Oh sure, now Lemmy wants to embrace crypto instead of calling it a scam, all because your porn was threatened.
I had to put up with so much abuse here just because I always say positive things about crypto. You people suck.
It’s not porn availability that’s threatened, but freedom. I don’t want to use bitcoin and I still think it’s a scam and a sort of gamble, but if Visa or Mastercard can deprive us of freedom, we may have to consider using bitcoin.
The don’t use Bitcoin.
I like Etherium cause it doesn’t waste electricity and you don’t need to buy expensive proprietary hardware to mine it. All you gotta do is press the “stake” button and enjoy that 4% APR. I made $500 in two years simply by sitting on my ETH and letting it grow. Just like how banks used to work back in the day. It’s nice; you’re missing out.
You can’t earn more than you worked.
The $500 isn’t real. You earned that by gambling, by taking the unnecessary risk.
Bro. I feel you. But you have to embrace the fact that Crypto is both a blessing and a curse. People certainly use it in scammy ways - but they do the same with dollars and physical currency.
So people hyperfixate on how crypto can hurt them instead of how they can be helped.
Crypto 100% can replace banks, savings accounts, the stock market, and pretty much every centralized financial institution that has already been captured by billionaire interests.
But you aren’t going to get people to hear that if you just complain about them fixating on the bad stuff.
Talk about what’s good about Crypto enough, and people will definitley come around.
What’s so frustrating about it is that every argument against crypto can also apply to fiat currency. The only one that holds water is the waste of electricity argument, which is why it’s important to invest in Proof of Stake coins like Etherium. So even that argument is a weak one at best. I just don’t understand the hate.
Well said! And same! The hate is entirely manufactured imo. Anyone with eyes can see that Bitcoin increased in value from .001 cents to $120,000 between 2009 and 2025. In that same 26 years what did the stock market do? Ride a rollercoaster of bullshit. The value of crypto is literally better than anything else in the last 2 decades, and that scares the people who control the fiat system outside it.
are you advocating for crypto as a payment system that’s supplementary or as a full replacement for fiat currency?
Full replacement, otherwise there’s no point and Visa still controls everything.
Crypto AI porn sounds kinda hot
Yeah, I’m going to buy my games with bitcoin now.
Oh shit, the fee is higher than the price of the game, can I use Litecoin ?
Cumrocket is the way!
This exists too ::: spoiler spoiler https://coinstats.app/coins/8fZL148nnC168RAVCZh4PkjvMZmxMEfMLDhoziWVPnqf_solana/ :::
Thanks for the tip, I’m putting all my life savings into it then.
The current Bitcoin transaction fee is $0.67. Which means for a purchase larger than $34, Bitcoin is cheaper than the average credit card transaction fee.
I only buy games at $30 or cheaper. So that won’t work for me 🤷♂️
I don’t have a credit card. If you pay per transaction, is there at least no monthly base fee?
A credit card, in the US, has a transaction fee for the vendor, 1-3% of the purchase price, sometimes with a flat few cents fee on top.
The consumer has no transaction fee, but does pay interest (around 28% annually) if they don’t pay off the full balance every month (if they do pay it in full at the end of the month, there is no interest charge). Usually there will be a 1-2% cash back for the consumer as well.
Some credit cards also have an annual fee for the consumer. These generally have higher cash back rewards and higher vendor transaction fees than those that don’t.
Thanks.
Don’t forget secured cards, which require an upfront deposit, and cards with regular monthly or annual fees, simply for having them, regardless of whether you use them or not.
Thats the kind of credit cards you get offered if you are bad with credit cards (cough most Americans are cough thats kinda the whole business model cough), or, if someone steals your identity and you either don’t have enough time or money or otherwise can’t sufficiently prove to credit reporting agencies / banks that that is what happened.
Go to a credit union. Your local credit union will offer better rates and good limits with low fees compared to big banks. My first card at 18 was a secured card, $500 limit and a 4% interest if you didn’t pay off your card. After six months it went to am unsecured ans $1500 limit. All with no fees.
