Coinbase Users Can Now Buy Crypto Assets Using Apple Pay

I worked in the crypto space for 2 years. 99.99% of the projects are straight-up scams.

Everything in crypto is just a ponzi scheme (and a bit like a pyramid scheme). You own a crytocurrency? You hype it up blindly in order to get more buyers. Then you exit for a profit. Anyone saying cryptocurrency is useful or is the future is only saying that to drive hype, thus price, before exiting.

14 years later, crypto hasn't done anything useful except enabling money laundering and buying illegal things. Not only that, it wastes energy (green or not) and hundreds of thousands of people talent that could have gone into solving more pressing problems in the world.

What cryptocurrencies are is just a modern, efficient way of creating and exiting scams. Cryptocurrencies take advantage of social media to spread and the fact that there is a lot of cash looking for "investments" due to our current low interest-rate environment.

Unlike owning things like stocks where the entities must have boards, report financials, have audits, disclose risks, crypto companies can raise $100 million and then completely shut down the next day without any repercussions except getting a few angry tweets from investors. Once you give money to a crypto project, the founders can do whatever the hell they want.

People say blockchain doesn't have a "killer application" yet. Actually, it does. Its killer application is scamming.

There is a reason why a significant portion of crypto companies are registered in the Cayman Islands.

I wish the U.S. and EU would just grow a pair and ban all crypto like China did.

I also want to explain why Bitcoin hasn't replaced money and never will.

For a blockchain, you can only pick 2 of the 3 following: decentralization, security, and performance.

Bitcoin is very decentralized (copies of the blockchain in millions of computers) and has good security (mining). But it can only perform 4.6 transactions per second because mining is incredibly computationally intensive and the blockchain is spread across millions of computers.

Compare this to Visa. Visa prioritizes security and performance. It's centralized. For simplicity of explaining this, Visa transactions only need be verified by Visa, probably using a high-performance centralized Oracle database. This allows Visa to handle 24,000 transactions per second and this limit can easily increase with more CPUs and servers.

All cryptocurrencies just turn the dial between decentralization, security, and performance. Any magical new blockchain that promises "100000x" the performance of Bitcoin is just less decentralized with less security. These blockchains are usually easily manipulated. In fact, there's a website dedicated to calculating how much it costs to attack them: https://www.crypto51.app/

Any cyrptocurrency that wants to process as many transactions as Visa will basically have to use a system very similar to Visa's which means it's no different than Visa. And we already have a Visa (and many other legitimate financial companies).

Hence, Bitcoin is just "digital gold" or something that does nothing except sit there and drain up a country's worth of energy.

I worked in the crypto space for 2 years. 99.99% of the projects are straight-up scams.

Everything in crypto is just a ponzi scheme (and a bit like a pyramid scheme). You own a crytocurrency? You hype it up blindly in order to get more buyers. Then you exit for a profit. Anyone saying cryptocurrency is useful or is the future is only saying that to drive hype, thus price, before exiting.

14 years later, crypto hasn't done anything useful except enabling money laundering and buying illegal things. Not only that, it wastes energy (green or not) and hundreds of thousands of people talent that could have gone into solving more pressing problems in the world.

What cryptocurrencies are is just a modern, efficient way of creating and exiting scams. Cryptocurrencies take advantage of social media to spread and the fact that there is a lot of cash looking for "investments" due to our current low interest-rate environment.

Unlike owning things like stocks where the entities must have boards, report financials, have audits, disclose risks, crypto companies can raise $100 million and then completely shut down the next day without any repercussions except getting a few angry tweets from investors. Once you give money to a crypto project, the founders can do whatever the hell they want.

People say blockchain doesn't have a "killer application" yet. Actually, it does. Its killer application is scamming.

There is a reason why a significant portion of crypto companies are registered in the Cayman Islands.

I wish the U.S. and EU would just grow a pair and ban all crypto like China did.

I hope you got paid in fiat to post this nonsense.

I hope you got paid in fiat to post this nonsense.

Where are the actual counterarguments? Or there just isn't any?

This is the third person who refuses to address any of my points except to resort to ad hominem.

Quote my arguments and provide your counterargument. Let's debate.

I also want to explain why Bitcoin hasn't replaced money and never will.

For a blockchain, you can only pick 2 of the 3 following: decentralization, security, and performance.

