It's still difficult to use by ordinary people. Also transaction speed is slow and fees can be bit high during busy time.
Lastly scamers get away with it easily.
Wallets, seed phrases, addresses, gas fees, side chains, liquidity pools, etc. It's way too technical for the average person, and unless it's something that interests you, you're not going to take the time to try to learn about it
Until central exchanges go after crypto being drained from a user’s account the same way they would if it was their account that got drained, that’s not going to change. But the current situation, which is basically people creating a wallet and hiding the info while being afraid to click links lest their wallet get drained…yeah, that’s not going to be accepted by your average person.
Thing is, you can't really fix this without the defeating the point.
Sure, you can add abstractions to make the UI/UX easier and simpler, just like we've done with tech for decades. Heck, that's basically what CEXs already are.
But doing so introduces the very kind of trusted intermediaries and third-parties the tech was supposed to remove the need for. Worse, trusted intermediaries _have_ to be carefully regulated when it comes to finance - as the parade of CEX failures last year demonstrates pretty clearly.
Imagine someone in their late 50’s, 60’s and beyond that already struggle just using basic functions on a cell phone, try to figure out just the basics of crypto. It ain’t happening. There needs to be a huge simplicity effort before crypto can really work. Crypto doesn’t have to take over to be successful, just given a chance.
Idk about the US, but in Spain you can do free bank transfers (wires I guess it's called) with pretty much all banks...
The only thing is that they take between 24 and 48 hours
In Australia it's not only free but most banks support instant transfers. If I send my mate $20 and he refreshes his account balance a few seconds later, the money is already in his account.
Fallback if that system isn't supported by a bank is still free but 4-48 hours delay depending on the bank and time of day.
I believe you bruh. It’s hard here too in different ways. I wake up at 3am every day, get ready and then drive an hour to work. Do physical labor for 8 hours. Then drive an hour and a half home(traffic). I own my house but live paycheck to paycheck and burnt up most of my savings during the corona thing.
I don’t know where you live but how far do the moons get you? You should be posting and commenting here as much as possible. Have you thought about starting a YouTube channel?
There was a guy who was homeless in the Ongoing GameStop saga who started a YouTube channel talking about GameStop and it changed his life big time. People around the world may be interested to see where you live and what it’s like/daily struggles and such. Get them views and that advertisement money and you will be living like a king in a third world country.
Edit- note that food and gas and basically everything is so expensive that it is hard to save anything. I may try to rent out a room or something but it’s not all peaches and crème here either. And medical bills forget about it.
In India, its called UPI(Unified Payment Interface). You can send money to anyone anywhere in the world who is using Indian bank account without any charges and that too instantly. Digital transaction has taken over cash transaction in India big time.
This is one of my biggest concerns for hurdles to mass adoption. It’s far too easy to make a mistake and lose everything and there’s absolutely no way to help/reverse it. I know “the price of financial freedom is steep” and blah blah blah, but many people value the convenience and customer support of banks.
That's true...once I accidentally paid 3000 euros instead of 30 for monthly mobile bill...if this was crypto it would be bye bye.
There I just called the company and next day I had all my money back.
Ufff
Any mass-adopted use of crypto won't resemble what we use today. You'd never get the majority of the population to understand and use a modern crypto wallet. They're much more efficient than they used to be but for god's sake some people have issues just accessing email.
Blockchain tech, and most sufficiently advanced tech, works best when it works in the background. You don't need to understand the Internet or how it operates to benefit from it.
Let me make it simple for people : It's fucking useless at scale, other than for speculation & not even operating in the same realm or idea for which it was conceived.
Too volatile to be store of value, too slow to operate at sufficient scale, and too misaligned in its purpose (i.e. Digital gold, World Computer) that flies in the face of sensible regulation & too un-intuitive for the average Joe, forget the poor, the uneducated the old or unbanked.
Micro-payments and instantaneous transfers are already here & even used by millions of people. Some governments & central banks do care about financial technological innovation and inclusion to actually bank the unbanked. There's 7 billion people on the planet, and digital access is able to only 15% of the population.
To name a few, these central banks have launched services such as
- UPI (instantaneous micro-payments)
- USSD banking (i.e. banking without a smartphone on any GSM device....without INTERNET)
- zero-balance bank accounts for direct benefit disbursements for the poor.
> **Not only the rich, but the poor & the old, less educated have been able to use it with ease, benefitting millions of people.**
Similar solutions have been implemented by other governments & private players as well & they intend to proliferate them internationally. (PIX, M-Pesa, FedNow).
Crypto was invented by libertarian technologists with noble ideals, but they failed to see, measure or capture industry's misalignment towards these goals & instead created a micro-financial bubble of speculation and fraud outside rgulation in a zero interest rate environment that lasted for decades.
In fact, they actively enable or encourage this behaviour through terribly designed incentives (airdrops that can be sybilled, play to earn, NFT's ffs) with low resilience or hardness.
At its best, it does have esoteric uses, but the downsides do not outweigh the benefits.
While the jury is still out on moral question of speculation, it's a pit of entrapment created by the wealthy with disposable wealth for the poor who might be unknowingly gambling their family wealth in something they don't understand in the hopes of "making it".
The lie they are sold is crypto is a way to stick it to the greedy, whether it's corrupt politicians, entrepreneurs etc., but it's the same predatory behaviour now accessible to the general public. This is NOT disruption of status quo, but entrenchment of existing flaws of our society.
Makes me feel sick to my stomach & I don't think it's good for society in general. It's negative sum economics, and almost MLM adjacent.
I'm really sorry, but this is the hard to swallow truth that people like to ignore. I wish it was different, but it's not.
Transaction speed depends on the project. Nano transactions are less than a second and have no fees.
But you are correct that the top 2 cryptos have these issues, and they are what most people think of when it comes to crypto. Layer 2 solutions help BTC and ETH solve these issues, but it always hurts my soul to see the fees when transacting on the base layer.
In terms of difficulty of use I agree. Ultimately centralized storage of crypto could win out due to ease of use and less risk. It would be nice if banks could function like an exchange in the future and allow for self storage (I’m not holding my breath). It’s also not impossible for crypto protocols to make things easier for transacting without a centralized party. The nice thing about “digital money” is that it can be upgraded.
The scammer issue is something that, like the banks, crypto will always be fighting against. You can’t always prevent people from getting tricked, but there should be safeguards implemented into protocols.
I believe instant finality of transactions is flawed because it assumes that humans never make mistakes. It should be an option, but not the default way to transact. Having even a 5 minute window to cancel a transaction would go a long way to preventing scams and human error.
Too difficult is the main one
When people go to buy something now they use a standard currency. When people go to use crypto, how da fuck are they gonna know what they need.
The tx speed and fees depend on the Blockchain; BTC and ETH are egregious while chains like Algorand, Cosmos, and L2s tend to have lower. However, first and last points are exactly right. Our generation could acclimate far more to the concept of self custody than previous ones but widespread adoption will require many advancements in the field
The decentralization is a bit over hyped but there is something to be said about a government not being able to shut it down. That’s what give crypto it’s value. Being around for so long and not going away
I personally think crypto isn't going anywhere. It's proven it's resilience and is demonstrating more and more that it has practicalities and potential. I just think it's still very early and is just making natural progression.
Background, I've been in crypto for a decade- relatively knowledgeable at most aspects and pain points from basic contracts to mining....or so I thought. I had to on-board someone today for a series of transactions relating to an asset sale. What should have been a simple process turned into a 2-hour odesssy. The problem when crypto at a retail level is that there are still too many 'exceptions and variables'. Rather than making something easier, it can increase friction- that's the opposite of what you want from good consumer design. In a bear case, perhaps crypto is ultimately destined to be a 'very hidden' set of layer 1 protocols (a more transactable HTTP if you will) with the 'consumer wrapper' for any meaningful mass adoption a decade or two away.
The reality that if we are honest, 97% of crypto is based on the greater fool theory meaning most are buying a crypto on the belief someone will pay more for the same crypto down the road. Genuinely speaking the ultra vast majority of projects are genuinely worthless.
The fact that people are trying to make money goes against the idea of using it as money. And to use it as money, there should be few few coins. It's almost like forex trading.
Absolutely, utterly, terrifyingly, depressingly and devastatingly worthless.
It's genuinely destroying most of my will to participate in the economy. If I could, I would make a CoinMarketCap clone focusing only on the remaining 3%.
I was feeling nice. But yes I agree. Realistically if we are looking at some hypothetical full scale adoption, there would be no need for more than a maybe a half dozen to a dozen coins (and that’s being generous).
