Meta shareholders overwhelmingly rejected a proposal to explore adding Bitcoin to the company's treasury, with less than 1% voting in favor of the measure

I had an acquaintance ask me about my opinion on crypto a few years ago and I explained it only has the perceived value and is highly volatile as a result, and that all but a few coins were basically rug pulls waiting to happen. He was satisfied with that and moved on. About a year later crypto had roughly doubled in value and he gave me shit about bad advice (it was an opinion not investment advice) and proceeded to move $10k into some coin I'd never heard of. About a month later a mutual friend said the other guy had lost like $8k of his $10k investment. Next time I saw the acquaintance there was no mention of crypto.

Yeah, it's like those people who fall for ads where people get rich going to the casino.
- LOL they love to parade around the 1/10,000 winners and make them spokespeople for the casino for a week.
  
  It is the way all lottery works.
  You are more likely to be hit by lightning than to win the lottery. Yet people believe they will win every time.
i notice that is usually conservatives that buys into the scam, and the ones that peddle it too.
(it was an opinion not investment advice)
If you did give them advice, would it be different?
some coin I'd never heard of
The problem is this person was looking at the market as a whole and then investing in some niche coin. At this point any coin that's not well-established is mostly likely pure grift.
- Right, why invest in a rug pull coin when I can invest in an ETF of all the rug pull coins!
  
  Bitcoin is the only crypto that has been approved by the SEC to be included in ETFs. So far.
  
  Slight correction, seen that Ethereum was also approved to be included in ETFs
  
  Oh, I completely forgot about that. Speaking out my ass. Thanks.
  
  So you're saying there's a chance? Heh heh heh... Only a matter of time.
  
  There are definitely elements of this administration that want to see their particular shitcoin approved. We'll see. It was quite the epic legal battle to even get bitcoin through that door. The SEC has rules for financial fundamentals that bitcoin legitimately met, which other coins would have a much harder time proving. But, this is the anything goes administration...
  edit - See other user's comment noting that actually Etherium was also approved for use as a security last year.

Fundamentally, no. That's just what it's become.

I agree and in fact I feel the same with AI.
Fundamental cryptocurrency is fascinating. It is mathematically sound, just like cryptography in general (computational complexity, one way functions, etc) and it had the theoretical potential to change existing political and economical structures. Unfortunately (arguably) the very foundation it is based on, namely mining for greed, brought a different community who inexorably modified not the technology itself but its usages. What was initially a potential infrastructure for exchange of value became a way to speculate, buy and sell goods and services banned, ransomware, scam payments, etc).
AI also is fascinating as a research fields. It asks deep question with complex answers. Research for centuries about it lead to not just interesting philosophical questions, like what it's like to be think, to be human, and mathematics used in all walks of life, like in logistics for your parcel to get delivered this morning. Yet... gradually the field, or at least its commercialization, got captured by venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, regulators, who main interest was greed. This in turn changed what was until then open to something closed, something small to something required gigantic infrastructure capturing resources hitherto used for farming, polluting due to lack of proper permit for temporary electricity sources, etc. The pinnacle right now being regulation to ban regulation on AI in the US.
So... yes, technology itself can be fascinating, useful, even important and yet how we collectively, as a society, decide to use it remains what matters, the actual impact of an idea rather than its idealization.
- Apart from all the other deflationary stuff...
  I can't get past the adjustable difficulty lottery system they use for mining blocks every 10m... :/ there has to be a better way.
  It's like diagonalizing huge matrices repeatedly just as a wait() function.
  
  there's better methods than how Bitcoin works (PoW) like Proof of Stake, but that has its own problems, like bringing more centralization to the network. Like how with bitcoin if a miner controls more than half of the global hash rates, they can mint more money than should be, in a currency with PoS they could just buy half of the coins and do it. They probably wouldn't because its not in their self interest, but its still a problem
- The purpose of a system is what it does. Crypto is used to bypass regulations, generally for illegal or immoral things. Its also been used as a ponzi scheme over and over, I guess we call them rug pulls now but its the same bullshit.
  Crypto is for gamblers or drug addicts, generally. Sometimes they are both. Sort of reminds me of the mortgage crisis in 2008 with people saying it wasnt the system just people abusing it. The system was built and modified to enable abuse.
  
