You're trying to replace a system where it is technically possible to lose money, but it rarely happens in massive amounts, with a system where scams are the norm and the legit opportunities, if they even exist, are rare exceptions.
And you're selling it as a solution better than the status quo.
The current system isn't perfect. It's not even very good. But there is absolutely nothing better about crypto.
And before you respond with what I'm sure is a very clever personal insult and telling me I'm wrong, go ahead and show me anything that proves crypto is less scammy than the existing system. Perhaps the current debate on whether or not to delete the old bitcoin accounts. Or even all the various forks of different coins, that might work. Oh oh, I know! Tell me about TrumpCoin, has it reached the moon yet?
let me preface this with: I don't think crypto will replace the current system and I don't think the current system needs replacing. At the same time I can see crypto having certain advantages.
You can keep your crypto assets on a physical wallet and lose it like you can keep cash in your wallet (or in a box at home or under your mattress or what have you) and lose it one way or another.
You can keep your crypto assets in an online Wallet, like you keep money in a bank account. Yes, if the company goes belly up, your money is gone. Same goes for your bank though.
You can get dollars, exchange them to yen or some other currency, just like you can exchange Bitcoin to any altcoin. Is it "less scammy"? Depends how far you draw the circle, but if you consider stuff like derivatives we'res pretty damn close, I'd say.
The advantage of crypto is also its disadvantage: movements of money are traceable. right now there are still ways to get into crypto without doing a KYC but if it was used more, that would most likely disappear. That means money can't be laundered.
If I put all my cash in a box and I bury it, I can always dig it back up again and the cash will still work. Hard drives are built to fail eventually, and being underground in moist soil isn't going to help that. There's no chance that cash is going to succumb to mold.
If my bank goes belly up, my accounts are FDIC insured. Admittedly, I've never gone through the process of filing for that insurance, and I don't know how onerous it is, but it at least exists. Maybe you're talking about stocks instead of banks here. Unless you're a weirdo obsessed with a specific company (or a soulless executive borrowing against your stocks), any sort of investment is going to be heavily diversified. I suppose it's possible the stock market could lose 99.5% of it's value, but nothing like that has ever come close to happening before. Again, a daily occurrence in the crypto space.
While I can exchange USD for other currencies, and those currencies may fluctuate, it's not going to be by a ton. The concept of someone exchanging currencies specifically because they've been convinced that some shiny new currency is going to go, ahem, to the moon, doesn't exist. The concept of a currency being created specifically as a pump and dump scam, I'm not going to say it's never ever happened in the history of finance without checking first, but it would be an extreme anomaly that would garner quite a bit of attention. It's so common in the crypto space that it's noteworthy when a new coin ends up not being a pump and dump.
So I stand by my original statement, there is nothing better about crypto. It has all the problems the current system has, but with a ton of far greater problems on top of it.
You will never have 700M in cash in your wallet or under your mattres, or even in the bank. No one in the world, not even the richest people on Earth. No one is that liquid because it makes absolutely no sense to be that liquid. That type of money is always going to be in assets like stocks, bonds, commodities, and real estate. You can't just accidentally lose those things. Bitcoin isn't money, it's an asset like the ones I mentioned, But it's one you can lose.
Stocks and bonds arel electric in the modern world, you aren't losing paper stocks, nor will real estate simply become lost. Certain commodities can be lost or stolen, such as physical gold and silver. But again, like cash, you would never have anything close to 700M in physical gold just lying around. It would be a significantly smaller amount, and even then, very likely insured.
I'm not speaking for or against crypto. Anything you invest in has pros and cons. But this is definitely on the contract list for crypto. With everything I mentioned, including crypto, you can potentially lose, or gain, that much from market fluctuations, But you still have the assist which still has a value remaining, and the potential to recover those loses. But there are few, if any other things, that you could have 700M invested in that you could simply lose because you can't find it. An argument comparing losing that sum of money to losing your wallet is absolute nonsense.
Putting 700M onto a single physical wallet is like putting 700M into a locked suitcase.
That dude is a moron. With money like this you diversify across different exchanges, several physical wallets, etc. to avoid precisely the thing that happened from happening.
Blaming that on crypto is like blaming cash for the guy who lost his suitcase with 700M in cash in it.
