I wasted years of my life in crypto

I've never understood the initial arguments about Bitcoin, no matter how many times they've been explained to me.

The block chain is, and always was, an extremely inconvenient database. How anyone, especially many intelligent people, thought it was realistic to graft a currency on top of such a unwieldy piece of technology is beyond me. Maybe it goes to show how few people understand economics and anthropology and how dunning-krueger can happen to anyone.

Now the uninformed gambling on futuristic sounding hokum? THAT is easy to understand.

That being said, I'm sorry the author had to go through this experience, the road of life is often filled with unexpected twists and turns.

It's an ingenious solution to achieve a "trustless" currency that prevents double-spending without a central authority. Unfortunately, this solves the wrong problem. Spending money usually involves getting a good or service in return, which inherently requires "trust" (as does any human interaction). Your fancy blockchain is not going to help you if you order something with Bitcoin and no package arrives.

> Unfortunately, this solves the wrong problem. Spending money usually involves getting a good or service in return, which inherently requires "trust" (as does any human interaction). Your fancy blockchain is not going to help you if you order something with Bitcoin and no package arrives.

That problem already has solutions. The problems cryptocurrency is supposed to solve are, I want to buy subversive literature from someone I already trust not to rip me off, or for an amount I'm not worried about losing, without anyone requiring me to give them a government ID. Or I want to sell it to people without requiring them to give anyone an ID. I want to donate money to Wikileaks. I want to commission art or software from someone in South America who doesn't have access to US banks. I have the same name as someone on a list and I want a way to move money without the government ruining my life. I live in an oppressive country and I want to finance the rebellion, or buy contraception or some other thing which is banned by the baddies when it ought not to be.

It's for doing the things where the existing system fails you, not the things where it works. But it can do those things too. Cash works the same way. You're not worried about a restaurant stealing your money because by the time you pay them you've already eaten. You're not worried about Newegg sending you a brick with "lol" written on it instead of a GPU because they're a well-known company and if they did that it would cost them more in damage to their reputation than they'd gain from the theft and people would sue them independent of payment method.

You don't always need your trust in other people to come from the payment system when it can come from a dozen other things instead.

> > Your fancy blockchain is not going to help you if you order something with Bitcoin and no package arrives.

> That problem already has solutions

The solution to that problem is "the court orders the bank to send the funds back to my account", including all the way up to clawing back any funds the scammer spent. This is possible when the government controls the currency. It is not possible with crypto.

The only remaining purpose of crypto is funding crime. Some crime you might approve of (buying subversive literature), but that's dwarfed 100000:1 by ransomware, scams, and much more nefarious activity (drugs, sex trafficking, etc.)

>The solution to that problem is "the court orders the bank to send the funds back to my account"

I see this as a very naive statement. A big story in Russia - popular singer sold her appartment, then told court she was scammed to sell appartment and have sent all money to scammers. Appartment returned to the singer, court suggested the buyer to get money from unidentified scammers.

So much for court orders :))) Poor buyer has lost > $1M. There are over 3000 similar cases all across Russia. Appartment sellers get their apartments back in court without compensating buyers. This madness is going to be resolved someday, next will appear immediately.

Another story - a prosecutor's office tells that largest pasta producer in Russia was actually illegally bought from the government some 20 years ago. Boom, entire business goes to government (to prosecutor friends, really). I can go on and on, there are literally hundreds such stories just in Russia just in the past couple of years.

The point is - having certain independence from the government is good. For the majority of world population (China, Middle Wast, all Africa) government is not a friend but either an unpredictable force of nature or a foe.

> >The solution to that problem is "the court orders the bank to send the funds back to my account"

> I see this as a very naive statement. [words]

Ok, you clearly have a lower opinion on the ability of your government to help than I do, but it doesn’t matter one bit: credit card chargebacks, escrow, and fraud departments exist and work every day without requiring a perfect government. It doesn’t matter at all that there exists cases of government abuse.

What does matter, is that crypto was designed to avoid needing any of the above, and with it, you have absolutely no recourse whatsoever if things go wrong. The only recourse you have is the government you’re supposedly trying to distance yourself from.

Imagine if the same house buyer bought the house from the scammer using crypto: There would be zero ability, even in principle, to get anything back. Those coins are gone. Even a perfect government with unlimited power could not recover them.

I’m sorry your country has shit courts and never helps you. Mine does. My credit card company’s fraud department does.

> credit card chargebacks, escrow, and fraud departments exist and work every day without requiring a perfect government. It doesn’t matter at all that there exists cases of government abuse.

What about cases of private abuse? Suppose you're using Paypal or Stripe and they lock your account for no apparent reason. Money you were paid for goods you've already shipped is now locked up, stolen from you, with no explanation or recourse.

> Imagine if the same house buyer bought the house from the scammer using crypto: There would be zero ability, even in principle, to get anything back. Those coins are gone. Even a perfect government with unlimited power could not recover them.

Suppose someone commits fraud by having you send them $50,000 in computer hardware or precious metals or bearer bonds. What happens? The government arrests them, seizes the goods and ultimately returns them to the owner. It's not any different when it's a hard drive with a private key on it instead of a bag of expensive rocks. But then they can't just take your stuff, i.e. reverse a transaction, without due process -- which is good.

Meanwhile the scammer in that case is the property owner in cahoots with the government. If the government isn't corrupt then there is no scam, because then either the person you're paying actually owns the property and having paid them the agreed upon price that is now your real estate, or they don't own it and then when you go to confirm that they actually own the property the non-corrupt government says that they don't and then you don't pay them.

> I’m sorry your country has shit courts and never helps you. Mine does. My credit card company’s fraud department does.

Except when they don't. US banks are not exactly known for their customer support, and their fraud departments don't have the investigative resources of a government. If Alice says she sent the goods and Bob says he didn't receive them, how's the bank supposed to know who's lying without sending them both to court? But every time they get it wrong they're a party to a theft.