[tyleo]

I love how new technology becomes like religion. It develops both cult followers and critics.

In that lens think the AI cult is more right than the Crypto cult. At least I can use it to do something tangible right now while crypto is still pretty useless after many years.

In some sense I think these technologies need the cults and the critics though. It’s good to have people push new things forwards even if everyone isn’t along for the ride. It’s also good to have a counter side poke holes. I think the world is better with both optimists charting new paths forwards and pessimists making sure they don’t walk right off a cliff.

[LightHugger]

Cryptocurrency allows people who are otherwise limited by draconian payment platform limitations, puritanical moralists who own credit card companies and such to buy and sell things online without being stopped. It's obviously not a good system but it provides a high effort release valve, a fallback mechanism that hopefully will undermine some of these draconian measures. Lots of people have been helped by the existence of cryptocurrency because of this, especially since lately a lot of bad actors control payment platforms and often just shut down businesses on whims.

Whether more have been helped or hurt is debatable but it certainly has a tangible, if niche, use case with real value. It certainly has no value as a store of value, though.

[glitchc]

Evidence suggests it's the exact opposite. The only thing crypto has really been good for is a store of value. Sure, it's a volatile commodity, but over any 5 year average window, Bitcoin definitely beats inflation. That makes it a safe store of value.

[jdlshore]

Huh. While I agree that Bitcoin specifically has been a successful speculative investment in the past, "a safe store of value" is a massive stretch. It's a safe store of value in the same way a S&P 500 index fund is, except more volatile. What's that phrase... "Past performance is not indicative of future gains?"

[LightHugger]

What evidence? People use it to bypass the payment processor cartels all the time.

[what]

Define all the time. I haven’t seen a shop that accepts crypto. There’s nothing I could buy with it.

[pluto_modadic]

other countries (e.g. India), just have... built better ordinary payment networks. Or laws for them (e.g., Europe). The US... has regulatory capture by draconian platforms.

[DonHopkins]

A lot of bad actors control most Crypto platforms. Some of them are even justly rotting in jail (until Trump pardons them), and a hell of a lot more of them deserve to be in jail, while most AI users aren't actively committing crimes, laundering and embezzling money, dodging taxes, pumping and dumping rug pulls and pyramid schemes, and committing fraud.

It's been such a relief since the Crypto scammers finally shut the fuck up with their incessant ShitCoin and NFT shilling and get-rich-quick pyramid schemes, so please don't any of you start up again, for the love of God.

AI is NOT like Crypto in any way shape or form, and this is an AI discussion, not a Crypto discussion. And I'm sick and tired of hearing from Crypto shills yapping HODL and FUD while I'm actually getting productive work done and making real money while creating tangible value and delivering useful products with AI, without even having to continuously recruit greater fools and rip off senior citizens and naive suckers of their life savings by incessantly shilling and pumping and dumping and pulling rugs out from under people.

[aorloff]

Crypto is still pretty valuable relative to how useless it remains.

Unless you are imagining a world in which there's a global conflict and crypto isn't shut down in the first 12 months.