What do you say to cRyPtO victims? \ stacker news ~AskSN

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296 sats \ 16 comments \ @optimism 7 Mar AskSN

I was chatting with a 86yo owner of a small bar yesterday. He was complaining about the son of a very prominent politician, let's call him Jimmy. Jimmy had not too long ago been explaining the extreme wealth the modern free markets bring to the common person and proposed to "settle his bill in crypto". The owner accepted after this great story and, after installing Coinbase Wallet, was sent about $500 worth of some scam token. Probably needless to say, but it's closer to $0 than $1 now.

How would you respond to this, SN? Show empathy and make a point about the evil of the scammer? Orange pill? Change subjects?

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200 sats \ 1 reply \ @endothermicdev 8 Mar

The extent to which bitcoin has leveled the playing field across the world is just astounding. Whether, by luck of genetic lottery you grew up in Palestine, or on Wall St., bitcoin offers the same access to the protocol and network. It grants global financial access to the most repressed, and limits the power of their dictators and abusers.

And in an era shaped by ever faster productivity improvement, whether by AI or other technology advancement, bitcoin is the first credible solution to the age old problem of spreading around the benefits of our ingenuity. Without it, we risk a dystopian future, where the benefits accrue to an ever shrinking pool of the population while the majority struggle to survive. Our fiat inflationary system is coming face to face with the cold hard realities of technological progress.

All this to say, the world needs bitcoin, and the degree to which it changes the game can't be undersold. It's a true revolution in decentralization and a trust in math and cryptography over politicians. There are no insiders in bitcoin.

It's unfortunate that we still have snake oil salesmen and affinity scams in this day and age, but it shouldn't be surprising. However, if people took a minute to understand what they have in Bitcoin, it's actually quite easy to spot the fraudsters. I'm sorry about your friend, but he clearly didn't learn what bitcoin is, or what it's about before he was sucked in by the lure of "easy money" by a con man.

13 sats \ 0 replies \ @optimism OP 8 Mar

he clearly didn't learn what bitcoin is, or what it's about before he was sucked in

Yes. In this case it was a clear information failure and ultimately I wonder: can we pre-empt the scammers? How do we get high quality information to every anon on the planet that is just running their local business, is not on SN, or X, probably not FB either?

Can we get a reasonable coverage? What's the message? And how do we not make it a religion because that will just put people off?

59 sats \ 8 replies \ @DarthCoin 7 Mar

22 sats \ 7 replies \ @denlillaapan 8 Mar

generally don't agree with Mr. Darth, but here he's got a point!

0 sats \ 6 replies \ @optimism OP 8 Mar

so basically you'd both say HFSP to an elderly person. savage 😂

100 sats \ 4 replies \ @denlillaapan 8 Mar

Yeah, certainly.

I'm big into generational inequity, so won't even feel bad about it

29 sats \ 3 replies \ @optimism OP 8 Mar

Between specific generations or in general? Can you give me the elevator pitch?

100 sats \ 2 replies \ @denlillaapan 8 Mar

Guess it's the same thing?

The generations (boomers and adjacent) that primarily got freebies off

housing to the moon
stocks to the moon
golden age of growth
structurally falling interest rates

A Cantillon effect, but across time and generations.

(I had another post, too, somewhere, but couldn't find it #873783)

100 sats \ 1 reply \ @denlillaapan 8 Mar

here it is! (found it) #855167 @optimism

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @optimism OP 9 Mar

I feel like you're neatly making all the counterarguments yourself there.

There's an intra-generational divide, too, that many people have missed: generations aren't singular units with combined agency and experience. They contain individuals that have a variety of life outcomes

I think this is important, so I'll admit on reflection: respect is earned, including respect for your elders. They had more time to earn the respect, so it's already biased towards them anyway. I guess we can just measure everyone against whatever values we deem important and save ourselves the prejudice.

on and on the endless circle of resent and inequity goes.

I look at it like this: if there are no problems to solve, people get complacent, so it's good to have some inequity between people that already had the chance over time versus those that haven't even had the opportunities to engage with yet. It's also better to not be complacent when you're young, because you'll get these opportunities in a time where it's relatively inexpensive to make mistakes. As you grow older, mistakes become more expensive: you'll have less time to recover.

Bottom line some people will solve the problems thrown at them, others will not. Some will even do it without scamming everyone else and I think that's what ultimately makes the difference to me: the how is important and the how much is really irrelevant: You have gazillions? Good for you. Now pretty please fuck off to your island and get out of the way.

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100 sats \ 0 replies \ @DarthCoin 8 Mar

YES

51 sats \ 1 reply \ @Aardvark 7 Mar

I'd feel bad for him, and change the subject. I'd assume he isn't very open to discussion about bitcoin at that point.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @optimism OP 8 Mar

Yeah I also didn't see a way to do the orange pilling. In the end we let him vent until he changed the subject himself.

32 sats \ 0 replies \ @SimpleStacker 7 Mar

"Sorry that that happened. 99% of crypto tokens are pump and dump scams. The only legitimate one is Bitcoin. It's been operating without issue since 2009, and I use it all the time."

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @OT 7 Mar

If the bar owner didn't convert into bitcoin he would have learned a valuable lesson. A lot of us have learned this lesson the hard way too.

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @nkmg1c_ventures 7 Mar

I'm trying to be less of a c**t lately, so probably "sorry that happened to you"