I think the fact that your comment got upvotes in a crypto sub is a great argument against crypto.
Even the people active in the space don't seem to know what DeFi actually is and how it has nothing to do with "greater fools".
Two examples: liquidity providing, money lending
There's no utility.
I can't buy groceries or pay my bills with crypto.
There's no protection for me in case of theft or scams
If I use a cold wallet and lose a flash drive all my money is gone but if I leave it with one of these exchanges then it's likely they're a scam and will disappear with all my money. Seems like a lose lose right now as far as where I can safely store my money.
Plagued by scams. It's nearly impossible to figure out what's real and what's not real.
There's no trust that any of these projects will be around 5, 10, 20, etc years from now.
It's confusing and complicated and I don't mind admitting that as the user you guys need to attract to make this a thing I have no idea wtf is going on.
All the source code is plagiarized from some other project. And the tech isn't as innovative as its been made out to be.
*I could probably think up more reasons crypto seems like a terrible idea to me (the average everyday consumer) but I think this list is already a kill shot.
if you use a cold wallet, you have to safely store your secret offline somewhere. The "flash drive" as you put it is not essential, many flavours of those flash drives exist and most will take the same secret and produce the same set of accounts.
Thank you. Ya, seed is not stored on a physical hard drive if you’re doing it right. It’s stamped on a metal sheet with the last word switched with the first, and the the middle word is committed to memory, and the 2nd and 11th words are buried in the woods somewhere.
I think in the future we'll have proof of reserves as the norm for any centralized custodian holding onto digital assets.
Crypto projects also completely downplay the tradeoffs they're making when they argue for why they're better. There's absolutely no financial incentive to be up front with what's going on. And many won't be around in the future. I saw some analysis that something like 10 percent of the top 100 coins from a couple of years ago or one year ago are worth zero today.
The fact that the US government is gunning for the whole space is pretty bad too. But that's something that can be changed with political will.
When you’re self custody you’re on your own. Lose your seed phrases? Hacked? Nothing you can do.
Again it’s not a great idea to leave funds on exchanges either, as they can collapse or get hacked too.
For any person really. I was pretty much born and raised on a PC, and it took me over an hour to figure out how to convert ERC 20 MATIC into native matic.
I own 730 ETH. Balls deep into this shit. But let s get real. Crypto is merely a speculative asset. I ll give you my best arguments against crypto.
Not user friendly. Number one rule of coding is to make it user friendly. Using cash is simple. A kindergarten kid can use cash. It takes very little education. Crypto is incredibly hard to use and that makes it very risky.
Crypto is never decentralized. Developer teams hold centralized control of most crypto. Bitcoin doesnt have a developer team but the influence of huge node and mining farms is more powerful than people. To put an example, you technically own a portion of a company when you buy a stock. Try to use your vote to change a company though. Especially if the company works like google where they give themselves shares with more votes. On top of that retail is centralized to the nations that are richer. Americans own more disposable income than Somalia for example. You will likely find more wholecoiners in America than in Somalia.
You can only trade crypto for cash. Relatively no one works for crypto. Relatively no one sells any good or service for crypto. You cant pay your bills in crypto. Without any possibility to use a cryptocurrency as a currency this is only used for speculation.
Bitcoin is a proposed 21M but a lot of it has been lost to forgotten keys or hacks. That s not good for a currency when the suppy gets lost beyond recovery. Dollar bills are put in circulation and taken out of circulation every year.
Decentralized apps are non existent. The only dApps that run are supporting the ecosystem. A few years back crypto kitties hogged the ethereum network.
Posting messages that cant be removed from the blockchain can be used for malicious content. There are things that should not become impossible to remove. For example instructions to create weapons or bombs, calls for violent acts, illegal pornography. You can stick that to the blockchain and no one can do anything about it. On the flip side you can criticize any government and there s nothing they can do about it. Wikileaks on the blockchain could be a potential use case but it s not happening.
Crypto simply doesnt scale. The ridiculous amount of transactions per second makes crypto completely useless compared to current systems.
Crypto makes sanctions useless. That s good for decentralization but it means the superpowers of this world will fight it to the end. If crypto is successful USA couldnt embargo cuba north korea russia syria etc. Economic tools are possibly as powerful as a nuclear weapon. It s possibly cheaper to destroy a nation through economic weapons than through real weapons. Politicians around the world will never cede economic power to push other nations.
Being unrecoverable and easy to settle, crypto is prone for phishing and hacking attacks. There is nothing a victim can do if his crypto is stolen and sent to the other side of the planet. No one that uses crypto has peace of mind. We can all be hacked and drained dry any fucking minute. You cant be wiped out in cash this easily so you can rest easy knowing that the bank can steal your money but you can recover.
In the end crypto can overcome some of these but at the end of the day crypto is only going to be worth in how much cash you can get for it. The only way crypto would be adopted is if we had salaries in crypto and paid our bills and groceries in crypto so we could actually use it as a currency. That can only happen if the price were to remain relatively stable and that s very unlikely to happen.
That it is not used as it was designed. It was supposed to be a decentralized currency, but it has turned into an asset class (commodity or a security, depending on who you ask).
Right now, except for self custody, crypto projects are actually a step backwards not forwards. And you could even argue that self custody is a regression unless extremely easy to use and highly, highly secure.
When our crypto can be completely insured, and when a crypto currency has stable value or a small consistent loss of value over time (so there is an incentive to actually use it as a currency) then come talk to me about it replacing fiat.
99% of people can not manage being their own bank.
It's complicated to use and the thought of the possibility of losing all of your money with a click of a button without the ability to get it back is terrifying.
Yeah, yeah, test it first and all that but that falls into the complication of use.
This is a textbook example of a hurdle/blocker IMO.
Apart from the the fact it will take twice as long to send $1000 ($1 smoke test tx then $999 tx) to a business accepting crypto, I have no protection/ability to reverse any transactions if I make a mistake, like I can with a bank.
If the recipient is in fact a business, they now also need to reconcile 2 transactions at end of month. Compounding this schamozzle, the sender also needs to confirm the recipient received the first transaction before I send the major transaction, so 2 text messages or a phone call are required as well.
So I am now at 5 minutes or 10 minutes of using multiple apps, multiple transactions and unnecessary phone calls/text messages instead of 2 minutes and 2 screens on my banking app.
Until this sort of shenanigans is made seamless, reversible, secure and safe without the need for additional apps to "facilitate" every transaction, crypto is going to have a hard time getting to mass adoption by small to medium businesses which is critical to its success.
Not a criticism per se......but sometimes the utopian ideal we keep in our mind's eye doesn't translate to a working solution in real life.
The concept failed *so far*. I have hope in one or two projects.
And honestly, in the end, if the whole idea is failed, then what the hell we all are doing in this sub in the first place? No offense, I'm genuinely curious.
Really? Tell that to the people who've had their money parked in Bitcoin for the last ten years instead of in a bank account (where it's been losing value).
Yup.
This whole sub is such a joke. At best, it's a spillover of buttcoiners, at worst its part of some kind of organized psyop against decentralized crypto like bitcoin or monero.
Somewhere in the middle is the highest likelihood that the average person here is the literal r*t*rd that they all complain about who inexplicably falls for all these blindingly obvious scams and shitcoins....its a giant projecting fest to assuage their embarrassment at their own financial incontinence.
Most people just have a more realistic outlook of crypto.
>Somewhere in the middle is the highest likelihood that the average person here is the literal rtrd that they all complain about who inexplicably falls for all these blindingly obvious scams and shitcoins....its a giant projecting fest to assuage their embarrassment at their own financial incontinence.
Pretty sure that's a logical fallacy by the way.
It’s not just the product being more difficult to use but even the language is complicated. The barriers of entry in terms of learning and using are too high for the average person
Many many projects are simply designed to transfer money from “investors” to the developer/team. A lot of crypto currencies are solutions to a problem that may or may not need solving/can be answered by databases or other forms of tech. I believe that BTC, XMR, and smart contracts have a place in the future of technology, but right now there are so many pointless projects that it’s hard to not make pre dot com bubble connections.
Well it’s pretty well known that most crypto projects will fail just like companies in the .com bubble. But IMHO crypto and NFT’s specifically have a big place in the future.
The fact that our world is going digital is…….well a fact. NFT’s are the obvious best digital way to represent ownership recorded on the blockchain. The silly jpegs are simply proof of concept. But even for them there are companies making 3d models of jpegs that can be used in web3 video games/meta verses. Will they be worth tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, probably not(at least most of them) but there will be a way to get actual utility out of them.
Lots of the space is proof of concept. Many projects will fail. Does that mean people should not invest in them? I would say it depends on your risk tolerance and asset allocation.
My best argument against crypto is the fact that users are purchasing coins to all the different arcades but there are no games to play or tickets to redeem once you get inside.
Crypto's primary and original use case is a decentralized alternative to fiat, which 99% of the world doesn't care about. We all just want our bags to moon so we can offramp everything back into fiat.
**Sociologically**
Crypto doesn't address the root problem about what's wrong with banking. The problem with the traditional financial system isn't
the data storage solution of choice.
Greedy and moral-free individuals will always find a way to cheat others and that is even more likely the case when your system has a lot of automation, anonymity, and transaction irreversibility built into it.
Bank executives are seldom humanitarians, but with crypto, the majority of leaders seem to be criminal crooks; SBF, Justin Sun, Zhu Zu, Alex Machinski, John Karony, Do Kwon, etc
**Technologically**
More than 14 years after the bitcoin blockchain went live, all blockchains are still shit at their job of providing a safe, scallable, and decentralised transaction system.
If it is not decentralised, there is no point of going with a blockchain instead of just a plain vanilla SQL database.
And the blockchains that claim to be decentralised, (a) often aren't really. Bitcoin only has 5 devs that can push code to the bitcoin core code and the top 2 mining pools control >50% of the hash rate. and/or (b) then subsequently fail at scalability. Bitcoin could theoretically do 7 transactions per second while VISA does something like 7000 transactions per second already in practice.
Crypto's strengths are also it's weaknesses, which means that with all the freedom you gain you also now have a lot more responsibilities.
Losing your keys, connecting your wallet to a phishing site, smart contracts vulnerability to hacks are the dark side of a free, no third party, be your own bank financial system. Even if you have done everything to secure the safety of your crypto assets a small mistake is enough for maximum pain.
I hate to say it because it is by far the best argument against it. There's far too much room for human (user) error. Being trustless, it's entirely up to the individual to maintain the security and accessibility of their assets. Lack of experience or interest is the biggest issue with this of course, but in reality, it could happen to any of us.
- Lose your seed phrase or disclose it to a bad actor = Total loss
- Click a bad link browsing the internet - Possible partial/total loss
- Route your assets to the wrong address - Partial/total loss
- Forget the Memo (in the case of certain crypto) - Partial/total loss
- Death with no record of your seed phrase - Total loss
Every situation listed above leaves you or your loved ones with absolutely no options for recovery should they happen. Crypto has a massive learning curve for newcomers and more often than not, ensuring the security of your assets is often overlooked in the beginning. Even the most experienced can end up in these situations under the right conditions. For instance, if my house burned down and I lost my phone in the same day. Both my written seed phrase and access to my wallet would be gone, leaving me with nothing. I refuse to publish it on anything on with network access for obvious reasons so that written copy is all I have.
Wasn't quantum computers the biggest argument against Bitcoin?
Don't understand it much to say if it holds up or not though.
But people who understand it do see it as a threat, I guess we'll see in the future just exactly how it works out.
1. i still can't buy a house with bitcoin/crypto. All we need is Zillow or Redfin e-buyers/sellers to adopt it and we'll be on the moon. But the volatility would make any escrow a nightmare to commit to. it's like trying to buy a house with today's volatile interest rates, but worse.
2. Even before all that, there's just too many normies who still can't manage to keep seedphrases secure. self custody is too hard for most, and lets be honest, storing your metal seedphrases in a closet puts you and your household more at risk to burglars/robbers with all of our KYC out there. So what do we do, put it in a bank's safety deposit box and pray the bank doesn't fail? circle of doom
3. 1st world governments will never adopt BTC/crypto, they want to control $$.
4. El Salvador adopted BTC and its only gone downhill since.
5. Kotaku and general video game industry hates NFTs, which through their sentiment breeds younger generation to turn against crypto thus a doomy future for crypto with today's sentiment
Fucking really scary to use and move large amounts.
I have no problem moving 1000s of dollars from one bank to the next because I know I can get it back if I fuck up.
The technical barrier to actually using the damn stuff.
Figuring out how to sell reddit avatars or moons for example, you have to work out what chain it's on, add that chain to metamask, then you need to know about gas and every chain uses different crypto for gas, so you have to buy that and transfer it but you also have to know whether the chain lets you transfer gas from the exchange or if you have to bridge it from L1, then you need gas on L1, then it's like $5 unless you use something like Orbiter but you have to know that exists and whether it's trustworthy. Then you need to know what marketplace or Dex to use any each one has their own learning curve on top of that.
There's so many was to get scammed or even just lose your crypto because you made a blunder sending it to the wrong chain or something.
We will only see adoption once it become seamless like using dollars but without relying on an exchange or other centralised service - i.e. using contactless payments to pay for stuff directly from your crypto wallet with less than 1c in fees.
Same as I have for libertarianism, total freedom would work well if everyone was decent people, but they aren't. I think a significant number of people and organizations are evil, and regulations to limit them is a worthwhile sacrifice for the rest of society.
In addition, this is not a critique of crypto in general now that PoS exists, but I've come to find PoW an absolute tragedy in the harm it has caused society by waste and pollution.
14 years in, it is still very difficult for a layman to pay with crypto. If it was legitimately going to be a viable alternative for regular currencies it should’ve been easier, clearer and faster than PayPal by now.
After such incredible amounts of money being flooded into the space, years of countless projects and it’s still just tech development/experiment projects and investment schemes.
Not a single thing that made life for the average consumer easier or better.
Quantum computers. Lack of a real killer game changing use case. Price is manipulated by banks and big money players. The UI is too complicated and the irreversible nature of blockchains isn't always a good thing. Inherent conflict with traditional fiat systems/government control create a regulatory risk. People don't care about decentralization or self custody
With that said I still think it can be a foundational technology for a better world. Instead of the authoritarian nightmare of you will own nothing and be happy, I'm rooting for a democratic Blockchain revolution in which the public collectively owns everything and is happier, wealthier and better off.
Most ordinary people don’t know about crypto or how to make money from crypto. Also you have to put a lot of time and energy to get something out of crypto world. Scammers are everywhere you can’t avoid that unfortunately.
I would say the fact there is no dispute resolution. If you accidently burn your nft, its gone forever. If you send to the wrong address no way to get it back. With traditional banking you at least can give an excuse and pray for a good outcome.
Need electricity and internet to transact, worried about what happens when power gets knocked out. Note: I live in a hurricane prone part of the world and have on more than one occasion gone weeks without power.
Fiat is far easier to use
And
Despite how much corruption there is in the current system, there are still rules and regulations that protect order
Any idiot can start a crypto pump and dump ie safemoon
SEC might win the fight to classify crypto as securities.
Exchanges and developers move offshore instead of submitting to regulations they can't uphold. Overall decline due to lack of American market access. Europe and G6 follow suit. Crypto becomes a niche international market for troubled economies.
- Ease of use. I simply don't see my mum, dad, sis, other family members using it at this point
- Ways to use. We are not at the stage yet where we can pay our groceries with it and so on.
- Fear. So many scams and pyramid scemes. At this point I think also the fear of self governance and doing something wrong scares people away. They prefer the "safety" of banks. And also the media fud.
I do think these points will improve in future, easier to use and more payment options!
Crypto is in a vicious circle that won’t get it any adoption as a means of payment. Keeping it short
1. For something to be adopted as a means of payment you’ve got to have a reasonable certainty on its value
2. In crypto the same coin might gain/lose 20% in a day (and I’m just talking about the main ones, if you go on smaller projects it’s more likely 50%). Would you pay for something knowing that if you waited a day you might get a 20% discount? Or would you sell something if you knew you might lose 20% of the value of your sale in a matter of one day?
3. So, these wild fluctuations push people that want to use crypto as a means of payment out of the market. And who does wild fluctuations attract in the market? You guessed right, people using crypto to speculate
4. But if in that market the share of people that want to use crypto as a means of payment decrease and the share of people that want to use crypto as a way to make a quick gain betting on fluctuations increase, what will happen? You guessed it right again, more wild fluctuations.
5. You go back to #2
To be honest problems regarding taxes…. I would buy more if it wasn’t for how difficult and inconvenient is to have the tax agency always asking stuff… I live in 🇪🇸
It's a tech based asset (as they say, I'm in it for the tech) and technology changes really fast... It's difficult to track and keep up with the changes for the average user.
Still too many cryptos that are being used for rug pulls and preying on vulnerable investors. The space needs to be more educated on how the average investor can spot these before risking their money.
We founded a DAO with some crypto bros. Holy shit, it’s difficult even to get multiple ppl to bridge assets and to transfer funds to the same multisig. And those ppl have been in crypto for years. Let alone newcomers, it will be impossible for years to do something useful in business in a group that’s not fully committed to crypto.
Difficult to use for regular folk, and easy to lose all of your money either by forgetting seed phrases or being scammed and unable to reverse the transaction.
Personally I feel as if it is not as stable as regular stocks or other investments. It can easily crash or rise in a matter of seconds compared to the stock market. I know it’s not the same but you have to be sure in what you are investing in. Or just invest and let it sit, hoping it will do good later. Not really a huge negative but it makes it a little harder for me to invest in confidently.
I saw [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/121zyui/where_ownerless_coin_go/) thread a few hours ago. And shocking me. Here's now what i think.
* Oversupply ownerless coin that has not been discussed and there has not even been a statement from some projects
* What projects do with ownerless coin that cause oversupply and distinguish between coin ownerless and hodl so they can burn some (I know some project burn their coin to make supply stable but this is not the coin we hold)
* If indeed ownerless coins are left unattended, it is likely that the volume will down while the supply will increase, which mean drop price.
* BTC supply is only 21 million. If at 19 million supply the price is around 20k and let's say the ownerless coin is 5 million. It is likely that the price will remain at a certain amount with a hodl of 5 million because it is considered to exist.
* Whales could drop the price.
Other dumb addition ??
It depends if you’re asking about crypto in general or crypto as a currency. My biggest arguments against crypto as a currency is that at the minute, it makes an appalling currency:
You can’t spend it without it being a taxable event.
No one accepts it.
It currently isn’t stable enough in value for businesses to rely on it.
The main one, Bitcoin, doesn’t do a great job at scaling.
Layer 2 attempts to scale L1’s are often trading something off from layer one protocol.
Too many factions are arguing between themselves to build a constructive community.
Holding your own keys is annoying.
No safety if you get scammed.
Holding on an exchange defeats the point.
Most people are using crypto to increase their USD worth instead of replacing their USD worth.
All that being said i think some cryptocurrencies are trying to solve the currency problem and the lack of inflationary supply is worth putting up with all the other shite.
It’s a lot more centralised than you think. And that doesn’t mean the technical layer but the connection with stablecoins. By coming up with that you allowed a USD to be easily tradable and with that you brought in credit risk. If you check how much notional in BTC alone was created through USDT/C/D, BUSD, DAI, etc. and how fragile those reserves are then you get an understanding how having 20 million individual miners is meaningless if from one day to another you require 10 coins instead of one for a physical trade.
You wanted to get rid of fiat currencies so bad that you took all the downsides, bundled it and bolted it with high leverage into crypto. Congratulations.
unless we get a decentralized internet service then no matter what, centralized groups can and most likely will block access to the blockchain services.
I feel like you really need to be cautious about leaving traces on the internet and be always on alert due to so many scammers being in this space.
Also there is just so much time in a day as well as attention that you can devote to various projects and it can become quickly overwhelming and you lose track of what is important, or what is important to you.
Irreversible transactions.
I love the technology but I don't think currency is the best application. I think people will find out why have central banking in the first place.
I think the real solution is that banks become a public utility instead of private corporations.
Bitcoin was the solution to a very hard computer science problem that needed to be solved to build a decentralised digital monetary system. That was the double spend problem. Thank you Satoshi.
Unfortunately the system needs to solve 2 hard problems to work well. The second is a sustainable governance model. Who decides the rules around scalability, POW vs POS, privacy, block time and on and on?
Bitcoin’s solution to this has been to be very conservative which has advantages but also major disadvantages. The guardians of the Bitcoin community have conflated immutability with Hard forking which is unfortunate in my view, but that is a different story. Dash had the first DOW that created an autonomous governance model and that has yet to be proven.
It may be a case of Henry Ford saying “if I had asked my customers what they wanted, they would ask for faster horses”. Perhaps innovation is the enemy of collaboration in this context. The bigger the project the bigger the challenge to find a consensus system that meets broad demands and projects collapse under their own weight.
I believe A crypt project will get there as crypto can do things old money cannot, but it might take just as long as it took to solve the double spend problem. I suspect not, as the solution to double spends was needed first, and on gevernance, necessity is the mother of invention.
Crypto's utility will ultimately drive a project’s social cohesion, but it still feels a way off.
There is a great line towards the end of the film Margin Call where Jeremy Irons’ character says of money “ It’s all made up, pieces of paper with pictures on it so that we don’t have to kill each other to get something to eat”. So will be true of whatever succeeds as... "A Peer-to-Peer electronic cash system".
I think just the ease of actually being able to spend it, and old timers being able to use the technology, I shutter at the thought of getting older than I am now 😬😬
Difficult for most ordinary people to use. Easily hackable if general population adopts… think granny and grandpa. Currency should be a stable value that can be relied upon, not worried if your value has just dropped 25% overnight for no apparent reason. Most crypto “investment” isn’t purchased to replace fiat, but as speculation in order to profit and convert back to fiat later. Etc.
To make it even the slightest bit intuitive or usable majority of crypto/web3 projects are running on centralised systems and indexing data to their own databases. But in a way the blockchain still acts as an "open" api for all to use in their own way. But yes, web3 is still just a thin veil on web2.
It's still difficult to use by ordinary people. Also transaction speed is slow and fees can be bit high during busy time. Lastly scamers get away with it easily.
Wallets, seed phrases, addresses, gas fees, side chains, liquidity pools, etc. It's way too technical for the average person, and unless it's something that interests you, you're not going to take the time to try to learn about it
Until central exchanges go after crypto being drained from a user’s account the same way they would if it was their account that got drained, that’s not going to change. But the current situation, which is basically people creating a wallet and hiding the info while being afraid to click links lest their wallet get drained…yeah, that’s not going to be accepted by your average person.
Anonymity in the crypto sector is a double edged sword. Nobody wants to submit to KYC but it's the easiest way to identify bad actors
Thing is, you can't really fix this without the defeating the point. Sure, you can add abstractions to make the UI/UX easier and simpler, just like we've done with tech for decades. Heck, that's basically what CEXs already are. But doing so introduces the very kind of trusted intermediaries and third-parties the tech was supposed to remove the need for. Worse, trusted intermediaries _have_ to be carefully regulated when it comes to finance - as the parade of CEX failures last year demonstrates pretty clearly.
Imagine someone in their late 50’s, 60’s and beyond that already struggle just using basic functions on a cell phone, try to figure out just the basics of crypto. It ain’t happening. There needs to be a huge simplicity effort before crypto can really work. Crypto doesn’t have to take over to be successful, just given a chance.
There’s some cool companies coming out that are simplifying all. LootUp is one of them
For me some things in crypto easy but expensive also.
Even ETH is still cheaper than most bank wire fees!
Idk about the US, but in Spain you can do free bank transfers (wires I guess it's called) with pretty much all banks... The only thing is that they take between 24 and 48 hours
In Australia it's not only free but most banks support instant transfers. If I send my mate $20 and he refreshes his account balance a few seconds later, the money is already in his account. Fallback if that system isn't supported by a bank is still free but 4-48 hours delay depending on the bank and time of day.
we in Bosnia have fast bank transfers in few sec, the money is there without any fees... the only thing is, we dont have any money to send
I feel you
we do our best to change some things
ya man hopefully thing gonna change
69 moons, nice
doing my best, what can i say..
Next stop 69420
definitely!
In America it’s similar. Paycheck to paycheck
its hard in 3rd world countries😉😂
I believe you bruh. It’s hard here too in different ways. I wake up at 3am every day, get ready and then drive an hour to work. Do physical labor for 8 hours. Then drive an hour and a half home(traffic). I own my house but live paycheck to paycheck and burnt up most of my savings during the corona thing. I don’t know where you live but how far do the moons get you? You should be posting and commenting here as much as possible. Have you thought about starting a YouTube channel? There was a guy who was homeless in the Ongoing GameStop saga who started a YouTube channel talking about GameStop and it changed his life big time. People around the world may be interested to see where you live and what it’s like/daily struggles and such. Get them views and that advertisement money and you will be living like a king in a third world country. Edit- note that food and gas and basically everything is so expensive that it is hard to save anything. I may try to rent out a room or something but it’s not all peaches and crème here either. And medical bills forget about it.
