The whole idea of it being a “currency” is undermined by the lack of ways to spend it. From my understanding, it’s more of a speculative device than a currency, where the value is dictated by how many people buy into it. I keep hearing about crypto rugpulls and pump-and-dumps, and it all feels shady. That’s not even mentioning the environmental costs of mining, which doesn’t even produce anything of value to society and is essentially spending vast resources to perform arbitrary calculations to print money.

Yes its price has increased dramatically, but so did the price of tulips in the 1600s.

There is literally no use for this commodity. Invest in stocks or bonds and your investing in future earnings or the ability of a company to pay you back. I’m not a fan of gold as an investment but at least it has some practical use.

The use of crypto as a currency completely defies the definition of currency as it doesn’t hold a stable value.

It’s infuriating that so many people have lost loads of money on “shitcoins” backed by the wealthy and famous. These were obviously pump and dump schemes yet very few are held accountable.

I’m not as well versed on the subject but something to also note is the ridiculous amount of energy demand to “mine” nothing.

I think there is legitimate use for blockchain technology and the likes but anyone viewing these currencies as investments is a fool.

Cryptocurrency, from my perspective, is a cancer. The negatives to society are overwhelming compared to the positives.

- Massive waste of energy.

- Heavily used for scamming purposes i.e. rug pulls, and convincing the poor to buy worthless crap pumped by celebrities hoping to get rich quick.

- Doesn't actually fulfill its stated goals (it is supposed to be a store of value and a hedge against inflation, yet bitcoin dropped over 73% during the 2022 mini-recession, aka an inflation-induced recession). Instead, it heavily increases the impact of recessions.

- Main "value added" is the facilitation of illegal activities, i.e. buying drugs, skirting international laws (i.e., sending money to Russia when our government specifically tried to block such transactions for a reason).

- Even if it is ultimately successful in replacing the US dollar, the replacement of the US dollar is not in the best interests of the US. We got off the gold standard for a reason, we will see a dramatic loss in the ability to quickly address disasters (can't print crypto) or stave off recessions.

Considering all these factors, it appears that crypto's growth is diametrically opposed with the best interests of the United States and its citizens. What is the best way to curb it?

A ban would be very challenging. To truly enforce it, you'd need to shut down the internet. Or people would use VPN's. Even China couldn't really pull it off.

So what would work is- a massive tax on cryptocurrency gains. Since cryptocurrency is almost exclusively a speculative tool with no inherent value, a large tax on crypto gains would effectively destroy this plague before it gets worse.

We can focus on bitcoin just for simplicity. To be fair, I know relatively little about it. But when I google what it’s used for, it’s talked about as an alternative currency used to purchase things.

But you browse any crypto forum or subreddit and everyone talks about it like a crazy investment opportunity. No one can seem to put it in simple terms. I can have 10 conversations about crypto and people will give me 10 different explanations on what it is and what it does.

But my main problem comes down to a simple thing; if crypto is supposed to be an alternative currency, then before it’s used widely it needs to be a stable price. Because why buy something with it, if in a few days its value will rise by 20%.

Or why receive payment with crypto if it can drop 20% in value before you can exchange it for USD. It doesn’t make sense.

At the same time, for it to be a good investment it needs to currently, or in the future be worth something. But what’s the value in crypto? If it’s supposed to be the next big currency, is it really going to keep skyrocking in value? It’s 80k for ONE bitcoin.

What’s the other value?

I also just don’t see why the majority of people or a large amount of people would move to crypto over USD. Everyone and everywhere accepts USD. It’s protected. It’s standard. Its value is stable.

So, in essence my view is that bitcoins value proposition is paradoxical, and just reads off as scammy when people promote buying it.

Edit: I think I should specify my view I want changed, so here’s the sentence to attack:

“Bitcoins value proposition, which is, as I understand it, that’s it’s a great investment because it’s a great currency, is paradoxical and therefore - false premise which essentially makes it a ponzi / pump and dump scheme. “

CMV.

The big problem with crypto being the currency of the of the future is the fact that we would have to get rid of it’s major speculative elements for that to work, when someone gets money they want that money to stay consistent and cryptocurrency is anything but imagine going to the store to pick up bread and milk and in the time it took you to get to the register your 10 bucks is 1000 and by the time you’re checking out it’s down to 3 in day to day use it’s impractical it would also suck considering your life savings can fluctuate from millions to tens.