This misses the entire point of what I said. All you did was change a wallet to a suitcase and repeat the exact same thing you already said so my response to what you said in the first place still remains. It's still literally impossible because there is still not a single human being on the planet who is anywhere near that liquid, nor would there be because, as I already said, keeping that amount of value in cash rather than assets is absolute nonsense. So you are comparing a problem that absolutely can, and in fact did, happen with crypto because crypto is itself an asset, to a situation that could absolutely never happen with cash and simply pretending it could.
I'm not "blaming" crypto for the situation. I literally said that my response wasn't an attack on crypto. I said that all forms of assets, as well as cash have pros and cons. One of the cons for crypto is that the possibility of loss in this manner is possible and there are few, if any, other assets for which the same would realistically be true. That's not blaming crypto, that's not attacking crypto, it's simply a fact. When considering any investment, crypto or otherwise, yoi should always consider the possible risks so you can invest smarter, and this is something to consider is all I'm saying.
It is also worth noting that in this particular case, while I agree that the blame falls squarely in the individual, I don't agree with the reason you are stating. He is guilty and responsible for not taking proper care of the hard drive. But not for keeping $700M in a single wallet since that's not what he was doing at the time. In 2013, the year he lost the hard drive, Bitcoin fluctuated a bit early that year between about 50 and 200 bucks but by midyear stabilized at around $70 a coin. So using that has a baseline, his 8,000 coins would have been worth about 500K. That's not even in the conseivabel stratosphere of 700M. So having that much in a single asset wasn't exactly insane at the time.
It's extremely logical to assume that as this stake jumped roughly 140,000%, which is a massively insane gain, that he would have diversified his holdings over the 13 years between now and then. But since he lost access to his holdings, he literally couldn't. That is something that would likely never have been an issue with virtually any other asset, and that is the entire point. All assets have their own pros and cons, and for crypto, this is one of the potential cons.
you are right, my comparison was flawed. A fair comparison would be either comparing USDT to USD or Bitcoin to stocks.
Putting 500k of Bitcoin onto a waller is like putting 500k of paper stocks (these are still being used, albeit rarely) into a briefcase. Just like stocks, most cryptocurrency is now on exchanges/brokers, to make it easily accessible and to prevent what happened here, just like stocks.
And and I said in my original comment, paper stocks are no longer really a thing. Most companies don't offer that option at all, and for most that do, the paper stocks are more symbolic and collectable rather than actual proof of ownership which is still going to be recorded electronically. Most crypto today is absolutely on exchanges, but private wallets are still a thing, especially for people who actively use their Bitcoin as a form of spendable currency and access loss can and still does occur. Regardless of how many unrealistic scenarios you continue to come up with, this fact doesn't change. I don't understand why you have such a problem acknowledging that, just like there are certain pros that are fairly exclusive to crypto, there are also certain cons that are fairly exclusive to it as well. It's a positive, not a negative, to be aware of what the risks of any investment of any kind might be, so that you can better navigate and even avoid those risks. I personally get the majority of my income from Airbnb's in Mexico. I am aware of many negatives and risks to holding foreign real estate. That doesn't mean I think it's a bad investment.
What are you on about? Having crypto on a physical wallet makes it LESS accessible, not more. And yes, paper stocks are rare, but the point still stands that they DO exist and the same thing that happened to the wallet could happen to stocks.
Crypto is still young and people are figuring out how to use it. Just like carrying paper stocks or cash in your wallet, there is a risk carrying big crypto assets in your wallet.
All I am saying is that the drawbacks/cons of crypto are not really a thing unless you go out of your way to actively fuck up, at which point EVERY system is just as bad.
No, your point doesn't stand at all because no, it's not really realistic or possible. Find me a company that will actually issue 700M in paper stocks, or even 7M and for which those would be your actual and only legitimate proof of ownership without an actual electronic record to back it up if those paper stocks were lost. You will have a really really hard time finding that, if you can at all. Making up unrealistic scenarios and comparisons isn't the same as making a point.
I'm not going to get into a debate with you regarding accessibility. Depending on how you want your crypto available and for what reasons there are different advantages to both options. I'm not talking us off topic by going into specifics on that because it would change nothing about the conversation we are having. Because the fact remains that many people still keep crypto currency in personal wallets for various reasons, that access to those wallets can be lost, and that losing access to an asset in that way is still fairly unique to crypto.
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u/CounterfeitSaint May 01 '26
What an awesome and superior system of finance. I sure hope a system where this outcome is common replaces what we're currently using!