It's definitely a sign of the times that I didn't even consider that! I hope you're right.

Be a better detective if you're going to accuse people of AI slop. The negativity it brings isn't worth it.

Nope. It took off during COVID when crypto-bro YouTubers pivoted to Pokémon and other TCGs. And now even Coinbase has started working in Pokémon card speculation.

It's a much more valuable vehicle he's ridding on the "after" picture.

Wow, that's interesting I'll check out the debacle, thanks

That is not even a modern low floor bus. The Benz is worth more.

What’s indicative of photoshop here?

The numbers on the gauge are completely wrong. If someone made this then they either sourced AI slop or are inattentive to details

For every person that gets a payday from crypto there’s probably 50,000 that lost money. It’s just gambling.

AI would put the gage in the middle between 4ʼn and fa⁵t.

Not on crypto but on both stock and commodity trading. My risk averse friend asked me how much I lost. I didn't tell him it's quite big but something I could tolerate 😅

My normal investments are fine for the long term, but yeah, I've got losses on my trading. I refined my strategy and studied Peter Lynch's growth investment philosophy. Sure enough, it worked by picking only stocks with the biggest market shares, does not receive any attention, competent leadership and excellent financial fundamentals that point to high growth.

IMHO the problem crypto leftists have had is that our implementation choices generally ignore the "decentralized" requirement to avoid difficult economics problems. We try things like having nonprofits checking IDs, or creating yet another money supply so we can pay the devs from it, or recreating treasury bonds because it looks greener.

What we need isn't "open source money, but generous". We need to build a new economy outside the old one, and what we're selling won't shoot to the moon overnight. While we can contribute useful tools, we aren't the architects of that future and can't be in charge even for now.

Yeah, now crypto is synonym of alt-right-incel-fash-neonazi-dickheads as Andrew Tate or Llados.

forced to drive to work vs leisurely taking the bus to go on an adventure

Yea, that's one of the few good things that cryptostuff and the Blockchain.

That and the fact that you could, theoretically, do implementations that are actually progressive (instead of regressive), and where the ones that actually deserve rewards are the ones who get that (sort of a "Proof of Contribution" or a "Proof of Value": if you actually add value and contribute to make things better, yoy get rewards, but if you're only a leecher, then you get punishments, sort of torrent now that I think about it; but if you're poor, you don't have to contribute that much or nothing at all, because any difference is acceptable only if it favors the least advantaged, and favoring them is precisely what it means to contribute and add value).

IMO the goals of leftists within crypto is:

1. protect the unbanked, underbanked, and even banked from the exploitative financial system: we’re making progress. There's is demonstrable proof of this. Even just the base protocols (Bitcoin, Ethereum) offer real relief from tradfi. A very simple example is sending aid to Gaza.

2. remove US hegemonic power by undermining the dominance of the US dollar: we’re making progress, but some things like USDC are actually reinforcing American dominance. The influx of institutions into the crypto space has really undermined this.

3. move away from capitalism and asset speculation to collective ownership (governance tokens), trade of useful goods (digital or physical), and savings protocols: we’re not making very much progress and are actively moving against this. This is where Breadchain / Bread Coop comes into play. There's so much potential, and some things have been built ... but overall it's been slow and big disappointment as we watch Capitalists actively co-opt crypto. The amount of scams, VC vaporware, rugpulls, casino games, etc seems to grow by the day. I truly believe there's genuine use cases out there, but crypto right now is mostly just ultra-capitalist speculative garbage.

It's been sad to see crypto leftists like Joshua Davila (author of Blockchain Radicals) move away from crypto and pivot into AI. sigh

Pro Tip: build a time machine, travel back to 2009, buy $100 worth of bitcoins at $0.00076 each, sell in 2013 at $1000 ea (roughly $130 million).

Unless you mined bitcoin instead of trading it - especially early on, when it was practical on a simple home computer. People were essentially plucking money out of thin air.

What are you talking about? You think gold or silver had to be “lost” in order to have value?

Precious metals as an investment kind of are 'lost' temporarily to be fair, silver being used to store value is silver denied to productive uses of which it has many.

Back then bitcoin was probably worth less than a penny per coin.

I’m so lucky that my work gives me a free public transport pass. It’s 25 mins from my door to the office with 10 of that being walking. I still have a car, but I dont need it for most days. Plus it would cost me like $180/month for parking at my work’s building. Hard pass.

it was worth significantly less

Ohhhh yeah - at some point in 2009 coins were worth less than 8 hundredths of a cent.

I like how bitcoin has no idiotic ID requirements so the government is almost entirely dependent on you to report your income in it.

If you travel back that far, there's no need to buy them. Just start mining them. It was super easy at the beginning. I kinda wish I hadn't been so lazy back then and done it myself.

Besides, I'm not sure there even was $100 worth out there available to buy at that price.

Is that really why you think they have more? Lol. You are funny.

Are you also saying you do have what the average baby boomer had at your age, and this is how you spend your free time? Talking online like this? Damn that's fucking sad. The world is truly bleak, man. I tell you.

Hold them warm for the cartels. You helped them get armed after all. They love Bitcoin and people like you, because you give them a lot of power. You are like their little slaves, their cookie clickers, building up their future wealth to harvest. What a nice lad you are.

You will never have real power or change in your life. You will never know what it was to live the "American Dream". Keep sleeping, though. Maybe someday :)