How did you buy drugs online before crypto?
I think it’s made it much easier. Also for international transactions of large sums I used to pay fees for services and crypto allows for an easy universal standard with no middle men.
Micropayments never caught on, but it would be a nice solution for that as well.
This argument that we already have money, we don’t need different money never flew with me. Crypto has its place, it was just abused as an investment commodity way too early and this massive inflation completely suffocated any practical application.
The argument is more that we already have better solutions than the one crypto tries to fill. Instead of finding a solution for a problem, crypto tries to find a problem to solve.
Blockchain may have some use case somewhere, but it is definitely not in money.
Buying illegal shit is important. I never would have accomplished the truama recovery I have in the care access desert we lived in without being able to buy psychedelics online. I’m thriving personally because of a few high quality darkweb dealers. I’m great at my job in part because they sent me accurately labeled and carefully grown cannabis when it was illegal, so I was gaining strain knowledge and experience when most of my coworkers were getting the best generic weed they could find in town. If the fascists succeed in making trans care illegal, I’ll use it buy my hormones. It pains me to see the intense turn against crypto, because, used for actual commerce rather than as an investment, it kinda saved me. We never used bitcoin unless we couldn’t help it. I’ve always been angry that using the least energy efficient coin as an investment became the norm. The value of crypto, in my opinion, lies entirely in its prompt and regular use as currency. Hodlers ruined things for everyone.
Yeah crypto critics often gloss over the fact that the war on drugs is an example of repressive government policy and that darknet markets where a lifeline for folks using drugs. As an example, psychedelic have genuine therapeutic uses and on the street level, many “research chemicals” with horrible safety profiles are sold as things like LSD or MDMA.
With a darknet market you get access to a community that can help vet sellers through forums, comments and rating that help keep users safe.
Moreover what this shows is crypto can help organizations or people under repressive governments. Another example was a group in Nigeria who was protesting against the police group SARS. The Nigerian government froze their bank accounts but the group was still able to fundraise using BTC.
And you think the companies charging exorbitant fees to remit money aren’t scummy? Crypto has its myriad issues, but remittance is one rock-solid example of it disrupting an egregiously predatory industry in a very positive way.
You are just putting a negative spin on things that are not necessarily negative.
The last one is not at all specific to crypto.
Let’s not forget that monitary structures are currently backed by governments, crypto offers a way out of the risks associated with that structure as well. Of course if crypto ever takes off it will end up controlled by corporations which is not inherently better, but at least it offers a choice / way out from governmental whims.
A lot of technological changes start as things trying to find problems to solve - that’s often how discovery works.
I don’t share your confidence. Clearly crypto isn’t going to sprout in popularity any time soon, but there aren’t nails in this coffin.
It’s funny cause crypto can totally be traced, like the whole idea is everyone has a copy of a history of the transactions, although wallets can be effectively anonymous with certain caveats. The idea of providing my address for a shipment was the part that always put me off with darknet. Although knowing how the laws work with how police obtain warrants etc, I didn’t see a huge risk on that front. Also the things I wanted to obtain weren’t necessarily illegal, mostly Shulgin’s compounds, spores, certain species of wood bark, and we already had a huge medical grey market cannabis market. Plain old etransfers were always preferred because under $10k its not a red flag and nothing “illegal” is happening anyway in the supply chain.
I welcome you to my comment thread where people downvote me for being a living example of where cryptocurrency solves a problem better than anything else.
I have questioned this ever since I learned that the more adoption there is, the less efficient mining becomes, ergo more power is wasted accomplishing the exact same task for no extra benefit. Difficulty creates a back asswards system that makes adoption a con.
It allows you to send money overseas very cheap. If you moved to a different country, cryptocurrency saves you a lot of headaches with exchange rates and bank fees.
It also allows you to lock down money into a program and distribute it systematically without anyone being able to touch it. Think mass donations being automatically distributed to a select number of organizations, but instead of trusting that the fundraiser doesn’t pocket any money for themselves, you make it impossible for them to do so.
It also doesn’t run as a company so it needs no offices, no employees or bosses, so theoretically it is more cost effective than traditional banking. In a way it is like the fediverse where instead of relying on one big bank service, many people host their own ones, and just like the fediverse, you have some hosts that you can trust and some that you can’t, and while it is more expensive to keep track of multiple instances, that simply is the cost of decentralization.
You’re not really supposed to earn money with crypto (unless you host a node), just spend it or use as your own private bank.
The idea was great, but it was ruined by greed.
It’s always been a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist.
