Good morning, everyone!
Over the past few months I have been going down the rabbit hole, by watching countless podcasts (mostly about Bitcoin), reading a bunch of articles and following the cryptocurrency space in general... I'm even reading a book about Bitcoin, The Bitcoin Standard, by Saifedean Ammous. 😊
The main thing I learned is that "Decentralised" is being used as a generic catchword by many people and many projects in order to sell their "fish" and get rich fast... thus deceiving a lot of people in the process. Or maybe not, since most people actually don't seem to care about that at all, they only care about making money. Centralised, censurable, dirt, FIAT money, that's all they care about.
Let's face it... the majority of folks in the cryptosphere are only here for Exchange Rate Speculation.
This is a huge problem in this space, as the hype around the markets get so high and so extreme that a lot of people without any integrity (or interest in Crypto at all) pop up and start taking advantage of it. One might think that more users and more projects means that Cryptocurrency adoption is rising... but no, that ain't true at all. Sadly, it only means that a lot of scammers are using Crypto in order to make a living.
But not all is bad. Cryptocurrency adoption is, indeed, growing. Just not as much as it appears.
We have to filter through all the garbage and noise to understand that a lot of good people are working and focusing on what matters: taking the power back from the bankers, multinational mega-corporations and politicians... and empowering the individuals.
We can find some of these good people in projects like Hive, for example... or Avalanche, Polkadot, Origin Trail or Tezos... but, to say the truth, these are a small group of people in the space. Most of the honest guys are working for Bitcoin.
But let's go back to the point of this post. What I wanted to talk about is decentralisation. Real decentralisation, not just for show.
Here's a good example:
In this case, a scammer was able to trick the owner of a collection of NFTs published in OpenSea to share his private keys, thus allowing himself to be robbed.
Now, if the OpenSea project was really decentralised, as it claims to be... the NFTs which had been bought by users wouldn't have been affected at all, they would remain in the buyer's wallets and the drama would have been kept to a minimum. However, as you can realise by reading the comments in that thread, a lot of buyers got their NFTs stolen in the process, which proves that OpenSea is... a Centralised Exchange, after all.
More, the owner of the collection was able to convince the OpenSea support to Freeze all the stolen NFTs.
Wait... say what? Freeze funds... that are supposed to be in a decentralised blockchain? 🤔 Is this a joke? No. No joke. Just a centralised project (OpenSea) in a semi-centralised blockchain (Ethereum...)
They might seem decentralised but these sort of constant shenanigans prove they are not. At least, not enough.
I know that it's no fun to be robbed and see our possessions disappear. But that's one of the downsides of Cryptocurrency and we should all be very careful to prevent that from happening.
If we go around screaming, shouting and freezing people's assets every time there's a problem, we don't need a decentralised blockchain at all. We would be much better served by a traditional centralised platform.
Yes, I went there: Ethereum is full of problems... and not as decentralised as it claims.
However, there are worse platforms out there. Solana have been making the news lately, much because of a pump (most likely) organised by the Venture Capital Fund which owns it, Alameda Research. With a little help from their friends at the FTX exchange, they can pump SOL price pretty much when they want.
Even compared to Ethereum, this project is a big pile of dong. If you want to verify if Solana is indeed a Blockchain, you would download some software to run a full node. Well, well, well... guess what? You can't run a full node. You can only run a partial node and you must trust the "4 Trusted Validator Nodes" run by Solana itself in order to synchronise with the blockchain.
So, how can we even be sure it's a blockchain? Short answer: we can't. It might well be a MariaDB database which is running the whole thing in the background.
These guys are selling NFTs, convincing people that they are the next big thing... and what will happen if they, one day, decide to turn of their "4 Trusted Validator Nodes"? I tell you what: all those SOL tokens and NFTs disappear into the ether and investors/gamblers will get burned.
This is a single example in a sea of scammers, hoaxes and marketing stunts.
In fact, the problem has become so rampant that a new term was forged:
- DINO: Decentralised In Name Only
This is why it's so important for people to stop trusting and start verifying. Stop blindly following all the youtubers with open mouth disease (you can identify them easily as most of their YouTube videos have a thumbnail with a guy with a shocked face and open mouth.)
Instead, start really investigating the projects by yourself.
Start by digging through their page, check out the software. Is it open source? See if it's possible to run a full node by yourself. If the requirements are too high and too expensive for a regular person or, if you cannot run a full node at all, these are huge red flags and you're likely dealing with a DINO.
Also, check out when the project was started. Most of the honest projects have been developing all the way through the bear market. If a project only appeared after the Bitcoin price started to go up a lot, you can be sure that either these guys are just following the money train... or worse, they are mere scammers.
I bet that most projects will simply disappear without an explanation when the prices start to fall. This happened in 2018 and it it happen once more. It's inevitable. Scammers are only around... while there's money to be made.
Meanwhile, all the credible projects and honest teams will carry on as if the falling prices didn't affect them at all. This is a sign of honesty and integrity... and this is what you will find among the best communities, specially in the Bitcoin community. Those people have been working through rain and sun and they will do it again, and again, and again.
These are the kind of people you can trust. These are the people who are fighting for a better world, not just for themselves but for all of us, including you and me.
I'd like to end this post with a quote from Lina Seiche. You probably have seen her cartoons about Bitcoin already, even if you don't recognise her name.
"If you are stressed about the price, you have too much exposure in relation to your conviction.
You can have all your money on Bitcoin and not be stressed but you need a lot of conviction for that.
So... if you're stressed you should either:
- Learn more about Bitcoin... or...
- Reduce your exposure."
I believe this is a great quote and simply perfect. Short, simple and true.
