I think parent commenter's argument is that it's hard to get excited about crypto just based on the fact that it allows some people buy drugs online. While millions of investors lose a ton of money to crypto scams.
If you generalize from drugs example, crypto (may) help you do things governments do not want you to do. Drugs are just one widespread restriction; and you may view Western governments as generally competent and benevolent (to be clear, I do not), and drug prohibition as necessary evil.
But it's hard to claim that most governments around the world and competent and benevolent, and easy to get excited about people being able to bypass things from capital controls and ruinous inflation, to outright censorship and confiscations. Not that I think crypto would actually succeed, but I hope it does.
I would love to agree with this argument. And maybe 5 years ago I would have. But so far crypto has not demonstrated that it can really solve the issues you are listing. Yes, it can result in some capital outflow from oppressive countries, but that does not have a big impact on these people or the regimes. The stories that are being written are not of a hard-working farmer who was able to save some monero and move it to a different country anonymously. Instead, we are seeing millions of people lose their savings and/or investments. I acknowledge that things might change in the future. But as of now I am not optimistic.
The main difference here precisely "not your keys not your coins". Replacing govt-influenced/controlled banks with some rando pseudo-bank is only a net positive for a really terrible govt...
And because of the complexity, I doubt crypto will succeed in its goal. It might get regulated but then it's probably no better than banks, since it would be restricted from the uses a govt doesn't like similarly to money in a bank.
The problem is HN is an exhausting circular firing squad when it comes to crypto. I could extol the benefits of private currency on philosophical and moral grounds but this won’t convince a lot of people. So I try to put it in more concrete terms and then it’s either criticized or brushed off.
If you believe as I do that government control of money is a mistake for many different reasons, then crypto is a revolutionary technology. If you say “Bitcoin has all the problems” then I refer you to monero.
No, that's not the issue. The problem with crypto is the grift -- and the inability to see what's a grift and what's not. I believe the term "rug pull" is the vernacular in the crypto community you may be familiar with.
Nikola (US public company) was a grift and thousands of retail traders lost money despite all the protections of the SEC and other regulators. The CEO is going to jail but most people will get very little in compensation, if anything.
If the current system is so flawless, why does this keep happening? Clearly the system is not flawless.
I myself am extremely technical and able to understand the crypto industry. I can separate scams from not-scams.
Similarly, the Machine Learning / AI industry is chock full of charlatans and scammers who have stolen billions from investors. For example, Watson from IBM is a hyped technology and product that has now been shuttered.
The unique element of crypto is a retail investor can put their life savings into a scam. This is unfortunate but not a reason to ban the tech.
Nothing stops a lower-class person from entering a casino or using a sports betting app and losing their house. The pearl clutching on HN is legendary.
By many accounts moving around and dealing with large values in cash is inconvenient and cumbersome compared with the relative ease of moving crytpo between holders.
To the point where cartels end up with literal huge piles of money in warehouses and resort to complicated operations to try and move it across borders.
