• brucethemoose@lemmy.world
    cake
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    37
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    edit-2
    22 hours ago

    Too bad about crypto.

    This is the exact kind of situation it was meant to deal with: finance independent of bad entities. But it’s such a dumpster fire…

    I don’t think there’s a purer example of social media engagement hype, predatory capitalism, and disinformation ruining something neat so quick.

      • brucethemoose@lemmy.world
        cake
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        4
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        13 hours ago

        Stablecoin is a thing. So is a system to control inflation.

        The more pressing issue to me is the core premise: a totally anonymized but publicly recorded financial system makes no sense, especially when the user generally won’t grasp it. It’s just begging for thieves and scammers, and that’s what it got.

    • 01011@monero.town
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      7
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      17 hours ago

      It really depends on the cryptocurrency in question. Some coins are much more credible than others. Lumping them all in together is like saying that the Japanese Yen and the Lebanese Pound are the same.

    • chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      10
      ·
      21 hours ago

      social media engagement hype, predatory capitalism, and disinformation ruining something

      I mean, it still works for getting around Visa and Mastercard. For instance it can be used to make donations to various media piracy groups. It’s just that it’s so useful to scammers and many people see the technology as a whole as being one ‘brand’.

      • brucethemoose@lemmy.world
        cake
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        edit-2
        18 hours ago

        It’s more than a perception problem now, it’s a culture one within the crypto community (as far as I can tell).

        Even if you treat the most prominent crypto as a utility, the sea of hype and speculation will affect you.

        • chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          9 hours ago

          Maybe. I feel a bit out of the loop on “crypto community culture” because I understand that much of it largely exists on Twitter nowadays, and I don’t go there. Still, it is a functional solution for a money equivalent of encrypted communication.

          • brucethemoose@lemmy.world
            cake
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            edit-2
            9 hours ago

            Or Discord! And investment TV! It’s so cultish, it’s unreal.

            I think this should be distinguished between “pure” crypto enthusiasts, in it for the utility, not speculation, which are probably like pink elephants now.

            AI has a similar divide, where like 99% of the hype is on Twitter and TV with AI bros, but there are little niche communities messing with open weights, locally runnable models in a much more grounded way. /r/localllama used to be a hub for this (and there is a little branch on Lemmy), but unfortunately it seems to be getting strangled by Reddit enshittification .