How did you buy drugs online before crypto? I think it’s made it much easier. Also for international transactions of large sums I used to pay fees for services and crypto allows for an easy universal standard with no middle men. Micropayments never caught on, but it would be a nice solution for that as well. This argument that we already have money, we don’t need different money never flew with me. Crypto has its place, it was just abused as an investment commodity way too early and this massive inflation completely suffocated any practical application.
So the use cases are:
Buying illegal shit
Scummy crypto exchange as middle men
Small payments that never got used
Trying to become rich by sitting on money
The argument is more that we already have better solutions than the one crypto tries to fill. Instead of finding a solution for a problem, crypto tries to find a problem to solve.
Blockchain may have some use case somewhere, but it is definitely not in money.
Buying illegal shit is important. I never would have accomplished the truama recovery I have in the care access desert we lived in without being able to buy psychedelics online. I’m thriving personally because of a few high quality darkweb dealers. I’m great at my job in part because they sent me accurately labeled and carefully grown cannabis when it was illegal, so I was gaining strain knowledge and experience when most of my coworkers were getting the best generic weed they could find in town. If the fascists succeed in making trans care illegal, I’ll use it buy my hormones. It pains me to see the intense turn against crypto, because, used for actual commerce rather than as an investment, it kinda saved me. We never used bitcoin unless we couldn’t help it. I’ve always been angry that using the least energy efficient coin as an investment became the norm. The value of crypto, in my opinion, lies entirely in its prompt and regular use as currency. Hodlers ruined things for everyone.
Yeah crypto critics often gloss over the fact that the war on drugs is an example of repressive government policy and that darknet markets where a lifeline for folks using drugs. As an example, psychedelic have genuine therapeutic uses and on the street level, many “research chemicals” with horrible safety profiles are sold as things like LSD or MDMA.
With a darknet market you get access to a community that can help vet sellers through forums, comments and rating that help keep users safe.
Moreover what this shows is crypto can help organizations or people under repressive governments. Another example was a group in Nigeria who was protesting against the police group SARS. The Nigerian government froze their bank accounts but the group was still able to fundraise using BTC.
And you think the companies charging exorbitant fees to remit money aren’t scummy? Crypto has its myriad issues, but remittance is one rock-solid example of it disrupting an egregiously predatory industry in a very positive way.
You are just putting a negative spin on things that are not necessarily negative. The last one is not at all specific to crypto.
Let’s not forget that monitary structures are currently backed by governments, crypto offers a way out of the risks associated with that structure as well. Of course if crypto ever takes off it will end up controlled by corporations which is not inherently better, but at least it offers a choice / way out from governmental whims.
A lot of technological changes start as things trying to find problems to solve - that’s often how discovery works.
I don’t share your confidence. Clearly crypto isn’t going to sprout in popularity any time soon, but there aren’t nails in this coffin.
It’s funny cause crypto can totally be traced, like the whole idea is everyone has a copy of a history of the transactions, although wallets can be effectively anonymous with certain caveats. The idea of providing my address for a shipment was the part that always put me off with darknet. Although knowing how the laws work with how police obtain warrants etc, I didn’t see a huge risk on that front. Also the things I wanted to obtain weren’t necessarily illegal, mostly Shulgin’s compounds, spores, certain species of wood bark, and we already had a huge medical grey market cannabis market. Plain old etransfers were always preferred because under $10k its not a red flag and nothing “illegal” is happening anyway in the supply chain.
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I welcome you to my comment thread where people downvote me for being a living example of where cryptocurrency solves a problem better than anything else.
[greed!] The cause of and solution to all of our problems
I have questioned this ever since I learned that the more adoption there is, the less efficient mining becomes, ergo more power is wasted accomplishing the exact same task for no extra benefit. Difficulty creates a back asswards system that makes adoption a con.
Ethereum doesn’t use mining at all anymore. It can get expensive to use though, which layer 2 chains help with
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It allows you to send money overseas very cheap. If you moved to a different country, cryptocurrency saves you a lot of headaches with exchange rates and bank fees.
It also allows you to lock down money into a program and distribute it systematically without anyone being able to touch it. Think mass donations being automatically distributed to a select number of organizations, but instead of trusting that the fundraiser doesn’t pocket any money for themselves, you make it impossible for them to do so.
It also doesn’t run as a company so it needs no offices, no employees or bosses, so theoretically it is more cost effective than traditional banking. In a way it is like the fediverse where instead of relying on one big bank service, many people host their own ones, and just like the fediverse, you have some hosts that you can trust and some that you can’t, and while it is more expensive to keep track of multiple instances, that simply is the cost of decentralization.
You’re not really supposed to earn money with crypto (unless you host a node), just spend it or use as your own private bank.
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This sounds like everything ever.
Having a huge penis got worse the greedier I was
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