this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2025
206 points (99.0% liked)
Technology
74130 readers
3508 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
The main use case for crypto is for peer to peer transactions that do not require the permission of any third party (or government). A secondary use case for crypto is the enablement of self-executing smart contracts.
The problem is that the financial speculation aspect of crypto has eaten everything else. "Number go up" is now the main use case, and people do t actually transact much with crypto anymore. And the only type of smart contract that has gained any popular use whatsoever is the type that makes more shitty crypto tokens. Any general utility it had years ago evaporated when it became too valuable to transact with.
Except for those criminals and fraudsters you mentioned: they do put crypto to good use evading government oversight of their transactions. In this respect, crypto is no different than a briefcase full of cash. Yes, you could legally stash a briefcase full of cash in your house, but there are so many better (trackable) places to keep that cash that if the cops found that briefcase in your house wbile executing a search for other reasons, they would cite the existence of that briefcase as proof of sometnig nefarious.
I've heard such arguments before, I don't find them convincing in the least. I don't believe you've thought this through.
You bring up cash? So what? You can use banks for crime as well. I believe one of the major US companies that got rescued in 2008 had several billion USD on the books that no one came to pick up because of disclosure rules.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg, there are multiple massive red flags with your arguement that don't require specialist education/experience/knowledge.
Yes, banks are used for crimes on a massive scale. Usually that’s not available to small time people.
Crypto can be used for criminal activity with a low barrier to entry. There are several use cases where things maybe should not be illegal in the first place. Like buying drugs for example.
Banks too are available for crimes for "small time people" if you know what you are doing.
The direction of this discussion is a red herring. My point was that beyond financial speculation and crime/fraud, crypto has no viable (not purely theoretical) use cases.
I agree with you.