  Crypto is not used to bypass regulations. Failure to regulate is on the state, not the crypto. It is easier to regulate crypto because of the public multiple ledger system that is the Blockchain, allowing you to trace tokens all the way back to their conception.
  The purpose of Crypto is that it removes the need for a bank for transactions and holding of nonphysical currency. Adoption rate proportional to total population is what gives them stability and makes them less susceptible to scams or pump and dumps.
  
  Crypto is not used to bypass regulations.
  From the very beginning it was sold as a way to work outside the existing banking system and all it did was recreate the earlier days of banking with little-to-no regulation.
  It is easier to regulate crypto because of the public multiple ledger system that is the Blockchain, allowing you to trace tokens all the way back to their conception.
  The key to regulation is enforcement. While some regulation was put on the books, the government has been very lax with enforcement. Obvious pump and dump schemes, which would be illegal with securities, are left completely alone with crypto. Ridiculous amounts of leverage has been used to pump up the value of bitcoin, including fraudulent printing (see Tether). Also, while the bitcoin ledger is public, you can shuffle and obscure entry and exit points enough to make it anonymous.
  The purpose of Crypto is that it removes the need for a bank for transactions and holding of nonphysical currency. Adoption rate proportional to total population is what gives them stability and makes them less susceptible to scams or pump and dumps.
  It removes the bank and introduces mining consensus. In the case of bitcoin, this consensus is slow and costly so people have built more centralized networks on top of it. Those are your new banks right there. Plus there is the issue of mining pools becoming too large and thus having more say in the consensus. Now talk about Proof of Stake and you'll find it's just a system where the more you hold, the more power you have (i.e. like the rich who hold more money).
  
  The purpose of a system is what it does.
  Right, reminds me of the hacker mindset or more recently the workshop I did on "Future wheel foresight" with Karin Hannes. One can try their best to predict how an invention might be used but in practice it goes beyond what its inventors want it to be, it is truly about how what "it" does through actual usage.
Idk. I've been reading about Bitcoin since the very beginning and while I don't think it's necessarily a "scam" the whole project was based on a flawed hyper-libertarian economic theory that inflationary currency is inherently evil and that the ideal currency has a fixed quantity, requires effort to produce, and becomes rarer over time. From that standpoint, I feel like Bitcoin has failed in its original mission. You simply cannot use it as a day to day currency and everyone is just using it to gamble essentially. I do agree that if crypto had been an outright scam from the beginning, Satoshi would have rugpulled already, though.
What any unregulated market becomes.
- A lot of scams are dependent on the presence of regulations.
  
  But a lot more are dependent on the absence of them.
  
  That is almost a fundamental statement, requiring logical proof.
  It's like with a computer program that can contain vulnerabilities - fixing vulnerabilities might introduce new ones, and new functionality intended for security can contain new vulnerabilities in itself, possibly making the whole even less secure than without it.
  
  Regulations aren’t perfect, but the banking industry has gotten vastly more full of scams since congress repealed Glass Steagall. Regulations offer a structure to punish fraud and scamming. We need clear defined rules to at least attempt to control markets from their worst possible outcomes.
  
