Thread by @PnictogenHorses

more #cryptocurrency talk. it seems that there may be (another) #cryptocrash developing; there's been so many of them.

to reiterate my earlier point: the allure of #cryptocurrencies is instant #money in vast volumes, and that's why $BITC and @ETH have a million copycats.

(1/x)

https://twitter.com/PnictogenHorses/status/1620133293781041153

#cryptocurrency (and the related #blockchain money-making gewgaw, the #NFT) are in a sense nothing new. there have been untold millions of #investment scams and #business tricks and other shifty clever ways that at least *pretend* they can guarantee an effortless #profit.

(2/x)

this is an artifact of the extreme #wealth inequality encouraged by #capitalism: once you've got a bunch of elite capitalists *hoarding* all the #money, that means you've got big enough piles to *steal*. all get-rich-quick schemes are ultimately acts of disguised _theft_.

(3/x)

the general pattern is: set up a scam (like a risky #investment #opportunity) that's *so tempting* it lures in people who have a lot of money to burn on risky ventures. if you get a rich enough sucker, hey presto! you are now yourself rich. you've stolen it off someone.

(4/x)

#capitalism has tried its hardest—all that #business and #finance #journalism, all that @BW and @Money and @MSN_Money stuff that's really pure propaganda—to disguise the fact that getting rich from "passive income" means that you're stealing from someone else's hoard.

(5/x)

but *all* methods of making "passive income" (especially if they're quick and "easy") have the moral weight of _theft_. in order for someone to get rich through #investment or #realestate speculation or #cryptocurrency, lots of other people are forced to lose out.

(6/x)

the #investors are like leeches attached to a successful corporation, sucking away #money that ought to be going to the people who made the success possible—not the *owners* of #capitalism, but the *workforce*. they do the work; the venture capitalists rake off their #ROI.

(7/x)

the #realestate speculators drive up the cost of housing, and now the masses aren't able to afford housing—it's not just #landlords like that @ChayaRaichik10 terrorist who have enriched themselves via extortion schemes with housing. the property speculators do the same.

(8/x)

and #cryptocurrency is naked theft: enormous quantities of semiconductors and electrical power and other scarce resources—resources that *could* be directly improving the lives of the general population—are instead eaten up in order to run computer simulations of #money.

(9/x)

that's one reason that #cryptocurrencies have proliferated so rapidly, to the point that @Bitcoin / $BITC (and @ethereum / $ETH, and @dogecoin / $DOGE, and of course all that #NFTCommunity stuff) may very well have *hundreds* of millions of imitators—it's just #software.

(10/x)

*anyone* (with sufficient starting capital, i.e. it helps to be rich first, as with all other ventures cooked up by #entrepreneurs in #capitalism) can make their own electronic play-money. anyone (rich enough) can create their own #blockchain blocks and gamble on them.

(11/x)

that's intrinsic to the allure of the #cryptocurrency scam: the *purpose* of the scam is to draw in a poorer cohort of gamblers, people who don't have enough for other speculative ventures like #investment or #StockMarket stuff. the #crypto game requires smaller stakes.

(12/x)

the fact that #cryptocurrency is designed to lure in people with less money than usual has given $BITC / $ETH / #cryptotrading the false impression of being *democratic*. "anyone can join" isn't quite true—first you have to have money, and the luxury of gambling with it.

(13/x)

that excludes most poorer people: people who are fearful every day about their boss canning half the staff, or getting bankrupted by a flat tire or a broken leg (or a #COVID19 infection), are far less likely to *gamble* what little they have—and #investment is *gambling*.

(14/x)

*ALL* "passive income" is gambling. the #investments aren't *supposed* to be guaranteed to pay. the #realestate market can always crash. the #landlords aren't guaranteed to get tenants into their clutches. *none* of this "passive income" is, intrinsically, a sure thing.

(15/x)

...and that's a MASSIVE problem with #capitalism right in plain sight—though for some reason the fearless "independent" paladins of the Fourth Estate, the intrepid reporters of unpleasant truths like @mtaibbi or @lhfang, ever noticed that capitalism depends on gambling.

(16/x)

an *enormous fraction* of #economic activity in #capitalism, in fact, consists of various ways of *pretending* that purely speculative value, *gambling* value in other words, is in fact a sure thing, something that you can bet the public's bank accounts and pensions on.

(17/x)

#cryptocurrency is the most speculative and aetherial of all the get-rich-quick-on-paper schemes of #capitalism, because it's *betting on #money itself*. it's like capitalism divided up #currency into a million competing pieces and now you can *bet* on their future value.

(18/x)

the very corporate branding of @Bitcoin and @ethereum and the rest of the #cryptocurrencies—all of these things are merely *corporate* in the end, mere #Internet "dot bomb" startups with bigger than usual ambitions—betrays the speculative nature of #cryptocurrency.

(19/x)

@Bitcoin and @VitalikButerin's @ethereum and all the rest of them advertise themselves in *the same way* as any risky #investing scam: they crow about lines going up and down.

they use the dollar-sign typographical convention: $BITC and $ETH are *just another stock*.

(20/x)

the absurd *early* promise of $BITC and $ETH was that they'd be _replacing_ government-backed #currency, which the #marketing pitches all said was old-fashioned and mere "fiat money" and unsafe. only #blockchain technology was safe and had a guaranteed, "intrinsic" value.

(21/x)

and yet the whole game with @Bitcoin and @ethereum and @Cardano and all the rest of the #cryptocurrencies and #NFT thingummies was simply this: you could bet on them, and you *might* just make gazillions—like @saylor or @brian_armstrong or @jack, or Sam Bankman-Fried.

(22/x)

the dishonesty was in plain sight; everyone could see that #cryptocurrency was mere *gambling*—and yet, nobody could see it any more than they could see that #blockchain blocks were simply blocks of noise that people bet on.

why?

#cryptography.

the *magic word*.

~Mona Drafter

@threadreaderapp unroll

@UnrollThread