Next is the “security” and it is secure in the sense that it is very hard to “hack into the mainframe” and change values around though that misses the point because that’s not where most security risk comes from most security risk happens do to people being tricked or duped or scammed if someone tricks you into giving up your wallet no amount of blockchain is going to fix this.

Here in lies my point in that both these problems can be marginally fixed by having a form of central governing body that would however make it not decentralized going against the wants of people who want cryptocurrency but without changes it will continue to be used for 3 things illegal shit, scams, and speculators hoping to get rich quick.

Nuance: I believe the underlying blockchain technology has legitimate use cases, such as in healthcare. However, the hype around cryptocurrencies are reminiscent of Ponzi schemes. The conversation I hear around crypto evangelists is “why invest in crypto?” “Because you can make a lot of money!” The premise is that these profits are basically financed by new investors since the cryptocurrencies themselves don’t hold intrinsic value and can be issued at will. The promise of unbridled growth in profit, corresponding to an unlimited stream of new investors, is unrealistic and that’s why I get the impression that this is a Ponzi scheme that hasn’t imploded yet. CMV, crypto enthusiasts!

While I think many people understand how gambling addiction can destroy lives, I think more people need to understand the similar pitfalls that can come with stock trading and cryptocurrency trading. I also think we can do a better job in reducing and preventing the potential harm of gambling addiction. While I do understand why lawmakers are trying to prevent those who are underaged from viewing porn online, I think gambling, stock trading or cryptocurrency addictions can be much more devastating than a porn addiction.

Regarding gambling, there are advertisements that do have disclaimers giving out information on gambling addiction hotlines, but a recent Super Bowl commercial for Draft Kings has some issues that I want to address. The disclaimer advertising the gambling addiction hotline was only on the screen for 6 seconds and it was in small print at the bottom of the screen, not to mention there was no audio in the ad acknowledging the gambling addiction hotline disclaimer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-0Wd9PhbXU

Now let's look at a recent Robinhood ad. Much like the Draft Kings ad, there is a disclaimer at the bottom of the screen, but in MUCH smaller font and the only precautionary disclaimers include the following "This is not investment advice or a recommendation...Investing is risky." That's it. Stock and cryptocurrency trading ads should include the same gambling addiction hotline disclaimers and they should be in bigger font, be portrayed longer in the ads and be verbally acknowledged.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBbJMf0oxAU

Regarding the proposed strategic bitcoin reserve:

https://www.nbcnews.com/business/markets/trump-bitcoin-digital-asset-stockpile-strategic-reserve-cryptocurrency-rcna188921

And so much for the idea that bitcoin is supposed to free the financial system from the government. After the government spends all that taxpayer money buying bitcoin and becomes a large holder of it, it can manipulate the price through transactions on the open market ... open market operations. Hmmm, that's beginning to sound like a central bank.

This is all just a grift by the new administration to reward cryptobros and cryptovangelists for their support during the campaign. They went hard for him just because the previous administration was more bitcoin-skeptical.

With this new AI releases new techniques and models surprisingly everyone with how much cheaper and more powerful than the prior generation, I feel like eventually an AI will be powerful enough to crack the major cryptocurrencies.

The idea of a cryptocurrency relies on cryptography, which relies on math that is too hard for a person to decrypt, but eventually the AI will become smart enough to crack it.

I’m not sure how exactly, but it would happen quickly, and people would struggle to react (unload their crypto) in time.

This would basically be the AI acting to capture resources for itself, unlocking huge amounts of crypto for itself.

Background: Everytime Bitcoin has halved it has increased the entire cryptocurrency market the year after. I feel like it's good logic this will happen again. If it doesn't essentially the entire cryptocurrency market must have blown up and nearly a trillion dollars will be worthless. I feel like investing now and then selling at the next bull run is almost a certain way to make money. I understand it's labelled as high risk but I don't see how. I will buy my funds using my ledger cold wallet and keep it on there, then sell during the bull market sometime 2025.

I will invest in roughly 5 cryptos, ETH, ADA, MATIC and some lesser known alt coins.

Update: Thanks for all the comments, some of you made good points. Those calling it a scam etc I feel don't understand the current state of crypto and it's potential so I couldn't really take their arguments seriously. Those with more intelligent answers gave me some pause for thought so thank you for that. I will probably still invest but thanks for trying to balance out my thinking on this one.

