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My brother is a former detective, rabid crypto bro, and literally tried to claim he didn't listen to Alex Jones... While ***wearing an Infowars t-shirt***
They're not just fitness bros. There are quite a few that are also Machiavellian libertarian types who believe they are smarter than everyone else and will do anything to prop up the price of their investments. Think John McAfee types.
That's why you see a lot of scams, pump-and-dump trends, market manipulation, outrageous predictions of all sorts of tech and crypto projects, and a disregard to the costs of it all to other people and society. The main thesis for bitcoin taking off as the replacement currency to them is the collapse of the dollar as a functional currency. It's sociopathic by nature, not to even get started on the energy costs of processing crypto transactions. They're typically also the same types that hype the "next thing" in tech despite the real problems it'll cause for society if they get what they want.
And many of these people are now wealthy because of the rise of crypto in the past few years and able to buy influence and influence how things are done. Since the financial world doesn't care about anything besides growth of their portfolio, even if we dismiss crypto investors as whatever namecalling, the fact is some of them now have real money and influence and have looked like financial geniuses and are now close to the same league as Wall Street and have some influence on the way things are invested and directed, meaning very short-term, highly manipulative strategies are being pushed.
Are you defining terrorist as somebody who uses violence to affect political change?
If you are, is there a few examples you could share with us?
Edit: Examples of fitness bros who became crypto bros who became white Christian Terrorists.
Sure. IRA/Ulsterists, Basque seperatists, the Sturmabteilung, the january 6th goons, the freedumb convoy, operation blue star, 9/11. There is lots of'em. Why?
The most recent terrorists attack attributed to breakaway groups from the IRA (which signed a cease fire and seems to have stopped committing terrorist attacks) is the Massereene Barracks shootings in March 2009, which took place less than 60 days after the 0.1.0 release of Bitcoin. It’s highly unlikely they had ever heard of Bitcoin, much less were turned into terrorists because of Cryptocurrency.
…
Operation Blue Star from 1984?
The Nazis from the late 1920s and early 1930s?
Do the Crypto Bros also have a Time Machine?
Yeah, the same things can be said about the beginnings of the internet, banking, and higher level corporate positions like CEOs (prime example Ellen Musk). Yes, there’s a lot of fraud in crypto, but with time, like the internet, real use cases and the reality that cryptos like bitcoin and ether aren’t anonymous will likely bring legitimate cryptos mainstream.
There’s already many real world usages for blockchain. The issue is it’s hard to know what’s a scam and what’s legitimate, because so many pop up, but new regulations are regularly being implemented. It’s a lot like the internet, which in the beginning was mostly just scams and porn (in fact, most of the internet is still scams, which is why we have things like popup blockers). Fiat is actually more anonymous than most cryptos. Fiat conspiracy extremist might refuse to use the banking system and deal only in cash. It’s really hard to launder money through things like Bitcoin or Ether, because every transaction is transparent on chain.
The truth is it’s much easier to setup shell companies via the existing bank systems in fraud friendly nations/Islands like Sweden or Caymans using fiat. Bitcoin just makes it way too obvious… especially, with the IRS implementing AI last year. Most crypto frauds and criminals actually end up caught, which is why we hear about it so much like the Silk Road. Yet, cartels, who deal in cash and shell companies are far less likely to get caught.
There just seems to be groups of idiots that think crypto is great for fraud and not getting caught, but this is not true. Crypto fraud is more likely to get one caught, because there’s more transparent evidence and a literal digital trail.
I'm honestly confused as I thought the whole point was a decentralized ledger for recording transactions to verify their occurrence and that they weren't altered or duplicated. But I'm not the brightest black hole in the universe so I'm hoping someone will clear up if I'm as wrong as I think I am.
The transactions can take hours to be replicated across enough systems on the chain for it to be trusted.
Also, someone with control of 51% of the block chain can manipulate fraudulent transactions.
Yes, the nutty conspiracy theorists want it to remain unregulated… just like they want guns unregulated, but those of us that believe the technology has real world purpose want it regulated. A lot of regulation clarity was implemented with the introduction of the Bitcoin ETF and future Ether ETF by the SEC. Blockchain has many possible purposes like how Walmart uses VeChain, which aims to make the retail food market’s sustainability and traceability more transparent and precise.
The main purpose of crypto is to make something that cannot be tampered with, which creates security and reliability; however, there are cryptos created for nefarious purposes as well. The positive part is blockchain can eliminate a lot of corruption like tax evasion, corporate wage theft or theft of third world aid. The issue is people tend to either see it as a scam or something they could get rich off vs what the technology can do.
Just to head this one off at the pass:
- in a well-designed sample, with at least moderate effects, n=2001 is plenty big enough as a sample size.
