Yes, I know that it still exist, and yes, decentralized currency which utilizes distributed, cryptographic validation is not actually a strictly bad idea, but…

Is the speculative investment scam, which crypto substantially represented, finally dead? Can we go back to buying gold bars and Pokemon cards?

I feel like it is, but I’m having a hard time putting my finger on why it lost its sheen. Maybe crypto scammers moved on to selling LLM “prompts?” Maybe the rug just got pulled enough times that everyone lost trust.

  • PixelPioneer@beehaw.orgEnglish
    19·
    1 year ago

    Well, the irony is hard to miss, right? Crypto was born out of this grand idea of decentralization, but then everyone just rushed over to these centralized exchanges. Kinda sounds like a death knell to me. Seems like the original spirit of crypto got lost in the rush for profits.

    I do think the tech and the concept will keep evolving, and eventually, it’ll morph into something new, get a new name or something. Here’s hoping that when it does, people will get that it’s better to trust the collective ‘us’ instead of just a select few. After all, these are often the same folks messing things up. But, what can you do, huh?

    • SuperSpruce@vlemmy.netEnglish
      3·
      1 year ago

      This almost sounds like what could happen to the Fediverse. It’s decentralized just like crypto, but the majority of people won’t know or care about how the Fediverse works, they will just want to communicate online.

      • nii236@lemmy.jtmn.devEnglish
        3·
        1 year ago

        I mean, most Lemmings (lol) hang out in Beehaw anyway, so centralised fediverse is already here

    • whiny9130English
      1·
      1 year ago

      Every time a “decentralized” thing only has one reference implementation it tends towards a platform. If multiple software projects use it, it can tend towards a protocol

      But whenever your thing kinda just… Talks to itself (like “distributed” exchanges that still die when us-east-1 does) then it’s kinda dead

      Or how ssb (manyverse) or radicle are going through a period of death and the primary client isn’t really usable during the rewrite…

      Vs activitypub which doesn’t stray away from a normal functioning server with a normal functioning browser UI…

    • SchoonerEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      I definitely agree that profit chasing hucksters have damaged the space. Though I’m hopeful that with the rise of smart contract wallets, account abstraction and social recovery managing your coins yourself will become more mainstream.

      You can also see this trend in the volume generated by centralised exchanges vs decentralised exchanges, which keeps trending up. Considering that 80% of centralised exchange volume is probably wash trading, that number looks even better.

    • geoffervescent@kbin.social
      1·
      1 year ago

      Now say it again but replace crytpocurrecy with Website aggregation. Its honestly not that different from leaving the big centralized reddit for the Fediverse… only to mostly end up in a few relatively huge alternatives in the name of decentralizing. Its just… human nature.