Buying crypto? Watch out for these 100 problems

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ISSUE 18.21 • 2021-06-07 PUBLIC DEFENDER By Brian Livingston People in the tech industry tend to find cryptocurrency very attractive as a concept. Aft
[See the full post at: Buying crypto? Watch out for these 100 problems]

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abbodi86, OscarCP, lmacri, wdburt1

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One of the problems with cryptocurrency is that there is no government backing it. In other words, there is no real enforcement of the law with regard to stealing the money. With traditional money, if I steal your money, I go to jail; with cryptocurrency, if I steal your money, what can happen? The transaction is reversed? That’s about it, IF they can even do that.

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OscarCP

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MrJimPhelps: “One of the problems with cryptocurrency is that there is no government backing it.”

To be more precise, there is no government’s full faith and credit backing the currency, which explains to some extent the extraordinary volatility in the value of cryptocurrencies. So buying at “the right time” might allow a speculator to sell it at great profit, or if it is not “the right time”, to end up with a big loss. But that comes with the territory.

To those who do not buy cryptocurrency to speculate but to carry short-term transactions it might be convenient, but is it good for saving money? I don’t think so. So it is both of limited safe use and also, as explained in the article, useful to scammers that prey on the enthusiastic but poorly informed users.

Of course, there are those that fantasize about governments being the cause of all that is wrong with the world and that one has an inalienable birthright to an absolute freedom to live and do exactly as one pleases without the government sticking its nose in one’s business. And that includes using crypto money because it is not nasty government “Fiat” money. All of which might be nice if it had any connection with reality, but as it has been my personal observation over many years that this is not even a very rough approximation to how the world really works. Not that I am trying to convince anyone here, I am not that ambitious. Just saying.

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I remember watching a William Shatner created television series called TekWar.   They made financial transactions via something they call Plas.   Bitcoin reminds me a lot of this concept.   Ripe for corruption if you ask me.   Fake money is fake money, whether backed by a centralized government or created in cyberspace.   Too bad real assets like gold and silver is just too damn heavy to lug around.   lolololol

 

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Your dollars are essentially fake money nowadays. Hasn’t been backed by gold for a long while.
They also can just print more and more and more…

Also @Jim, if someone steals your “real” money, it can be sometimes hard to trace. If someone steals your crypto, you can at least see where it’s gone! Transaction CANNOT be reversed though (depends on the chain) as that’s the entire point.
The coins that were stolen in the MtGox exchange hack are essentially rendered unusable now, as they’re marked on the network. It’s MORE tracable than standard money.

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