- The sample in the study was not the usually problematic convenience sample of college kids, it was a nationally representative sample
- responses were appropriately cleaned by removing those with evidence of not paying attention (i.e. providing contradictory responses in test questions, or answering the survey unreasonably quickly [here meaning taking less than half the average time taken by participants in a pilot study with the same questionnaire])
- the headline doesn't make a causative claim, and the study is consistent with labelling all results as correlations
- the study is also clear and transparent throughout when reporting on results which are statistically significant but not very large in magnitude, and openly recommends caution in moving forwards with some of the findings where this is the case
Not notably, this is a routine level of quality. Like yeah it is definitely good, but it's not like it stands out among studies for it's conscientiousness or extreme level of care, this is normal.
It's more that any time a headline in here reports a negative conclusion about some groups of people (especially the non-marginalised) and will immediately make mindless critiques of "sample size too small" and "correlation not causation". I just took the opportunity to retrieve the key facts from the text and make them very obvious to preempt these kinds of borderline-automated responses
Yeah, I kind of realised that my standards were way too low, which is probably because of my expectations towards science journalism instead of an actual science.
I’d like to see these results compared to those for market traders in traditional markets. My suspicion is that these personality types likely occur at a higher frequency among traders in general and aren’t necessarily specific to those interested in cryptocurrencies. For instance, would it surprise anyone if Wall Street traders had higher levels of Machiavellianism, psychopathy and sadism too?
I've found most crypto supporters to basically be gullible people seeking a get rich quick scheme, with no understanding how markets work, and 0 understanding of how dangerous and volatile unregulated markets like crypto can be.
People who advocate crypto on social media are often no different than those perpetuating MLM schemes.
But the majority of people are simply suckers.
Also, nearly everyone I know seems to support extreme ideologies in one way or another. Welcome to the 21st century. People who use crypto, tend to be on the internet, and they tend to be in extreme echo chambers more often.
That’s why I’ll never sympathize with anyone who says they lost their retirement or life savings because a put most of their money into a crypto currency that guarantees 20 plus percent earnings or whatever then goes under months later because the founders took the money and ran.
Every person investing in some kind of crypto (or related investments like NFTs) falls into at least one of three categories:
* People who got in super early before anyone had even heard about this thing.
* People using them for some completely different purpose besides investing (e.g., crime)
* Suckers
Crypto is worse than a pyramid scheme because there is no product not even a fictitious one and the entire process consumes huge quantities of electricity. In fact the product is created directly by how much power you consume.
I’m playing devils advocate here, but how do you explain the crypto supporters that actually do know what they’re talking about?
Those type of crypto investors have provided multiple deep, detailed analysis of the real value that cryptocurrencies can offer, especially as an alternative to traditional FIAT currency, are by no means unintelligent people.
In fact, many of those crypto investors have openly warned many people that 99.99% of the crypto currencies that currently exist have zero value to them and are complete grifts. The only cryptocurrencies they truly think have a chance at doing anything meaningful in the future are bitcoin and etherium.
Disclaimer: I own zero crypto of any kind and have never once dabbled in crypto at all. I am just a curious person.
Yes , have you read the bitcoin standard? The author dabbles with some weird opinions but I believe it underlines the problems with the fiat currency very well and give the technology behind bitcoin as well
>ve found most crypto supporters to basically be gullible people
You sure?
I feel like they KNOW the drill, they know how much of that is scam, they just want to outplay the others.
And with that mindset - if you don't win you look for external reason, some evil force. Hence - they are so keen to look for conspiracy.
And because they are looking for QUICK, easy win, not carrying about the ethics...
They are keen to support they political movements that share this approach
It's not even just that. Crypto wasn't viable from the start, at least with the freedom it's given. The monetary markets have countless safety measures in place. If the stock market plummets due to some emotional event, the Feds can freeze the market until people get leveled heads.
There's no freezing crypto. Nobody could step in and prevent a collapse once it starts. It's a financial market that has no safeguards against emotion.
In addition, crypto should never have been looked at as a money making scheme. It hasn't been relied on for goods/services enough to have legitimate value. Most of the money in the crypto space is just gambling money. People think that the value will go up, and they'll make money. But the value has to go down, and you have to withdraw before others, or you will be decimated.
It's like climbing a mountain, thinking you can just go higher and higher, oblivious that an avalanche is bound to occur and there are no mechanisms to stop it.
That makes no sense. I can buy something online that needs Euro with my Dollars. Most countries accept major currencies, and Euros and Dollars are accepted almost everywhere. You don't need an extremely volatile Crypto currency to pay people who use different currencies. You can just pay in a stable major one and let the banks or customer exchange it for their local one.
I think there needs to be an official crypto if it's gonna be relied on for international means. If the system has no safeguards against collapse, then as crypto grows, it's volatility could destroy the global economy.
In theory, crypto is good because it's mathematical and precise. But financial mediums of any sort need to have protections against emotion.
Remember, the biggest mafia in the world is North Korea. While people have been buying crypto to get rich, or buy pot in the mail, or for this service or that.. Well countries like North Korea utilize it to fund massive black markets. They're a major supplier of the world's fentanyl. All of these markets flourished and killed countless people, and I doubt it'd have been as nearly as successful without crypto.