  Frankly movement is all that matters. Too deregulated looks like cryptocurrencies, too regulated looks like PSTN which every phreaker could own, because it relied upon laws for its defense, not technical robustness.
  There's no system that remains working when just kept standing, all that matters is that we can quickly rebuild any part of it. Which is why modern legal systems and modern Web suck so much, they've lost that trait.
In what way is Bitcoin not fundamentally a scam? There are multiple interpretations of "Bitcoin is a scam" you can take, and honestly with most of them I think it's been true the whole time.
Edit: I think some folks are parsing my sentence incorrectly, and I can't blame them. I didn't do a great job communicating. When I said "in what way is it not a scam" I didn't mean to make it sound like an exclamation like "how can you not think it's a scam!?", I am saying, "which specific way of people referring to it as a scam do you believe is wrong?"
- It would be better to state how it is a scam
  Apart from that, well no big company or country profits from it. You’re not paying someone that’s actively trying to fuck you over. You’re not paying to fund a capitalistic villain that wants all the world money. You’re paying for an, at least the original goal was, uncensurable means of payment that’s decentralized and doesn’t rely on a government or a company.
  A pseudonymous and trustless way of paying people. Believe in the maths, not a regulated entity that might seize your money at any time.
  It’s the cypherpunk's wet dream and I view it as such.
  Most people only view it as investment and "ponzi scheme" because they don’t care about this. They don’t care about not giving too much power to a few individuals and don’t hate banks.
  Any country can just print money and make what you have worthless, and it’s often done in poor countries as a way to wipe debts or similar bs. Crypto can shield them against that, which is probably the reason why it’s more used in those kind of countries (or in countries with oppressive governments)
  Bitcoin is one of the cleanest cryptos. It’s old, doesn’t work that well, but it’s not owned by anyone and it has a strong identity
  For anyone saying it’s only perceived value and doesn’t rely on anything, well it’s a bit like any market. How does it really differ from stocks for example? And crypto actually relies on the way of creating coins: mining, minting… which is known. If you don’t agree with it, don’t use it. The limited number of coins plays an important role in the price.
  
  For example, I mainly hold crypto that I’ll be using for payments, or those I deem technologically interesting.
  I’ve already made many crypto payments, know how they pretty much work, and prefer using them than paying by card, because fuck the banking system and those greedy visa/mastercard that takes huge cuts from payments. Also, anonymity benefit: don’t always want my name to be known, for example when donating to an individual or particular cause
  
  I do hope you're being real careful with your opsec if anonymity is important to you. Generally speaking, more people will know who paid who with crypto compared to bank transfers. Chains like Monero are an exception of course and yes, there are ways to anonymize other wallets too, but it requires a great deal of care, more than I personally trust myself.
  You've got a valid point for the card payments where there are huge fees the merchant has to pay (nearly 2% for many I think), but bank transfers are infinitely cheaper (free) and instant, compared to paying gas fees and waiting. Obviously this is not true for all banking systems yet, but it's getting there.
  
  Chains like Monero are an exception of course and yes, there are ways to anonymize other wallets too, but it requires a great deal of care, more than I personally trust myself.
  No worries, you got an XMR fan here. Churning and swapping to remove all leads
  My biggest problem with card payments is the fixed fee, which, for small payments, is enormous. When I donate to some content creator, I hate that 30% of what I send is cut into various fees, and that’s even before VAT and tax.
  Gas fees are only a thing in some cryptos. BCH, LTC, XMR have nearly non-existent fees.
  Wire bank transfers suck big time. Enormous fees when sending to foreign countries, and it’s also super slow.
  
  Well in the EU you get instant free payments through SEPA and the US is trying to implement something similar with FedNow. Doesn't solve the cross border issues, but Wise does once you can get the money on Wise. I get paid in dollars via ACH and they become euros real fast once I see them in my account. 1000 dollars converted is just under 3 dollars in fees and then the transfer from Wise to any other SEPA account is free and instant.
  Now crypto could very well make this all even smoother worldwide but unfortunately we have governments and they like to see what's going on. So no reputable merchants will ever be able to take XMR payments in most countries.
  
  I think they didnt say part of their reasoning. Crypto is useful to buy things that are either illegal or not socially acceptable/available in your local area.
  
  Absolutely - if you're good about your opsec. If you're not, it's almost worse than a bank transaction and for sure worse than cash.
  
  It enables this, yes. Some may like it, some don’t.
  I believe I should be free to buy porn, weed or start a seedbox. Not that I will do it, but being able to use the currency for what I deem acceptable gives a big feeling of freedom.
  
  Very true, although I don't think freedom is always a good thing.
  
