Just Because Common Currencies (Including the US Dollar) Are Considered Uncertain Doesn't Mean People Should Adopt Volatile Multi-Level (Pyramid) Schemes
One of my best friends, a university professor, lost all his money (after selling the house) to some so-called 'crypto' scammers, who had approached him in Microsoft LinkedIn. I mentioned this many times before. He wanted me to mention this in my sites, but I told him I just didn't know enough to cover it properly and meaningfully. Why was he so gullible? He didn't even want to tell anyone for about a year (shame or fear of mockery). Apropos, the wife of Jim Zemlin of the Linux Foundation is one of those scammers.
Well, the scammers are trying to "go mainstream". They got their Cheeto and MElon in the bag (they now participate in the scam). Having already received so many bribes to buy the "top seat" - a nazi oven office - and then reward those who gave the bribes, even the 'crypto' (not) Ponzi schemers, they and anyone else can expect a bailout (i.e. handover from taxpayers to scammers).
As an associate explains in very simple terms:
1) the max number of bitcoins is finite2) the max number of bitcoins is somewhat small
3) storage media containing bitcoin wallets get lost
4) bitcoin wallets get lost or deleted
5) bitcoin wallet passwords get lost
6) the number of bitcoin lost that way is unknown and unknowable
Thus, the number of available or working bitcoin can only decrease and will eventually cross a tipping point. Given point 6, the date of that tipping point is unpredictable and may have already been crossed. Ergo the bailout is a scam, nothing more, nothing less... unless one counts the unmitigated environmental disaster caused by releasing so much fossil carbon into the air for no reason.
I never dabbled in those things, never felt tempted to even try them, and will never touch them. From what I've heard and read, even if some 'fakecoin' is considered 'stable', what about the exchange one uses to buy them through? What if it collapses? If one mines [sic] one's own, what are the chances of a house fire or even some bad sectors in the drive/s?
The world is in a position of growing uncertainty because of wars and NATO becoming mostly Europe (Cheeto prefers his neighbour to the "west"). But that does not mean abandoning the 'traditional' currency/bartering tokens is the best option. A friend of mine said he bought gold. I asked, where is that gold? How do you trust those who claim to "keep" it for you?
Remember that any online portal that claims you "own" something can just go under (offline) any day for all sorts of reasons. Anything can just vanish very suddenly. It happens all the time. People come and go. Regulators can step in.
If you think the "drugs don't work" because they're too mainstream and/or a price-fixing cartel, trying some "alternatives" or "traditional" ones might make things worse. In science, replacing one evil with another does not guarantee that the latter (the unknown evil) will be better and there's risk that it'll be a lot worse.
Money is a bit like a religion. But if the clergy is several governments and not some Scam Altman in a T-shirt, which would you choose?
As Ryan puts it: "I can talk about the exchanges a little bit. Most of them are not based in the United States. They have varying degrees of compliance with United States law. And the people who run them are often stealing from you and try to escape from US law enforcement when they try to do something about them. They got Sam Bankman-Fried back because he was in an extradition country. What about the rest?"
"I call Uphold "Hold Up" for a couple reasons. Brave Software partnered with Uphold to be their official crypto exchange. But Uphold flouts US tax law. They issue form 1099-B as a 1099 composite, however they miss the deadlines. Therefore you may end up having to request a tax filing extension and pray Uphold eventually gets a form that was due to you by 60 days before tax day. Sometimes they're not out until a few days before the deadline."
"They also do a "cooldown period" and what that is, basically, is this thing where you can't have your money back sometimes for over 100 days. They never say why, or if they do they say they want to make sure fraud isn't happening. Disturbingly, many people in Reddit end up with their account frozen entirely and can't get their money, or their money just disappears."
"And it can be very hard to contact anyone about it, and I have never seen anyone tell me they got this problem resolved. As we've seen with Celsius and FTX, sometimes there's just no money at all. The guy is buying himself Ferraris and living like a rock star and running a Ponzi scheme."
"My sister-in-law was opening accounts in the names of her children, on an exchange in Panama. What legitimate reason is there to do that? I never make financial decisions without my spouse. It's just not done. I always explain what we're doing and why it needs to be done. I mean, I may shop for groceries or something without going over the particulars, but I'm never opening investment accounts or credit cards in someone else's name like some sort of a criminal would. That's how the in-laws live. I don't roll that way."
If only my friend asked me (and others) about those 'crypto' scammers before it was too late...
"In the UK," Ryan recalls, "someone offered to buy an entire dump so he can go looking for some hard disks that have bitcoins on them."
"Your concern is similar to hoarding cash in the house. There's risks with lots of cash. You risk someone could hit you over the head and take it. Inflation. I like the USD because it's a store of value, or at least has tended to be. You can usually at least earn enough interest somewhere that you'll beat or mostly offset inflation. Bitcoins don't do that. They can be worth half of what they are today by noon tomorrow. Almost no millionaires or billionaires like bitcoins. It's not that they're stupid. It's that they're concerned you trade valuable stuff for an entry in a digital ledger. And when people insult you by saying "It's totally real, you're just too stupid to get it." That just makes it even more suspect."
For the time being the consensus is that "BTC", for example, was some failed experiment. Some people still re-attempt this experiment, wishing that it would become something more real one day. But it just does not scale. █