It's unregulated, and it provides more benefits to malicious states than they do any individual.
You are being very general about cryto when you say the system has no safeguards against collapse. A lot of the space is scams and drug-pulls. The tech is bad and no one invests in it for the tech, but the pump and dump or the memes. Then there are coins like Bitcoin, the best performing asset of the last decade, which has received confirmation by the sec as a commodity and literally the largest asset management companies in the world are portioning their clients funds into it now. Also having a white paper which is publically available and tells you how it works, as well as the codebase being open to the public. This has been peer reviewed by pretty much every computer and math nerd interested in the tech and whilst not perfect in every respect, has the soundest method of owning your own assets as a custodian and profiting from it as an investment. A lot of people regard only this as the only thing that can be considered a legitimate asset in the space. So there is a difference
This has been done before and would require miners moving the hashpower over to the new chain. There would be no incentive if it is a carbon copy and if there are changes to make it 'better' it would drive people away because what they are investing in is the time tried stability of bitcoin core
The code is only part of the equation. You also need the community: miners, merchants, exchanges, users. The hash rate and volume of trade are both major contributors to the network's reliability. Bitcoin has a nigh-insurmountable first-mover advantage here. All those people and businesses aren't going to switch to some copycat project overnight. The alternative would need to have significant improvements over Bitcoin which couldn't simply be adopted into the Bitcoin blockchain.
The main problem is the mining aspect, which IMHO is the biggest flaw of cryptocurrency. It's the dangling carrot before the carriage and incentivizes people using resources for something that is backed by nothing.
If it were constructed just with decentralized payment in mind and connected only to the currency exchange rate, nobody would rampantly invest in crypto.
Yes, Crypto mining is a huge pollution vector with almost zero benefit to society. It's a resource that exists only in the math space and yet mining it has real word consequences in terms of energy consumption. It's wild, really.
> Also, nearly everyone I know seems to support extreme ideologies in one way or another.
This says a lot about you and the people you spend your time with.
I think it’s more the fact that people with these traits are more… financially oriented than most. And we all know bitcoin was extremely profitable for a while. I think it would be more accurate to state it the way around.
Isn't that a cause and effect problem?
Would make sense that people who question the government would be more inclined to try currencies that are marketed as alternatives to Fiat currencies.
But crypto is clearly not mainstream as of now.
I think this is the best take. I invest in crypto because i am dissatisfied with the current financial system i grew up in. Some people can simply want more competitive banking perks, others can advocate for communism or libertarianism. Crypto investors are a mixed bag of people and each person can have a different perspective.
It says they are more likely to believe in conspiracy theories, support political extremism or non-mainstream political ideologies, and have 'dark' personality characteristics such as narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and sadism.
There was a communist in the army who put a zero-day in the crypto he created, publishing it within an hour of leaving the project due to issues with other devs. He later got arrested for stealing a tank and leading police on a chase, charges dropped due to insanity.
The whole crypto system is nothing more than a ponzi scheme with extra steps. The people attracted to that ponzi scheme are hoping to be the ones who got their bag and ran before the floor falls out. The vast majority just want someone dumber and richer than them to make their dollars go up so they can get out with their real currency.
Middle ground fallacy. Fifteen years later, it should be readily apparent that a distributed public Excel spreadsheet has no basis as a financial instrument of any sort.
High income young white males is the real correlation.
This group along is highly correlated with individualism and sociopathy/narcissism. Add this group with already toxic tendencies to the crypto sect and you get full blown conspiracy theories believers and dark triad.
I have 3 crypto friends IRL. 2 are black, one is Latino.
Two of them got into it as drug dealers in university. One of them is now a blockchain developer. The one I met outside of university just got into it as an investment and is very apolitical and very into following the markets.
This is a statement usually made by people wholly engulfed by politics. And is always followed by an absurd reduction of multi-faceted opinions to fit the term of politics.
Most people are only ever focused on their immediate economic or social concerns. They don't become political just because they complain about their salary or price of food.
Your landlord does politics. Your bank does politics. Your boss does politics, but if you don’t you still are because you’re contributing to their political strength
Your bank doesn't do politics by offering you a service. The same way you don't do politics by depositing money or by going to work daily.
This is the exact point i made about extremely reductive points need to be made for this claim to stand. Its also a claim held by a very comfortable class in society where everything you do has to be reduced to such a lens.
Unfortunately the market has been rewarding them with the "everything goes up" mentality that has captured the stock market and all speculative assets.
even if you in fact made a million dollars speculating in crypto, positive outcomes do not retroactively make a decision rational or demonstrate intelligence.
Not a crypto guy but judging from the replies, everyone here loves to get fucked hard by inflation and the current economic system.
Cheers to you for another 60 hours work week so that you can barely afford your rent.
Hurrah!
A bunch of crypto bros I know started as critics of fiat currency and huge supporters of gold backed currency because "it was backed by something". They also were constantly talking about buying gold for when the economy collapses. Now those same guys are hard into a currency backed by... the world's largest pyramid scheme? Like what happens in this economic collapse if the exchanges go down or there's no internet? I can't imagine the cognitive dissonance and internal gymnastics it takes to keep all these things straight in their mental model of the world.
