Crypto-believers often blame greedy financiers as the cause of the Great Recession, but crypto is not immune to these same risks.

TLDR: meme coin rug pulls, among other issues around centralization

Crypto-believers often blame greedy financiers as the cause of the Great Recession in 2008. But we argue that crypto is not immune to these same risks.

Public blockchains operate on a distributed peer-to-peer network. This network provides each user a complete record of transactions that is updated in real time. Users can send digital cash between themselves without relying on a centralized authority.

Since each user has a full record of transactions, the system promises full transparency. But our research demonstrates that public blockchains, and the cryptocurrencies that run on them, do not actually replace trust with transparency.

Speculation, manipulation and market crashes remain very real dangers, regardless of whether the financial system is centralized or decentralized.

Centralization of power in the hands of insiders is still a major issue in the cryptocurrency space. This is particularly an issue for emerging cryptocurrencies like memecoins. Memecoins are a type of cryptocurrency named after internet memes or similar jokes. They draw their value entirely from speculation.

  • Lucky_777@lemmy.worldEnglish
    427·
    2 days ago

    Even bitcoin, there are a select few who hold most of the coins. You want a coin like Digibyte. Community owned. Finite amount. Fast speeds.

    In crypto, there aren’t too many real options. Do your research.

      • nickEnglish
        206·
        2 days ago

        Agreed. Crypto is a waste of time and energy.

        Fuck every crypto.

        • shameless@lemmy.worldEnglish
          91·
          2 days ago

          I used to think it had some potential use case many years ago. But now I totally agree with your statement.

          Its just a big scam and a waste of time and energy.

        • bjorney@lemmy.caEnglish
          2·
          1 day ago

          It’s been around for a long time. It was very popular back in like 2017, but fell off because it’s value proposition was “we are a shitty fork of the Litecoin codebase with a few constants changed (which was in itself a shitty fork of the Bitcoin codebase with a few constants changed) and no other meaningful changes”