Well, that's all for now... Sorry about the rant but I start to get tired to see so many bad actors in this space. I know they will be weeded out during the next bear market, as always. But I wish we didn't had to go through all this... bulshit.
Bitconneeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeect! 😅 Yeah. Scammers.
This is what I love about crypto, as a leftist. But all the get-rich-quick, not-really-dentralized, scammy people make it reeeeeeeeeeally hard to make this point to my fellow lefties. Like yes, would I like the Star Trek Future where everyone has what they need without money and we look at the Ferengi with confused Pikachu faces? Yes. But do I think we're going to go from wholly reliant on centralized fiat/banks to no money in one giant leap? No, barring some Mad Max style apocalypse (which, the way the world is going... ). I think decentralized crypto is how we free ourselves from that influence and control in the first place. Once the power is in the people's hands, we can decide what to do with it. It's pretty anarchist really, but it gets tainted by the scammy people and people don't trust it. Admittedly if you're techno challenged you might not be able to tell the difference between a worthwhile project or a scam, which only adds to the problem.
Totally agree!
Back in 2017 I was sad because of the Bear Market, now I see why it is useful. The only way for the scammers to go away... is to remove the financial incentives that make them stay. Unfortunately, a lot of good people also suffer along the way.
Now my main rule is: "If these guys appeared after the bull run started... ignore it." 😊
Nice post @trincowski, the best time to be active is in the bearmarket, thats when real wealth are created. My best projects that have been developing all the way through the bear market and that was Theta :)
Hahahaha, good rule, really. Also my spidey senses go up if it's got backing from a bank or a bank proxy (whatshisface, from JPMorgan Chase, who is into crypto; I don't trust a banker).
Oh shoot I always forget that I have this here: !ENGAGE 10
ENGAGEtokens.As soon as the bitcoin exchange rate starts to grow, a lot of newcomers appear in hive right away. with the fall of the exchange rate, these users disappear. They want easy and fast money. More often, they just beg for tokens.
Yeah, that has been happening every single time... I wonder what happened to Golos. Is it alive? Do you still use it?
Mostly the rich individuals. The few cents what most people earn on the Hive blockchain will not empower them. Most of us cannot even earn back the price of the internet subscription.
I used to say the same... but it's definitely possible, if you stick around for a few years. 😊
Loved your take on the cryptocurrency markets as a whole. There are indeed DINO projects everywhere in the space. ☄️
🦕 🦕 🦕 🦖
So I’m glad that you wrote a rant saying DYOR. Solid fundamentals demand this intellectual respect and I’m proud to see that Hive and its various projects haven’t stopped building be it bull or bear markets!
I’m also glad that your taking the time to read “The Bitcoin Standard”. Now THAT is a great book! I’ve been learning about BTC since 2012 and Saifedean Ammous’s book still informed my investment strategies!
For anyone wanting to get the big picture... that book is a must read.
Have a good day and thank you for making this a wonderful post!
@wil.metcalfe
Thanks a lot, I'm still at the beginning of the book. Quite interesting so far. 😊
Yeah, HIVE was one of the few projects that never stopped, with people building all kinds of frontends, communities, exchanges and even games. It's a pity the tokenomics aren't a little bit better, as it would attract more people.
Nice post mate! I enjoyed the read
Look at all those twits with their open-mouthed YouTube thumbnails lol
We all need to be realistic. Whenever there's growth in crypto, only a portion of that growth represents actual, long-term, authentic adoption by individual people that understand the true purpose and goals of this tech. It might only be 5 percent of the total, maybe less
It's still growth, which is positive, but we all need to be weary and vigilant of the motives of the other 95%
@bunny11 and @aturtlewithwings, check this out! 😀
Exactly, there are a lot of investors and gamblers coming into the markets... but very few users and builders. The real growth is there, though. Things are evolving a lot... even if many of that goes unnoticed.
Thanks for stopping by!
Yay! 🤗
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Very informative pat my friend. Yes for sure cryptokarket is growing with more new people investing in crypto. Here before dogecoin thing peope barely knew about crypto but now everyone is familiar with this word.
That's true... but we need the builders more than the traders. 😏
That's true my friend
So touching 🤗
Thanks a lot!
Amazing
Thanks!
I usually lose interest after reading the first two to three paragraphs on a long post, but it didn't happen here. Nicely explained. I came to know a few new things as well. Thanks.
!ALIVE
Thanks, I'm happy to hear that! 🤗
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There is at least one way to determine which projects are the most decentralized, and that is to simply wait and see which ones are left standing, when the exit scammers can't find enough people to scam anymore, the hackers can't find a blockchain that can be hacked, and the regulators can't find any centralized entities to go after.
In the meantime, those of us who have some understanding of what's going on can share info on decentralization. Good info you've provided about Solana. I was checking them out recently to see what the price pump is all about. From their slick looking website it seems like they have a lot of dApps, but on further investigation, quite a few of those dApps are dead or alpha.
Hive just has to keep doing what it's doing to be one of the last standing.
Solana looks very fishy to me... and it looks like I was right. Their recent hiccup proved just how centralised and unreliable that network is. They might as well have used something like MySQL or MariaDB. Their project doesn't take any benefit from the blockchain technology. They sacrificed all the good things in order to pursue speed... Facebook and Google have been doing that for ages, without any blockchain. 😏
everything will be alright..
Nailed it.
Brilliant article, @trincowski !! Thank you for helping me navigate - it's great to have folks filter down the wisdom to us at the relatively 'new' end of the spectrum in crypto/ decentralised world... @ninasophia and @exoexplorer - I thought you'd both be interested in this, too.
Thanks, I'm glad to hear you liked it! 🤗