If it's not about cashing out then why is the primary hype mechanism talking about the dollar-equivalent value of anything crypto related? Why does it matter if an NFT was sold for $300k worth of ether?
Blame financial news media, things like Fortune magazine's list of new crypto billionaires.
The author of this blog post's claim that 99.99% of people in crypto are only participating because of expectations of future profit is unsourced and a fiction that he has created based on preconceived notions.
Don't participate if you don't want - I like participating in a system that isn't being tracked by agencies especially with news of Treasury actively building out systematic functionality to investigate any bank accounts with transactions exceeding $600
I'd bet that cryptocurrencies are much more vigorously tracked than US dollars. The fraction of cryptocurrency transactions related to scams, fraud, money laundering, tax evasion, and other financial crime must be at least a couple orders of magnitude higher than that for real money.
This gets to the heart of the issue with these discussions - people like yourself asserting non-factual statements based on the equally (if not more so) incorrect assertions they hear from others. Where are your sources? Why do you feel like you need to state things as fact when you just don't like something?
You are exactly incorrect.
Cash represents the overwhelming supermajority of laundered funds and ongoing credit extended across criminal elements.
Cash is the heart of the criminal economy, crypto is creating a transparency that doesn't exist in traditional peer to peer physical transaction systems like cash or IOUs.
I'm done with this, nothing productive is coming out of this conversation.
I didn't state any facts. I started with "I bet" and included "must be". Those are pretty clear opinion markers.
Your reply is also confused. Is the majority of money laundering denominated in USD and other real currencies? I'd believe it, because that's where the money is. But I'm saying the proportion of Bitcoin transactions that are fincrime-related is surely much higher than that of total USD transactions.
This seems pretty obvious to me given that Bitcoin is much less useful for quotidian transactions, but much more useful to people engaged in assorted financial crime. That's unsurprising given how much cryptocurrency advocates tout privacy/anonymity as features. But if you think otherwise, feel free to show the data that has convinced you otherwise.
Also, it's bad form to read something, go on a rant, and then declare the conversation over. Especially when the rant is incorrect.
> The estimated amount of money laundered globally in one year is 2 - 5% of global GDP, or $800 billion - $2 trillion in current US dollars. Due to the clandestine nature of money-laundering, it is however difficult to estimate the total amount of money that goes through the laundering cycle.
> The United States continues to estimate that domestic financial crime, excluding tax evasion,
generates approximately $300 billion of proceeds for potential laundering, based on the sources
and analysis cited in the 2015 NMLRA. Criminal prosecutions and law enforcement investigations indicate that most of the money earned from crime in the United States stays in the
United States, but also that the United States is an attractive destination for illicit funds generated
abroad.
You talk about sources but like where in that pdf does it speak to your claim (cash is the majority of laundered funds) or to the parents separate claim (the percentage of crypto that is used for scams, fraud, etc. is higher than the percentage of cash used for the same). It just talks about _how_ the crime works, not the statistics in question.
Stolfi has been around the crypto scene a long time, long enough to have gotten a pretty good idea of what motivates people.
The news media did not create the gold rush mentality around crypto, it has been there almost from the beginning. Go and read the bitcointalk forums for evidence, if you want.
I have been involved in crypto since 2013, I get it. But I have given up engaging in these conversations. You either get the anti-statist thesis and economic liberation angle or you don't. If you don't then OK, best of luck.
I like having spending power that isn't immediately based on CIA organized crime or boomers at the Fed/Treasury
I mean focusing on whether it's a Ponzi scheme in particular vs the entire breadth of reasons to like or not like Bitcoin brings up whether it should attract _more regulation_, the question of free choice to participate or not is moot because it's considered misleading and fraudulent.
Are you claiming that crypto-finnews was not dominated by the crypto community prior to, say, 2018? The same community that complained at every turn that real media/finance is not taking crypto seriously?
More and more, I'm hearing only the ETH value rather than dollar denomination. Personally, when I bid (or receive bids) on any of my NFTs, I'm only considering the ETH price.
It's a new shift, but I think quite profound.
Edit: If you're referring to mainstream media, the dollar value is all that most would be able to put into context. For those deep in the space, we're thinking about dollar values less and less. My primary benchmark on overall portfolio value is the value denominated in ETH, not USD.
But ETH is still tied to the dollar and that's where it gets its value, is in the comparison to the dollar. I don't accept ETH for a used car I'm going to sell. I accept dollars, though.
It's not the whole internet, just you or the company that holds your BTC wallet. Just the other day Facebook was down for hours. Imagine had that been Coinbase.
You can denominate ETH in whatever you want, but come April 15th you’d better exchange enough for dollars to meet your dollar denominated tax obligation.
> But ETH is still tied to the dollar and that's where it gets its value,
For people that look at it like that, sure. That's not how everyone looks at it though. I personally look at it with the aim of acquiring as much ETH as possible because I can see that the future economy will be built on it and eventually things will be priced in ETH.
Just because the transitions are slow and you don't see it happening, doesn't mean that there's not a transition happening.