Yeah, I know it can be hit or miss depending on your location, but I have had similarly good experiences with my local credit union… you just prove to them in a more old fashioned way that you’re responsible, and they’ll often be flexible with you in ways that banks aren’t.
There are are no other fees for holding crypto, you only pay when you move it from one place to another, those fees change depending on time of day/week as well. Though some services (like coincards) may take additional processing fees.
The merchant pays the fee. With cryptocurrencies, the consumer pays the fee. Some sites offer a discount for paying with cryptocurrency as a result. For example, most precious metals dealers who accept Bitcoin offer a 3% discount for using it.
The current Bitcoin transaction fee is $0.67.
For a ~60 minute confirmation target. It’s $0.77 for a 20 minute confirmation target right now. The daily average is $1.03.
And lets not forget that the only reason the price is so low now is because people aren’t competing much for those transactions. If people actually used bitcoin to buy games the transaction fee would increase significantly.
You only have to wait one hour for the transaction to be confirmed. It also takes a shit load of energy and is extremely inefficient compared to credit card payment processors. Woohoo!
the fee might be higher at some points but you’re just blabbering. check mempool.space and actually look at what fees are at rn + consider that there are many chains and l2s that can be used for payment. B)
A dollar in fees is a dollar more than with fiat for the person paying. That and do you expect enough normal people to learn about L2s and chains to make it worthwhile for Valve or whoever to implement support for anything besides the main chains of 2-3 major cryptos and stablecoins on ethereum main?
I mean either you care enough about payment processor censorship to go around them or you don’t. If the extra dollar isn’t worth it to you then that is what it is.
Nobody is going to rush to implement a payment system where the fees can change 5x hour to hour because that’s just customer dissatisfaction waiting to happen.
That’s actually one of the matured parts of the crypto ecosystem that has existed for years already, as it was one of the most immediate needs. Last I checked Stripe and Bitpay were the most popular options for vendors.
A dollar in fees is a dollar more than with fiat for the person paying.
Average credit card transaction fee is ~2%. So a dollar of Bitcoin fees makes Bitcoin cheaper for any purchase over $50.
But it’s not variable so the seller prices it in. Switch to Bitcoin and you have to pay it while prices likely stay the same. Also lately most of my games have been under 30 EUR tbh
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Oh you’re definitely paying the credit card fee too, but since it’s the vendor who gets billed it’s just priced into the product. That’s why the product costs 10 Stanly nickle instead of 9 Stanly nickle.
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Pay same in cash or credit.
Depends on the vendor. There are a bunch of places around me that offer cash discounts, which I make solid use of. Lets them lower prices for you as you aren’t forcing a credit card transaction fee onto them.
Yeah good point, they’re not discounting the credit increase for the crypto buyers. That might even be against their credit processor contract.
The transaction fee is not paid by the consumer (directly), and lord knows sellers are not going to lower prices based on payment method.
It depends, I have shopped at places where they will discount up to 15% by paying cash.
Yeah, there are a bunch of places around me that offer cash discounts which I make solid use of. Lets them lower prices for you as you aren’t forcing a credit card transaction fee onto them.
Sadly, this is probably true. Unless they’re trying to steer customers away from more troublesome payment providers.
sellers are not going to lower prices based on payment method
Mullvad actually does this for their VPN service, which I think is great. For a VPN company that doesn’t want to store identifiers about you, taking crypto makes sense because that also doesn’t necessarily have identifiers about you attached that they could read or be required to store, unlike a card that requires your name, address, and card number.
Other than that though, no larger companies are going to do anything of the sort, let alone be likely to even implement it as a payment method to begin with. Tons of additional technical complexity for little to no benefit.
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yes I expect l2s to catch on in different ways and yes I hope that a lot of places like steam or whatever properly implement at least bitpay or something similar in house.
Lightning network exists too
Bitcoin is pretty old, newer cryptocurrencies are more efficient.
I’m glad we’re spending the equivalent of a couple dozen million households of electricity on it
Let’s not ask how much power Visa and MasterCard use for their global monopoly.
Literally orders of magnitude less? Are you not familiar with how proof of work crypto operates? Being energy inefficient is the whole point.