  They extra costs of creditcards is why I use a modern bankcard, but the US is really behind on that so for some things I need to use my CC
  
  Wdym by "modern bankcard"? And I feel like the USA are pretty good in terms of crypto
  
  A chipped bank card aka what the rest of us use with modern standards like 2FA etc
  
  Someone could say crypto "is a scam" in that the proof of work aspect encourages miners to keep adding more hash rate to the network so long as it is profitable to do so and not whether the network actually needs it. It takes crazy amounts of energy for simple transactions.
  Someone could say crypto "is a scam" in that proof of stake algorithms (like Ether) is just a plot for the rich to get richer and favor early adopters who have more coins.
  Someone could say crypto "is a scam" in that it's controlled by technology and not laws and can't be fixed. Someone stealing it is more likely to get away with it because it's not like a company can just revert fraud.
  Someone can say crypto "is a scam" because it doesn't hold value. Stocks do hold value because you own a portion of that company and if they don't reinvest their profits you get dividends. Money does hold value because even in the absence of a gold standard we've been using it long enough that it's so ingrained in everything and everyone agrees it has value. Money has value in that the massive amount of financial regulations surrounding it creates a more stable value. Not everyone agrees crypto has value. Crypto is hardly regulated. Crypto wildly fluctuates in price.
  Someone could say crypto "is a scam" because it is often used in scams and makes it easier for scammers to be anonymous and lock down funds they steal.
  These are all the ways I could think of off the top of my head. I don't because agree with all of them, and some I think are more valid arguments than others. The last one being the weakest since it feels odd to say scam instead of a trap or something.
  
  Someone could say crypto "is a scam" in that the proof of work aspect encourages miners to keep adding more hash rate to the network so long as it is profitable to do so and not whether the network actually needs it. It takes crazy amounts of energy for simple transactions.
  I don’t see how it makes it a scam. But anyways, by definition, a bigger hash rate is always good.
  Someone could say crypto "is a scam" in that proof of stake algorithms (like Ether) is just a plot for the rich to get richer and favor early adopters who have more coins.
  You mean just like stocks, and banks, and real estate, and investing? Doesn’t make it a scam either. Find better algorithms. Crypto works because people use it. If something is better for everyone, it’ll end up gaining traction.
  Someone could say crypto "is a scam" in that it's controlled by technology and not laws and can't be fixed. Someone stealing it is more likely to get away with it because it's not like a company can just revert fraud.
  I could see a valid reason in this but when you get into crypto, you know what to expect. I feel like I have been personally scammed by the banking system and PayPal through abusive reversals, which funnily enough, is fraud caused by the anti fraud system. Many people abuse this stuff.
  For the crypto value thing. Well yea. Not everyone agrees it has value, but that stands for pretty much everything. You could draw a parallel with art. Most people don’t give a fuck about your black and blue painting that apparently costs millions. People might also not care about a blue spider hat. It doesn’t make it a scam in any way. If people pay, then it has value to them. No one forced them to buy crypto. They’re not a great value store, they’re a risky investment and usage product, just like stocks. It doesn’t make it a scam.
  Someone could say crypto "is a scam" because it is often used in scams and makes it easier for scammers to be anonymous and lock down funds they steal.
  Not a scam but it would be a valid reason to hate it. Cash is the same. Government seizing crypto because it was linked at some point to a scam even though you’re not linked to it is a scam imo.
  I’m not really convinced by any of these reasons. They’re valid reason not to like crypto, but none of them makes it a scam.
  
  Someone could say crypto "is a scam" in that proof of stake algorithms (like Ether) is just a plot for the rich to get richer and favor early adopters who have more coins.
  You mean just like stocks, and banks, and real estate, and investing? Doesn’t make it a scam either. Find better algorithms. Crypto works because people use it. If something is better for everyone, it’ll end up gaining traction.
  No, stocks, banks, and real estate do not give you more of themselves by mere fact of owning them. Some stocks pay dividends, but you don't get more stock for owning it, setting something up to buy more with dividends is your own decision. Banks give you interest, but that is not a function of how money works, that's something the bank does. Owning property does not give you more property over time. None of these are like how a proof of stake algorithm works.
  Do I think it makes it a scam? No, not really. Do I think people saying it's a scam because of that are wildly off base? Fuck no. It's valid to be concerned about it. Do I think it's better than proof of work? Yeah, probably. The arms race of increasing hash rate so long as it's profitable energy wise is pretty nasty.
  
