New year's resolution to learn more about crypto?
January 11, 2022 7:43 AM   Subscribe

Crypto Theses for 2022, published by Messari Perhaps you are genuinely curious, or like me: you have a family member who is deep into crypto, NFTs, W3, etc, and the weekly family visits are getting challenging. This 165 page PDF was released by Messari, founded by Ryan Selkis. I came across this report via Stephen Downes, who writes on technology in education.. generally, if something catches his eye I tend to perk up. I've been receiving his weekly newsletter to my inbox for years and it's one of my favorite things.
posted by elkevelvet (10 comments total)

This post was deleted for the following reason: Sorry but this is too much of a "Yay Crypto" hype thing to make a good post for Metafilter; something more in depth (and less personally framed) that covers issues and criticisms as well as promoters might work better. -- taz



 
Crypto means cryptography.

This post is about cryptocurrency, the speculative financial instrument, released by a cryptocurrency investment company.

I got to this line before I had to close the tab, emphasis added: I own assets discussed in this report. My core holdings are disclosed at the end of Chapter 1 (along with those of the rest of the Messari team), and any angel or liquid investments I have made to date are marked with an asterisk. No conflicts, no interest.

Here is the most recent expression of bewilderment and/or alarm from a cryptographer about cryptocurrency and web3 that I have read.

Cryptocurrency enthusiasts/boosters/marks are speedrunning why financial regulation exists and I hope their entire industry is banned everywhere as soon as possible.
posted by All Might Be Well at 7:55 AM on January 11, 2022 [13 favorites]


Yuck. (That's just my default reaction to Crypto, don't take it personally.)
posted by dominik at 7:55 AM on January 11, 2022 [3 favorites]


one may also find this work enlightening in a broader sense: Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Mackay
posted by glonous keming at 7:56 AM on January 11, 2022 [7 favorites]




Crypto means cryptography.

It used to. Not any more.
posted by LionIndex at 8:05 AM on January 11, 2022 [2 favorites]


In the interest of keeping a somehow open mind, I tried reading this. I got one page in.

We all agree the traditional banking industry is awful. It doesn't excuse making something worse.

Also, I am so tired of this completely unregulated industry whining about "government interference."
posted by phooky at 8:08 AM on January 11, 2022 [3 favorites]


The link All Might Be Well posted is the essay that I've seen talked about the most in the last week. It's by (now) ex-CEO of Signal Moxie Marlinspike. I think it's making such a big impact with the nerd set I follow because he both knows a thing or two about cryptography (that's what the word "crypto" used to refer to, ha) and actually went to the trouble of building some crypto-based apps, minted NFTs, etc. to actually get under the hood. And it turns out the hood, for now at least, is mostly a tangle of wires that ends up connected to a couple of VC-funded companies. So one of his main points I got out of it was that even with cryptographically safe, trustless systems, there are still end points (servers, apps) that somebody owns, that you as the end user still need to trust.
posted by gwint at 8:10 AM on January 11, 2022 [2 favorites]


Yeah, that Moxie Marlinspike is a great view into the underbelly of what makes this all "work", for a pretty broad definition of work.
posted by sagc at 8:12 AM on January 11, 2022


It would've been wise to read the room a bit before making this post, but hey at least everyone gets a nice space to vent about crypto. Which is helpful in its own right!
posted by Philipschall at 8:13 AM on January 11, 2022 [1 favorite]


Here's some other extremely good long form articles:

The Bit Short: Inside Crypto's Doomsday Machine (another one about Tether)

Here is the article you can send to your friends when they say: But the environmental issues with Cryptocurrency will be solved soon, right?

My personal experience with Cryptocurrency is that my husband bought some (Dashcoin) from the vending machine at the gas station as a speculative investment. Later, when the price reached an all time high - as a result of other investors, knowing that the price was about to plummet because Elon Musk was about to announce that you could no longer buy Teslas using bitcoin, doing a pump and dump scheme - he tried to exchange his cryptocurrency for cash. However, the ATM at the gas station ONLY lets you buy, not cash out. He didn't have the technical know-how to actually cash out the coins, which in most cases involves exchanging them for another cyptocurrency, like Tethers or USD, with a direct link to dollars. Before he could figure out the transaction, the price had already crashed.

After Elon Musk announced that Tesla would no longer accept bitcoins as payment, investors started using SEO techniques and celeb recruitment to hype NFTs, because basically they needed something, anything, besides drugs you could actually spend the cryptocoins on in order to make them effective instruments of money laundering and suckering in the rubes.

Anyway, the whole thing is a scam. It can't die fast enough.
posted by subdee at 8:14 AM on January 11, 2022 [3 favorites]


« Older Kitties v. Elon Musk   |   I am made of poison Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments