ellynu wrote on April 13, 2021 at 2:21 AM

Reply to comment by twovests in cryptocurrencies are good actually by twovests

Apparently it's "collateral backed", so it seems USD.

its backed by other coins, like other stablecoins including tether, which is notorious and involved in pumping up the price of other coins

that's just a problem with capitalism. math and software isn't gonna fix it

this is true

it doesn't impact the value of cryptocurrency

i am still not convinced it has any real value, rather than just a bubble backed by the hopes and dreams of software devs and desires of grifters.

i feel like we've had substantial discussion to agree that cryptocurrency isn't a "grift".

it definitely is built upon grifts

twovests OP wrote on April 13, 2021 at 2:43 AM

i am still not convinced it has any real value

i agree here, in the same sense that existing paper currencies have no real value. they're practically useless. but i can buy things with both of them.

ellynu wrote on April 13, 2021 at 4:19 AM

fiat currencies at least have the value of being a generally accepted item with an exchange value that is easy to use to trade for things, and its backing is usually the existence of the states that made them and the institutions and laws they use to back things. bitcoin/ethereum/etc are mostly useful as a speculative commodity. in the terms of capital, they are much more M-C-M (exchanging money for a commodity, at the hope of selling it later for more money) than C-M-C (producing something to get something else that you need).

if tether, for example, was operating by minting regular currency rather than cryptocurrency, it would be so obviously a giant scam. creating fake dollars to buy other fake dollars to bump up their price to back the fake dollars they made and repeat.