alt Hacker NewsI wasted years of my life in crypto
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“The gamblification of the economy” is the real story here. Crypto, prediction markets, and omnipresent instant gambling apps are poisoning more and more of our society and draining money from folks in an entirely unproductive way. These things promise a quick path to fortune but the only people making money are the fraudsters or the platform owners (often the same people). Serious regulation of these things is long overdue, and no, forcing them to advertise gambling hotlines is not sufficient.
don’t view it as a waste
you understand how to construct complex & stimulating games that people will play compulsively for money. that’s good.
next, craft games for which you can guarantee a house edge. should be small yet assured.
you’re already an experienced casino game developer
As OP says: He was radicalized.
I like some aspects of Ayn Rand, I like some aspects of crypto. I like some things Elon did.
One takes in info, incorporates it into ones world view. One does not go nuts following just one gospel as absolute truth.
This piece has nothing to do with Ayn Rand, or Crypto. It's just another example of how, when you're young, some oversimplifications can make you feel like you really understand the world. It's important to guide the young ones through this phase. I also remember putting down Atlas Shrugged thinking I'd find THE WAY. But it's the start of a learning process. Models (as in the models of the world we build in our heads) are useful, but always approximations. One needs to learn to appreciate that. For me that came with age, OP is going through something similar.
As someone who spent some time in "crypto land" and much time in the "real world", my surprise was usually that people seeing odd things in crypto land didn't realize that very similar odd things are also present in real world. E.g. the author's frustration at not being able to spot a real business. How many times have we seen an IPO or acquisition at an unfathomable valuation, for example?
Crypto adds no value to an economic system. It's an expensive way to move money in a big pile.
I'm glad OP has been enlightened. Growth can be painful.
> I have zero doubt that BTC will hit $1m one day.
Well, there's your problem. Here is a potentially interesting math paper that comes to very different conclusions: https://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/BTC-QF.pdf
Believe in what is important and meaningful to you.
Eight years ago was 2017.
Everything you figured out about crypto was known then. You had to choose to disregard that information and continue on. And you did, and it took you eight years to figure it out. And now that you have money, you think you have special insight others did not. Sorry, you don’t. There’s going to be a significant portion of people reading this saying, “No shit”. But congrats on winning at the casino I guess.
I have had some thoughts on crypto but basically trust is required in every system, yes there are trustless ways to do things but that isnt the main issue
I think the main issue is that our current credit/debit cards primitives can be stolen/worried about, there are companies which accept your free tier and will auto charge you and hope you forget etc.
Another issue is privacy, Crypto provides some privacy by having usdc <->monero <-> usdc <-> pay where you want.
Another issue is for teenagers, I am a teen, I can't create a banking account but I have accepted money for 0 fees well technically but exchanges are a mess and I have used those to buy domain names and similar via crypto.
I think that there are stable cryptocurrencies with low or 0 gas fees so it can allow some primitives like just having a public key online -> convert it to respective token's -> send lets say 0.1$ as a token of gesture and then like it can enable a sense of microeconomy but the people who try doing it try to mess it up by having their own coins or whatever whereas I believe stablecoins should be the one doing it
Personally I really prefer gold tokens because that is the best way to get "yield" in my opinion because most places like aave etc. kind of work via providing liquidity to traders or this gambling and due to ethics and just in my opinion, gold coins since pegged to gold have an 100x more volume which is genuine.
Personally as a teen, I have always loved the tech behind crypto because it can enable somethings impossible but its current implementation with 0 pegged coins,trading/gambling etc. sucks and is scummy. I think stablecoins are genuinely really nice
I have shared it in another comment but frankly let me reshare it : https://justforhn.mataroa.blog/blog/most-crypto-is-doomed-to...
Man, I really wish if there was someone who can work with me accepting crypto usdc <-> bank account as I know people in some industries who want to work with crypto but crypto is regulated with them in their country basically or like personally although I stay away from crypto even though I have built things on top of it (nanotimestamps), I would love working in stablecoins but I think that the market is saturated and it requires a lot of regulations and funding to establish a new stablecoin and for what basically when there are already good enough options?
Personally I dont think much of what I said makes sense if you are an adult (90% of the population) 90% of the time, privacy makes only sometimes sense when you are buying something very privacy sensitive and want to fundamentally be unable to link yourself with that identity
So mostly crypto would just be for ephemeral things, like I buy some monero right now instantly sell it to someone, like no need to "hold" things imo or only holding a very small amount
Or it can be good for teenagers which I wish man, people should do something about it.
Also for less transaction fees that visa/mastercard etc. take, I wish if companies can implement UPI transactions/Pix transactions or some system expands soon relating to it but UPI is genuinely so good that most of you do not know what you are missing out on if you aren't Indian. I have heard good things about Pix too
This is one of the signs that we are near bottom in the crypto market.
> I believe it will lead to the long-term collapse of social mobility
I mean, isn't it the goal of US libertarians?
> The reality hit me like a fucking truck. I am NOT building a new financial system. I built a casino.
Hey now, you didn't just build a casino. You also built a way for pedophiles and drug dealers to move money around.
Wait, you can write full blogs on Twitter now?
How many with X?
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Why not link to the archive.is page in the HN feed? I failed to discover how to open the original article link.
This is a sob story from someone who got wealthy from building an engine to finance crime.
There are paths towards redemption - the author could begin by donating every ill-gotten cent to a worthy charity.
What's that? Crickets? Thought so.
Wasting your 20s sounds like you did nothing in your 20s. Instead you actively made the world worse by building a casino with power hungry technology.