Is Crypto Finally Dead?
Is Crypto Finally Dead?
Yes, I know that it still exist, and yes, decentralized currency which utilizes distributed, cryptographic validation is not actually a strictly bad idea, but...
Is the speculative investment scam, which crypto substantially represented, finally dead? Can we go back to buying gold bars and Pokemon cards?
I feel like it is, but I'm having a hard time putting my finger on why it lost its sheen. Maybe crypto scammers moved on to selling LLM "prompts?" Maybe the rug just got pulled enough times that everyone lost trust.
I'm a fan of cryptocurrencies, and I would dearly love for the "speculative investment scam" aspect of it to be dead. It's been a massive drag on the technology's reputation for many years, preventing it from being used for all kinds of applications that would really benefit from some form of cryptocurrency integration. Unfortunately even if the "speculative investment scam" aspect dies the bad reputation will linger, so hopefully those applications will find ways to sneak it in where useful without drawing too much attention.
-
As an actual currency, it's functionally useless. Even if every retailer on the planet were to accept it, the overhead for making the transaction is just a non-starter
-
Because of that, it's entirely just funny money. Even further, since it's entirely a virtual asset, if the power goes out, your wallet goes with it
-
The environmental impacts are horrifying. This fact alone means that it should all be eradicated. Destroying the planet for Internet funny money isn't an acceptable proposition
-
For a decentralized currency, people sure do love centralizing under large exchanges, and the massive losses, thefts, fraud, etc. have shown that no matter how "decentralized" it's supposed to be, it's still susceptible to the same bullshit as any other currency
-
Its high profile association with grifters, scammers, malware, and dark web shenanigans has completely soured its image in the public mind
-
It's entirely a speculative investment scam now. There's no way to decouple it from that.
-
but I'm having a hard time putting my finger on why it lost its sheen.
One aspect might be, that the scam stories are much more popular and easier to circulate on social media than are actual usages. It's a strong online virality bias. Scams and phishing also happen a lot in fiat and cash (albeit relatively lower), but since most of it is so secret and banks really don't want to get bad media, then try to keep such things hidden.
Look at Monero (privacy coin) for example. There is no news on whales, scams etc. there, because it's private so there is no attention given to that. That makes is easier to simply use it and not get an overly negative news bias.
At the same time, cryptos were successfully used during Ukraine for quick money Donations. This was also reported in news, but it doesn't stick so long into the minds of the people as the controversial scams/ftx etc.
Finally, at least with Ethereum there is still around 10 years of development in front of it with exciting new capabilities. Until a few years from now, we'll finally have a system with scalability ans high security as well.
However, until then ethereum will grow slowly.
Also, unfortunately I think the focus of many people has shifted from p2p currency and adoption to money making and investment - which isn't too bad, but adoption still sucks and makes it less useful for now.
Well, the irony is hard to miss, right? Crypto was born out of this grand idea of decentralization, but then everyone just rushed over to these centralized exchanges. Kinda sounds like a death knell to me. Seems like the original spirit of crypto got lost in the rush for profits.
I do think the tech and the concept will keep evolving, and eventually, it'll morph into something new, get a new name or something. Here's hoping that when it does, people will get that it's better to trust the collective 'us' instead of just a select few. After all, these are often the same folks messing things up. But, what can you do, huh?
Fuck, let's pray it is
Maybe people understood, that instead of freedom as advertised, crypto brings out even more oppressive forms of capitalism.
A lot of controversial comments. Here are some of my observations:
- Not a single mention of decentralised finance/DeFi in the comments, which is a game-changer.
- A lot of outdated information or misunderstanding of recent developments in the industry
- A large focus on scams and crypto bros, who are the loudest but definitely not the majority
Oh boy, wait until you find out about CBDC (Government's version of cryptocurrency with dystopian spin on it such as deleting your money if they don't like you.)
It’s just another kind of MLM right now. It always has been. The superbowl Larry David add was the swan song for crypto mainstream appeal.