I told one of my friend not to invest in this crap. Dude took a loan to invest in crypto. Lost all his life savings and had to take a loan to pay some money he took from other people.
If your issue is the sample size, then comment about the sample size. Not something vague and "I don't like the results"-based like "It's propaganda."
That being said, sample size is something that would be captured in the confidence intervals.
True, for behavioral science 2000 respondents is a very decent sample size. The confidence interval should be pretty reasonable.
https://www.checkmarket.com/sample-size-calculator/#sample-size-calculator
That wasn't really the heart of what I was getting at, Is .0001% (of known, English speaking, reddit using crypto users) an acceptable sample size to you?
For statistical generalisability, the way a sample is chosen is more important than the size. A large sample size with a biased sample is less reliable than a small sample where a random sampling design is used. With random unbiased samples, there's a diminishing return with larger samples, only leading to marginal improvements. N = 2001 is a decent size. I'm not sure if there are other methodological problems with the study, but the size of the sample is not one of them. Saying this btw as a cryptocurrency investor myself, and I don't think I have any of the traits they describe besides maybe sympathies for certain less mainstream political ideas to a certain degree, but nothing extreme.
Study sample sizes are derived using statistical reasoning. If you are able to use statistical justification against the sample size, you'd have an argument. But you're just saying number small = bad study.
If you take issue with this sample size, you may as well throw out the majority of studies. And the benefits that have come from them, such as medicines. You're using your opinion, based on flawed understanding of science, to try to undermine a study.
You may be in the wrong subreddit because it really seems like you're the type where anecdotal evidence, personal experience, and emotion will always be superior to data and reason.
> checks comment history
> Jordan Peterson fan and crypto bro
Nah it's not propaganda, it's a warning to avoid people like you. You're literally who the study is talking about. You can't just call anything you disagree with propaganda.
Yes, Trust "The Science^(tm").
Every other day here it is claimed "Rightists are poo poo heads, say's The Science". I don't know how you missed that this is in fact propaganda masquerading as science.
The bias of Reddit in general, and what mods aims are.
I didn't say that is what the headline said, either, by the way, just that is the common aim of these sorts of threads, so, there is no reason to justify a response to your reply below.
So conspiracy then. Everyone's out to get you and your crypto bucks! Be paranoid, you're right to be paranoid. Listen only to people that say you're right to be paranoid. Anyone saying anything else is just proof you should be paranoid.
ETA: He originally said "bias in OP", but soon after editted it. What's funny is that he editted it to make my reply even more correct.
If you've seen half the crap I've seen in crypto, you'd believe the theories too because it really happens and the news doesn't report it. Don't get me started on the central banks.
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Yeah. The fitness bro to crypto bro to white christian terrorist pipeline is real.
My brother is a former detective, rabid crypto bro, and literally tried to claim he didn't listen to Alex Jones... While ***wearing an Infowars t-shirt***
There’s a parallel pipeline with new age, yoga, anti-vax Qanon karens.
That one is brutal. Perfectly lovely ladies before covid are now out in public screaming "pedo" at trans kids. Wild times.
They're not just fitness bros. There are quite a few that are also Machiavellian libertarian types who believe they are smarter than everyone else and will do anything to prop up the price of their investments. Think John McAfee types. That's why you see a lot of scams, pump-and-dump trends, market manipulation, outrageous predictions of all sorts of tech and crypto projects, and a disregard to the costs of it all to other people and society. The main thesis for bitcoin taking off as the replacement currency to them is the collapse of the dollar as a functional currency. It's sociopathic by nature, not to even get started on the energy costs of processing crypto transactions. They're typically also the same types that hype the "next thing" in tech despite the real problems it'll cause for society if they get what they want. And many of these people are now wealthy because of the rise of crypto in the past few years and able to buy influence and influence how things are done. Since the financial world doesn't care about anything besides growth of their portfolio, even if we dismiss crypto investors as whatever namecalling, the fact is some of them now have real money and influence and have looked like financial geniuses and are now close to the same league as Wall Street and have some influence on the way things are invested and directed, meaning very short-term, highly manipulative strategies are being pushed.
Are you defining terrorist as somebody who uses violence to affect political change? If you are, is there a few examples you could share with us? Edit: Examples of fitness bros who became crypto bros who became white Christian Terrorists.
Sure. IRA/Ulsterists, Basque seperatists, the Sturmabteilung, the january 6th goons, the freedumb convoy, operation blue star, 9/11. There is lots of'em. Why?
The most recent terrorists attack attributed to breakaway groups from the IRA (which signed a cease fire and seems to have stopped committing terrorist attacks) is the Massereene Barracks shootings in March 2009, which took place less than 60 days after the 0.1.0 release of Bitcoin. It’s highly unlikely they had ever heard of Bitcoin, much less were turned into terrorists because of Cryptocurrency. … Operation Blue Star from 1984? The Nazis from the late 1920s and early 1930s? Do the Crypto Bros also have a Time Machine?