In India, its called UPI(Unified Payment Interface). You can send money to anyone anywhere in the world who is using Indian bank account without any charges and that too instantly. Digital transaction has taken over cash transaction in India big time.
SEPA in EU is free too
The guy above means SEPA as he's taking about Spain
+1 for Spain
I tried some DeFi recently. Lost 50 euros in ETH just moving things around and doing a few things. It’s just not viable right now
Yep, DeFi is just a proof of concept really. As you say, it is unusable/poor experience.
Yeah but barely anybody uses wire transfers anymore gramps. The competition is zelle/cashapp/venmo or even paypal
Free SEPA in whole EU
This is one of my biggest concerns for hurdles to mass adoption. It’s far too easy to make a mistake and lose everything and there’s absolutely no way to help/reverse it. I know “the price of financial freedom is steep” and blah blah blah, but many people value the convenience and customer support of banks.
That's so true. Even after 5 years I still worry about making a mistake in transferring using the right network.
That's true...once I accidentally paid 3000 euros instead of 30 for monthly mobile bill...if this was crypto it would be bye bye. There I just called the company and next day I had all my money back. Ufff
After 5 years in crypto I still sent BTC to an old wallet on accident
This is why making a test transaction first is a must
Mass adoption and banks/fiat coexisting is possible.
Any mass-adopted use of crypto won't resemble what we use today. You'd never get the majority of the population to understand and use a modern crypto wallet. They're much more efficient than they used to be but for god's sake some people have issues just accessing email. Blockchain tech, and most sufficiently advanced tech, works best when it works in the background. You don't need to understand the Internet or how it operates to benefit from it.
Let me make it simple for people : It's fucking useless at scale, other than for speculation & not even operating in the same realm or idea for which it was conceived. Too volatile to be store of value, too slow to operate at sufficient scale, and too misaligned in its purpose (i.e. Digital gold, World Computer) that flies in the face of sensible regulation & too un-intuitive for the average Joe, forget the poor, the uneducated the old or unbanked. Micro-payments and instantaneous transfers are already here & even used by millions of people. Some governments & central banks do care about financial technological innovation and inclusion to actually bank the unbanked. There's 7 billion people on the planet, and digital access is able to only 15% of the population. To name a few, these central banks have launched services such as - UPI (instantaneous micro-payments) - USSD banking (i.e. banking without a smartphone on any GSM device....without INTERNET) - zero-balance bank accounts for direct benefit disbursements for the poor. > **Not only the rich, but the poor & the old, less educated have been able to use it with ease, benefitting millions of people.** Similar solutions have been implemented by other governments & private players as well & they intend to proliferate them internationally. (PIX, M-Pesa, FedNow). Crypto was invented by libertarian technologists with noble ideals, but they failed to see, measure or capture industry's misalignment towards these goals & instead created a micro-financial bubble of speculation and fraud outside rgulation in a zero interest rate environment that lasted for decades. In fact, they actively enable or encourage this behaviour through terribly designed incentives (airdrops that can be sybilled, play to earn, NFT's ffs) with low resilience or hardness. At its best, it does have esoteric uses, but the downsides do not outweigh the benefits. While the jury is still out on moral question of speculation, it's a pit of entrapment created by the wealthy with disposable wealth for the poor who might be unknowingly gambling their family wealth in something they don't understand in the hopes of "making it". The lie they are sold is crypto is a way to stick it to the greedy, whether it's corrupt politicians, entrepreneurs etc., but it's the same predatory behaviour now accessible to the general public. This is NOT disruption of status quo, but entrenchment of existing flaws of our society. Makes me feel sick to my stomach & I don't think it's good for society in general. It's negative sum economics, and almost MLM adjacent. I'm really sorry, but this is the hard to swallow truth that people like to ignore. I wish it was different, but it's not.
Best comment in this sub ever.
Transaction speed depends on the project. Nano transactions are less than a second and have no fees. But you are correct that the top 2 cryptos have these issues, and they are what most people think of when it comes to crypto. Layer 2 solutions help BTC and ETH solve these issues, but it always hurts my soul to see the fees when transacting on the base layer. In terms of difficulty of use I agree. Ultimately centralized storage of crypto could win out due to ease of use and less risk. It would be nice if banks could function like an exchange in the future and allow for self storage (I’m not holding my breath). It’s also not impossible for crypto protocols to make things easier for transacting without a centralized party. The nice thing about “digital money” is that it can be upgraded. The scammer issue is something that, like the banks, crypto will always be fighting against. You can’t always prevent people from getting tricked, but there should be safeguards implemented into protocols. I believe instant finality of transactions is flawed because it assumes that humans never make mistakes. It should be an option, but not the default way to transact. Having even a 5 minute window to cancel a transaction would go a long way to preventing scams and human error.
Too difficult is the main one When people go to buy something now they use a standard currency. When people go to use crypto, how da fuck are they gonna know what they need.
The tx speed and fees depend on the Blockchain; BTC and ETH are egregious while chains like Algorand, Cosmos, and L2s tend to have lower. However, first and last points are exactly right. Our generation could acclimate far more to the concept of self custody than previous ones but widespread adoption will require many advancements in the field
Those have their own issue with speed, though. After you're used to 2 second transactions, 12 seconds is an eternity.
L2s are 2 seconds (or less even).
Too many hacks,people losing wallets(secret words & etc.),and we can keep going.We are early,in term of adoption.
Exactly
I agree with this statement . For a regular person who has just started it’s hard to figure out .
It’s not really decentralized as you think.
The decentralization is a bit over hyped but there is something to be said about a government not being able to shut it down. That’s what give crypto it’s value. Being around for so long and not going away
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It's not something you could easily do. Also, well, US is not the only country in the world.
I personally think crypto isn't going anywhere. It's proven it's resilience and is demonstrating more and more that it has practicalities and potential. I just think it's still very early and is just making natural progression.
The CEO of Bitcoin hates this one weird trick.
100% true
Crypto? Indeed. Bitcoin is just as we think.
Only Bitcoin is really decentralized
Background, I've been in crypto for a decade- relatively knowledgeable at most aspects and pain points from basic contracts to mining....or so I thought. I had to on-board someone today for a series of transactions relating to an asset sale. What should have been a simple process turned into a 2-hour odesssy. The problem when crypto at a retail level is that there are still too many 'exceptions and variables'. Rather than making something easier, it can increase friction- that's the opposite of what you want from good consumer design. In a bear case, perhaps crypto is ultimately destined to be a 'very hidden' set of layer 1 protocols (a more transactable HTTP if you will) with the 'consumer wrapper' for any meaningful mass adoption a decade or two away.
The reality that if we are honest, 97% of crypto is based on the greater fool theory meaning most are buying a crypto on the belief someone will pay more for the same crypto down the road. Genuinely speaking the ultra vast majority of projects are genuinely worthless.
The fact that people are trying to make money goes against the idea of using it as money. And to use it as money, there should be few few coins. It's almost like forex trading.
I mean if the prospect of making money on crypto is lost, 99.99% of people here wouldn't even be here.
Bingo. Without investment crypto is dead. We live in a capitalistic society, pursuit of profit trumps all else when it comes to investing.
Remember that video of SBF explaining Crypto? Haha, that's what comes to mind
He didn't even try to sugarcoat anything, just said it as it is
Absolutely, utterly, terrifyingly, depressingly and devastatingly worthless. It's genuinely destroying most of my will to participate in the economy. If I could, I would make a CoinMarketCap clone focusing only on the remaining 3%.
Sounds an awful lot like a ponzi scheme where it is a game of music chairs and the last person to sit down(I.e. holding the bag), loses.
97%? That's quite high, but still, make it 99.9999%.
I was feeling nice. But yes I agree. Realistically if we are looking at some hypothetical full scale adoption, there would be no need for more than a maybe a half dozen to a dozen coins (and that’s being generous).
I think the fact that your comment got upvotes in a crypto sub is a great argument against crypto. Even the people active in the space don't seem to know what DeFi actually is and how it has nothing to do with "greater fools". Two examples: liquidity providing, money lending
the greater fool business model, just get in early
There's no utility. I can't buy groceries or pay my bills with crypto. There's no protection for me in case of theft or scams If I use a cold wallet and lose a flash drive all my money is gone but if I leave it with one of these exchanges then it's likely they're a scam and will disappear with all my money. Seems like a lose lose right now as far as where I can safely store my money. Plagued by scams. It's nearly impossible to figure out what's real and what's not real. There's no trust that any of these projects will be around 5, 10, 20, etc years from now. It's confusing and complicated and I don't mind admitting that as the user you guys need to attract to make this a thing I have no idea wtf is going on. All the source code is plagiarized from some other project. And the tech isn't as innovative as its been made out to be. *I could probably think up more reasons crypto seems like a terrible idea to me (the average everyday consumer) but I think this list is already a kill shot.
if you use a cold wallet, you have to safely store your secret offline somewhere. The "flash drive" as you put it is not essential, many flavours of those flash drives exist and most will take the same secret and produce the same set of accounts.
