• tourist@lemmy.world
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      19 hours ago

      can you still buy drugs in the mail with any of that stuff

      like, I don’t see the point of cryptocurrency otherwise

      literally every crypto headline I’ve seen for the last 6-7 years: rugpull, tax fraud, rugpull, scam, identity theft, scam, GPU market fuckup, scam, rugpull

      • percent@infosec.pub
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        7 hours ago

        Here’s a practical use case: Sending money internationally.

        I wanted to send some money to a friend in another country once, and it was difficult to find some service that could do it without some crazy expensive fee.

        I’ve sent money to other countries before, but for this particular country, it was different. Maybe it’s some (dis)agreements between our governments, banks, etc. Maybe it would require the service to send it through another country or two, or convert it to some other intermediate currencies. I didn’t look into it, so I don’t really know why it was so expensive.

        Anyway, it was much simpler and cheaper to just send crypto instead.

      • kestrel7_7@lemmy.world
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        9 hours ago

        Hey, you can buy plenty of stuff besides just drugs (illegal weapons, human organs, enslaved/trafficked people)

      • freijon@lemmy.zip
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        17 hours ago

        with a crypto wallet you’re not relying on a bank that can control when you get access to your assets. but there sure are a lot of downsides to crypto as well.

          • percent@infosec.pub
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            8 hours ago

            Yeah that was the idea, originally (hence why they’re called cryptocurrencies). It’s unfortunate that that’s not what it’s actually used for, in most cases.

      • Axolotl.cpp@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        17 hours ago

        I once tried crypto, I added 10/15€ to the wallet, I couldn’t use them for transactions anymore cuz i needed to add at least 20€, i honestly just left those money there and ignored cryptos ever since; it was not told to me anywhere that i needed at least 20€ for transaction, i expect them to hide even more important infoes about how the shit works if they do not bother to let me know such stuff :/

        Edit: i used USDC i think

        • KubeRoot@discuss.tchncs.de
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          16 hours ago

          Note that cryptocurrencies (typically?) don’t have an official exchange, the official thing is that you get compatible software, might need to download the entire history of the network, generate a wallet (which is a local cryptographic process), and allows you to issue transactions from that wallet (and presumably other funky actions)

          Whatever you used that required 20€ minimum was presumably just some exchange… Though scams are very commonplace in cryptocurrencies. Probably a good idea to avoid them unless you have a specific need and you understand why you’d need specifically crypto for something.

          Disclaimer: I don’t actually use crypto and can’t give you specific recommendations, but I think the technology itself and the idea behind it are cool.

          • Axolotl.cpp@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            15 hours ago

            I see, i guess i got scammed or smth :/

            itself and the idea behind it are cool

            Yeah i agree, though, I think that’s not a good tech anymore and hopefully it will superseeded by tech similiar to the digital euro one which seems way more reliable and works offline

            • KubeRoot@discuss.tchncs.de
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              11 hours ago

              works offline

              Huh, that’s curious, that sounds impossible to make properly secure, since if you’re not verifying the validity of transactions with some trusted third party or ledger (I think it’s called that in crypto), someone could make a transaction, and then locally rollback their state to make another transaction to somebody else, which wouldn’t actually be valid.

              I’ll have to read up on it if I remember, maybe it’s just half-offline, in that you can sign transactions offline if the other party is online to execute them?

              Generally though, whether it’s “good” tech is a rather ambiguous question - I think it’s a good concept that has some ethical problems and big issues in practice, including social aspects of how it’s used. I think most people on the fediverse value decentralization to some degree, so a world where crypto didn’t end up being mostly used for speculation and scams could’ve been interesting.

      • hanrahan@piefed.social
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        15 hours ago

        i have a few dollars in BLOX, pays a weekly income

        https://nicholasx.com/blox/

        We’ll see.

        As to crypto, lots of folks outside the monetary system use it, I r ever lot of Venzualans under Maduro were using it to buy groceries etc Feamily overseas couldn’t get remittances to them (because e of the US) , so they used crypto. Similarly a lot of Africans who were having their currency devalue hand over foot oved some into Crypto.

        I’m sure Cuba uses it because… what choice ?

        • explodicle@sh.itjust.works
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          11 hours ago

          The rugpulls GP is warning about come from centralized assets like that. If you’re trusting your money to some guy, then you’re doing crypto wrong.

      • heartSagan5@lemmy.zip
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        18 hours ago

        And with those crypto headlines, how safe is it to really use crypto for transactions? I think I’d rather just swap a handful of cash at this point.