You’re so right, environmental impact has not been assessed by any cryptocurrency ever made. Literally zilch. None. Nada.
? And that makes bitcoins waste disapear?
No, and I never stated that. I just think it’s stupid to group all of crypto as an environmentally unsustainable technology. Following your logic, switching to electric cars isn’t worth it because the 100 years of petroleum pollution won’t disappear.
Meanwhile the US military’s energy budget eclipses global crypto mining essentially to maintain petrodollar dominance and American residents pay for it.
Yeah I’m using this cool new Lightning cryptocurrency, check it out.
Litecoin is cool.
Isn’t this a right wing meme about centrists, but with the text changed?
The Bitcoin side wouldn’t catch you, because that interferes with the user’s choice to hit the ground.
This doesn’t even make any sense. Just use cash if you hate cards. Most places actually will love you for this.
Fuck crypto.
Crypto remains a pyramid scheme masquerading as a resistance against tyranny
Ironically you know what ACTUALLY protects from powergrabs by payment processors? A fully centralised, government backed form of digital cash that is fully equivalent to paper money.
Ask a Brazilian about pix. Super low fees (often feeling non existant). And transactions can’t be invalidated on the whims of a corporate board. For something to not be buyable by pix it has to be illegal, thus having to go through every layer of checks and balances a democracy has.
The problem with visa and their ilk is that finance has been privatised. Too much power in the hands of corporations that have deftly dodged regulation that would keep them neutral and honest. Thinking privatising things further and turning everyone into a fully unregulated petty digital landlord is gonna solve anything rather than make it worse is foolhardy.
This is a heated topic it seems, to crypto or not to crypto.
I guess the dollar might need to end, but for different reasons.
As long as Trump is in power, he can in principle just print as many dollars as he wants to and spend them on what he likes.
The mechanism is by (ab-)using the Federal Reserve bank. It hands out “loans” to the government, the government never really has to pay them back. (it’s called national debt)
Ending the existence of the dollar seems to be the only real way to take a money-printing machine out of Trump’s hands.
I’m not saying this lightheartedly, just considering the options.
This is called debt monetisation and has been forbidden by law in the US since 1981.
well then it’s good that Trump always adheres to the law
Trump is not yet in charge of the Federal Reserve. That may change depending on what his goons in Congress and the Supreme Court do, but for the time being, even if Trump says “I ORDER the Fed to buy $1 trillion in TrumpBonds”, Powell can say “I’m good” and there’s not much he can yet do about it.
Assuming that Trump fires Powell
Lmao, crypto tech bros coming out of the woodwork trying to get popularity for their bag holder’s game…
Also pretending that shit hasn’t been bought up by wall street
What? They have like 5%. You should revisit your stance
Crypto is still a scam.
And specifically bad for this.
Only way out is communism. Pick yoir flavor.
What…
The only way out of crypto is full blow communism?
Crypto has all the same vices as government and corporate currencies, just arranged a little differently. It’s not the revolution.
You can do various flavors of anarchism or centralism or the weird shit in between, but the only way for someone to not be able to say what you can spend your money on is to abolish money or get rid of all the people who could tell you what to do.
Bitcoin is not crypto
it’s literally called a “cryptocurrency”.
Yes but they are still very different things.
only if you change the definition of “crypto”.
Many would argue that there needs some distinction between them. The ongoing joke is “Shitcoin” as many have abandoned the benefits of bitcoin.
Wtf are you talking about??? Bitcoin is THE cryptocurrency.
If you do not know a lot about “crypto” then I would say the main thing to understand is that there is Bitcoin (not owned by any single entity) and then there is everything else. Other “coins” are owned by corporations that can make decisions about it and change it to some extent. These are extremely risky.
Bitcoin (btc) does have risk but much less. It is not owned by any company or person or country. It is like the internet, only exists because tens of thousands of internet providers(miners for Bitcoin) around the world make it possible. Bitcoin has, in its codebase, a limitation that any change must be agreed upon by 95% of these providers(miners). This way security patches and bug fixes can be added because everyone agrees those are good. Other harmful changes would never reach 95% agreement therefor could never be implemented. There is a limit of 21 million Bitcoin and this number can never increase unless 95% agree to it… which they never would. This is in stark contrast to normal money which is constantly printed(at random rates depending on who happens to be in control at that moment) so that the supply increases making its value drop.
