• StupidBrotherInLaw@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        I read your comment, thought it’s impossible that you’re right, and took a beat to verify. You’re entirely correct. Crypto truly is this stupid.

        • Buddahriffic@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          The same method is used to determine market cap of publically traded companies. Whatever the most recent trade price was * total number of shares = what the company is supposedly worth.

          • futatorius@lemm.ee
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            4 months ago

            Non-rigged markets tend to also require a minimum trade volume, restrict insider trading, and keep a close watch to prevent pump-and-dump and similar scams.

            Clean, open markets are regulated. That’s why the scammers to go the crypto markets: they’re opaque, rigged, and free of those inconvenient fraud-prevention rules

      • PM_Your_Nudes_Please@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        This was a blatant way to allow people to donate to Trump while skirting existing campaign finance laws. Get his buddies to buy his meme coin for exorbitant prices, and now he gets to keep the money because he “sold” something and it’s not a bribe.

      • CeruleanRuin@lemmings.world
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        4 months ago

        Great! Now we need to fix the tax code so you have to declare that as income, and it’s taxed progressively. That would pretty quickly put the kibosh on these scams.

        • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          Short term capital gains already are taxed as income. I doubt anyone is holding these rug pull coins for more than a year.

      • phx@lemmy.ca
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        4 months ago

        It’s like those terrible celebrity endorsed/named perfumes and other product.

        Being sold like stocks

        But with no physical product even a shitty one

    • ricecake@sh.itjust.works
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      4 months ago

      Yes and no.

      It’s a collection of numbers with properties related to how they’re found that make them difficult to counterfeit, and the way they’re recorded makes it difficult to steal. This, as well as a handful of other properties, give digital currencies behavior not entirely unlike the things that make cash useful.

      Unlike money, it’s not backed by a government. This means that it’s much more volatile in terms of value. Say what you will about the state of the US, it’s unlikely that the dollar will significantly change value over the next year. It’s essentially guaranteed that the price of every cryptocurrency will be wildly different a year from today.
      Put them together and you’ve got a wonderful vehicle for laundering money or bribery, which is what this all is.
      The other key aspect of money that it’s missing is being generally useful outside of speculation. I can reliably use my dollars to pay for goods and services, and most significantly to pay taxes and satisfy debts in the eyes of the law. Cryptocurrency is inevitably either instantly converted to money once someone gets it, or it’s held onto under the assumption it’ll be worth more later.
      Money has value because it gets you “stuff”. Cryptocurrency has value because it gets you money.

      It’s fake money, but it’s a very complicated and realistic fake money.

      • LePoisson@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        People acting like cryptocurrency isn’t just a security backed by thin air really drives me up the wall.

        Crypto is a mirage and when it crashes people will all be wondering, “damn how were we this naive.”. But humans are great at playing make believe so who knows. But acting like the USD and Bitcoin are the same is lunacy.

        Like you said one is money, the other you hold onto and want to turn into money.

      • Revan343@lemmy.ca
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        4 months ago

        Cryptocurrency is inevitably either instantly converted to money once someone gets it, or it’s held onto under the assumption it’ll be worth more later.

        Money has value because it gets you “stuff”. Cryptocurrency has value because it gets you money.

        With one notable exception…when it is actually used as a medium of exchange, to buy drugs on the internet. (Which the vast majority of crypto is not used for, especially shitcoins like Trump’s scam.)

          • Revan343@lemmy.ca
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            4 months ago

            I don’t know if this one is more money laundering or bribery or both, but it’s clearly something in that ballpark, yeah.

        • prole
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          4 months ago

          Yeah and you’re a fool if you use Bitcoin for that purpose

            • prole
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              4 months ago

              I truly have no idea what that means… Unrelated, but I recently got into a tragic boat accident.