they bought in early.
I have no idea why I feel so compelled to reply, but surely you realize there are people who wouldn't have wanted to follow that path? I'm not really a fan of cryptocurrency "investing". Sure, with the way things went, it would've been a huge quality of life boost, but it's just not that important. Life continued. Instead, I could've won the lottery. Could've invested in Tesla in 2019. Do I sit here bitterly regretting that I hadn't? Nope. I know some people who did pretty well off cryptocurrency and I'm happy for them, but I chose not to play. Of course, my assessment at the time was that it wouldn't go anywhere value-wise; that was wrong, and I blame that at least in part due to the famous John Maynard Keynes quote. ("The markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent") In another timeline I could've also gone bust on it, or worse, it could've become illegal somehow.
That said, I actually don't hate cryptocurrency in spirit, I just do not like the path that it has gone. I wanted an alternative to PayPal and credit card processors that is harder to censor, especially as PayPal and credit card processors repeatedly shy away from hacking tools (Think Flipper Zero, emulators, etc.) and anything related to sex. And I think some of the technology is neat; Monero is really cool in theory. Unstoppable swap and related tech will always be interesting even if they attract unscrupulous actors. But a lot of the work for cryptocurrencies feels like it goes to the dumbest fucking stuff. Like, it'd be nice if there was better solutions for subscription payments. Also, consider the following: let's say I wanted to set up a site that accepts crypto currency payments. I can obviously just put a wallet ID somewhere on the page, but if I want to automate payment processing, I need a way to tie transactions back. It'd also be ideal if the server-side components could be very low-trust so that they can generate wallet addresses and verify payments, but not spend from the wallets. I think this is even technically possible with Monero, but it seems pretty hard and as far as I can tell there are no good off-the-shelf tools for this (Please correct me if I'm wrong, I am certainly interested.) Instead it seems like the defacto answer is integrating some service that does it for you, like Coinbase, which I fully understand why you'd do that if you were adding cryptocurrency payments in addition to Stripe and Paypal or whatever, but to me, this goes against the spirit of cryptocurrency.
So when I see the latest Mt Gox or FTX news, yeah, I am totally feeling zero sympathy for the hodlers, because I viewed cryptocurrency as a potential solution to a serious problem, not as a way to get rich quickly, and I think it's kind of upsetting that this deep in that seems to be its primary legacy still.
Technical issues aside, the current crop of crypto people took the half baked Austrian school economics to their hearts, where scarcity begets value and hyper-deflation makes a desirable outcome.
Satoshi invented Bitcoin as a form of protest against the prevailing economic conditions following the GFC. I don't blame Satoshi for it as he probably wasn't 100% serious about the endeavour, however the way Bitcoin (and majority of crypto that followed) is structured guaranteed that it will end up as a means for people to speculate.
There was a lot of noise coming from the people trying to get rich quick. We are all tired of that.
But there is real utility. You can do a lot of the positive things you mentioned with crypto. Admittedly it is still super hard and there are big problems with scalability.
But there are serious people working on those problems.
My comment is pointing out that many anti-crypto comments here are thinly veiled jealousy.
Personally, I don't believe sour grapes accounts for the majority of cryptocurrency skeptics; for the most part, they've been fairly consistent before and after the boom. Of course, at the end of the day, it's not really that important.
But I definitely got burned out on crypto stuff. I'm glad to have more bandwidth to hear about other stuff this year.