  I don’t agree with your first paragraph. It’s virtually the same as banks and stocks.
  Banks give you interest, but that is not a function of how money works, that's something the bank does
  So is owning ETH… all ETH is not staked. And even if it was, how does it matter? In the end everyone gains the same percentage.
  Apart from that, everyone uses compounding interests and most people reinvests dividends.
  You’re free to unstake your ETH at any point.
  
  What putting money into crypto does is empower early bitcoin speculators
  
  Your statement is technically true for everything you buy. You make the market price go up, so every owner benefits from it if they intend to sell at some point
  
  Right, but definitely not a ponzi scheme. Also, proof of stake is also definitely not a ponzi scheme.
  
  Low effort troll
  
  It's a joke. Trolling implies intent to deceive or get a negative reaction.
- Bitcoin is not directly a scam. Rather it is a vector for scams. It makes scamming just a bit easier until regulations catch up.
  Now, the various meme coins are directly scams. You are guaranteed to lose money buying into them.
- In what way is it?
  
  Decentralised currencies are fundamentally too expensive to operate, while providing dangerously little safety and a far worse user experience than fiat.
  The scam part is the idea that any crypto coin is an asset with inherent value, when in fact the price is created entirely by new investment, in other words it's just a ponzi scheme
  
  I think you may have misunderstood. I'm saying people call it a scam for a variety of reasons, so when someone says it isn't a scam, I'm asking which way of calling it a scam are they saying it's not a scam in relation to.
  
  I'm the way that none of those other ways are fundamental to it's intended use by it's creator as an actual currency.
  
  There are plenty of things that aren't created by scammers to be scams that people call scams.
  
  That exactly my point.
  
  Which doesn't take away for them to be scams anyway.
  
  They believe shitcoins = the whole crypto economy
  The only thing they know are ERC20 tokens
  
  No, I don't. But I do find it humourous you moderate a community called "how to sell drugs online fast" lol. And I genuinely don't mean that in some sort of "you're biased" way, truly.
  
  Haha yea funny
  I like the show and I wanted to have a community for it on Lemmy rather than Reddit
  Apart from that, crypto usage increased due to dark net markets so there’s a real link
  It means you spied on me though 👀😂
  
  https://web3isgoinggreat.com/
  The entirety of blockchain is a scam. And especially Bitcoin.
  
  Not sure what your link is supposed to prove. I could make the exact same site but with problems related to the banking system, and trust me, it would be a lot worse.
- It's not a scam. It's also not immune from valid criticism, but people who call it a scam don't understand it well enough to make those criticisms.
  
  I think you're doing a disservice by saying everyone who calls it a scam doesn't understand it well enough. It's not like everyone saying it is a scam are doing it for the same reason. There's a variety of reasons people have for doing it.
  
  People can all have different reasons for a thing and yet all still come to the wrong conclusion. Bitcoin just doesn't meet the criteria for a scam. It's one thing to not like or trust it for legitimate reasons. It's another thing to denounce the thing you don't like or trust with an invalid accusation.
  
  What's the criteria for something being a scam in your opinion and why do you believe others whose criteria is different from yours don't have legitimate reasons and make invalid accusations?
  
  No, it's your accusation. You tell me why you think this FOSS software protocol is a scam and if I don't think your arguments hold water, I'll tell you why. You've got a navigator avatar, dev in your username, and a programming home instance. I imagine you're capable of educating yourself enough to make some sound arguments on the topic and a bit of factual contribution to the discussion.
  
  No, it's your accusation.
  I never said it was a scam. I'm asking what people's response to others who feel it is a scam is.
  You tell me why you think this FOSS software protocol is a scam
  I listed many reasons why many people might view it as a scam here: https://programming.dev/comment/17292659
  You've got a navigator avatar, dev in your username, and a programming home instance. I imagine you're capable of educating yourself enough to make some sound arguments on the topic and a bit of factual contribution to the discussion.
  No need to be so condescending.
  