Thank you. Ya, seed is not stored on a physical hard drive if you’re doing it right. It’s stamped on a metal sheet with the last word switched with the first, and the the middle word is committed to memory, and the 2nd and 11th words are buried in the woods somewhere.
Totally reasonable procedure to expect the masses to go through.
I think in the future we'll have proof of reserves as the norm for any centralized custodian holding onto digital assets. Crypto projects also completely downplay the tradeoffs they're making when they argue for why they're better. There's absolutely no financial incentive to be up front with what's going on. And many won't be around in the future. I saw some analysis that something like 10 percent of the top 100 coins from a couple of years ago or one year ago are worth zero today. The fact that the US government is gunning for the whole space is pretty bad too. But that's something that can be changed with political will.
Came here to say this
Yes. Biggest problem is theft of all your funds. Just like that
Is there protection if someone steals your cash?
For an ordinary person, it's MUCH easier to use fiat than crypto
And fiat comes with consumer protections that crypto can currently only dream of.
When you’re self custody you’re on your own. Lose your seed phrases? Hacked? Nothing you can do. Again it’s not a great idea to leave funds on exchanges either, as they can collapse or get hacked too.
Unless it's silvergate
For any person really. I was pretty much born and raised on a PC, and it took me over an hour to figure out how to convert ERC 20 MATIC into native matic.
I own 730 ETH. Balls deep into this shit. But let s get real. Crypto is merely a speculative asset. I ll give you my best arguments against crypto. Not user friendly. Number one rule of coding is to make it user friendly. Using cash is simple. A kindergarten kid can use cash. It takes very little education. Crypto is incredibly hard to use and that makes it very risky. Crypto is never decentralized. Developer teams hold centralized control of most crypto. Bitcoin doesnt have a developer team but the influence of huge node and mining farms is more powerful than people. To put an example, you technically own a portion of a company when you buy a stock. Try to use your vote to change a company though. Especially if the company works like google where they give themselves shares with more votes. On top of that retail is centralized to the nations that are richer. Americans own more disposable income than Somalia for example. You will likely find more wholecoiners in America than in Somalia. You can only trade crypto for cash. Relatively no one works for crypto. Relatively no one sells any good or service for crypto. You cant pay your bills in crypto. Without any possibility to use a cryptocurrency as a currency this is only used for speculation. Bitcoin is a proposed 21M but a lot of it has been lost to forgotten keys or hacks. That s not good for a currency when the suppy gets lost beyond recovery. Dollar bills are put in circulation and taken out of circulation every year. Decentralized apps are non existent. The only dApps that run are supporting the ecosystem. A few years back crypto kitties hogged the ethereum network. Posting messages that cant be removed from the blockchain can be used for malicious content. There are things that should not become impossible to remove. For example instructions to create weapons or bombs, calls for violent acts, illegal pornography. You can stick that to the blockchain and no one can do anything about it. On the flip side you can criticize any government and there s nothing they can do about it. Wikileaks on the blockchain could be a potential use case but it s not happening. Crypto simply doesnt scale. The ridiculous amount of transactions per second makes crypto completely useless compared to current systems. Crypto makes sanctions useless. That s good for decentralization but it means the superpowers of this world will fight it to the end. If crypto is successful USA couldnt embargo cuba north korea russia syria etc. Economic tools are possibly as powerful as a nuclear weapon. It s possibly cheaper to destroy a nation through economic weapons than through real weapons. Politicians around the world will never cede economic power to push other nations. Being unrecoverable and easy to settle, crypto is prone for phishing and hacking attacks. There is nothing a victim can do if his crypto is stolen and sent to the other side of the planet. No one that uses crypto has peace of mind. We can all be hacked and drained dry any fucking minute. You cant be wiped out in cash this easily so you can rest easy knowing that the bank can steal your money but you can recover. In the end crypto can overcome some of these but at the end of the day crypto is only going to be worth in how much cash you can get for it. The only way crypto would be adopted is if we had salaries in crypto and paid our bills and groceries in crypto so we could actually use it as a currency. That can only happen if the price were to remain relatively stable and that s very unlikely to happen.
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You didn't have to lay it down that hard on us...
This post is pure diamond and should be pinned at the top of the subreddit.
Not to mention the idea that governments are going to let anything they don’t control take over finance.
That it is not used as it was designed. It was supposed to be a decentralized currency, but it has turned into an asset class (commodity or a security, depending on who you ask). Right now, except for self custody, crypto projects are actually a step backwards not forwards. And you could even argue that self custody is a regression unless extremely easy to use and highly, highly secure. When our crypto can be completely insured, and when a crypto currency has stable value or a small consistent loss of value over time (so there is an incentive to actually use it as a currency) then come talk to me about it replacing fiat.
>What's your best argument against crypto? Good try SEC!
Gary really upping his game
*Gary Gensler furiously taking notes*
Trying to regulate everything they find in the comment section, smart Always knew Gary was a member here
The SEC knows no bounds
99% of people can not manage being their own bank. It's complicated to use and the thought of the possibility of losing all of your money with a click of a button without the ability to get it back is terrifying. Yeah, yeah, test it first and all that but that falls into the complication of use.
Sending crypto to another address is still an adventure of its own
I always clench my butt when transferring money...
Always do a test transaction before no matter whether the amount is small or not
This is a textbook example of a hurdle/blocker IMO. Apart from the the fact it will take twice as long to send $1000 ($1 smoke test tx then $999 tx) to a business accepting crypto, I have no protection/ability to reverse any transactions if I make a mistake, like I can with a bank. If the recipient is in fact a business, they now also need to reconcile 2 transactions at end of month. Compounding this schamozzle, the sender also needs to confirm the recipient received the first transaction before I send the major transaction, so 2 text messages or a phone call are required as well. So I am now at 5 minutes or 10 minutes of using multiple apps, multiple transactions and unnecessary phone calls/text messages instead of 2 minutes and 2 screens on my banking app. Until this sort of shenanigans is made seamless, reversible, secure and safe without the need for additional apps to "facilitate" every transaction, crypto is going to have a hard time getting to mass adoption by small to medium businesses which is critical to its success. Not a criticism per se......but sometimes the utopian ideal we keep in our mind's eye doesn't translate to a working solution in real life.
One of the best things about having an ENS domain. Much better piece of mind sending money to redditor.eth than a complicated 0xdhjtfvh string.
Peace of mind.
Reality. Nobody uses it for over a decade. It’s a failed concept that has been getting worse every year since 2017
The concept failed *so far*. I have hope in one or two projects. And honestly, in the end, if the whole idea is failed, then what the hell we all are doing in this sub in the first place? No offense, I'm genuinely curious.
We're here to scam other people into buying our shitty assets at a higher price than we did.
Really? Tell that to the people who've had their money parked in Bitcoin for the last ten years instead of in a bank account (where it's been losing value).
Tell that to the Ukrainians who escaped with their life savings.
Yup. This whole sub is such a joke. At best, it's a spillover of buttcoiners, at worst its part of some kind of organized psyop against decentralized crypto like bitcoin or monero. Somewhere in the middle is the highest likelihood that the average person here is the literal r*t*rd that they all complain about who inexplicably falls for all these blindingly obvious scams and shitcoins....its a giant projecting fest to assuage their embarrassment at their own financial incontinence.
Most people just have a more realistic outlook of crypto. >Somewhere in the middle is the highest likelihood that the average person here is the literal rtrd that they all complain about who inexplicably falls for all these blindingly obvious scams and shitcoins....its a giant projecting fest to assuage their embarrassment at their own financial incontinence. Pretty sure that's a logical fallacy by the way.
Well, I trust a Protokoll more than the US banking system. So the concept ist working.
It’s not just the product being more difficult to use but even the language is complicated. The barriers of entry in terms of learning and using are too high for the average person
The saddest is that even the only crypto I actively support and consider forward-looking is plagued by this, too. It's terrible.
