Here’s a quote I paste all over the internet:
If you love Crypto, then either you don’t understand it, or you’re trying to scam someone.
Why do I think this?
I’ll allow two YouTube videos to speak for me on this one.
First, there’s a succinct argument from this guy:
What’s nice about this video is that he starts out with the positives, but then shows how they’re heavily outweighed by the negatives.
However, if you’ve got a couple of hours to spare, then you must watch this video:
This shows how these schemes are just that. They’re schemes.
If you want my view, here’s why Crypto is a scam. It’s a virtual asset which only has value while it’s being hyped by the Crypto-bros to the people they’re trying to lure into the crypto community. The value only grows the more people are convinced to put real money into this illusion.
In other words it’s a Ponzi scheme.
However, here are some specific observations to add onto the back of it:
- Unregulated finance is a bad thing – the lack of rules means you’re going to get hurt
- Nothing’s unregulated, people are in charge, and many of those people are crooks or cybercriminals
- You don’t own any assets, you pay money for a receipt that proves ownership – it’s some bytes
- No, stablecoins are not linked to stable real-world assets – they’re linked to volatile assets that have also been hyped… probably
- Crypto wallets have been hacked and will be hacked
- Every crypto transaction is an ecological disaster
- Blockchain is not exciting – it’s just some technology to expensively prove a record on a ledger – so what!
- The immutable record on a blockchain can, in itself, be false
- You don’t own an NFT
- An NFT is a very expensive receipt to a hyperlink that you don’t even control
- The “art” in an NFT probably remains the copyright of someone else
- The crash will happen
I honestly hope that those people most banging on about how amazing crypto is are taken down by their own stupidity.
Other videos deserving honourable mentions:
and I love this one, which points out that what you think you’re buying with an NFT is a much lesser thing that you could have bought with existing copyright laws:
Ashley Frieze 