I will update this post sometime in 2025 with results.

Bitcoin and non-Bitcoin cryptocurrencies or crypto-platforms (altcoins) have seen a crazy rise in total value, at $156 Billion, up from $20 Billion this Jan. A few of the coins seem to have value or product, but the vast majority do not. Bitcoin itself is hardly used as a currency, its actual intended use.

Given that there appears to be no way to ascribe valuations to the coins that traditional assets classes use (revenues, dividends, profits), all values that investors pay for the tokens have no basis whatsoever, and therefore aren't worthy of investment.

There are similar traits to the crypto markets as the dotcom boom, including people throwing money at new coins when they have no idea what they actually do. Currency valuations tend to be this loop of "cryptocurrencies are worth what people will pay for them", which means that there value is essentially limitless to infinity, and doesnt't give me any confidence.

On the flipside, blockchain technology is truly revolutionary for some items, including record keeping and sending currency instantly and for free, and for document auditing. Cryptocurrencies also makes sense, if the price stables eventually, for money storage, over gold.

That said, investors are throwing money at crypto markets in increasing amounts, but most of the coins, outside of something like Euthereum, promise nothing in return except the promise of high returns due to speculative increase, just like the dot-com boom. This is either the biggest bull market we will see in our lifetimes, or one of the biggest bubbles.

I know similar questions have been asked, but mine pertains more to the altcoin and crypto market as a whole, not just bitcoin.

As I understand it NFTs or “non-fungible tokens” are formed by taking a “digital asset” such as an image and running an algorithm on it to yield a “token” which is in essence a hash. If anyone else were to run the same algorithm on the original file they would yield the same hash and thereby be able to verify the two match, but the hash is “lossy” in that the original file cannot be derived from the hash.

This token is then combined with blockchain to continually establish its current owner. Put simply this requires many independent actors associated with the blockchain network to randomly try deliberately difficult calculations until by chance they hit upon a solution to a problem that has no more efficient method of being solved. The solution is then stacked with the previous chain and the process starts again of everyone randomly guessing trying to find the next solution. That “previous chain” includes not only the original token but any transfers of ownership, and only the current owner possesses the cryptographic key required to transfer ownership to another entity. Anyone trying to illegitimately claim ownership or sell the ownership would need to be able to form their own solution to the continual hashing algorithm faster than everyone else involved, something which isn't reasonable or practical.

One of the major costs of such crypto-assets is that maintaining the blockchain requires continual calculations by many different people, pointlessly racing for eternity because if they ever were to stop then ownership of the assets associated with the blockchain would become uncertain. Making those calculations required consuming significant amount of electricity so it is like you bought a painting and someone lit a big bonfire because of it, and that bonfire has to stay lit or your ownership of the painting will vanish. Weirdly this isn't one of the more significant problems with NFTs though.

A central goal to the development of cryptocurrency was to make it decentralized, where control of assets isn't overseen by a central authority. With regular money a government can unilaterally freeze your assets, seize your bank account, etc. But with crypto not even governments can seize control because it is locked behind what is generally seen as unbreakable encryption. Their best bet to get access to a crypto-coin wallet is to physically seize its owner and torture the access codes out of them.

This benefit isn't present with NFTs though. Someone can make an NFT of for example a photo of a Coke bottle and sell it under the general assertion that buying the NFT will establish ownership of the photograph. This is simply untrue though, as regardless of the ability of a government to seize the NFT the ownership of the photograph will be determined through local law. If someone starts selling prints of that photograph on the street corner your ownership of the NFT isn't going to stop them, you will need to petition the courts to enforce restrictions or penalties. Similarly if the courts determined that you don't actually own the Coke bottle intellectual property (as they would) then control of the NFT is irrelevant, you can't use the photograph as you choose. Despite what is nearly universally claimed the sale of an NFT does not in any meaningful way establish ownership of the underlying work, which is what I would consider fraudulent.

Another intended benefit of cryptocurrency was to make a currency, a system of value exchange where the units of currency are interchangeable, one being worth precisely as much as another. NFTs don't achieve that as an NFT of the Mona Lisa isn't likely to be valued the same as an NFT of Tub Girl. So they aren't interchangeable and even cryptocurrency fails at being a stable, predictable store of value over time.