Scamming happens with cryptos, Bitcoin, euros, dollars,yuan… and always will.
I really like Taler
Honestly, what’s the point of a credit card? Why don’t people mostly use debit cards? It gets just directly wire transferred from your account. No sort of junk fees or monthly subscription needed. Genuine Question.
Fiscally responsible people do it because of the cash back/perks and 0% interest.
Fiscally irresponsible people do it because ‘free money’ (ignoring the 28% annual interest).
Credit cards also offer better consumer protections than debit cards. Ex: chargebacks.
Fiscally irresponsible
I mean, there are people who just don’t have the money for a needed “purchase” (like medical care, transportation, or food), and hope they’ll be able to get a better job or make more money in the future to pay it off later. Been there.
This is not true for many countries. Debit cards in my country have equal or even better consumer protections than credit cards and are also cheaper.
It’s true in the United States. In the US, a debit card transaction is an EFTPOS (electronic funds transfer at point of sale) and once you enter your PIN, there are no take-backs and if you want a refund and the merchant refuses, you have to resort to the legal system for recourse. Credit cards, on the other hand, have consumer protection rules and dispute procedures.
I live off a credit card, my money sits inside an offset account against my home loan the interest charged on that is calculated every 30 days at the end of the month so the more cash I have in there the less interest I pay on my mortgage.
The credit card is free with no fees or interest provided I pay it off on time with that date being every 30 days from the 15th of the month.
Thus at the end of the month when interest is calculated on my home loan I have more cash in my account then I would if I had of spent 2k that month on bills etc.
The other benefit is I earn points that the bank will exchange for cash with me so it’s kinda like free money.
For context I’m Australian with an Australian bank.
This set up is great if you’re disciplined for anyone due to the points etc however if you screw up spend beyond your means etc you will incur interest and that’s not good.
I make sure to never spend more then I actually have and it has worked wonders for me.
In the past 10 years I’ve probably been made about 7k back in points value.
Cash flights etc all for spending exactly as I do.
I should note the card is provided to me as part of my home loan package hence it has no fees attached as I pay an upfront cost for the “home loan wealth package”
i’ll add an extra to this on the cashback etc
credit card companies charge stores processing fees, and then give consumers cash backs to encourage them to spend using their cards
stores add credit card processing into their cost of doing business… you’re charged that in the cost of things you purchase
if you pay with a credit card, you get some of that back. if you don’t pay with a credit card, you’re still charged the fees - you just don’t get any of the benefits
The latest that drives me mad is the 1.5 surcharge they’re putting on pay wave transactions now.
They pushed it free convenient etc etc and now charge extra for it regardless of debit or credit card
whaaaat? where is doing this? i haven’t seen it, and would ABSOLUTELY boycott the shit out of it
Small to medium shops all around my town in Australia.
It’s started to make me think about returning to cash, but it’s $3.20 to get cash out unless you go to the bank during their office hours
Because I have to. A lot of platforms literally don’t support debit cards.
A lot of platforms literally don’t support debit cards.
You can get a Visa debit card from your bank; everyone takes Visa.
I’m EU based. We don’t have visa debit cards
I am in EU, but likely a different country. I dont think we do Visa credit cards here, the only credit card around is Mastercard, all Visas are debit. Weird how that’s different
The EU has Visa debit cards.
I’m in France. Pretty much everyone has a Visa debit card.
“Debit” in the United States refers to chip-and-PIN transactions only (though tap-and-PIN is also now a thing). The US debit card networks process only in-person transactions because their fees are limited by law and the risk of fraud is lower for chip-and-PIN compared to the “trust me bro” of online card transactions.
All other transactions processed through the Visa or Mastercard network are treated as credit card transactions for the purposes of processing the transaction on the network, even if the underlying card is a debit card.
