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>In addition, the dollar is guaranteed to be diluted, meanwhile for Bitcoin, there's no such certainty.

People having to HODL tell themselves whatever they need to to feel confident in their so-called investment. Frankly, people that bought towards the top in Bitcoin are still massively down and that lack of certainty isn't exactly a comfort.

Besides, although I tend to think of your comment painting USD in a poor light, the USD is actually working as designed; to be nominally inflationary to encourage spending and investment in productive aspects of society and business and not to encourage hoarding. The USD is doing exactly what it's supposed to do.


> Frankly, people that bought towards the top in Bitcoin are still massively down

Isn't this the case with almost any other asset at the moment?

> The USD is doing exactly what it's supposed to do.

The current levels of inflation weren't planned. But lowering interest rates it's so tempting and easy, and rising them so unpopular.

The US debt has bee doubling every 8-9 years in the XXI century. The current approach is not sustainable and nobody wants to be the one to stop it. I don't foresee a bright future for the dollar and I fear the day our debtors demand actual stuff for our dollars.


Which certainly reinforces the notion that Bitcoin is not a good "hedge" that is often claimed by bitcoin maxis.

Digital gold my butt.


Sure. But one thing cryptocurrency is terrible at is requiring that you do your own op-sec. Maybe you're good at that sort of thing, but because of the inherent lack of controls to reverse transactions made by mistake or accidental fat-fingering other details, such as the address, it's pretty bad for the less tech-savvy.

Did you ever bother to check that "single link from a donation page" to make sure it's really the correct one?

I love being able to call a bank if my VISA card gets stolen and charged up to high heaven and get that all reversed.

Meanwhile, good luck with that NFT that mysteriously landed in your wallet that has bad coding in it to wreck your day. But yes, mass adoption imminent!


Agreed. I think this is simply cashing in on the cryptocurrency craze while it's still fashionable. Then again, Moxie Marlinspike was never the most transparent fellow I've seen.

At this rate, I'm probably going to go with a Matrix + element style chat system with my family and friends. I'm getting fed up with the outright grift.


Matrix and Element user here, been working well for almost a year. No complaints. Using my own Synapse server as a Docker container.


Does everything have to be an exploitative grift though?

With reddit also announcing cryprocurrency based karma, I'm starting to think that this is all an effort to cash out on whatever goodwill they may have.

Frankly I wish this stuff would calm down already, but it may have to run its course and people will have to get hurt or die when the next black swan event occurs.


Maybe this will be what leads to the down fall of Reddit and Discord.

Hopefully their replacements will learn their lessons as they once learnt the lessons from those they replaced. Ultimately it's greed.


Oh yeah, giving decentralized power to the users is soooo bad. Man i wish Facebook paid me for my fucking data.


Ah, this article is for you!

Why adding an optional feature in a free app that tons of users want badly is "exploitative grift" I'm not sure I'll ever be able to understand.


Dude this made my day. Thanks! xD


I'd argue the WWW was instantly useful, even during its halcyon days.

IPFS on the other hand is a horrible "jack of all trades" that has mediocre performance even in the best of times, and it hasn't really gotten any better since it first launched 6 years ago.

And that's not even bringing up the cryptocurrency cohort souring the project with its stench.

I don't object to the existence of IPFS, rather I prefer more efficient and focused projects instead. Someone in the comment threads mentioned Solid, which sounds like a decent decentralized information protocol or system of sorts.

And for those that want censorship resistance... who can forget Freenet? That project has been around since 2000 and seems to do a pretty bang up job, even if the performance is not much better.


@dang runs a great site here.

I will admit, I haven't always been the most level headed commenter all the time, but I've been trying to improve where I can, and I think what he says resonates with me.

I try to pretend I'm in an actual room with actual people IRL when I write. Being mindful of my tone and never name calling is always a great start.


What do you mean? Of course it is. How else has ransomware been able to thrive as of late?

The sooner governments abolish fiat to cryptocurrency exchanges and make such transactions illegal, the sooner this clown car of sadness will come to an end.

As much as I'm not a fan of China and the CCP, they are making some good moves in this department recently to eliminate unneeded capital flight. The US should follow in their steps here.


It happens, but it isn't "the domain" like he meant. There are hundreds of millions Bitcoin users already, and the vast majority of them are not criminals. According to Chainalysis, only 0.34% of total transaction value was criminal in 2020.[0]

[0] https://blog.chainalysis.com/reports/2021-crypto-crime-repor...


Nice subtle humble brag.


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