"I was in crypto long before people even heard of it.
At the peak of the (non-speculative, but still speculative) hype I remember following religiously many interesting projects from nav to sia, from ark to whatever, was an active member on all these people's platforms, following startups that wanted to sell energy in the balkans through smart contracts, etc, etc.
Then in autumn 2017 I remember Bitcoin splitting in two different chains, one that would later become known as Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin (or Bitcoin Core). It was absolutely crystal clear that Bitcoin Cash was going in the correct technological direction, but it was blatant that people in Bitcoin (Core) controlled the narrative on bitcointalk, reddit, etc. It was by then also crystal clear that cryptocurrencies could be validated without this insane waste of energy (see Ethereum's POS). It was also crystal clear that there were many cryptocurrency projects that were technologically simply better and more sound, could process insanely more transactions at a fraction of the energy of Bitcoin. It was crystal clear that lighting network would not work. It was crystal clear that 90% of the price of cryptos was sustained by unbacked fake tether and that the real amount of money was peanuts compared to what market caps would make you believe. Very little liquidity.
Then I started myself asking questions, what am I really trading in?
I started questioning everything I took as face value.
Bitcoin is like gold? That's mental. I can't just release another gold tomorrow. I can't fork it. I can literally (maybe not me, but someone popular like Elon) go on GitHub and download the code for Bitcoin/Litecoin or many better cryptos and get people to use it. In fact people do that and have created countless new "gold"s with billions in market cap. Litecoin was originally just a better reimplementation of Bitcoin. Did they create a new gold? Doge the same or the hundreds of currencies out there.
Deflationary currencies? That's mental. There's 0 incentive in spending them, there's only incentive in hoarding and holding. Why would you buy a Tesla in Bitcoin today if tomorrow Bitcoin's gonna appreciate? And why would I buy it tomorrow, if in 2 years it's gonna appreciate and be even scarcer? Deflationary currencies can't work as currencies.
Technology? Nobody gives a goddamn fuck and Bitcoin's dominance is a clear proof of it. All people care for is how much dollars or euros can get for their Bitcoins, nothing else matters.
Actually why would you even hoard money at all? Money is worthless. Unless you like staring at dead national heroes and monuments printed on paper, it's worthless. You only want it because people around you want it, but money has no intrinsic value, fiat or crypto. Actually fiat does retain at least a bit of it, because of government trading in it, and contracts using it, but even then, what's good into having money if you can't trade it? If something has a value only if someone else wants it, then it has no value, it merely has a price.
Rich people are rich not because they have much money (most rich people don't have much of it), but because they have land, estate, shares in companies making money, art, whatever. Nobody is a billionaire because they hold a billion dollar, but because they have stuff that's worth that amount.
At the end of the day I realized that all there was in crypto was a cult into getting more and more people convinced of wrong ideas. Crypto combines everything people don't get about money with everything people don't get about technology.
Look, as Buffett says, I know what I have if I have all the land in Texas, or all the apartments in downtown London, or all the shares of Coca Cola. I can put a value on that. But Bitcoin? I can have all the bitcoin in the world and I can do jackshit with it. Nothing at all. I can only hope someone will pay me for it.
And as Buffett (or Dimon) say, everybody is free to do what they want with their money, and I have no idea whether Bitcoin will go to 1M in a decade or something. Might be it.
But I know that the only thing it will have in a decade will be a price, and nothing else.
I got rid of all my cryptocurrencies early december 2017 after coming all these realizations, and I always only encountered hate from cultists that "you don't get it", fuck off, I was [developing](), deploying and launching cryptocurrencies in 2014 when people thought it was monopoly money and mocking me.
Getting out of crypto was by far the best decision I've done, and nothing since 2017 (even though I followed and still follow the sector) made me change my ideas. In fact not once in 2017 I've met someone who promoted cryptocurrencies to be anywhere near knowledgeable at neither the economic or technological factors to sustain arguments with me. Most will throw bullshit around and say that you don't get it and stay poor (hint, I'm not poor at all, and definitely less than 99.99% of crypto cultists).
If someone speculates and makes money with it, I have nothing but praise, the same praise and awe I have for 0dte monkeys bravery and craziness, but if someone will want to get me or any of my friends involved I will say what I've said before. Money is worthless, crypto even more, the economics and technology does not work, and nobody gives a fuck anyway about the technology or using it. People don't want trustless systems, they want simple systems they can trust.
Oh, and small addendum. Smart contracts are nice, but they can only work for stuff that does not interact with the real world. They can work for stuff like gambling and few other things I can think of (you can implement a fair casino that will always pay), but no, the moment it has to interact with real world events (insurance, sports betting, etc), it's useless and you're back at square one."