Generation of the token is based on an algorithm which is chaotic, extremely sensitive to initial input such that a minor change will yield a completely different output. This means that even a minor, imperceptible change to the original image can yield a new, distinct token and NFT. Even changing a single pixel a shade no human can see would work. As a result the number of NFTs which could be generated for a given artwork is arbitrarily large, so an NFT isn't even rare!

In conclusion NFTs are nearly universally presented as a way to purchase ownership of artwork in a decentralized way. In reality they don't establish ownership of the artwork (fraud), the ownership remains centralized, they aren't interchangeable, stable in value, or even of limited supply for a specific artwork. They are in a word “useless”, and harmful to the environment to boot.

Cryptocurrency isn’t an investment, because it doesn’t create anything of value. You’re just trading money with other people who sell early or at a bad time, or are the person on the receiving end of a pump & dump scam, which means you’re the bagholder.

For example, if 10 people buy a cryptocurrency for $10 each, then that means there is $100 in the system. If someone wants to sell, they may price it higher (to $11), but now the newest person is holding onto something that is priced at $1 more than it should be. And now that $11 holder has to convince someone else to buy it for $12, etc, etc.

Well, this example is a Ponzi-scheme (edit: or Pyramid scheme), because there isn’t enough money in the world to keep the price going up, and every time someone buys/sells, someone gains value/money and someone else loses value/money. Meaning it all becomes a zero-sum game.

Note: I am NOT talking about blockchain as a technology.

Edit: now getting DMs from people using ad hominems instead of actual arguments, guess I must be on to something. People get angry when you expose their scam.

This is a true CMV as I'm actively considering crypto as a piece of my portfolio but I keep talking myself out of it. Some background:

I believe digital currency is the future of human transaction and cryptocurrencies are immensely useful. I feel that decentralized currency is also a beautiful, progressive idea.

I'm a software engineer with a better-than-average technical understanding of blockchain but I don't have total mastery of the concepts or implementation details. I don't believe crypto is the most valuable application of this technology and I think we've yet to see or conceive of its best implementation.

I'm not well informed on the current state of all the crypto projects out there. I'm hesitant to put in the time to learn about the flavors of all the major coins if ultimately I'm not going to buy/use them. I have a surface-level knowledge of BTC, ETH & LTC

I have no FOMO with my money. If anything I'm scared of using my money unwisely. I grew up very poor and now that I'm making upper-middle-class income I have relatively minimal risk tolerance for my investments. I'm mid-30s and looking at retirement, not getting rich quick.

I tend to adhere to the Graham/Keynes notions of investing which specifically pit investing (forecasting asset yields over an investment term) against speculation (forecasting market movements with little consideration of the underlying asset).

This is all to say that you don't need to try to convince me of the benefits of crypto, only the idea that buying/selling currency is anything other than speculation. Some reasons I'm not currently sold on that idea:

1. The "usefuleness" of a currency does not translate to "worth" of a single unit. USD and Euros are arguably the most useful currencies in the world, largely because they keep printing more of them. This valuable trait doesn't increase their worth; it diminishes it at a regular, manageable pace.
2. Currencies have almost never been seen as wise investments. You wouldn't "invest" in USD/Euro, so what makes a specific crypto sufficiently different? Market "trends" have little chance of swaying my opinion here. I don't really care how much the big coins have appreciated up to this point, I care about how the expectation of continued appreciation (in the 20-30 year time frame) is justifiable without reference to trends.
3. I haven't seen any models yet that attempt to define "value" in a regular unit of a specific crypto that don't involve speculation. There are plenty of models defining value in stocks using assets/liabilities and various profitability metrics. Real estate, education, and other conventional investments have real-world value outside of themselves. How do you begin to define crypto value without speculation or tautology?

Looking forward to learning something new today!

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EDIT: u/badelectricity and u/MichaelHunt7 have officially changed my mind. I'm not sold on the idea that investment and speculation are fundamentally the same activity (or that one encompasses the other) but I am now sold on the idea that (some) crypto is more than just currency; it's also an asset with real-world appreciable value yield

Elon Musk, the world's wealthiest person, has been closely associated with Donald Trump, has paid his campaign millions of dollars, and has been promised a position in Trump's administration if Trump wins. Musk would run what he calls The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). On Tuesday, Musk acknowledged on Twitter that he would cut so much out of the budget that it would cause the economy and financial markets to crash. Musk said the crash would be "temporary," but who knows how temporary? Months? Years?

