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Buy bitcoin, bro (thelemmy.club)
submitted 20 hours ago* by to c/memes@lemmy.world
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Buy bitcoin, bro
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[–] 65 points 16 hours ago (21 children)

Saddens me that crypto is now about investment/gains instead of being improved as a fair, decentralised, convenient, fast, secure money system.

Looks like we will have to stick to the banks and their bullshit yet after all.

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  • [–] 14 points 13 hours ago (3 children)

    I loved the idea of crypto. There was even a niche but growing Crypto Leftist movement, creating tech/apps to help the working class (Breadchain), but in 4 years they built basically nothing. Then just fucking everything else got captured by VC money, big tech, and institutions. It's just capitalism 2.0 now. It's such a shame.

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  • [–] 3 points 7 hours ago* (1 child)

    IMHO the problem crypto leftists have had is that our implementation choices generally ignore the "decentralized" requirement to avoid difficult economics problems. We try things like having nonprofits checking IDs, or creating yet another money supply so we can pay the devs from it, or recreating treasury bonds because it looks greener.

    What we need isn't "open source money, but generous". We need to build a new economy outside the old one, and what we're selling won't shoot to the moon overnight. While we can contribute useful tools, we aren't the architects of that future and can't be in charge even for now.

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  • [–] 2 points 6 hours ago*

    IMO the goals of leftists within crypto is:

    1. protect the unbanked, underbanked, and even banked from the exploitative financial system: we’re making progress. There's is demonstrable proof of this. Even just the base protocols (Bitcoin, Ethereum) offer real relief from tradfi. A very simple example is sending aid to Gaza.

    2. remove US hegemonic power by undermining the dominance of the US dollar: we’re making progress, but some things like USDC are actually reinforcing American dominance. The influx of institutions into the crypto space has really undermined this.

    3. move away from capitalism and asset speculation to collective ownership (governance tokens), trade of useful goods (digital or physical), and savings protocols: we’re not making very much progress and are actively moving against this. This is where Breadchain / Bread Coop comes into play. There's so much potential, and some things have been built ... but overall it's been slow and big disappointment as we watch Capitalists actively co-opt crypto. The amount of scams, VC vaporware, rugpulls, casino games, etc seems to grow by the day. I truly believe there's genuine use cases out there, but crypto right now is mostly just ultra-capitalist speculative garbage.

    It's been sad to see crypto leftists like Joshua Davila (author of Blockchain Radicals) move away from crypto and pivot into AI. sigh

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  • [–] 8 points 12 hours ago (2 children)

    The real value Bitcoins tech brought us is immutable ledgers. We need our money to go through immutable ledgers.

    There would be no "release your tax returns," itd be public domain.

    We need that shit.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 hours ago

    Yea, that's one of the few good things that cryptostuff and the Blockchain.

    That and the fact that you could, theoretically, do implementations that are actually progressive (instead of regressive), and where the ones that actually deserve rewards are the ones who get that (sort of a "Proof of Contribution" or a "Proof of Value": if you actually add value and contribute to make things better, yoy get rewards, but if you're only a leecher, then you get punishments, sort of torrent now that I think about it; but if you're poor, you don't have to contribute that much or nothing at all, because any difference is acceptable only if it favors the least advantaged, and favoring them is precisely what it means to contribute and add value).

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  • [–] 21 points 16 hours ago (3 children)

    When was it not?

    People only complained they didn't get in before 2016 so they could be rich.

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  • [–] 19 points 16 hours ago (2 children)

    There were more honest attempts to spread it and use it in physical/online stores back when BTC was under 1000 than now, and it's not like we got higher exchange rate fluctuations. If anything, it becomes more stable.

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  • [–] 9 points 15 hours ago (1 child)

    Naw, we all talked about the once in a while pizza purchases that were reported on Reddit, but then a week later the $20 pizza was worth $100 in bitcoin. Right from the start.

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  • [–] 5 points 11 hours ago

    On no, someone used money to buy food instead of hoarding money and only thinking about how much return they could've made if they invested money instead of buying food.

    Crypto-as-invement midset is a poison to the real crypto adoption - ability to buy things with crypto effortlessly.

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  • [–] 14 points 15 hours ago (1 child)

    I remember the moment it clicked for me that this was the case. In early 2018 I overheard my roommate listening to a Bitcoin podcast hosted by people I understood to be prominent members of the community. They were trying to justify why it was a good thing Steam no longer accepted Bitcoin to purchase games. I couldn’t see a single upside to a currency, whose purpose is to be exchanged for goods and services, no longer being accepted for a good. I thought about the large amount of crypto the podcasters likely held and how they were probably trying to keep other people in to keep their own crypto worth more. But if the people near the helm were no longer able to admit when something is wrong, then the dream was dead, crypto was dead to me, and I stopped getting more.

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  • [–] 4 points 14 hours ago (1 child)

    It is used as a decentralized convenient secure money system. States use it for bribing, sanctions, online crimes, laundering. There are so many use cases. It's not what people think it is. You will never ever buy your bread with it but at the same time it is not going away as it is so useful as a shadow currency that there will be always billion transactions

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  • [–] 1 point 11 hours ago*

    fair, decentralised, convenient, fast, secure money system

    Can't believe the scam money for scammers isn't about the core principles of equity, efficiency, and security anymore.

    What has become of the Mt. Gox's of yesteryear?

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  • [–] 2 points 14 hours ago (1 child)

    You wanted stability. Stability requires centralization and trust.

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  • [–] 5 points 11 hours ago

    Stability comes from popularity. Its already way more stable than before - $100 BTC fell into sub $20. We don't have x5 swings now.

    Bitcoin would be way more popular if it actually delivered the decent tech that everyone is using to do purchases.

    BTC ran into speed & scaling issue, and eventually made Lighting Network. So now we have 2 different currencies, one stable and decentralized and one fast and centralised. This is not what was promised originally.

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