Bitcoin is very decentralized (copies of the blockchain in millions of computers) and has good security (mining). But it can only perform 4.6 transactions per second because mining is incredibly computationally intensive and the blockchain is spread across millions of computers.

Now, look at Visa. Visa prioritizes security and performance. It's centralized. For simplicity of explaining this, Visa transactions only need be verified by Visa, probably using a high-performance centralized Oracle database. This allows Visa to handle 24,000 transactions per second and this limit can easily increase with more CPUs and servers.

All cryptocurrencies just turn the dial between decentralization, security, and performance. Any magical new blockchain that promises "100000x" the performance of Bitcoin is just less decentralized with less security. These blockchains are usually easily manipulated. In fact, there's a website dedicated to calculating how much it costs to attack them: https://www.crypto51.app/

Any cyrptocurrency that wants to process as many transactions as Visa will basically have to use a system very similar to Visa's which means it's no different than Visa. And we already have a Visa (and many other legitimate financial companies).

Hence, Bitcoin is just "digital gold" or something that does nothing except sit there and drain up a country's worth of energy.

I agree with much of what you said, despite having dabbled with various coins personally, although I think you’re not taking into consideration the evolution of the technology and it’s long term future potential.

There are very complex financial systems growing around the trading & exchanging of Cryptos, especially over the past 2 years. If a crypto coins future potential-use was as clear as day then absolutely everyone would be jumping onboard overnight, destabilising the market.

However there is slowly but surely heavy investment being poured into setting up infrastructure and governance systems that are facilitating crypto’s growth and I can’t see that it’s all being done simply to profit from some hype bubble.

I don’t think anyone knows with absolute certainty what the use-case will be for all these intangible digital coins all with their own tokenomics at play, however enough people believe that there will be a radical shift to their use over fiat and other commodities in the trading of value in the future.

I think you’re judging it too harshly too early, in the scope of a millennium of technologically advanced civilisation, a decade is nothing really. There is a future somehow for these digital coins.

Spot on description of what crypto currencies are. They are just "assets" with no meaningful real value. We only see their prices explode because we see prices in all asset markets explode. That is not a success story of crypto currencies, it's an asset bubble caused by poor macroeconomic policies. The low-interest-rate of the recent years has brought us there.

And why are interest rates so low? Because politicians and economists (mostly neoclassical) incorrectly assumed that monetary policy by central banks can control consumer price inflation by indirectly controlling money creation through lending of private banks. But they evidently can't because the amount of money does not cause such inflation. Rising salary does. More money in the wrong place just causes asset bubbles.

But since at least a decade (in japan even since about 25 years) companies do not lend money anymore even with zero interest rates. Central banks can lower interest rates but they can't force companies to invest. This is perfectly described by economist Richard Koo.

)

Instead money goes into assets. But if one saves money there must be another one that takes the same amount as debt. Currently it's the state.

Crypto currencies are not the solution, they are a symptom of poor monetary policy. Private banks are creating billions of additional money every year through lending. But those credits that have in the past been used by companies to invest into an increase of productivity increasingly flow into the pockets of the already wealthy that instead use it to bet on rising prices of assets, no matter if it is stocks, real estate or crypto currencies. The whole development reminds me of what happened in 1929.

Currencies that are unregulated and subject to massive speculation on the market will never be accepted as general means of payment because they are inherently unstable and they lack an authority that enforces demand for it through taxation.

And now tell me. What do you think cash is?

Before, gold was the backer for cash, but ultimately it has no intrinsic value these days. The banks just print more when needed. It's backed by no asset so just like crypto, it can fluctuate and the price can be manipulated easily.

Great. More ways for most people to lose real money.

Is Bitcoin a scam? Ask yourself how Bitcoin is valued and you have your answer.

What does Bitcoin produce? The answer is nothing and this is why it is such a great scam. The price can literally be anything you want and there is an argument to justify it.

At the end of the day, if you’re valuing your Bitcoin in terms of dollars, you still want the dollars and all your arguments fall apart.

And you trust your government with your money?

Take Cyprus as an example. (All bank deposits over €100k were seized no matter how legit your money was).

Take Spain as an example. (The tax office can seize money without warning at their discretion)

Governments can manipulate currency to their hearts' content.

The point of decentralization is to protect against this. That's why it carries value.