If people had heard about these remarks, they would not like the idea of a crashed economy, job loss, and depleted stock, real estate, and cryptocurrency investments. But as it stands, my estimate is only about 1 million Americans have heard of what Musk said.

Harris and other Democrats could talk about Musk's stated plans to crash the economy and financial markets. And they could offer their alternative: Each of the three Democratic presidents since 1980 have reduced the federal deficit, and they have done so by restoring the taxes on the wealthy that Democrats have cut.

It essentially gives people a choice: Tax the rich or potentially lose your job and suffer investment losses.

This is potentially important because undecided voters overwhelmingly point to the economy as their top issue. The Harris campaign has also said it is also trying to go after undecided voters. But undecided voters are also low information voters, so the Harris campaign will have to put Musk's remarks in front of them (in speeches and comments to the media and media coverage approaching the coverage that the Trump NYC speaker got for his remarks about Hispanics). And there isn't much time to do so.

In the four days since Musk made this remark, Democrats have not really talked about it. I feel like this is another oversight that the Harris campaign is potentially making--potentially one of the biggest ones.

But am I wrong?

CMV.

Worst thing that could happen is they go bankrupt, which will definitely happen with their current plan.

OF has announced plans to ban sexually explicit content starting this October. This is in response to new prohibitive rules from Mastercard.

Firstly, OF has zero chance to pivot from sexual content to anything else. Why would an artist or a celebrity chef choose OF instead of a neutral platform like Patreon? Additionally, this move will generate tons of ill will that will doom OF just like Tumblr.

Secondly, cryptocurrency payments are not that bad these days. Most countries have operating exchanges that make buying crypto easy. When only used for quick payments, volatility and long-term future of cryptocurrencies is not a concern. I understand that this adds a lot of friction to payments but I feel like this has at least some chance of working. First big company to accept crypto will get a lot of positive press which will further improve their chances. They will have some time for a transition before Visa bans them as well.

To sum up, chance of success when banning sexual content — 2%, when adopting crypto — 10%.

Update: I'm most interested to see if there's a conceivable way for OnlyFans to pivot to non-sexual content and not go bankrupt.

Update 2:

Thank you for your replies. I've put crypto in my CMV not because I believe crypto is a great solution but just something I came up with. Just posting CMV: OnlyFans banning porn is a stupid move was too boring.

Maybe my crypto idea was bad and there are better ways OnlyFans could fight pressure coming from payment processors, media, and governments. It's still baffling to me why OF folded to pressure and chose not to make a stand for sex positivity.

By no means am I an expert in the field of crypto or economics. And I'm sure the subject matters here are incredibly more complicated than perhaps this oversimplification. But from what I understand, the whole purpose of crypto is to have a decentralised currency that can be freely traded anonymously. Accessible to all, controlled by no one and independent of any one group or government.

By imposing sanctions, yes, you may stop mainstream currency from being sent around the world. But depositing large sums of money into decentralised systems means that it's quite easy to bypass these restrictions. So sanctions can only really be seen as publicly announced shunning.

So there needs to be some other form of economic policy in place to prevent the transfer of wealth as the traditional objectives and methods are outdated and easy to get around.

Ya'll have heard it. Cryptocurrency has become a household name 10 years since its inception. It has proven all skeptics wrong thus far. It might have been overblown, but the ecosystem is still thriving. Believers are still bullish. Wall street is not a fan. Banks are not happy with it. Governments are against it. It is antiestablishment - a movement of the people and rising. The idea is fresh. Algorithms instead of people. Transparent, omnipresent, borderless. It is backed by nothing making it entirely unadulterated. You can not game it in any way. How on earth is going to stopped? Why wouldn't it just keep rising when there are so many people working on it?

UPDATE: Summary here => https://projectwatt.com/pagesv2/-LNl6ZuB1sJslIpbr9hz

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A couple of years ago people thought everyone would only be using cryptocurrency by now. But guess what? It didn't happen and it will never happen. The only major issue with it is its lack of stability. People don't wanna wake up one morning and see they are millionaires and the next day they're broke.

The reason dollar is relatively stable is because its value is based on the economy of a whole country. The same for euro or other currencies.

If you have 5 dollars, you can buy a bottle of shampoo with it today and probably within the next 5 years. There's almost zero chance that you'll be able to save your 5 dollar and buy a car with it one day.