And you are right, most of the people that were telling you to buy cryptocurrency for reasons, now are into the “prompt engineering” fad.
Por metaverse, only the really unicorn-chasing and completely clueless about technology marketing “gurus” got into it.
No, twitter just shit the bed is all and thats where the scams were primarily spread, but now that so many people have dropped twitter you don't hear about it as much.
Pretty much 1/3rd of the ads I get on Reddit, for example, are still crypto scams.
I will agree though that it lost the crypto-bro sheen, thank god, and companies stopped trying to shoehorn it into everywhere it had no use case for.
There are use cases for it but they are extremely specific and most of the time a normal database is the right tool for the job. You need to satisfy multiple conditions for a blockchain to be the right tool for the job over a normal DB.
Furthermore, even if you do satisfy the requirements and use blockchain tech, its annoying to try and market that. Just as an example, how often do you see video game companies or gambling companies or other websites touting the fact they have, I dunno, a Redis mem server on their backend as a "selling point" of their service?
No one. No one does that, no one cares. No one tries to market what database their backend uses as a way to make their product sound better, because no one gives a shit what your backend is built on top of. They care about the actual features and functionality of your product, not the tech your developers used.
So hopefully we have now entered the era where some services do use blockchain on the backend when its the right tool or the job, but they don't bother to try and market it and no one gives a shit if its MSSQL, Blockchain, Mongo, or whatever else that is used to store data.
Too many scams. Too many ads advertising companies who ended up being scams as well. The pivot to NFTs was short-lived (because they were scams). The high-profile exchanges (FTX et al) going belly up, and the their founders in jail.
Ah yes. Another entry to the list: https://99bitcoins.com/bitcoin-obituaries/
Weak hands got shaken out, and the economy is teetering on recession. When inflation stops and interest rates fall, and quantitative easing starts back up it's gonna come roaring back. The SEC and CFTC aren't trying to kill crypto, they are just trying to decide who's jurisdiction it falls under. The crypto industry will benefit from regulation, it will get safer, and you'll feel like an idiot for asking this question instead of buying while it's cheap. Hit me up in 2025!
I don't think it is dead, but the hype certainly seems to be over. It is important to realize that as long as the crypto value trend is strongly linked to value of other commodities, it is still being treated as an investment, rather than a currency. Increasing the places where crypto can be actually used to pay will allow for unlinking crypto from being an investment to a currency. I guess there most people are currently not interested in that as much, which I think is unfortunate.
Mid-bear-cycle. It'll be back in a year or two.
I think the bubble has certainly burst. COVID resulted in loads of new consumer investers, and the visibility of crypto had never been higher. Exchanges were being advertised by major celebrities on Superbowl ads!
Then the market crashed, and all those investers realised what a mistake they'd made. I don't think it's a mistake many will make twice.
It was such a bizarre time, with major governments talking about minting their own NFTs or even their own digital currencies. That all seems to have quietly gone away now, thankfully.
It is humming along nicely for those that use it. There could be another speculative pump filled with scams, that would be no surprise.
i think the shitcoin trend and NFT shit is over, but crypto as a technology and cryptocurrency certainly isn't. I don't see BTC, ETH, XMR dying aaanytime soon, especially the former and the latter - they're gold standard on the net already. Overengineered crypto like ETH seems to be less popular now.
Dear god, I hope so
I hate watching so many people get scammed
I'm having a hard time putting my finger on why it lost its sheen
Oh I don't know maybe it has something to do with Sam Bankman-Fried swindling $8 billion.
While the prospect of using it in everyday transactions seems pretty much dead, for some reason the crypto market cap in and of itself is very much alive. Plus it's interesting that crypto was born out of the 2008 financial crisis and people wanting more control over their assets, so if anything I would think it would be more socially relevant now than ever.
the pyramid scheme of crypto is dead. Partially because there are no suckers left to buy in and partially because interest rates have gone up, meaning that money is no longer free and investments need to promise a return, which crypto can’t provide as it lacks meaningful utility.
