enough people automatically buy into every coin created, a couple bucks here, a couple bucks there, hoping one will take off, that's where this 50k bump earnings, and the millions in valuation comes from. kid invested $300 buying a stake in his own coin, he could've lost it. he didn't.
Yeah. Everyone who got mad at him is basically like, 'Hey! Fuck you, asshole, for selling before I got a chance to sell! I wanted to do that, but you did it before I could do it! No fair!'
Also: the coins are now with far more than when he sold. So strangely, the folks who got rug pulled ended up with an actually valuable coin and an opportunity to sell at a high price. Which makes zero sense to me. But they apparently have no reason to complain. It worked out great for everyone, somehow.
The entire purpose of crypto is a scam. People buy it only because they hope it will later be worth more and they can sell it. Even tho the act of selling it lowers the price especially if they have a lot.
You're saying it's right because it's working as intended and legally it's not prohibited.
Other people say it's a scam because they're putting their personal morals over the law. That's textbook antisocial behavior, and not always a bad thing. The French resistance in WW2 were antisocial, MLK was antisocial, Occupy was antisocial.
It can be bad too, like the KKK or the people from 1/6
But when the majority of a society is antisocial (doesn't matter good or bad ways) that society is usually fucked.
And this week just gave a pretty good example that a majority of people put their personal morals above societies laws.
At a certain point, the people change societies to match their morals, the opposite is always temporary.
That’s not how money works. Fiat currency is just IOU’s, literally, which are discharged when the promissory note returns to its originator (in the case of dollars, the US treasury). Check out Debt the First 5000 Years for an anthropological look at the origins of money.
Whereas I would prefer to live in a moneyless (i.e., debtless) post-scarcity anarchist society, which is how small tribes and communities were organized for tens of thousands of years before the rise of nations, fiat currencies are used to maintain the modern (unimaginably huge) marketplace, whose ostensible purpose is to allocate scarce resources.
Personal debt is risky. If I issue an IOU, I might die before I can fulfill that promise. Governments are more permanent, which removes the speculative aspect of currency (at least for most purposes, though Forex trading is a thing).
A central bank can balance inflation and employment numbers to ameliorate the natural volatility of the market (with good regulation lol).
Fiat currency can be synchronized with economic productivity, avoiding the deflationary pressure that is anathema to any currency.
Dollars represent faith in the power of the US government to extract taxes from its population.
Crypto represents nothing. It stands for nothing. “Coins” come and go, and if you’re the last one standing in the zero-sum game of musical chairs, you lose your savings. For that to happen with dollars, the US government would have to implode, which is unlikely.
Crypto is, quite possibly, the purest form of speculative trading (gambling) we have ever concocted. The only reason I don’t think it should be illegal is that I have no interest in saving people from their own cupidity and greed.
I have to use USD to pay my taxes, and if I don't pay my taxes i go to jail. Cryptocurrencies aren't used for anything other than financial speculation
None of this is specific to cryptocurrencies or even money, people do this with stocks (esp penny stocks), precious metals (look at all those "Buy Gold!!" videos), and collectibles (I still remember the beanie baby craze of the late 90s).
This is just gambling, betting that you'll cash out before everyone else, but after the price has run up.
But that's not "how all cryptocurrency works." Yes, cryptocurrencies are valued based on supply and demand, but many aren't actively speculated on and are used more as a currency. For example, Monero isn't attractive for speculation because mining is unprofitable and exchanging with fiat is banned or difficult in many areas. It's great as a currency though because transaction fees are low, transactions are fast, and it has a bunch of privacy features. Bitcoin is more attractive, but not as much for gambling because volumes are too high to get crazy spikes. So you end up with longer ye term speculation in Bitcoin like you'd see with individual large cap stocks. Bitcoin isn't going to 10x overnight, but it's also not going to drop 90% overnight either.
Like anything else, pick carefully, and ideally don't gamble.
This is just gambling, betting that you'll cash out before everyone else, but after the price has run up.
Even worse, it is unregulated gambling. In normal gambling there are rules. Yes, the house will always win in the long run as the odds are in their favor, but the game is set up in a transparent way and doesn't change half way through.
Also the original idea of cryptocurrency was never speculation and cashing out. But sadly it has turned into that in 99% of the time.
I've been considering it tbh... And I know what my target audience would be even. I just don't know if I want to actually go through with it + if I do, I have to buy Monero with it or something so I could launder it, then somehow explain to the tax authority that I've suddenly got a bunch of crypto I'm selling... Though the last part might not be too bad, as long as I do TELL them that I'm selling it and want to pay taxes on it.
The Hawk Tuah coin scammed millions to their insiders, and they were rudely unapologetic about it afterward. They lied about everything they promised their "fans". I cant believe such theft is not illegal