You come to my store to buy something, you hand me the bill, I take it and don’t give you anything in return.

Video cameras. Also the shopkeep develops a reputation and is easily identifiable.

Most scams are done irl with FIAT,

Technically the truth, but a MUCH larger percentage of the crypto ecosystem is devoted to scams. I don’t think that is just “growing pains”, the design of crypto, again, incentivizes this behavior because it gives victims no recourse.

at the end of the day you can’t protect everyone from everything, especially from their own gullibility.

Yes, but gullibility is the #1 problem and again, crypto has no safeguards or recourse.

For some people complete control over their money is a plus

Control but only within the system and ruleset that is made by those who control the chain. If institutions leverage their power in the space in a mass-adoption scenario, then they will be the ones making these rules and controlling what you can do, and the rigidity of crypto’s rules advantage them in that case, no the consumer.

I would prefer for crypto to be gone. Based on my understanding of blockchain, I don’t see how it can be used as currency ever. Blockchains can be extremely useful, just not as currency.

The only thing you can really do about stolen tokens is have some authority de-list them and re-issue new token to the victim. That’s hardly a solution. It also extremely centralizes control, which runs antithetical to the purported benefits of crypto.

Crypto also doesn’t take power away from institutions. If institutions were to leverage their power in the space, they would become just as, if not more powerful than they are currently, assuming a mass-adoption scenario. The inflexibility of crypto always works to the advantage of those setting the rules.

Crypto is also incredibly power inefficient. Even with proof-of-stake instead of proof-of-work, it is still factors less efficient than normal FIAT transactions, and as of yet I see no solution to that. One may pop up in some hypothetical future, but I have no faith in that.

Additionally, crypto will also always reward those who engage with it disingenuously, as it is not linked to one’s real identity and, again, is inflexible and impossible to truly regulate. In a mass-adoption scenario, scammers would become enormously more successful.

Most importantly, crypto is a digital asset whose store of value is implicitly tied to the belief that it can be sold for FIAT. It is almost exclusively a speculative vehicle, and always had been since its inception. Actual crypto purchases are disincentivized by how slow, inefficient, unwieldy, and volatile it is. Not to mention high transaction fees for the most popular coins. It is also deflationary, meaning one is disincentivized from spending it, which is extremely bad for the economy in a mass-adoption scenario. Gentle inflation is one of the core principles underpinning our economy. Having currency also be an asset that appreciates in value is objectively a bad thing.

I feel like I could keep going for a while but hopefully you at least understand why I feel this way now lol.

Yes, exactly my point. It’s way harder to scam with physical stores of value like cash, because there aren’t layers of obfuscation like there can be with digital stores of value. That is why scamming is so much less common in meatspace compared to crypto, where every single interaction, even with a vendor or exchange, is a potential landmine you have to be cognizant of.

With PayPal or bank transactions, those can be reversed and there are regulatory bodies to ensure consumer protections. Even with physical stores like cash, it is much easier to track someone and prosecute for illegal activity since they can’t hide behind crypto wallets.

Every store of value has some form consumer protections and systems of accountability except for crypto, and as such scammers are empowered by it.

There will always be scammers, my point is just that Bitcoin empowers them. Scammers and fraudsters have many more tools through Bitcoin than they would with FIAT, and they are more likely to succeed and thrive.

I consider piracy wrong when companies are stealing from creatives (like authors whose books are included with no credit or royalties) for the purposes of profit. I don’t believe all piracy is always good full stop. I believe piracy is ethical if it allows for preservation of content that may otherwise not be preserved or maintained.

Also that was just one of my points lol. Most LLMs are still just bad at what they are claiming to be able to do.

I use it for sure, I even pay for Gemini for its creative writing capabilities, but most LLMs are bad at many tasks they’re advertised to be good at (coding being one of those things), plus they’re largely based on stolen work and/or copyright infringement. They don’t reliably do what they’re claiming, and they are unethically developed. Hence, they’re bad products, just objectively.

Generative AI is hardly “good” yet, either morally or as a product.

My point is that its lack of regulation and decentralization makes it more vulnerable to the types of attacks that actually matter, namely market manipulation, fraud, and scams targeting specific accounts through social engineering. Those are already the biggest problems with FIAT, and crypto just intensifies them by removing existing protections.

Never! Except with early pump-and-dumps, whale manipulation, spoofing, wash trading, Mt. Gox, or what’s happening with Tether.

But besides all that stuff creating massively disruptive volatility on a slow as shit network, what’s not to love?

If you get scammed using FIAT you can just call your bank and they can issue a chargeback through the card provider, especially if it’s credit.

If I took $100 cash from you under false pretense, it would be a crime and I would be prosecuted for it. I would also have to expose myself by interacting with you. If I trick you with a fake login page and steal all your shit from your crypto wallet, then according to the blockchain that’s just fine, and I can do it completely anonymously from the other side of the planet with 0 hope for anyone to do anything about it. I had access to the tokens, so I can do anything I want with them and no one can stop me, reverse it, or even find me. That’s the issue.

Every crypto bro I’ve talked to has said some version of “well don’t get scammed then”, which is such a fucking stupid and asinine answer. Every financial system has consumer protections except for crypto because they are 100% necessary for normal people to survive.

True, but Crypto has been awash with scams from its inception. Blockchain inherently rewards those who engage with it deceptively since access to tokens = ownership, there are no take backsies, 0 consumer protections, and it’s global.

I agree that book bans are symbolically a big issue, but I also think it’s hilarious that the conservative idea of shielding children from “dangerous” information is to take the books out of school libraries, as if anyone uses them to get LGBTQ-related information. When I was in school, the library was just a place where you would study, with most of the books being related to the curriculum. Basically no one went there to read about complex, modern, fast-moving topics like queerness. Kids these days all know how to look shit up online, and most school libraries have a computer lab with fairly permissive internet access. Most kids will use that to research any “forbidden” information that conservatives would find offensive.

Based on that, it really seems like book bans aren’t mean to solve and practical issues for conservatives at all, and are moreso meant as vehicles to broadcast and systemically solidify the exclusion of ideas and people they don’t personally like. Like a child shouting “you can’t play here anymore!” on a playground to someone they don’t like, only for the excluded party to go right back to what they were doing uninterrupted.