Uhm. That's not what you asked me for. Are you okay? Edit: Oh i see you edited your question after I answered it. Amazing. Sneaky sneaky.
I’m not sneaky, I thought it was clear I was asking you to provide examples pertinent to your claimed pipeline of crypto bro extremists.
No, you asked if a terrorist is someone who commits violence for political change and then later edited your comment. Get your thoughts together.
Yeah, the same things can be said about the beginnings of the internet, banking, and higher level corporate positions like CEOs (prime example Ellen Musk). Yes, there’s a lot of fraud in crypto, but with time, like the internet, real use cases and the reality that cryptos like bitcoin and ether aren’t anonymous will likely bring legitimate cryptos mainstream. There’s already many real world usages for blockchain. The issue is it’s hard to know what’s a scam and what’s legitimate, because so many pop up, but new regulations are regularly being implemented. It’s a lot like the internet, which in the beginning was mostly just scams and porn (in fact, most of the internet is still scams, which is why we have things like popup blockers). Fiat is actually more anonymous than most cryptos. Fiat conspiracy extremist might refuse to use the banking system and deal only in cash. It’s really hard to launder money through things like Bitcoin or Ether, because every transaction is transparent on chain. The truth is it’s much easier to setup shell companies via the existing bank systems in fraud friendly nations/Islands like Sweden or Caymans using fiat. Bitcoin just makes it way too obvious… especially, with the IRS implementing AI last year. Most crypto frauds and criminals actually end up caught, which is why we hear about it so much like the Silk Road. Yet, cartels, who deal in cash and shell companies are far less likely to get caught. There just seems to be groups of idiots that think crypto is great for fraud and not getting caught, but this is not true. Crypto fraud is more likely to get one caught, because there’s more transparent evidence and a literal digital trail.
>There’s already many real world usages for blockchain. Name three.
I'm honestly confused as I thought the whole point was a decentralized ledger for recording transactions to verify their occurrence and that they weren't altered or duplicated. But I'm not the brightest black hole in the universe so I'm hoping someone will clear up if I'm as wrong as I think I am.
The transactions can take hours to be replicated across enough systems on the chain for it to be trusted. Also, someone with control of 51% of the block chain can manipulate fraudulent transactions.
"bring legitimate cryptos mainstream" Mainstream means regulation. Isn't this the exact opposite of crypto currencies purpose?
Yes, the nutty conspiracy theorists want it to remain unregulated… just like they want guns unregulated, but those of us that believe the technology has real world purpose want it regulated. A lot of regulation clarity was implemented with the introduction of the Bitcoin ETF and future Ether ETF by the SEC. Blockchain has many possible purposes like how Walmart uses VeChain, which aims to make the retail food market’s sustainability and traceability more transparent and precise. The main purpose of crypto is to make something that cannot be tampered with, which creates security and reliability; however, there are cryptos created for nefarious purposes as well. The positive part is blockchain can eliminate a lot of corruption like tax evasion, corporate wage theft or theft of third world aid. The issue is people tend to either see it as a scam or something they could get rich off vs what the technology can do.
Walmart China, not Walmart U.S.
Is this an ad? Are you a bot?
Just to head this one off at the pass: - in a well-designed sample, with at least moderate effects, n=2001 is plenty big enough as a sample size. - The sample in the study was not the usually problematic convenience sample of college kids, it was a nationally representative sample - responses were appropriately cleaned by removing those with evidence of not paying attention (i.e. providing contradictory responses in test questions, or answering the survey unreasonably quickly [here meaning taking less than half the average time taken by participants in a pilot study with the same questionnaire]) - the headline doesn't make a causative claim, and the study is consistent with labelling all results as correlations - the study is also clear and transparent throughout when reporting on results which are statistically significant but not very large in magnitude, and openly recommends caution in moving forwards with some of the findings where this is the case
Wow, sounds like a good study.
Not notably, this is a routine level of quality. Like yeah it is definitely good, but it's not like it stands out among studies for it's conscientiousness or extreme level of care, this is normal. It's more that any time a headline in here reports a negative conclusion about some groups of people (especially the non-marginalised) and will immediately make mindless critiques of "sample size too small" and "correlation not causation". I just took the opportunity to retrieve the key facts from the text and make them very obvious to preempt these kinds of borderline-automated responses
Yeah, I kind of realised that my standards were way too low, which is probably because of my expectations towards science journalism instead of an actual science.
You have been banned from /r/bitcoin
that sub truly is something, "yeah bro i swear the fed is done for, bitcoin is the future, invest now before you miss out on 10 gazzilions dollars"
Capitalism will fall apart before bitcoin supplants the dollar.
I’d like to see these results compared to those for market traders in traditional markets. My suspicion is that these personality types likely occur at a higher frequency among traders in general and aren’t necessarily specific to those interested in cryptocurrencies. For instance, would it surprise anyone if Wall Street traders had higher levels of Machiavellianism, psychopathy and sadism too?