The long and short of it is that crypto was never a good idea, a currency where no one is “in charge” Is a currency where no one is responsible, so if something goes wrong no one is to be expected to fix it.
I’m not about to say that the federal reserve is the perfect system, but it is much better than anything the crypto world has come up with. Bitcoin is deflationary and inefficient, ethereum is undemocratic and has it’s attention split, and everything else lacks a broad base.
The centralization or currency was never the problem and these alternatives are worse in just about every way.
Cryptography? No it's not, any more than math is dead.
Cryptocurrency? I don't know.
@peanuts4life@beehaw.org It's called a bear market. Every 3-4 years, it's the same thing. Patience...:blobcatthinksmart:
it should be
as long as there are suckers out there, crypto will live.
Maybe crypto scammers moved on to selling LLM “prompts?”
I use crypto for its real intention, as money. I buy my groceries with crypto and pay most of my bills in crypto on a monthly basis. Crypto itself is not a problem. Its the FTX's and Mt Gox's of the world trying to graft old banking norms onto crypto that is the majority of the problem. "not your keys, not your coins." Exchanges are like gas station bathrooms, you go in, do your business, and get the heck out. You dont just hang around.
Most existing cryptocurrencies have no inherent value, they might make sense as a currency, but having a cell in a distributed spreadsheet assigned shouldn't be considered a growth investment and it's absurd how many treated it that way. The only way that sort of thing works is with an endless supply of greater fools, and evidently they ran out.
Well, are MLMs dead? Audible book spamming? The nigerian prince scam? Hell, mail scams are still running to this day.
As long as there's a hook, I doubt cryptomoney scams are going to be leaving any time soon. It is rare we'll see scams of the same magnitude as before, but they'll always be around in those sorts of communities. Just a matter of principle, whenever money's involved.
You could probably go back to buying pokemon cards, though. The fact that crypto's greatest investors have a vested interest in not having their cash vanish into thin air, it's best used for it's purpose-- as currency-- unless another FTX fumbles the bag.
Crypto is dead, long live bitcoin.
No, it'll never go away, fortunately or unfortunately depending on your perspective.
Not dead, just sleeping. It's a tougher, higher interest-rate market which cuts out a lot of the gambling behavior. I remain invested but my principle has shifted away from the financial and trad-economic terms to this:
Blockchains are valuable where they secure valuable information. Therefore, if a blockchain adds more valuable information, it becomes more valuable.
And that's it. You don't have to introduce markets and trading to make the point, but it positions those elements in a supporting role, and gets at one of the most pressing issues of today: where should our sources of truth online start? Blockchains can't solve the problems of false sensation, reasoning or belief, but they fill in certain technical gaps where we currently rely on handing over custody to someone's database and hoping nothing happens or they're too big to fail. It's just a matter of aligning the applications towards the role of public good, and the air is clear for that right now.
This is good for Bitcoin.
In the US each time crypto is traded it needs to be reported.
I got free crypto from Coinbase. Then sent it to a wallet, then sold it. So each transaction needed to be reported. It’s too troublesome to be worth it.
Also, if I buy crypto, they have a week hold before I can move it. My idea was to buy crypto in country A and sell it in country B to quickly transfer money between the two countries I live in. Also it would help me beat the bank fees.
But the 7 day hold kinda defeats the purpose of quickly transferring money.
It's definitely not dead. Market cycles come and go. It's just a matter of time until the next round.
Bitcoin is still around 30k a pop, so I wouldn't say it's dead yet. But I foresee a big crash in the months or years to come: the hype has passed, and the real uses of crypto are very few. It's also not a good investment since the expected returns are 0. Once people finally realize that, I see the price falling to 1k or even less.
Most people are shifting towards the AI trend instead. Read a post which somewhat describes it well, people integrate the new trends into their projects to get more investor money. Nothing looks better to investors other than 'We have AI Blockchain nano technology behind our service'.