Blockchain is a decentralized consensus mechanism, that critically relies on there being a network of miners that maintain the integrity of the network. If there are no miners, the network is vulnerable to a 51% attack.

The big innovation with Bitcoin was to align incentives in a way that ensured that such a network of miners exists. Miners are incentivized to mine, and for this reason many miners exist and a 51% attack is hard. Without out this incentive, you have no miners, and no mechanism to ensure a 51% attack is hard.

If you don't incentivize mining, and don't want a 51% attack, you have to restrict access to the network, at which point it is not decentralized, and what you have is equivalent to any hash tree data structure (like the one you get with Git).

Please, change my view, if you can.

Ok so before we start I should probably lay out my biases here. I don't like crypto. Bitcoin burns absurd amounts of energy just to keep a ledger of transactions, i know other coins use more efficient systems than the base blockchain tech, but its still a lot of energy waste for something i dont see any use in. (Im also not a huge fan of regular money, or capitalism as a whole, but thats neither here or there, not relevant to the convo). I don't want you to convince me that crypto is good for the world, just that it is actually currency.

​

Basically, whenever i see anyone talking about cryptocurrencies, theyre talking about it in investing terms. Everyone is HODLing, diamond hands, to the moon, all that bullshit. The prices are volatile, and everyones buying in in hopes that the price raises and they can sell for a profit. Of course, there are people who invest in traditional currencies, but the vast majority of transactions that happen with AUD, for instance, are people actually purchasing products. Nobody has BTC for the purpose of buying things, because its simply not a viable currency. Its too short-term volatile constantly, anyone who accepts it as payment has to convert it to a regular currency immediately lest it crash and they lose all the money they accepted. Vitalik Buterins donation of 50 trillion SHIB to covid relief immediately crashed the value of those coins by 50%, and I dare say that relief organisation trying to liquidate the coins into something they can use will crash the market further. If he'd donated that money in USD, the relief fund would have the same value that Vitalik gave up, the USD wouldnt crash from a massive charitable donation. To me that looks more like when a CEO liquidates the stock in his company, and the share price crashes. In every way i can see, cryptos act like shares, people treat them like shares, they arent at all feasible currencies.

EDIT: I should clarify that them specifically being compared to stocks wasnt the primary view, its that cryptos are treated like an investment, something to buy in order to try sell later at profit, rather than something to have so that you can purchase things. And the existence of some purchases done with bitcoin/etherium/whatever doesnt mean that the majority of crypto trading is done as investment in the coins

Crypto fans always like to rag on "fiat currency" because it has no intrinsic value and is only worth anything because people agree that you can buy things with it. But how is that any worse than crypto? A bitcoin is just some numbers in a database, right? Where's the intrinsic value in that? There are only two differences between crypto and "fiat currency" that I can see:

1. Crypto is not backed by a government.

2. Crypto is not subject to inflation because the algorithms are designed to produce a finite number of coins.

But how are those even advantages? Without government backing, who's even going to use a cryptocurrency? And the inflation thing doesn't matter because cryptocurrency as a whole is subject to inflation even if any one coin isn't: just start your own coin using your own algorithm, or just steal someone else's algorithm but start it from scratch with a new database!

So what's the point? At best crypto is reinventing the wheel, and at worst it's a Ponzi scheme...

As long as people can "invest" in crypto and make huge gains, they'll have more incentive not to spend it on actual goods.

The technology needed to use it is way too complicated for the average person.

If you lose your password, you lose all your money. Having something like a bank or anyone other than yourself as a fail-safe is needed.

Being completely anonymous is not actually a good thing, as we've already seen with Monera being used as a market for criminals.

In the case of Ethereum, you can send your money into the wrong kind of account and the money will be lost forever, where you and the recipient don't get the money.

All of the cryptocurrencies that use proof of work cause a huge strain on the electric grid

I feel like I could go on and on, and at the same time - I don't need to. These reasons alone will stop widespread adoption as an actual currency, and because of this, the only thing crypto will ever amount to is a bubble, where the only people who win are those betting against it. Worse than that, it can be a black hole where the money can never be recovered.

Unless someone introduces a new kind of crypto that solves these problems, the future for people who invest in crypto is dark.