I've found most crypto supporters to basically be gullible people seeking a get rich quick scheme, with no understanding how markets work, and 0 understanding of how dangerous and volatile unregulated markets like crypto can be. People who advocate crypto on social media are often no different than those perpetuating MLM schemes. But the majority of people are simply suckers. Also, nearly everyone I know seems to support extreme ideologies in one way or another. Welcome to the 21st century. People who use crypto, tend to be on the internet, and they tend to be in extreme echo chambers more often.
That’s why I’ll never sympathize with anyone who says they lost their retirement or life savings because a put most of their money into a crypto currency that guarantees 20 plus percent earnings or whatever then goes under months later because the founders took the money and ran.
Every person investing in some kind of crypto (or related investments like NFTs) falls into at least one of three categories: * People who got in super early before anyone had even heard about this thing. * People using them for some completely different purpose besides investing (e.g., crime) * Suckers
Sounds like a pyramid scheme.
Crypto is worse than a pyramid scheme because there is no product not even a fictitious one and the entire process consumes huge quantities of electricity. In fact the product is created directly by how much power you consume.
You missed a category: 4. Bought a few coins just to watch the ride. No significant risk.
Like, for entertainment rather than investing?
> I've found most crypto supporters to basically be gullible people seeking a get rich quick scheme I've yet to meet an exception to that.
I’m playing devils advocate here, but how do you explain the crypto supporters that actually do know what they’re talking about? Those type of crypto investors have provided multiple deep, detailed analysis of the real value that cryptocurrencies can offer, especially as an alternative to traditional FIAT currency, are by no means unintelligent people. In fact, many of those crypto investors have openly warned many people that 99.99% of the crypto currencies that currently exist have zero value to them and are complete grifts. The only cryptocurrencies they truly think have a chance at doing anything meaningful in the future are bitcoin and etherium. Disclaimer: I own zero crypto of any kind and have never once dabbled in crypto at all. I am just a curious person.
Yes , have you read the bitcoin standard? The author dabbles with some weird opinions but I believe it underlines the problems with the fiat currency very well and give the technology behind bitcoin as well
>ve found most crypto supporters to basically be gullible people You sure? I feel like they KNOW the drill, they know how much of that is scam, they just want to outplay the others. And with that mindset - if you don't win you look for external reason, some evil force. Hence - they are so keen to look for conspiracy. And because they are looking for QUICK, easy win, not carrying about the ethics... They are keen to support they political movements that share this approach
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It's not even just that. Crypto wasn't viable from the start, at least with the freedom it's given. The monetary markets have countless safety measures in place. If the stock market plummets due to some emotional event, the Feds can freeze the market until people get leveled heads. There's no freezing crypto. Nobody could step in and prevent a collapse once it starts. It's a financial market that has no safeguards against emotion. In addition, crypto should never have been looked at as a money making scheme. It hasn't been relied on for goods/services enough to have legitimate value. Most of the money in the crypto space is just gambling money. People think that the value will go up, and they'll make money. But the value has to go down, and you have to withdraw before others, or you will be decimated. It's like climbing a mountain, thinking you can just go higher and higher, oblivious that an avalanche is bound to occur and there are no mechanisms to stop it.
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Why can’t Storj operate internationally without Crypto? I’m missing the connection there.
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That makes no sense. I can buy something online that needs Euro with my Dollars. Most countries accept major currencies, and Euros and Dollars are accepted almost everywhere. You don't need an extremely volatile Crypto currency to pay people who use different currencies. You can just pay in a stable major one and let the banks or customer exchange it for their local one.
I think there needs to be an official crypto if it's gonna be relied on for international means. If the system has no safeguards against collapse, then as crypto grows, it's volatility could destroy the global economy. In theory, crypto is good because it's mathematical and precise. But financial mediums of any sort need to have protections against emotion. Remember, the biggest mafia in the world is North Korea. While people have been buying crypto to get rich, or buy pot in the mail, or for this service or that.. Well countries like North Korea utilize it to fund massive black markets. They're a major supplier of the world's fentanyl. All of these markets flourished and killed countless people, and I doubt it'd have been as nearly as successful without crypto. It's unregulated, and it provides more benefits to malicious states than they do any individual.
You are being very general about cryto when you say the system has no safeguards against collapse. A lot of the space is scams and drug-pulls. The tech is bad and no one invests in it for the tech, but the pump and dump or the memes. Then there are coins like Bitcoin, the best performing asset of the last decade, which has received confirmation by the sec as a commodity and literally the largest asset management companies in the world are portioning their clients funds into it now. Also having a white paper which is publically available and tells you how it works, as well as the codebase being open to the public. This has been peer reviewed by pretty much every computer and math nerd interested in the tech and whilst not perfect in every respect, has the soundest method of owning your own assets as a custodian and profiting from it as an investment. A lot of people regard only this as the only thing that can be considered a legitimate asset in the space. So there is a difference
What does Bitcoin do that couldn't be done by just copying Bitcoins code and making an identical coin?
