It’s all a scam, don’t even try to tell me it’s useful

I mined a few back in the day. I think I got a couple pizzas and a new router out of it. Could've bought a decent house at the peak value. Oh well.

It's the American Dream

I played around with it for a bit in 08/09. Got a few coins, but didn't keep going with it and lost the wallet at some point.

Which is why a lot of cryptocurrencies adopted proof of stake in favor of proof of work.

Not like the millions or billions of man hours wasted to make 50-ish removed into defacto-gods.

The GPU mining got me a free GPU and several hundred dollars, for the cost of about 10 cents per KWh. I'd take that "scam" any day of the week, and so I mined until it was over for GPU mining. No regerts.

This is the way to do it. What I've got is all profit too, whether that means a million dollars or just one.

I have rss feeds that’ll let me know if any of the coins I own spike for some reason.

Ooh, that sounds handy! Mind if I ask where those feeds are coming from?

Same. I had the money to spare and the means to mine so why not? We made more doing that than I have in working for the last few years and even if it were gone tomorrow it wouldn't affect our livelihood. It's just so nice thing to have when we are old.

I mean it is very very useful for specific purposes, like purchasing, uh, certain substances in certain, uh... unregulated online marketplaces.

As far as being a currency for other purposes goes though, I think it is incredibly unfit for purpose. And as far as being an investment vehicle goes it's essentially a ponzi scheme.

Gold is useful in that it always remains gold but that's the extent of it.

Wouldn't say terrible. Just volatile and with a specific use cas. But incaseyour currency loses value you still have some wealth wich you can use for financial interactions (assuming you still have access to it)

Layer 2 networks like Arbitrum resolve the issue of high transaction fees and still be able to transact in ETH. I get there is hurdles compared with the simplicity of PayPal, but at least some of us prefer decentralized payment options where possible.

I tried to do the same for an online marketplace I wanted to create so I didn't have to fuck around with the legal stuff and the sellers could do whatever they wanted with the money and have them deal with legal when exchanging the crypto at an exchange. The closest project with some stability and something was the Blockchain Telos with their pinned Telos USD coin. It seemed promising, but I gave up.

Bitcoin Lightning Network would have solved your fee and speed problem. You can use BTC at many businesses

You make more money as the cult leader but you have more fun as a follower

It also helps morons and crooks self-identify.

I have a friend who bought some eth in like 2015 (or whenever) just to see if he could make money on it. Same guy told me he once bought coke on the darkweb. As far as I know, he only did each of these once to see if they were true.

I would not associate with anyone who is an active participant in crypto. Much less anyone who owns and hypes NFTs. That's like telling me you like cops / are pro-life / believe Jesus needs to save me. All of these are signs that we are not compatible.

I love that "Web 1.0" link on the bottom for us NoScript users. Enough webs already!

I’ll fight them fisticuffs style 💪🏽💪🏽

It's always been a solution to a problem that doesn't exist.

the idea was great

I have questioned this ever since I learned that the more adoption there is, the less efficient mining becomes, ergo more power is wasted accomplishing the exact same task for no extra benefit. Difficulty creates a back asswards system that makes adoption a con.

This sounds like everything ever.

Someone could just send you a copy

I ran a very small mining operation at home back in the day and it definitely was all about trying to optimize everything.
Today, I don't think mining is economically viable without running a data center, but I still mine in the winter and turn my computer into a space heater for my home office. It definitely doesn't cover the power cost but it does offset a small portion of it.

Not affiliated in any way but Nicehash is what I use now since it (mostly) runs out of the box with minimal configuration.

As a side note, don't mine on laptops - you won't get enough heat to keep a room warm and you might end up with something failing from overheating.

I still don't understand the "you own it" argument of NFTs. When you buy an art piece from the creator normally, don't you also own it? Like when you commission a piece from an artist the rights are transferred to you once you pay them right?

Also, trading NFTs is basically the same as rich asshole private collectors trading Van Gogh's and Pablo Picasso's, just dumbed down to get normies in on the action. I know NFTs promise to give the artist a cut of the revenue, but one, they're paid in tokens that are infamously difficult to actually buy anything with other than more crypto, not "real" money that they can spend on food or more art supplies, basically the techbro version of paying in exposure. Two, there is absolutely zero things stopping literally anyone from minting an NFT from stolen art and getting a cut too with, by design, no way for the real artist to take down those NFTs or for people who bought it thinking it's genuine and that they're supporting the artist to reverse their transactions. In fact AFAIK that's the majority of NFTs in existence, so to say it's "all about artists" while doing nothing to address that means you don't actually give a shit about artists.

You’ve basically explained why crypto can’t work.

Deflationary currencies don’t make sense to spend because their future value will be higher.

The outcome is people hold onto them in the hopes they gain value. The exact opposite of what you want for a currency.

Bitcoin, not CrYPtO.... fucking noobs

I think generally the big issue that people have with crypto is that there are so many irreversible mistakes you can make, not that the underlying security is worse/better than a bank. There are lots of ways to securely manage crypto, but most people don't have the tools, expertise, and discipline to do so. Even simple things like being diligent about randomly generating strong passwords, hardening your accounts and devices against account theft and social engineering, etc.

At the end of the day if you lose your bank password, account details, etc, you can go to a branch with your id and get access. If you are scammed and money is transferred from your account, the bank will generally make you whole or be able to reverse the transaction. None of those safeguards exist in crypto, and many would say that is a feature, not a bug. Which is fine, I get it, I was a crypto early adopter because I liked the math side of it. But it's not what most people need or can integrate into their life.

I will also say that I laughed long and hard about reports of NFT smart contracts being used to execute malicious code sent as an NFT, which is a massive security issue, but I don't think it's fair to lump the whole crypto ecosystem into the NFT cesspool.

You very well know that is not what is being talked about here.

You should use line breaks more often.

Better way to get scammed. I never see big winners from Crypto. Money doesn't just come out of nowhere, its like stocks someone pays eventually.

Crypto is a scam. It's yet another example of a pyramid scheme usually that seldom pays off.

I'll start taking crypto seriously when you stupid shills stop trying to get rich off of that shit and actually fucking achieve something useful with Crypto that isn't enriching yourselves or others in the hopes that you too will be enriched.

You're giving real money to unregulated corporations run by tech-bros in exchange for a string of numbers that you don't understand and the promise that you'll get money back one day.

Yeah, that's a scam.