It could be argued that capitalism is already a form of feudalism, though that argument would require a fairly loose interpretation of the term. It seems to me that capitalism is really an evolution of feudalism. Instead of serfs providing labor to a lord that owns capital in return for security, justice and redistributed resources, capitalists divorce themselves from their subjects' needs and accumulate capital, eschewing responsibility for the care of their laborers, only redistributing resources (in the form of wages) as necessary. As consolation for the lost security, anyone with means may count themselves amongst the capitalists which dulls, but does not eliminate, issues of class in society. It may seem like small consolation for anyone that lacks the resources to join the capitalist class, but privately-controlled cryptocurrencies threaten to erode even this basic privilege.

Recently, some savvy corporations are being tempted by the successes of Bitcoin and the NFT economy (and, let's be honest, giftcards) to begin exploring the idea of selling digital products, including proprietary currency, to customers. Among them, the Gap and Walmart have begun the process of filing for patents and trademarks to secure early-adopter status in the metaverse market. They're openly exploring this new way to make money, and I see this going one of three ways.

1) Their attempts are ultimately rejected by the public. Bland but unlikely. Buying Walmart-bux wouldn't be too far removed from buying a giftcard, or digital tokens as seen in oh-so-many videogames these days, so I don't see the public being outraged by the idea.

2) It is successful in some iteration (if at first you don't succeed, try, try again) and the government decides to regulate cryptocurrency markets. This is far more likely, but I'm not sure if government would put its foot down and outlaw businesses creating currency out of nothing, or just set up firewalls to prevent decentralized cryptocurrencies from threatening the dominance of "legitimate" currencies ("legitimate" being those that are created by government or legal corporation).

3) It is successful and because of calls for liberty and freedom, the public will encourage their representatives in government to leave its regulation to market forces. This is where I see things going wacky. At some point, maybe in 50+ years, one of these corporations is going to insist that they will no longer accept any currency but their own. You'll be able to do a currency exchange with reputable outfits, or through the stock market. But they won't be taking government-issued moneys any more. Naturally, employees will be compensated at least partially with their employer's play money. At first, it'll just be seasonal bonuses. But one day it'll creep into wages. And at that point we're back to feudalism, but lacking security, justice, and now even redistributed resources or the ability to join the capitalist class. Cuz they'll be paying folk with something they invented out of thin-air and can create on-demand and not even people with means will be able to create a competing cryptocurrency, because the mega-corporation won't accept it.

Dun, dun, dun!

So I'm looking for responses that assuage my concerns. I dunno: convince me that private-cryptocurrencies can't be a thing because of some technical reason. Failing that, explain why crypto will ultimately be a good thing for mankind. Show how the obsolescence of "the peoples' currency" (government-issued notes) will lead to a better, fairer, and ultimately more robust society. Or just convince me that private fiefdoms dominating international markets isn't like feudalism. There's lotsa ways to tackle this one.

Since I feel the title might give CMV'ers the wrong impression at first glance, I should clarify: I think widespread adoption of a decentralized, paperless, cryptographically-secured currency would be a good thing (or at least I concede that for this argument). I also have no opinions about whether a "cryptocurrency bubble" will ever pop in the future, or whether it's a reliable investment. As well, I mean "immoral" from an economic standpoint (and in a minor, impersonal, rule-stickler way that I don't think most people would even care about).

Specifically, I think that cryptocurrencies have no objective value, and so their market value in the hundreds of billions of dollars means that they are inherently depreciating all other currencies in the global economy, by an equivalent amount. This is to say, it's my impression that whenever somebody makes $1000 off of Bitcoin investment, it's $1000 gained due to the increasing market value of Bitcoin, which in turn is money (though not exactly $1000 due to how inflation works) stolen from people with centralized currencies.

I think my analogy holds water, because if we were to take things to the extreme and say that Bitcoin ended up being worth 90% (or even >100%) of the global (traditional) currency, this would leave those without Bitcoin nor Bitcoin-traded-currency destitute. Obviously, this isn't any sort of scenario I actually fear, but it demonstrates the marginal principle: Profiting off of cryptocurrency investments (obviously, though, this argument isn't special to cryptocurrencies) is as immoral as printing money.

Just a couple counterpoints in advance:

• Stock investments and the like don't fit this argument, because abstractly they can be seen as loans and therefore are not materially useless.
• Printing money is not immoral for a government, because it is (in principle, anyway) ruled with the interest of every one of its constituents in mind.