  Alright, well in the spirit of you not thinking it's a scam and merely listing why others may think it is, I guess I'll respond to your compiled list.
  the proof of work aspect encourages miners to keep adding more hash rate to the network so long as it is profitable to do so and not whether the network actually needs it. It takes crazy amounts of energy for simple transactions.
  TL;DR I think this is a valid argument. But let's break it down to really know what we're saying. If you take the estimated global mining power of 175 TWh at an average 3,000 transactions per block, it works out to 1.1 MW/transaction. Which is a ton, easily arguable as far too much. The problem with this argument are IMO threefold, although they do amount to mere caveats:
  It ignores sidechains like lightning, a federated network that handles the majority of small bitcoin transactions. Anecdotally speaking, most purchases of goods and services that I've ever made in bitcoin (Mostly software and game passes, a few coffees) have been via lightning. Potentially billions of lightning TXs can tether behind a single on-chain transaction. I do not believe lightning processes this level of volume today, but as it's an immeasurable federated network it casts heavy doubt all power estimates. I would not be surprised if the ratio of side-chain to on-chain BTC transactions is already 100:1. Which is still too much power per tx but...
  ...The power argument gives a free pass to even more expensive proof of works that already exist, which are normalized enough to us that we do not think of them as the proof of works that they are. What is the single largest consumer of energy on the planet but an energetic protection of the value of the USD? There is a reason that the US military is several times larger than the next 9 world militaries combined, and it is not territorial expansion or defense. I'm not naive enough to think that a deflationary currency can stop a nation state from committing military violence on a mass scale so long as it wants to, but every time I hear that "proof of work is a waste" I get frustrated at what I see as misdirection.
  Mining intensity plateaus over the long term due to several factors. Decreasing block rewards, regulatory catchup, and industry crowding put a cap on participation. The one and only force pushing back against these weights is increasing bitcoin value, which itself plateaus over time or at least S-curves off. When the price spikes, you are right that miners respond to the profit incentive by growing. But these spikes become less pronounced year over year, and with them the industry has already begun to level off. It's growth is not exponential like some believe, and certainly not runaway.
  Proof of stake algorithms (like Ether) is just a plot for the rich to get richer and favor early adopters who have more coins.
  I agree with this. I feel that PoS breaks the holistic system that bitcoin's whitepaper outlines. But Etherium is not Bitcoin, and I would not bother arguing for it's sake.
  It’s controlled by technology and not laws and can’t be fixed.
  Just plain wrong. We have plenty of very strict laws that control software use. We can and should have laws surrounding bitcoin use, especially ones that pertain to steering the mining industry and taxation.
  Someone stealing it is more likely to get away with it because it’s not like a company can just revert fraud.
  Conditionally true. If the thief is in Russia or one of a handful of other nations that stand contrary to global financial regulation, then yes it would be relatively easy for them to get away with it. But outside of those jurisdictions it would be a matter of time before a motivated law enforcement agency tracked them down, as just about all on/off ramps are now regulated and value movement can be tracked along a chain of wallets - Including tumblers / mixers! - On the public ledger. Still conditional though, because the funds could be spent long before the thief is caught. This is one of the main reasons why I think multi-sig wallets are going to become the norm over the next decade.
  it doesn’t hold value. Stocks do hold value because you own a portion of that company and if they don’t reinvest their profits you get dividends. Money does hold value because even in the absence of a gold standard we’ve been using it long enough that it’s so ingrained in everything and everyone agrees it has value. Money has value in that the massive amount of financial regulations surrounding it creates a more stable value. Not everyone agrees crypto has value. Crypto is hardly regulated. Crypto wildly fluctuates in price.
  IMO this argument is completely vapid, and illustrative of my main gripe about the way that people criticize bitcoin. Bitcoin is money, all of the arguments made for "money" that you relay here can be made for bitcoin, and the fact that bitcoin is money is not a strength, it is the one single ACTUAL heavyweight criticism that can and should be leveled against bitcoin. But when it's time to argue against bitcoin, all the leftists suddenly transform into liberals. Arguing against bitcoin from the position of defending money, rather than arguing against money, including bitcoin, on the basis that not only is bitcoin money but that it is accelerated, hyper-financialized, straight-into-your-veins money that intensifies all the typical immiseration of workers under capitalism! I can't believe that people actually argue that "bitcoin isn't money and that's why it's bad" instead of "bitcoin is the most money that ever did money and THAT is why it's bad"! It eclipses any and all other criticisms, rational or otherwise, yet we fail to make that one argument.
  it is often used in scams and makes it easier for scammers to be anonymous and lock down funds they steal.
  Merh, I don't find this argument compelling. I really don't think that most scammers are anonymous or need to be. Most of the scams I see in the world are right out there in the open. The scammers successfully pushing their scams with their real faces. Crypto as a whole does attract scammers. But again, most of them have known names and addresses.
  Anyway, since these aren't necessarily all your arguments I'd be interested to see how your own opinions of them compare to mine. My fingers are sore, that was a lot of typing.