Last year, 'we have blockchain' earned lots of money. Now it's 'we have AI'. In both cases, the technology probably isn't needed, it is there just to be there.
It will never die. I believe it will wax and wane over the years. Being incredibly anonymous and deregulated means it will always be a great place for the evil doers to manipulate the market and make money off of it. Because of that there will always be some people using it.
I think one of the biggest failings of cryptocurrency in general is that people view it as a replacement for cash or debit cards when in reality with how slow and expensive the transactions are it is more of a replacement for clearing houses. When you get money sent to your bank you can use it right away because the bank trusts you and provides that service but the money isn't truly there yet. You may have heard the phrase of "the check cleared" or something similar. It takes a long time for those processes to complete and crypto is faster than it.
Bitcoin's in the low $29kus region lately (up from $26kus), so it looks like it's going to keep going. Also, big real money investors are now pretty long on cryptocurrency, so there is a vested interest in keeping it around.
Plus, you know, folks buying stuff on the black and grey markets with it. Wish I didn't have to mention drugs, but it's the easiest way to keep getting insulin for folks these days in addition to the usual recreational compounds.
I am just really happy that storage-based crypto died. It made getting hard drives, and used-servers with drive-bays pretty expensive....
Although, https://cryptoslate.com/cryptos/storage/ I guess many more rose to take its place. :-/
I think the real problem with crypto, everyone and their mother has decided to make another stupid cryptos.... and most of them, are completely stupid. The only person profiting, is the person who created it and minted themselves a bunch of coins to hold onto until the value went up.
Don't get me wrong, I think crypto has its place. But, buying pizza at pizza hut isn't it.
not really. the stupid stuff, like nfts, are dying, but the rest is still the same.
as long as there are easily accessible networks with money on them there will be scammers to try and exploit them, this is no different than what we have seen with fiat, the biggest difference being that usually you have to use cash only to put out a shingle and be shady. Crypto allowed anyone to "look" legit and have easy access to settlement.
if anything people are learning WHY you want to at minimum control the ramps and ensure there are channels through which there can be trade using strong identity systems. next phase of crypto will look a bit more grown up as it will very likely be coming to the party as an enabler of multiple VRF style auth systems, helping break dependance on social login systems.
There are always some new people who believe they can get rich quick by investing in stocks, crypto, NFTs or something else. Why don’t we just write numbers on ping pong balls, throw them in huge transparent plastic sphere, shuffle the balls a few times, pull out a few and give some money to anyone who guessed the right numbers. Oh, wait we’ve already invented the stupidity tax centuries ago.
No, one thing is the use cases of some to bypass laws.
The other thing is, there will always be people to fall for all kinds of scams, cults, hypes, pyramid schemes so many are still alive as well, there is people out there buying sugar pills and energy healing and Reddit gold.
Good
My partner just got a DM on Instagram about... cryptomoney! Funny thing is, if you search the company, the entire first page is about scandals and negative things. And it is on some MLM list too.
So, the grifters are still out grifting.
considering the comments, it’s right now the best time to buy some eth
I was naive enough to get into the crypto games, because I was hoping to earn some crypto for myself. I wasn't having much luck, and I started to tell myself that crypto was a scam. I enjoyed seeing the web3 browsers emerge, like Brave, Osiris, etc, as they offered a new infrastructure to the internet. Something decentralized, which was cool. I'm also disappointed that we now have AI browsers, which is scary and not a good direction to go in.
I don't think it's dead, just dormant right now. It kicked up a looot of buzz and got a lot of attention, especially from bad actors and govs. I can see it getting big, again, I just don't know when.
On our breakfast TV during the news segment they touch on international markets, e.g. "the DOW is xyz". They also have a slide on crypto and as well as listing Bitcoin and Etherium (or whatever it's called), I still can't believe they seriously show Dogecoin.
No, the market is down. stocks are down.
It's not dead, but the SEC sure has been really helping the consumers basically tanking the market about everytime they help....
As long as Kim needs goods, crypto will exist...
