> I realize I’ll be in the minority here saying this but: Isn’t all crypto a pump and dump scheme?
Bitcoin was created as a gigantic middle finger to the various governments, worldwide, ever printing more money out of thin air. This has been made very clear in the message encoded by Satoshi in Bitcoin's genesis block:
"Chancellor on the brink of second bailout for banks"
From there everybody was free to side with cypherpunk anarchists and to mine Bitcoins or to buy Bitcoins.
Now I'm not disputing there have been lots of pump and dump.
I'll list two examples...
Without squinting too much the following for example is one kind of fraud: although SBF and FTX had already been exposed (by a famous short-seller) for the complete and utter scammy fraud they were, "journalists" at the NYT kept writing articles about SBF as if he was the second coming of Christ. Not surprisingly SBF had parents very well connected in NY and raising tens of millions for the dems. This, too me, is not far from a criminal organization (SBF/FTX/his parents and their accomplices at the NYT) actively defrauding people. One may dispute what's "pump and dump" (FTX was known to pump and dump a lot) but the NYT's articles certainly lured many into FTX, which pumped a great many shitcoins, and then, poof, all the money disappeared.
Following that even, the very Chamath Palihapitiya said that VC from SV had to look very deep into the way they were functioning because they actively took part in a great many pump and dump of shitcoins (he criticized for example lessons being given as to how to create coins).
It's nearly as if the biggest of the biggest of the pump and dumps were organized by well-known and well-respected entities and not by the cypherpunks who originally created Bitcoin no!?
As for an actual usecase, I'll leave this here:
- Turkey inflation rate in 2022: 72%
- Venezuela inflation rate in 2022: 234% ("slowing" down from previous year)
- US government public debt: soon to reach 36 *trillion*
I think people who buy Bitcoin see it as the digital equivalent of physical gold.
Now physical gold is something lots of HNer used to make lots of fun of in the past. They're probably not laughing that much now that central banks are stockpiling physical gold and that gold reached new all-time highs.
So I'd suggest this: first wonder if you were one of these making fun of physical gold, thinking it was stupid. Then wonder if you were maybe wrong or not. Then wonder if "digital gold" is really that crazy of an idea?
Physical gold and crypto have very little in common. Gold price swings are extremely tame in comparison. It is a finite resource and it is actually quite useful (though admittedly, industrial usage alone does not account for its value.) And even still, it’s a dumb investment for most, and the central banks doing it are mostly small economies.
If you were worried about rampant inflation or government default, you could hedge in any number of other ways that don’t routinely experience massive fluctuations and still pay interest.
Economists thought buying gold was dumb for many decades, and still do. You can find some time periods if you look hard enough where gold outperformed the stock market but you have to really stretch to make a case that it’s a trend.
Bitcoin was created as a gigantic middle finger to the various governments, worldwide, ever printing more money out of thin air. This has been made very clear in the message encoded by Satoshi in Bitcoin's genesis block:
"Chancellor on the brink of second bailout for banks"
From there everybody was free to side with cypherpunk anarchists and to mine Bitcoins or to buy Bitcoins.
Now I'm not disputing there have been lots of pump and dump.
I'll list two examples...
Without squinting too much the following for example is one kind of fraud: although SBF and FTX had already been exposed (by a famous short-seller) for the complete and utter scammy fraud they were, "journalists" at the NYT kept writing articles about SBF as if he was the second coming of Christ. Not surprisingly SBF had parents very well connected in NY and raising tens of millions for the dems. This, too me, is not far from a criminal organization (SBF/FTX/his parents and their accomplices at the NYT) actively defrauding people. One may dispute what's "pump and dump" (FTX was known to pump and dump a lot) but the NYT's articles certainly lured many into FTX, which pumped a great many shitcoins, and then, poof, all the money disappeared.
Following that even, the very Chamath Palihapitiya said that VC from SV had to look very deep into the way they were functioning because they actively took part in a great many pump and dump of shitcoins (he criticized for example lessons being given as to how to create coins).
It's nearly as if the biggest of the biggest of the pump and dumps were organized by well-known and well-respected entities and not by the cypherpunks who originally created Bitcoin no!?
As for an actual usecase, I'll leave this here:
I think people who buy Bitcoin see it as the digital equivalent of physical gold.Now physical gold is something lots of HNer used to make lots of fun of in the past. They're probably not laughing that much now that central banks are stockpiling physical gold and that gold reached new all-time highs.
So I'd suggest this: first wonder if you were one of these making fun of physical gold, thinking it was stupid. Then wonder if you were maybe wrong or not. Then wonder if "digital gold" is really that crazy of an idea?