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From an IT perspective, blockchain technology is a solution in search of a problem. From an environmental perspective, crypto is a disaster. From an economical perspective it's too unstable to be anything but gambling.
Buying drugs over the internet is the only real reason crypto currencies can be useful. Hell even in person it's better to use cash.
Re: your edit
Scams are a visible problem, but even if they don't scam outright, it ends up becoming a pyramid scheme by default. Late game you have people trying to convince people to use x coin because they'll get rich, when they're just trying to boost the coin in their own wallet.
Digital, hard to track cash has it's place.
As far as the tech, yeah it's cool AF, we keep trying to find ways engaging enough to make people run the ledgers but nothing but get rich quick schemes seems to have enough drive.
Outside of the very small niche use as payment for illegal services, it's basically a scam.
When it is mentioned in mainstream media it's almost always by some asshole trying to get more people into their scam, thus the negative reaction.
There are several reasons why I ignore anything crypto related.
The barrier to entry is daunting. Where do I buy it that isn't going to scam me? Where do I store it that isn't going to just steal it? How do I use it?
Almost everytime I hear about it, it is related to a scam. I recieve texts from strangers wanting to scam me with it. I read about people like Bankman-Fried being seemingly legit but then stealing it. I read about Musk's on-again/off-again love for Doge and it feels like just a way to pump up his own investment that would be illegal of it were normal investments.
The freedom it gives you to get what you need is the same freedom that allows organized crime, terrorist organizations, and sanctioned countries avoid scrutiny a lot easier.
Most are a risky investment. The price swings greatly on the biggest ones and never goes up on most of the others. The only ones that don't seem to have that problem are the ones that peg their value to a real currency.
Before the inevitable downvotes: I do not endorse crypto, but I understand it better than most people because I work with it every day at my job. I am forced to understand it simply because my job requires it. So I will address the points you made and why I think they are weak arguments against crypto.
The barrier to entry is daunting
Is it? You go to one of the many mainstream crypto brokers like Kraken or Binance and you make an account and start trading. Is that any more daunting than going to a bank website and opening up a new checking account?
Almost everytime I hear about it, it is related to a scam.
Okay? I hear about scams involving the US Dollar every single day. I'm not boycotting the US Dollar because it is commonly involved in scams. Every single unit of currency is subject to this problem; crypto is not special or unique in this regard.
The freedom it gives you to get what you need is the same freedom that allows organized crime, terrorist organizations, and sanctioned countries avoid scrutiny a lot easier.
This is the same argument the feds use to argue against cryptography as a whole. "Bad people can use this technology for bad things, so we should be against it.". The cartels murder thousands of people every year over the US Dollar but nobody's boycotting that for some reason.
Most are a risky investment
Anyone getting into crypto who thinks it isn't a risky investment has been lied to. No different from a shitty financial advisor (not a fiduciary) telling you to invest in meme stocks and blindly believing them.
IMO the best genuine argument against crypto is that proof-of-work models are an environmental fucking disaster (which is not to say that printing paper money does not also have a disastrous environmental impact). Proof-of-stake models are better but are not perfect. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. Crypto was founded under idealistic principles but it has been implemented in very flawed ways. But I say don't throw the baby out with the bath water.
People don't like nuance. A lot of scammers, a lot of pump and dump schemes, a lot of unregulated market exploitation took place " on the blockchain ". That's what most people think about. So the PR is terrible.
For monero, which is trying to be digital cash, not an asset you hold, not a speculation, just a transactional currency. It's great. I advocate it to the people I associate with, and I use it for legitimate services all the time, VPNs, donations to nonprofits, domain registration, hosting, many things.
The main thing you have to focus on, is the utility, don't worry about the popularity contest online. If there is utility, and it's better than other options, people will use it. So you have to make sure the ecosystem is friendly, usable, and practical for people. Once that exists the rest will fall into place.
As a crypto noob, how does monero avoid being a speculative asset like all the other coins?
You could hold monero, and that's speculation, sure. But Monero is meant to be used. Have some, use some, don't hoard it hoping it goes up.
That way madness lay.