It's not, but there are plenty of crypto scams. It's not an investment and it's also not a particularly good store of value, but it is decent for P2P transactions, with some coins also providing privacy.

If that's not your use case, don't buy cryptocurrencues. Most people shouldn't buy them until more places accept them for payment.

Most people shouldn't buy them until more places accept them for payment.
It's not going to happen. You can't price things when the value of the currency changes every 10 minutes.
- That is not what's stopping people from paying for things in bitcoin. When you buy something in BTC you pay the equivalent to whatever you would have paid in the local fiat. And on the vendor side, merchant services often convert that paid BTC into fiat in the moment after the sale. Both parties are insulated from volatility in the context of the exchange. What actually keeps people from paying for day to day goods and services in BTC is Gresham's Law, the observation that nobody wants to pay for purchases with an appreciating asset, so long as there's also a depreciating asset they could pay with instead.
- You’re aware we just use the conversion price in fiat, right?
  
  I don't know what you're saying. If I charge a particular amount for a loaf of bread and then the cryptocurrency value drops halfway through the day then that person still has the bread but I now don't have the money.
  The whole point of currency is to get away from the fluctuating value of exchange that everyone had to deal with when we used to buy things with gold and semi-precious stones.
  
  Vendors can immediately sell upon receipt. And prices rarely change that much in a day, usually it's a few percent at most (within the credit card fee range), especially for the currencies targeted at actually being currencies instead of scams.
  
  This ^
  Most vendors do frequently sell or convert to stablecoins to avoid this problem, and in times of uncertainty, they often charge more to cover the eventual losses
  
  What is the point of using them if you are expected to switch them to an actual real fiat just to keep your value?
  
  Well, you said it: using crypto.
  I believe you don't hold massive stacks of cash under your bed, though you might occasionally withdraw cash.
  I also believe you don't keep all your money on your normal bank account. You invest some, as investing is better in some situations.
  Well, for crypto it's the same. Sometimes it's better to pay in crypto, like in situations where you don't want to be tracked because you're privacy concious, or maybe because you don't trust or hate banks, or because you like the technology and want to see it develop, or because of international payment/transfer fees, or because your economy is overinflated (like in poorer countries)...
  You can also decide to take the potential risks and hold the crypto, or just swap to a stablecoin. Stores prefer switching to fiat to simplify their legal declarations, have clear incomes and expenses. They just accept crypto because customers want to pay with it.
- That happens to every currency, BTC is more volatile than many, but things can be priced.
  Also until twiddling is made illegal, prices can be set by some other currency or some function, and be calculated in BTC from that, and displayed on electronic price tags for example.
- Never gonna happen is a bit of a stretch. It used to be a thing. Steam accepted bitcoin. They stopped accepting it due to volatility and high transaction fees at the time. You still price things in your local currency but convert at checkout. There are "plug and play" payment processors who can handle it now.. Spar in Switzerland accepts it.
  But imo, its not something regular people should be using anyway.
  
  The fact that they stopped due to volatility kind of proved my point.
  
  I thought your point was it was never happening? I provided examples where it did happen in the past and where its happening now. Volatility of the price vs USD is not the biggest issue if the payment processor gives the vendor USD back after the transaction. If the vendor believes in crypto, they can decide to keep it as well. Had Valve chosen to hold their crypto earnings in 2016 for a few years, they'd have seen even larger profits. But thats beside the point. I personally believe they canned it more because of transaction fees. At the time, bitcoin network was oversaturated due to an explosion of popularity which reduced it to unusable levels for everyday transactions.
  You should be focusing on why other vendors are still supporting crypto and asking yourself why.
  
