• EpicMuch
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    10 hours ago

    Please correct me: is this nothing but entirely fake money?

    • lukewarm_ozone@lemmy.today
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      3 hours ago

      All money is “entirely fake”. The only difference is how big the value fluctuations are and to what degree you can exchange it for other currency. Crypto has a big problem with the former and minor problems with the latter, but generally speaking it’s not much less real than, say, the US dollar.

      • futatorius@lemm.ee
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        2 hours ago

        The Democrats should issue a statement that they will ban this shit as soon as they’re back in office. See what that does to the market cap.

        But they won’t because they are fucking spineless and have no fight in them.

    • ricecake
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      8 hours ago

      Yes and no.

      It’s a collection of numbers with properties related to how they’re found that make them difficult to counterfeit, and the way they’re recorded makes it difficult to steal. This, as well as a handful of other properties, give digital currencies behavior not entirely unlike the things that make cash useful.

      Unlike money, it’s not backed by a government. This means that it’s much more volatile in terms of value. Say what you will about the state of the US, it’s unlikely that the dollar will significantly change value over the next year. It’s essentially guaranteed that the price of every cryptocurrency will be wildly different a year from today.
      Put them together and you’ve got a wonderful vehicle for laundering money or bribery, which is what this all is.
      The other key aspect of money that it’s missing is being generally useful outside of speculation. I can reliably use my dollars to pay for goods and services, and most significantly to pay taxes and satisfy debts in the eyes of the law. Cryptocurrency is inevitably either instantly converted to money once someone gets it, or it’s held onto under the assumption it’ll be worth more later.
      Money has value because it gets you “stuff”. Cryptocurrency has value because it gets you money.

      It’s fake money, but it’s a very complicated and realistic fake money.

      • Revan343@lemmy.ca
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        6 hours ago

        Cryptocurrency is inevitably either instantly converted to money once someone gets it, or it’s held onto under the assumption it’ll be worth more later.

        Money has value because it gets you “stuff”. Cryptocurrency has value because it gets you money.

        With one notable exception…when it is actually used as a medium of exchange, to buy drugs on the internet. (Which the vast majority of crypto is not used for, especially shitcoins like Trump’s scam.)

        • HelixDab2@lemm.ee
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          1 hour ago

          Crypto can be used at regular merchants as well. It’s very handy for avoiding interchange fees, and annoying bank rules. For instance, my own bank will not allow me to make any purchases with a vendor outside of the US, even if I call them and try to pre-authorize it; their excuse is that there’s too much fraud. That means that if i want to buy, for instance, military surplus apparel and equipment from Czechia that I have to find a company that uses a US payment processor, or find someone that’s importing the surplus that I want, rather than going directly to the source. If I want a surplus Czech OM-90 gas mask, it’s about $400 new through a US distributor, and about $50 or less (…plus shipping) if I buy one directly from Czechia. Even allowing for the relatively small mining fees with crypto, and the costs of shipping, buying direct with crypto ends up being much cheaper than using a US distributor, or trying to find a bank that doesn’t either prevent foreign transactions or charge usurious fees for them.

      • karobeccary@lemm.ee
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        9 hours ago

        Ugh… just don’t if you can’t fuckin answer the question like a normal fucking person. What a smug insufferable prick.