Because many people don’t actually have the money on hand. Some do but me and many others are spending money we don’t have yet. It’s a negative feedback loop of debt because capitalism sucks
I’ve just got rid of my credit card after 10 years in NA. Yes it can come in handy if you need a couple grand all of a sudden but damn, what a ball and chain, I hated it
I buy stuff for work with my personal card and I’ve made probably thousands of dollars from the cash back. Even on my regular cards I get a couple hundred back off of stuff I normally buy.
There’s other benefits too like using points to buy plane tickets, fancy lobbies in the airport with free food, etc.
Tons of cards have zero fees. Some offer rewards and benefits at no real cost. I have for nearly a decade used a card with 1% back on purchases and 1% back on payments. Running all my usual spending through that and then just paying it off has net me a lot of money in that time that I just use for statement credit.
It’s easy to dispute charges should I ever need to. Rare since I’m cautious anyways, but the extra layer before my actual bank account is nice.
It has also built up a hell of a credit rating for me as well.
You can get 2% cards with no fees now as well. 2% on everything.
Paid cards go up to 6%, or possibly higher.
You can game this system if you don’t have debt on them.
That’s what I do. 2% card with zero fees and no debt on it. Run every possible expense through it monthly and just pay it off.
I am usually cautious with claims of free money. There is no free money for working class people. So, who’s paying it in that case and for what reason? I reckon the company who is running the platform does it, such that they can get market share to coerce sellers into using their product.
Or am I seeing this wrong?
I will agree that a credit card only really made any sense as I began to finally gain more financial independence. Before then, it was pointless.
The claim is that they are giving you a portion of the merchant fee for utilizing said credit cards.
I’m sure they also make money by selling all your info.
You get points. I pay a fee on only one of my cards, the one that gives me 6% back on groceries. I make decent money using that card.
If someone steals your debit card, they can directly take money out of your account. With credit cards, there’s a buffer between the product and the bank account, and it makes it easier to stop fraud
I’ve had my debit card information stolen before. My bank knew before I did, cancelled the fraudulent charges, and refunded my money without any action on my part. Doesn’t seem like a credit card would have been any advantage in my [admittedly anecdotal] case.
Banks can, but they’re not legally obligated to. With a credit card they are. (US)
In the US if someone takes your debit card and enters the correct PIN, the transactions are permanent, and the bank has no obligation to give your money back (and if they choose to do so it would be out of their own pocket).
It’s not fraud, it’s interest.
If you use a debit card and can’t cover a transaction, it just doesn’t go through. If you have a credit card then the bank pays and now you owe them, and they’ll charge you extra for that privilege.
You could just pay off your balance by the due date and you won’t be charged any interest.
But is it really worth all of the junk that you have to accept? I like the credit scoring, the monthly subscription, and, if you miss the date for paying back, the absurdly high fees. Well, yes, with the debit card you have, technically speaking, the risk of someone being able to make about 100€ worth of RFID payments, and then the code is needed again for the next 100€ RFID payments. For everything else that doesn’t involve RFID, the code is needed always.
The US implementation of chip and PIN left off the PIN. The reason given was “no one wants to put in a PIN every time” so for the vast majority of transactions you just hold up your card to the sensor or put it in the chip reader. PIN is only required for cash withdrawals in my experience.
Jesus Christ, that is absolutely moronic. No wonder people are so obsessed with losing their card.
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This problem could be solved.
Well not to stop it before it happens, surely, but an easier time reclaiming your money due to the buffer.
Debit cards typically have PIN numbers.
I know these can be defeated in various ways, but its not usually as simple as, just steal someone’s card.
Also, you can just go to your bank or credit union, call them, report online or w/e: Hey, my card got stolen, these txns are fraud.
Might not be as streamlined or as fast as a payment challenge with a credit card, but its not that much worse.
Because people are reliant on debt because wages haven’t kept pace with expected standards of living.
Of for more ago well off people some cards offer perks like cash back or air miles and it’s free if you pay it off in full each month.
Also, in my country at least, you get more protection if you have an issue with the goods you’ve bought. https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/reclaim/section75-protect-your-purchases/
My debit card is a master card.
They still need to go through a payment processor, using a debit instead of credit card isn’t really the solution to the current problems.
The insane thing about Bitcoin’s continued popularity is that out of all the thousands of cryptocurrencies out there, it’s easily the worst in every regard.
I’m not going to name names for fear of being called a shill, but if you want a cryptocurrency for just buying stuff there’s a ton that are more stable, faster, don’t cost a fortune to process, and don’t destroy the planet.
Crypto has its issues, but when used as an actual payment system, it’s a great alternative for online payments, and can give more privacy and anonymity if used correctly
It’s a pyramid scheme.
I imagine you believe the stocks market is also a pyramid scheme?
He’s not wrong…
who?
The person implying that the stock market is a pyramid scheme.
:(
That’s not what a pyramid scheme is
Perhaps, but bitcoin isn’t exactly the best example of that.
Yes, I believe bitcoin is not a good crypto overall. It’s only the oldest and most famous one, but fails on many sides
Yes. It was an amazing proof of concept, but it has been surpassed on all fronts.
except for the insane fluctuations in currency value and the immense inefficiency of the whole system and all the fraud even in “stable” coins and all the lack of regulation
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“Insane fluctuations in currency value”: Someone who makes most of their payments in crypto is likely doing it with a stablecoin, which is a cryptocurrency pegged 1-to-1 to a fiat currency, like the US dollar. So, no more wild fluctuations than the 10% decrease in value the USD has experienced over the past year. Speaking of which, the 100% increase in BTC value this past year certainly is wild, but I don’t think any of it’s holders would consider that a problem.
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“Immense inefficiency of the whole system”: If you consider the US military to be the value security for the world’s dominant fiat currency [which you would be foolish not to] Proof of Work security is a large improvement on energy use. Proof of Stake security, which most stablecoins use these days, doesn’t really use any energy worth noting.
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“All the fraud”: Credit cards suffer far more fraud than crypto. Perhaps that’s a product of their wider adoption, but that’s where 99% of the fraud is happening.
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“The lack of regulation”: One of the hottest topics in US congress over the past several years, for both Biden and Trump regimes, has been crypto regulation. It’s a moving space right now but it seems myopic to call lack of regulation when it’s certainly going to be a moot point by 2028.
Sorry I don’t really consider myself to be some crypto warrior but I do really dislike these decade+ old off the cuff relatively low-information talking points. This is not how you argue against crypto, if you want a strong argument against crypto come at it from an explicitly anti-capitalist lens and accuse it of accelerating global financialization, which it is, like a gas can poured on a campfire. Go big or go home. If you don’t oppose capitalism and you’re just looking for a better money, crypto is not your boogeyman.
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You speak of Gresham’s Law, which is “bad money beats good money”. For payments, people would rather part with an inflationary asset than deflarionary because of future value. Definitely the thing that has settled the argument over Bitcoin’s primary use case.
Agreed re: the faux anticapitalism. I mean, ideologically I think of myself as anticapitalist. But I have to afford things to not be destitute within this economic regime, so I “play the game”. But I wouldn’t delude myself into thinking that advocating for one sort of money over another is in any way a stance against capitalism. In most cases it isn’t even a stance against status quo.
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As someone who used to be (but no longer is) into crypto: These statements are all technically accurate to some degree, but are missing extremely important nuance.
The stablecoins part is accurate. Most purchases made in crypto are with stablecoins.
What’s missing here is the fact that these stablecoins are issued and controlled by private companies, or would be influenced by them otherwise. For example, Circle issues USDC, one of the most popular dollar stablecoins. (as well as EURC for Euros)
Circle holds real dollars in real bank accounts to back USDC. Circle can also freeze your balance and blacklist addresses, because they don’t want their banks to stop working with them. That’s it. They can unilaterally stop you from using your USDC.
Other mechanisms for keeping a stablecoin at $1, such as algorithmic pegs, failed spectacularly many times, the most famous of which being the Terra disaster.
Some other stablecoins use centralized coins as backing to then issue new coins. (e.g. 1 STABLECOIN is backed by 1 USDC, and can be exchanged freely) These coins could then be in trouble if they’re used enough for fraud, and Circle just blocks the coin itself from exchanging between itself and USDC to maintain the peg, making it worthless. This is an inherent risk. You either use a centralized platform less accountable than card companies, or you use a third party backed by that centralized asset that could face peg issues.
