• Breve@pawb.social
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      3 hours ago

      Pretty much. You can make 1001 cards with your signature and a number on them, sell 1 of them for $1000 to your best friend, then say you’re a millionaire now because you have 1000 cards left each worth $1000.

      That’s how cryptocurrency market caps work.

      • StupidBrotherInLaw@lemmy.world
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        3 hours 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.

      • CeruleanRuin@lemmings.world
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        3 hours 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.

    • ricecake@sh.itjust.works
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      14 hours 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 hours 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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        12 hours 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 hours 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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          6 hours ago

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