  Never happening doesn't mean they don't try.
  
  Fees are predictable. Volatility is not. If you can't make sure the money you are paid retains its value then the price you are selling something for is also volatile rather than inert.
I like GNU Taler, and I would like there to exist not just such a payment system, but also an electronic currency system without blockchains (global synchronization is a pain), unfortunately currencies are not like most applications.
I also wrote two smartass paragraphs completely wrong after this, and now thinking about it - Taler is as good a solution as possible. It's basically what can be done. You can't decentralize an issuer or a bank, except for the BTC way. If you can, then you can't plug it in seamlessly , you need some synchronization (would be a shame if a failed transaction made it into Taler as passed).
If I understand that correctly.
Gosh. It's year 2025, I've achieved nothing. I was blabbering on these subjects in year 2011! I'll be 29 in less than a month. But so cool that someone is making the humanity better.
- Taler is cool, but it solves a completely different set of problems vs cryptocurrencies, and is ripe for being replaced with alternatives, undermining its primary purpose.
  Here are a few of the problems being solved here:
  transaction fees
  privacy
  decentralization
  independence from fiat
  Taker largely attacks the first two, and cryptocurrencies largely attack the second two, and I'm mostly interested in the middle two. However, since Taler doesn't do either of the last two, it's subject to either being ignored (i.e. if no banks are willing to support it) or directly competed against with something that sacrifices one of the first two, and customers won't get the option of Taler.
  I think Taler makes a ton of sense for something with its own currency, such as microtransactions or a browser extension for rewarding creators (say, in lieu of displaying ads). I don't see benefits for banks who make a ton from credit cards. There are some cryptocurrencies that hit the last three (e.g. Monero), so that's what I'm excited to see take off.

My portfolio disagrees.

Y'all should have bought BTC when the price was hovering around $19K about 3 years ago. I told you the price was going to go up, but no one listened. Now it's at $105K, I'm $60k richer, and y'all are still whining and complaining that it's a "scam".

Hate to break it to you, but bitcoin isn't to crash and burn anytime soon. It's still early; buy in now or regret it for the rest of your life.

https://web3isgoinggreat.com/
It won't crash indeed, cause it is too useful to scam people.
My Enron stock disagrees.
- Your attack missed!
  You can pull the Enron card when talking about investments in general; your comments do 0 damage.
  
  The point did fly over your head, you're right about that. Pointing at the current value of your scam investment as proof of it not being a scam does not make it legitimate.

No, it's not. SOME cryptos are scams. Saying it all is a scam is ignorant.

Even the "legit" parts are only used by people to try to get richt from it. It isn't a currency and won't ever be.
And as an investment it is bad. At least with real investments the company actually uses the money to improve. Crypto is nothing more than a sock under your bed.
- You are wrong.

Monero is the only good crypto

No, but one of the good ones

Same way fiat is.

Édit: damn, and I thought bitcoiners were obnoxious You guys take the cake with so much copium.

Oh stop it
What’s the GDP of Bitcoinistan?
- Can't be any worse than the GDP of the 2025 fascist USA
  
  I mean, it is worse
- Probably the same as North Korea, with the amount of money laundering, ransomware, propaganda and scams they do 😄
They're the same with AI. Had these people been interested years ago, they would be sitting pretty. But they kept telling everyone it's garbage. Now it's just sunk costs for them
- I'm sure that if they found a set of keys for a Bitcoin wallet, they would just throw it away.
  
  I certainly wouldn't keep anything in cryptocurrency. I would transfer it to something stable.
  
  I mean if I found a wallet with a million euros worth of bitcoin, I'd sell half and keep half. If it rises significantly, sell half of the remainder. And so on.
  If I found a wallet with like 5k worth of BTC on it though? Just sell it all right away, it'll do more for me now than say 10k in 5 years which is an insane long term return tbf.