I generally like Robert Reich and respect his opinions. I've seen a lot of interest in cryptocurrency expressed here and elsewhere. Do you agree with Reich's assessment or does cryptocurrency provide a beneficial function?
I don't know much about it. Thanks for the video though as it was educational.
Overall my feelings on it are...I haven't put any money into it and I'm not going to.
A lot of ways to take this one.
You've got the whole cyber security angle with crypto. Is it hackable? Depends upon who you ask. I've not heard of a technology yet that wasn't hackable. Trust me there are ways. Assuming no effective hack is known yet it's only a matter of time before one is discovered/invented. So the fact it is based wholly upon technology is something that will potentially kill it. Even if hacks don't kill it, with the invent and use of quantum computers and such on the horizon crypto currency will soon be a technological dinosaur.
It's open, decentralized and easily accessible to anyone. That's just not true. It isn't open and easily accessible to anyone. You've got to have the technological knowhow and do dads. It most certainly isn't decentralized. Look up any of the latest studies on cyber currency and you'll discover this is simply a lie. Might have started that way but it sure isn't anymore.
It's a Ponzi scheme. I don't know. I've heard others call it that as well. Is it? I'll tell you this much, I don't see it being a long term player. One way or another it's going to die.
It's not just beneficial, it's critical. Global, decentralized currencies are safeguards against a lot of problems like runaway inflation and currency devaluation/manipulation. There are already two countries that have adopted Bitcoin as their national currency, and Bitcoin isn't even remotely the most useful and functional crypto coin. They will not be the last, either. People shit on crypto a lot, but they're just going to miss the boat. The trends are following the exact same pattern as the usage trends for computers/ the internet. Will coins fold? Obviously. A lot already have. But so have national currencies, even national currencies of countries that didn't cease to exist. Fuck, even in the US confederate bonds were sold and are no longer redeemable. But a lot of that is risk:reward. Same with stocks. There are tons of people who bought high risk stocks and lost everything on them. There is no such thing as a guaranteed investment. And as has been said a trillion times, never invest/gamble that which you can't afford to lose.
Now is actually probably a really good time to dip a toe in the crypto water. There was a huge downturn in crypto (and everything else) and historically crypto markets do well in October.