I wasted years of my life in crypto

I've never understood the initial arguments about Bitcoin, no matter how many times they've been explained to me.

The block chain is, and always was, an extremely inconvenient database. How anyone, especially many intelligent people, thought it was realistic to graft a currency on top of such a unwieldy piece of technology is beyond me. Maybe it goes to show how few people understand economics and anthropology and how dunning-krueger can happen to anyone.

Now the uninformed gambling on futuristic sounding hokum? THAT is easy to understand.

That being said, I'm sorry the author had to go through this experience, the road of life is often filled with unexpected twists and turns.

GNU Taler is a working implementation of "digital cash" in the spirit of Ecash. Since it doesn't come with its own currency, it cannot be used for gambling. It is quite telling that it has seen essentially zero adoption in the "crypto" scene.

I got into crypto back in 2011/2012. I used PayPal and bank wire transfer extensively back then, as I bought and sold a lot of stuff internationally - so to me bitcoin seemed like the natural next step, and a godsend to people like me. At my height, I had 100 BTC.

Eventually big events in my life happened, and I sold my coins out of necessity. I found myself unemployed, separated, and broke - so I sold everything I owned. I cashed in around $40k or so from the coins, which helped me pay off my debts and get a down payment for my house. To be honest, I personally don't know anyone from way back then that became filthy rich off crypto, most sold off their stuff when every boom cycle started again, afraid that it would be the last one...the people I know that became rich, were those that went all-in on crypto around 2017/2018. They dumped everything they had, and managed to 10x-100x their investments.

Of course, had I held onto those, I'd be set for life now. But hindsight is 20/20

But with that said, I remember around 2017/2018 when the first "real" boom occurred - that's when everyone pretty much abandoned ideals, and went into it for the money. Lots of people made life-changing money back then, and the idealistic dream was pretty much dead. "Store of value" won the war, and soon after "moon lambo".

At least for me, the writing on the wall was clearly that crypto would evolve into just another financial instrument that big finance would pump and dump periodically. Though I could not foresee a crypto-friendly US gov. entering the picture.

Considering the transaction time and cost, crypto never made sense. As fast as I can tell, it's been pure speculation since its inception.

Glad to hear the change of heart here and the guts it took to write it up. I know that's not an easy thing to do, and it likely burned some bridges.

The point about it being gambling, and therefore, taking advantage of idiots, yeah that rings true. The mass proliferation of gambling and the true compulsive addiction and ruin of mostly young men, it's hard to look at oneself and state that they caused that pain for other and their loved ones.

The next step is, of course, to do the very hard part: use the money gained for good. The author mentions that they are a hypocrite for only speaking out after making their money. They need not be so. Finding legitimate ways to use the ill gotten gains for good is a bit of what they built their skills in, after all.

I hope to someday see the next post of theirs detailing how many people they helped and how many lives saved, families reunited and made sound again, based on how they used this new wealth for good.

They are very far from the end of their story, but the midpoint, so to speak, has been passed.

Okay, so if your time felt wasted, that must mean there were better uses of your 20s.

But, how else would you have driven towards your goal of building a new financial system?

Alternative to archive.is

https://xcancel.com/kenchangh/status/1994854381267947640

I always wondered what "clever" people expected from crypto, apart from getting rich quick schemes. Boring.

We had such know-it-alls still with their pimples from Frauenhofer and Max Planck giving presentations. Even back then, 99% percent of the audience were skeptical, but sadly too many decision makers are just emperors with no clothing. There were so many immature, useless loud speakers given a junior professorship because old morons have FOMO too. That must have sucked for the valid academics with proven achievements. I'm glad I'm not one of the ones waiting in queue. There no single project having any sign of impact, naturally. While that can be said of a lot of academic work, crypto: more buzzwords, even less delivered.

You feel old when you read "crypto" and your first tought is about cryptography.

I’d hesitate to say it’s wasted. Aren’t these some of the most complex, electronic, decentralized systems in human history? That skillset is going to be more and more important the more and more computers there are.

Wasting your 20s sounds like you did nothing in your 20s. Instead you actively made the world worse by building a casino with power hungry technology.

don’t view it as a waste

you understand how to construct complex & stimulating games that people will play compulsively for money. that’s good.

next, craft games for which you can guarantee a house edge. should be small yet assured.

you’re already an experienced casino game developer