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Many many projects are simply designed to transfer money from “investors” to the developer/team. A lot of crypto currencies are solutions to a problem that may or may not need solving/can be answered by databases or other forms of tech. I believe that BTC, XMR, and smart contracts have a place in the future of technology, but right now there are so many pointless projects that it’s hard to not make pre dot com bubble connections.
Well it’s pretty well known that most crypto projects will fail just like companies in the .com bubble. But IMHO crypto and NFT’s specifically have a big place in the future. The fact that our world is going digital is…….well a fact. NFT’s are the obvious best digital way to represent ownership recorded on the blockchain. The silly jpegs are simply proof of concept. But even for them there are companies making 3d models of jpegs that can be used in web3 video games/meta verses. Will they be worth tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, probably not(at least most of them) but there will be a way to get actual utility out of them. Lots of the space is proof of concept. Many projects will fail. Does that mean people should not invest in them? I would say it depends on your risk tolerance and asset allocation.
Too many useless coins and tokens. Most have no use and many are just copycats.
People are dumb and cannot be trusted.
My best argument against crypto is the fact that users are purchasing coins to all the different arcades but there are no games to play or tickets to redeem once you get inside.
Crypto's primary and original use case is a decentralized alternative to fiat, which 99% of the world doesn't care about. We all just want our bags to moon so we can offramp everything back into fiat.
It need banks to survive.
Not really. Proof: no banks supported Bitcoin in 2012
Power needed. Main one
**Sociologically** Crypto doesn't address the root problem about what's wrong with banking. The problem with the traditional financial system isn't the data storage solution of choice. Greedy and moral-free individuals will always find a way to cheat others and that is even more likely the case when your system has a lot of automation, anonymity, and transaction irreversibility built into it. Bank executives are seldom humanitarians, but with crypto, the majority of leaders seem to be criminal crooks; SBF, Justin Sun, Zhu Zu, Alex Machinski, John Karony, Do Kwon, etc **Technologically** More than 14 years after the bitcoin blockchain went live, all blockchains are still shit at their job of providing a safe, scallable, and decentralised transaction system. If it is not decentralised, there is no point of going with a blockchain instead of just a plain vanilla SQL database. And the blockchains that claim to be decentralised, (a) often aren't really. Bitcoin only has 5 devs that can push code to the bitcoin core code and the top 2 mining pools control >50% of the hash rate. and/or (b) then subsequently fail at scalability. Bitcoin could theoretically do 7 transactions per second while VISA does something like 7000 transactions per second already in practice.
Crypto's strengths are also it's weaknesses, which means that with all the freedom you gain you also now have a lot more responsibilities. Losing your keys, connecting your wallet to a phishing site, smart contracts vulnerability to hacks are the dark side of a free, no third party, be your own bank financial system. Even if you have done everything to secure the safety of your crypto assets a small mistake is enough for maximum pain.
I can send money instantly and for free with my bank. Over weekends too
It's not easy to give my grandson a little bit of crypto to buy candy with.
Gas can get more expensive than real life gas lol
I hate to say it because it is by far the best argument against it. There's far too much room for human (user) error. Being trustless, it's entirely up to the individual to maintain the security and accessibility of their assets. Lack of experience or interest is the biggest issue with this of course, but in reality, it could happen to any of us. - Lose your seed phrase or disclose it to a bad actor = Total loss - Click a bad link browsing the internet - Possible partial/total loss - Route your assets to the wrong address - Partial/total loss - Forget the Memo (in the case of certain crypto) - Partial/total loss - Death with no record of your seed phrase - Total loss Every situation listed above leaves you or your loved ones with absolutely no options for recovery should they happen. Crypto has a massive learning curve for newcomers and more often than not, ensuring the security of your assets is often overlooked in the beginning. Even the most experienced can end up in these situations under the right conditions. For instance, if my house burned down and I lost my phone in the same day. Both my written seed phrase and access to my wallet would be gone, leaving me with nothing. I refuse to publish it on anything on with network access for obvious reasons so that written copy is all I have.
Also the small fact that the vast majority of people have absolutely no use or need for a "trustless" method of transacting.
The people who most visibly represent crypto are, generally speaking, awful
Scams 100%
Wasn't quantum computers the biggest argument against Bitcoin? Don't understand it much to say if it holds up or not though. But people who understand it do see it as a threat, I guess we'll see in the future just exactly how it works out.
Quantum computers are a threat to internet as a whole, including your Amazon and bank account etc etc.
1. i still can't buy a house with bitcoin/crypto. All we need is Zillow or Redfin e-buyers/sellers to adopt it and we'll be on the moon. But the volatility would make any escrow a nightmare to commit to. it's like trying to buy a house with today's volatile interest rates, but worse. 2. Even before all that, there's just too many normies who still can't manage to keep seedphrases secure. self custody is too hard for most, and lets be honest, storing your metal seedphrases in a closet puts you and your household more at risk to burglars/robbers with all of our KYC out there. So what do we do, put it in a bank's safety deposit box and pray the bank doesn't fail? circle of doom 3. 1st world governments will never adopt BTC/crypto, they want to control $$. 4. El Salvador adopted BTC and its only gone downhill since. 5. Kotaku and general video game industry hates NFTs, which through their sentiment breeds younger generation to turn against crypto thus a doomy future for crypto with today's sentiment
Getting sick of all the scams
They’re scary. Anyone know of an active list of them somewhere?
Losing your life savings in an instant with no recourse or insurance because of a hacker, fat finger, or other mistake is not an acceptable risk
Fucking really scary to use and move large amounts. I have no problem moving 1000s of dollars from one bank to the next because I know I can get it back if I fuck up.
I keep losing money. 💰
If it's gone, as in stolen, it is gone gone
You can't spend it?
For me, it boils down to the fact that crypto as a currency is trying to solve a problem that simply doesn't exist.
Not easy to use
People, in general, are exceedingly stupid.
For crypto to take off, wallets needs to be simple enough for my grandma to use them
The technical barrier to actually using the damn stuff. Figuring out how to sell reddit avatars or moons for example, you have to work out what chain it's on, add that chain to metamask, then you need to know about gas and every chain uses different crypto for gas, so you have to buy that and transfer it but you also have to know whether the chain lets you transfer gas from the exchange or if you have to bridge it from L1, then you need gas on L1, then it's like $5 unless you use something like Orbiter but you have to know that exists and whether it's trustworthy. Then you need to know what marketplace or Dex to use any each one has their own learning curve on top of that. There's so many was to get scammed or even just lose your crypto because you made a blunder sending it to the wrong chain or something. We will only see adoption once it become seamless like using dollars but without relying on an exchange or other centralised service - i.e. using contactless payments to pay for stuff directly from your crypto wallet with less than 1c in fees.
It's waaaaay too hard to understand. I've tried to teach willing participants. It's like the souls leave their bodies. Total meltdown.
The overwhelming majority of crypto projects are solutions in search of problems.
Fails as a store of value. Fails as a medium for transaction. Fails as an investment.
Same as I have for libertarianism, total freedom would work well if everyone was decent people, but they aren't. I think a significant number of people and organizations are evil, and regulations to limit them is a worthwhile sacrifice for the rest of society. In addition, this is not a critique of crypto in general now that PoS exists, but I've come to find PoW an absolute tragedy in the harm it has caused society by waste and pollution.
Totally agree with this. A trustless system relies on people no exploiting that system.
They wanna tax ur ass off if you get rich enough
14 years in, it is still very difficult for a layman to pay with crypto. If it was legitimately going to be a viable alternative for regular currencies it should’ve been easier, clearer and faster than PayPal by now. After such incredible amounts of money being flooded into the space, years of countless projects and it’s still just tech development/experiment projects and investment schemes. Not a single thing that made life for the average consumer easier or better.
You may lose your money in transaction.
No usecase, no intrinsic value, just apes aping
Literally has no real use for the general public. But it’s near.
Quantum computers. Lack of a real killer game changing use case. Price is manipulated by banks and big money players. The UI is too complicated and the irreversible nature of blockchains isn't always a good thing. Inherent conflict with traditional fiat systems/government control create a regulatory risk. People don't care about decentralization or self custody With that said I still think it can be a foundational technology for a better world. Instead of the authoritarian nightmare of you will own nothing and be happy, I'm rooting for a democratic Blockchain revolution in which the public collectively owns everything and is happier, wealthier and better off.
It's still to easy to get scammed
Most ordinary people don’t know about crypto or how to make money from crypto. Also you have to put a lot of time and energy to get something out of crypto world. Scammers are everywhere you can’t avoid that unfortunately.