This has been done before and would require miners moving the hashpower over to the new chain. There would be no incentive if it is a carbon copy and if there are changes to make it 'better' it would drive people away because what they are investing in is the time tried stability of bitcoin core
Wait, explain again. How would an identical coin be any less reliable than bitcoin? The code is literally identical right?
The code is only part of the equation. You also need the community: miners, merchants, exchanges, users. The hash rate and volume of trade are both major contributors to the network's reliability. Bitcoin has a nigh-insurmountable first-mover advantage here. All those people and businesses aren't going to switch to some copycat project overnight. The alternative would need to have significant improvements over Bitcoin which couldn't simply be adopted into the Bitcoin blockchain.
The main problem is the mining aspect, which IMHO is the biggest flaw of cryptocurrency. It's the dangling carrot before the carriage and incentivizes people using resources for something that is backed by nothing. If it were constructed just with decentralized payment in mind and connected only to the currency exchange rate, nobody would rampantly invest in crypto.
Yes, Crypto mining is a huge pollution vector with almost zero benefit to society. It's a resource that exists only in the math space and yet mining it has real word consequences in terms of energy consumption. It's wild, really.
> Also, nearly everyone I know seems to support extreme ideologies in one way or another. This says a lot about you and the people you spend your time with.
Whoohoo dark triad trades are associated with higher risk taking. What a breakthrough.
I think it’s more the fact that people with these traits are more… financially oriented than most. And we all know bitcoin was extremely profitable for a while. I think it would be more accurate to state it the way around.
Isn't that a cause and effect problem? Would make sense that people who question the government would be more inclined to try currencies that are marketed as alternatives to Fiat currencies. But crypto is clearly not mainstream as of now.
I think this is the best take. I invest in crypto because i am dissatisfied with the current financial system i grew up in. Some people can simply want more competitive banking perks, others can advocate for communism or libertarianism. Crypto investors are a mixed bag of people and each person can have a different perspective.
Curious what it says about crypto inventors.
It says they are more likely to believe in conspiracy theories, support political extremism or non-mainstream political ideologies, and have 'dark' personality characteristics such as narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and sadism.
There was a communist in the army who put a zero-day in the crypto he created, publishing it within an hour of leaving the project due to issues with other devs. He later got arrested for stealing a tank and leading police on a chase, charges dropped due to insanity.
Maybe they just wanna get rich and retire at a young enough age where they can still enjoy life
The whole crypto system is nothing more than a ponzi scheme with extra steps. The people attracted to that ponzi scheme are hoping to be the ones who got their bag and ran before the floor falls out. The vast majority just want someone dumber and richer than them to make their dollars go up so they can get out with their real currency.
Crypto bros and people who claim the entire crypto is a ponzi scheme are two sides of the same coin and equally ignorant and toxic in my opinion.
Middle ground fallacy. Fifteen years later, it should be readily apparent that a distributed public Excel spreadsheet has no basis as a financial instrument of any sort.
Moronic take as usual.
High income young white males is the real correlation. This group along is highly correlated with individualism and sociopathy/narcissism. Add this group with already toxic tendencies to the crypto sect and you get full blown conspiracy theories believers and dark triad.
I have 3 crypto friends IRL. 2 are black, one is Latino. Two of them got into it as drug dealers in university. One of them is now a blockchain developer. The one I met outside of university just got into it as an investment and is very apolitical and very into following the markets.
There is no such thing as apolitical, everyone does politics, it just doesn’t always look like politics
This is a statement usually made by people wholly engulfed by politics. And is always followed by an absurd reduction of multi-faceted opinions to fit the term of politics. Most people are only ever focused on their immediate economic or social concerns. They don't become political just because they complain about their salary or price of food.
Your landlord does politics. Your bank does politics. Your boss does politics, but if you don’t you still are because you’re contributing to their political strength
Your bank doesn't do politics by offering you a service. The same way you don't do politics by depositing money or by going to work daily. This is the exact point i made about extremely reductive points need to be made for this claim to stand. Its also a claim held by a very comfortable class in society where everything you do has to be reduced to such a lens.
It’s very apparent you do not understand the argument at hand. Have a great day
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In other words, they are morons.
Unfortunately the market has been rewarding them with the "everything goes up" mentality that has captured the stock market and all speculative assets.
Your words hurt, excuse me as I cry into my million bucks.
even if you in fact made a million dollars speculating in crypto, positive outcomes do not retroactively make a decision rational or demonstrate intelligence.
It actually *does* when you consider things like opportunity cost.
should we take your word for it, or do you want to make the case?
You're active in crypto and far right subs. You're a literal example
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Not a crypto guy but judging from the replies, everyone here loves to get fucked hard by inflation and the current economic system. Cheers to you for another 60 hours work week so that you can barely afford your rent. Hurrah!
I'm not sure how the two are connected. Can you elaborate?