Hey by the way because I am admittedly quite green. Do you have anything other worth advocating from the same vein? You know decentralized, hard to shut down, privacy focused. I am sure there is ton of things I haven't heard about
Lemmy, is decentralized, federated, hard to kill, censorship resistant. You're living the dream right now.
Join !monero@monero.town
Look at graphene OS, look at the tor community forums.
See what services you use regularly, that you could find a privacy provider for, here's a nice list of crypto accepting service providers https://kycnot.me/
Check out privacy guides https://www.privacyguides.org/en/
Thank you! I may have created this post to rather quickly and crudely check the local narrative which I see aligns with the mainstream. That means lemmy is doing pretty great nice to see
Cryptocurrency is just another game for the rich. The freedom is a ruse to get marks to buy into it.
Not to mention the toll it takes on the environment.
Proof-of-work based crypto has been a disaster. It consumes huge amounts of electricity and other natural resources but produces nothing of intrinsic value. It's spawned whole new criminal enterprises committing whole new categories of crime.
Cryptocurrency in general has been an abject failure. It has not become a genuine currency. It is not a store nor a measure of value; it's value is measured in fiat currencies. It's closer to a commodity, but unlike actual commodities you can't use crypto to make anything useful.
99.99%+ of cryptocurrencies are Ponzi schemes designed to enrich the person or persons who started it. That's why everyone and their dog is setting up their own cryptocurrencies. If crypto actually lived up to its promise of being decentralized and impossible to manipulate there wouldn't be a new type of coin being invented every 5 minutes.
And NFTs? Don't get me started.
Crypto is used to do scams and illegal stuff more easily, and you don’t understand why people hate it?
Read again my answer as long as you don’t understand.
Aside from fairly limited use doing... let's call them privacy-minded things, a lot of cryptocurrencies are useless bandwagoning at best, highly random objects for speculation in many cases, or obvious, unrepentant pyramid schemes or other fraudulent bullshit at worst.
Cryptobros have managed to completely destroy everyone's patience for it by relentlessly pitching The Next Bitcoin (one of the zillion different ones, that is) every millisecond for years, to anyone not physically resisting it, so... yeah, now nobody wants to listen anymore. Go figure.
Eh who cares about these cryptoschemes really i mean yeah I can understand that. They always were stinking of fraud
Shitcoins they were called iirc
I only love crypto because it evades facist gov. Seems more and more needed as time goes on
But then imo we are heading into cyberpunk reality
Who cares? The people whose opinion you specifically asked about, for starters. That's why I'm mentioning it. You were asking why people are losing their patience with cryptocurrency evangelism: that's the answer. Cryptocurrencies have few "legit" (or at least legit-seeming to most people) uses, and are now mostly associated with crime, fraud, pump and dump schemes and "speculation" (gambling by any other name).
Crypto is a fascists government's wet dream - they can literally follow the chain of transactions, and bitcoin is pseudo-anonymous at best unless you as a user take extra steps to anoymize yourself.
People got hung up on the gambling of it by celebrities.
People love celebrities and they scammed them so now crypto must all be a scam.
I have been following the tech since it dropped.
Crypto solves plenty of real world issues such as quickly and efficiently handling transactions. A project like Ripple has been working with BOA and their payroll division to cheaply handle transactions and scale the service as needed. Something our dinosaur ACH system sucks at terribly.
It also solves warehouse management issues. Warehouse management has become increasingly asymmetrical with massive hubs such a Amazon growing exponentially within the last 15 or so years. People cannot keep up. Give everything a RFID crypto tag and you can find anything anywhere.
It’s stable and efficient tech. People who say otherwise may not know the good projects as opposed to the scam coins/projects.
If a celebrity is doing it, don’t buy it. The conditions have changed, this isn’t 1960 and celebrities are just d bags mostly. Just my observation living around and knowing some.
Anyway crypto is dope, the cultural bullshit and lies aren’t. And most people are fairly dumb. Which is why we need a working Google and not whatever the current garbage state it’s in.
BTW Coinbase is the only barrier to entry I am aware of. Safest, most regulated exchange and has a lobby in Congress.
Get educated not “cultured”.