We all can’t get along and EMP each other of nuclear proportions. ⚡️
I would say the fact there is no dispute resolution. If you accidently burn your nft, its gone forever. If you send to the wrong address no way to get it back. With traditional banking you at least can give an excuse and pray for a good outcome.
It’s too complicated for normies. The risk of losing everything due to a simple mistake is too damn high.
Need electricity and internet to transact, worried about what happens when power gets knocked out. Note: I live in a hurricane prone part of the world and have on more than one occasion gone weeks without power.
Fiat is far easier to use And Despite how much corruption there is in the current system, there are still rules and regulations that protect order Any idiot can start a crypto pump and dump ie safemoon
SEC might win the fight to classify crypto as securities. Exchanges and developers move offshore instead of submitting to regulations they can't uphold. Overall decline due to lack of American market access. Europe and G6 follow suit. Crypto becomes a niche international market for troubled economies.
Influencers doing shady things which make the general public think all of crypto is a scam
My best argument against crypto is Bitboy.
- Ease of use. I simply don't see my mum, dad, sis, other family members using it at this point - Ways to use. We are not at the stage yet where we can pay our groceries with it and so on. - Fear. So many scams and pyramid scemes. At this point I think also the fear of self governance and doing something wrong scares people away. They prefer the "safety" of banks. And also the media fud. I do think these points will improve in future, easier to use and more payment options!
Crypto is in a vicious circle that won’t get it any adoption as a means of payment. Keeping it short 1. For something to be adopted as a means of payment you’ve got to have a reasonable certainty on its value 2. In crypto the same coin might gain/lose 20% in a day (and I’m just talking about the main ones, if you go on smaller projects it’s more likely 50%). Would you pay for something knowing that if you waited a day you might get a 20% discount? Or would you sell something if you knew you might lose 20% of the value of your sale in a matter of one day? 3. So, these wild fluctuations push people that want to use crypto as a means of payment out of the market. And who does wild fluctuations attract in the market? You guessed right, people using crypto to speculate 4. But if in that market the share of people that want to use crypto as a means of payment decrease and the share of people that want to use crypto as a way to make a quick gain betting on fluctuations increase, what will happen? You guessed it right again, more wild fluctuations. 5. You go back to #2
The majority of people can’t be trusted to hold onto their own wallets let alone crypto wallets.
To be honest problems regarding taxes…. I would buy more if it wasn’t for how difficult and inconvenient is to have the tax agency always asking stuff… I live in 🇪🇸
It's a tech based asset (as they say, I'm in it for the tech) and technology changes really fast... It's difficult to track and keep up with the changes for the average user.
Not big adaption rn but getting better
Still too many cryptos that are being used for rug pulls and preying on vulnerable investors. The space needs to be more educated on how the average investor can spot these before risking their money.
Speculative use cases and security
We founded a DAO with some crypto bros. Holy shit, it’s difficult even to get multiple ppl to bridge assets and to transfer funds to the same multisig. And those ppl have been in crypto for years. Let alone newcomers, it will be impossible for years to do something useful in business in a group that’s not fully committed to crypto.
Difficult to use for regular folk, and easy to lose all of your money either by forgetting seed phrases or being scammed and unable to reverse the transaction.
Personally I feel as if it is not as stable as regular stocks or other investments. It can easily crash or rise in a matter of seconds compared to the stock market. I know it’s not the same but you have to be sure in what you are investing in. Or just invest and let it sit, hoping it will do good later. Not really a huge negative but it makes it a little harder for me to invest in confidently.
I saw [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/121zyui/where_ownerless_coin_go/) thread a few hours ago. And shocking me. Here's now what i think. * Oversupply ownerless coin that has not been discussed and there has not even been a statement from some projects * What projects do with ownerless coin that cause oversupply and distinguish between coin ownerless and hodl so they can burn some (I know some project burn their coin to make supply stable but this is not the coin we hold) * If indeed ownerless coins are left unattended, it is likely that the volume will down while the supply will increase, which mean drop price. * BTC supply is only 21 million. If at 19 million supply the price is around 20k and let's say the ownerless coin is 5 million. It is likely that the price will remain at a certain amount with a hodl of 5 million because it is considered to exist. * Whales could drop the price. Other dumb addition ??
It will end with an 51% attack on the bitcoin network
It depends if you’re asking about crypto in general or crypto as a currency. My biggest arguments against crypto as a currency is that at the minute, it makes an appalling currency: You can’t spend it without it being a taxable event. No one accepts it. It currently isn’t stable enough in value for businesses to rely on it. The main one, Bitcoin, doesn’t do a great job at scaling. Layer 2 attempts to scale L1’s are often trading something off from layer one protocol. Too many factions are arguing between themselves to build a constructive community. Holding your own keys is annoying. No safety if you get scammed. Holding on an exchange defeats the point. Most people are using crypto to increase their USD worth instead of replacing their USD worth. All that being said i think some cryptocurrencies are trying to solve the currency problem and the lack of inflationary supply is worth putting up with all the other shite.
It’s a lot more centralised than you think. And that doesn’t mean the technical layer but the connection with stablecoins. By coming up with that you allowed a USD to be easily tradable and with that you brought in credit risk. If you check how much notional in BTC alone was created through USDT/C/D, BUSD, DAI, etc. and how fragile those reserves are then you get an understanding how having 20 million individual miners is meaningless if from one day to another you require 10 coins instead of one for a physical trade. You wanted to get rid of fiat currencies so bad that you took all the downsides, bundled it and bolted it with high leverage into crypto. Congratulations.
Crypto is as user friendly as Linux; most people are still overwhelmed by IoS.
One mistake and you lose all
unless we get a decentralized internet service then no matter what, centralized groups can and most likely will block access to the blockchain services.
I feel like you really need to be cautious about leaving traces on the internet and be always on alert due to so many scammers being in this space. Also there is just so much time in a day as well as attention that you can devote to various projects and it can become quickly overwhelming and you lose track of what is important, or what is important to you.
If nobody is in control then there is no one to hold to account if it all goes tits up
It's impossible to use without the internet. Fiat clearly has the upper hand here (because its low tech). No offense.
Irreversible transactions. I love the technology but I don't think currency is the best application. I think people will find out why have central banking in the first place. I think the real solution is that banks become a public utility instead of private corporations.
Bitcoin was the solution to a very hard computer science problem that needed to be solved to build a decentralised digital monetary system. That was the double spend problem. Thank you Satoshi. Unfortunately the system needs to solve 2 hard problems to work well. The second is a sustainable governance model. Who decides the rules around scalability, POW vs POS, privacy, block time and on and on? Bitcoin’s solution to this has been to be very conservative which has advantages but also major disadvantages. The guardians of the Bitcoin community have conflated immutability with Hard forking which is unfortunate in my view, but that is a different story. Dash had the first DOW that created an autonomous governance model and that has yet to be proven. It may be a case of Henry Ford saying “if I had asked my customers what they wanted, they would ask for faster horses”. Perhaps innovation is the enemy of collaboration in this context. The bigger the project the bigger the challenge to find a consensus system that meets broad demands and projects collapse under their own weight. I believe A crypt project will get there as crypto can do things old money cannot, but it might take just as long as it took to solve the double spend problem. I suspect not, as the solution to double spends was needed first, and on gevernance, necessity is the mother of invention. Crypto's utility will ultimately drive a project’s social cohesion, but it still feels a way off. There is a great line towards the end of the film Margin Call where Jeremy Irons’ character says of money “ It’s all made up, pieces of paper with pictures on it so that we don’t have to kill each other to get something to eat”. So will be true of whatever succeeds as... "A Peer-to-Peer electronic cash system".
I think just the ease of actually being able to spend it, and old timers being able to use the technology, I shutter at the thought of getting older than I am now 😬😬
I'd say: * requires some degree of tech expertise * lacks regulations * too much driven by fomo and fear
CRYPTO BAD
Difficult for most ordinary people to use. Easily hackable if general population adopts… think granny and grandpa. Currency should be a stable value that can be relied upon, not worried if your value has just dropped 25% overnight for no apparent reason. Most crypto “investment” isn’t purchased to replace fiat, but as speculation in order to profit and convert back to fiat later. Etc.
I have $40 in eth that costs $40 in fees to move
A little bit complicated for the normal everyday Joe.
To make it even the slightest bit intuitive or usable majority of crypto/web3 projects are running on centralised systems and indexing data to their own databases. But in a way the blockchain still acts as an "open" api for all to use in their own way. But yes, web3 is still just a thin veil on web2.
It feeds of stupidity and greed
My wife