Cryptocurrencies are a massive fraud

"

femboys jesus christ

I'm reasonably wealthy, but not really rich thanks to crypto currencies. I'm in partial retirement in my 30s. I could fully retire if I wanted to, but I still like doing some stuff on the side that just happens to make some income as well. I'm definitely not going back to a traditional workplace grind. I shouldn't ever have to as long as I use what resources I got wisely.

I was looking into buying up some property, fixing it up and renting it out, and this was pre-covid, but the housing market is a total bust right now, and it's the worst time in US history to be renting property out to anyone right now, so all that's on hold right now, but I plan to do this as soon as the housing market settles back down, and no more moratoriums on evictions.

I got a little lucky, we were going through some of my aunts stuff who passed away, and she had this owl pendant that was really heavy, we looked at it and said "there's no way this is real gold", so they let me have it. I didn't think it was real, either, but I did have someone check it out, and apparently it's a vintage piece of jewelry made by this guy name rossi, and it's a whole ounce of 18k gold, with some gem inlays on it. Worth about $5000. I still haven't told anyone that thing is real yet, nobody thought it would be real, so I'm going to let them continue believing that, just to avoid any drama. They let me have it without getting it checked out first based on the assumption that it was gold plated costume jewelry, at best.

I'm glad you all think it's a fraud. Wasn't for me though.

Bet you wish you bought a few hundred dollars worth of bitcoins back in 2010-2011, don't you? I'll be honest, I took a gamble and it paid out. I didn't spend enough that it would break me if I lost it, I just had a gut feeling, but not a good enough feeling to take too much of a risk.

I've already cashed out enough and diversified my assets in a way that it won't really matter that much if crypto does crash. I've already made my money, but I still got some in. I've also bought some other smaller cryptos, and most of them have made me money as well. Total gains? Considerably better than if I invested that in the market, even on non-bitcoin cryptos. Even freaking monero coins, which I purchased for really cheap have done amazingly well.

Buying bitcoins in 2010-11 was better than buying google or amazon stock back in the 90s.

Crypto is a way for international criminal organizations to launder money easily and efficiently, and given that criminal groups control the entire world, it's a given that crypto will be part of the game.

So, as long as there's boatloads of crooks with power equivalent to their wealth obtained by illicit means, there's gonna be crypto currencies. And these people are giving you the opportunity to get a cut of their pie by investing in some of these cryptos. I honestly couldn't give a damn about the tiresome moral platitudes being peddled.

Bankers are all huge crooks, possibly the biggest. Crypto was developed in opposition to the banker monopoly on currency and transfers. Crooked bankers charge a fortune to do stuff like launder money, you're basically paying a huge tax. This could be done with crypto, and by cutting the banker out, so crooks flooded to crypto, and this is part of the reason why many countries are going after crypto, and is also the reason why bitcoin freaking exploded.

What I will say, is that if Bitcoin does bust, the same crooks who drove up Bitcoin are going to spread out. Given how I've got my assets setup, if this does happen, I'd stand to gain even more, probably. Even if it doesn't, and bitcoin keeps going up, I'm OK with that too.

Haters gonna hate. Some people figured out that betting on crypto crooks is better than betting on big business and banker crooks in "markets". So, crypto isn't any more of a "fraud" than the "market".

"

MrSmiley21 wrote:

Haters gonna hate. Some people figured out that betting on crypto crooks is better than betting on big business and banker crooks in "markets". So, crypto isn't any more of a "fraud" than the "market".

Yeah, maybe it's just me, but governments and people just ought to stop 'investing' (plunder) and start investing. It's a misuse of language really, if we are to talk about economic activity and accept any class of gains as investment.

If there is actual, profitable business going on, that's an investment opportunity. I'm not talking about casino wins, I'm talking about non-zero-sum games. I'd further argue that term 'invest' really only applies to non-zero-sum games, otherwise it's pretty much just gaming the system in one way or another.

There can be winners and losers in a gambling based system but only real term investment can provide a winning system. That's the difference between the two. However, I won't go into moral specifics here, as they seem very old-fashioned.

"

MrSmiley21 wrote:

Bet you wish you bought a few hundred dollars worth of bitcoins back in 2010-2011, don't you?

Haha, no.

"

vmt80 wrote:

"

MrSmiley21 wrote:

crypto isn't any more of a "fraud" than the "market".

...

If there is actual, profitable business going on, that's an investment opportunity. I'm not talking about casino wins, I'm talking about non-zero-sum games. I'd further argue that term 'invest' really only applies to non-zero-sum games, otherwise it's pretty much just gaming the system in one way or another.

While I agree that socially productive investment involves non-zero-sum games, it seems you're just babbling non sequiturs at this point, friend. Unless I'm missing something about how crypto is a zero-sum game, where Bitcoin going up means some other "investment" is going down. Serious question: what zero-sum game are you talking about here?

I declare Smiley victor by word salad TKO.

I personally enjoy mining on my 3080s, brings in some passive income and pays some bills. It's what I've been doing anyway since PoE has gone down the gutter.

Opinions may vary. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

"

trevxo wrote:

I personally enjoy mining on my 3080s, brings in some passive income and pays some bills.

Since when was mining profitable on anything less than an industrial scale? Did we go back in time to 2013 again or something?

If people think crytoCURRENCY is a "massive fraud", I wonder what they'd think of NFTs lol. At least the currencies serve some purpose, especially so for things like Ethereum. I wonder what NFTs are supposed to do, other than serve as a faux certificate for a totally unenforceable ownership claim.