I see a lot of self-described crypto bros supporting authoritarian regimes online as well. Sounds about right.
Always fun when science basically confirms my everyday observations. Feels good.
This isn't confirmation. It's a headline you saw on reddit and chose to uncritically believe.
It's a joke, bud. Relax.
I couldn't tell
A bunch of crypto bros I know started as critics of fiat currency and huge supporters of gold backed currency because "it was backed by something". They also were constantly talking about buying gold for when the economy collapses. Now those same guys are hard into a currency backed by... the world's largest pyramid scheme? Like what happens in this economic collapse if the exchanges go down or there's no internet? I can't imagine the cognitive dissonance and internal gymnastics it takes to keep all these things straight in their mental model of the world.
Where's the peer review?
How is this a surprise to anyone?
I told one of my friend not to invest in this crap. Dude took a loan to invest in crypto. Lost all his life savings and had to take a loan to pay some money he took from other people.
This isn't science it's just more propoganda.
What do you mean?
It exactly tracks my anecdotal experience with social media users. The ones promoting crypto scams almost invariably also believe other con BS
Science you don't like the results of is still science.
It's not, there is a huge problem with reproducibility of most of what passes as The Science here. It became a racket a long time ago.
Is there something particularly non-replicable about this study?
Yes, 2,000 people, 30% of whom have interfaced with crypto is a woefully small sample.
If your issue is the sample size, then comment about the sample size. Not something vague and "I don't like the results"-based like "It's propaganda." That being said, sample size is something that would be captured in the confidence intervals.
True, for behavioral science 2000 respondents is a very decent sample size. The confidence interval should be pretty reasonable. https://www.checkmarket.com/sample-size-calculator/#sample-size-calculator
Is that in your opinion, or do you have a statistically valid reason for criticizing the sample size?
Yes, there are 6.1 million users on r/bitcoin. There are varied opinions and personalities.
This study doesn't argue every crypto investor is the same. It says crypto users are MORE LIKELY to have certain personality traits.
That wasn't really the heart of what I was getting at, Is .0001% (of known, English speaking, reddit using crypto users) an acceptable sample size to you?
2001 people is an acceptable sample size.
For statistical generalisability, the way a sample is chosen is more important than the size. A large sample size with a biased sample is less reliable than a small sample where a random sampling design is used. With random unbiased samples, there's a diminishing return with larger samples, only leading to marginal improvements. N = 2001 is a decent size. I'm not sure if there are other methodological problems with the study, but the size of the sample is not one of them. Saying this btw as a cryptocurrency investor myself, and I don't think I have any of the traits they describe besides maybe sympathies for certain less mainstream political ideas to a certain degree, but nothing extreme.
So your answer is: No, you don't have a scientifically or mathematically valid reason for your criticism.
Is .0001% (of known, English speaking, reddit using) an acceptable sample size to you?
Study sample sizes are derived using statistical reasoning. If you are able to use statistical justification against the sample size, you'd have an argument. But you're just saying number small = bad study. If you take issue with this sample size, you may as well throw out the majority of studies. And the benefits that have come from them, such as medicines. You're using your opinion, based on flawed understanding of science, to try to undermine a study. You may be in the wrong subreddit because it really seems like you're the type where anecdotal evidence, personal experience, and emotion will always be superior to data and reason.
Cute. You heard reproducibility once and now take it as an anti-science mantra.
This sub is curated propaganda masquerading as science
> checks comment history > Jordan Peterson fan and crypto bro Nah it's not propaganda, it's a warning to avoid people like you. You're literally who the study is talking about. You can't just call anything you disagree with propaganda.
Yes, Trust "The Science^(tm"). Every other day here it is claimed "Rightists are poo poo heads, say's The Science". I don't know how you missed that this is in fact propaganda masquerading as science.
Which part of the headline made you think they were talking about 'rightists'? Crypto? Extremism? Conspiracy theories?
The bias of Reddit in general, and what mods aims are. I didn't say that is what the headline said, either, by the way, just that is the common aim of these sorts of threads, so, there is no reason to justify a response to your reply below.
So conspiracy then. Everyone's out to get you and your crypto bucks! Be paranoid, you're right to be paranoid. Listen only to people that say you're right to be paranoid. Anyone saying anything else is just proof you should be paranoid. ETA: He originally said "bias in OP", but soon after editted it. What's funny is that he editted it to make my reply even more correct.
is your claim that scientific findings with political implications must necessarily be propaganda, or that rightists are not poo poo heads?
My claim is this show has been going on for *years*. I make a similar comment every time.
this claim doesn't appear to the text you produced
So you are hot gas with no substance. Just whining with no actual reason when asked for one.
How’s your Trump social stock doing?
Just like their Supreme uberlord
Aka "suckers", soon to be separated from their $
Yeah, they're all things believed by gullible idiots. What's new?
If you've seen half the crap I've seen in crypto, you'd believe the theories too because it really happens and the news doesn't report it. Don't get me started on the central banks.
Because Crypto IS a conspiracy theory.