As for the inefficiency, it’s actually true that PoW is being phased out by most chains other than Bitcoin for PoS, which is incredibly energy efficient by comparison. Truly, it’s actually just pretty energy efficient. This isn’t missing much nuance, though you could argue that the financial mechanisms used by the systems running on top of a PoS consensus mechanisms are still complex in their own right.
For the fraud part, this is only half accurate. Fraud in crypto has been on the rise, and while it’s maintained itself at a level lower than credit card fraud, this is also because of the limited scope in which crypto operates. If crypto were to be used in more situations like credit cards are, then there would be more opportunities to be defrauded in the first place.
The majority of activity in crypto operates within speculative markets, protocols offering yield farming and staking, liquidity pooling, vote bribing, and an untold number of other mechanisms that exist. As such, scammers are mostly limited to tricking people in the field of investments.
If crypto was also used to pay your bills, for your purchases at the store, for every rideshare and food delivery app, and to pay friends back for dinner, then the scope of fraud becomes much larger.
Crypto does not have less fraud because it is fundamentally better at preventing it, crypto has less fraud because it’s used in less circumstances.
(There is also an argument to be made that many investments in crypto that don’t work out because of rugpulls, failed promises, unaccountable DAO leaders, etc, aren’t counted in fraud statistics, and that the number should be much higher)
Now, finally, as for regulation, it’s true that crypto has seen much more regulation than it used to have, but it’s only getting a bit stronger, and is nowhere near the sheer quantity of regulations that financial corporations have to follow, though some are technically not necessary for crypto as most crypto is already transparent via the blockchain’s very structure, and thus doesn’t require some of the transparency regulations corporations often follow.
Crypto still lags far behind, and there’s a degree to which it physically can’t be regulated in the first place. For example, you can’t regulate how the Uniswap exchange handles user funds, because the code for Uniswap has already been immutably deployed to its respective chains.
If a system is built on rejecting authority, there will always be a degree to which justifiable authority that could protect people becomes impossible by its very nature.
I’m not wholly against any possible use of crypto. If someone being, say, censored by payment processors is able to use crypto to send money home to their family, or pay for a thing the corporations currently deem to not be nice for their brand image, that’s all well and fine.
But as a whole, crypto is nowhere near being more beneficial than harmful.
Very useful addendums. I agree with pretty much all of this, I just didn’t say most of it for the sake of brevity. Overall though yes, when taking apart individual arguments quickly like I did one does lose the whole picture in order to be exacting about specific points.
As for crypto being more harmful than beneficial overall? I agree with that too. It’s just that I feel that way about all money under capitalism. For me that kind of goes without saying. Money under capitalism is overall more harmful than beneficial. However, is crypto less beneficial to the average individual than fiat? …In most cases still, also yes lol. But there are plenty of edge cases.
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The lack of regulation is pretty much a goal. When a government controls or regulate a currency, your liberty is attacked.
Fraud? What are you talking about?
How is the system inefficient though? Compared to what? I don’t believe it’s fair to compare a decentralized system to a centralized one. Lemmy is much more expensive to run per user than Reddit for example
Fluctuations suck indeed, though they vary, it depends of the crypto
By inefficiency I just mean transactions per kWh. It’s insane how expensive cryptocurrencies can get.
Sadly true for PoW cryptos. Luckily, PoS exists, but it might not work with every crypto.
More kWh = more secured chain, that’s currently how it works. At this point blocks are going to be mined anyways, so let’s fill those blocks
The lack of regulation is pretty much a goal. When a government controls or regulate a currency, your liberty is attacked.
If your argument hinges on avoiding regulation, then it’s guaranteed to fail. Having oversight is not a bad thing.
The idea of positive self-regulation, especially of a currency in a capitalist system, is pure fantasy.
Part of me wonders if this is all a play to boost crypto values by the execs in these industries.
Devil’s advocate, it’s a play to get crypto banned cause it’s only used for illegal/disapproved activities.
Feasible but it’s a long con. Although big corporations can play these games i guess
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