This post is brought to you courtesy of the financial crash/crisis of 2008 (a motivator for the development of Bitcoin and later cryptocurrencies) and a discussion thereon, on CVn.

The whole financial crisis was insane. Even looking back on it from where we are now still gives people a feeling of disbelief. Welcome to the world of Big Money ...

In a nutshell, the economy is in shambles because some guys are afraid their dicks are tiny, to give an over-simplified summation.

CDOs still exist, but they're now called Bespoke Tranche Opportunities (BTOs), because most of us are stupid and won't notice the banks continuing to do the same shit. Banksters and FSPs are still greedy and still attempting to set the world on fire, for their own short-term gain. Central banks, private hedge funds, any financial services organization you can name, it doesn't matter. Fuck them. They really do gamble with people's livelihoods. (The minimum customer funds that banks are required to hold in reserve is 0%. You might as well stash your cash under your mattress, provided it's below the legal limit, of course.) They don't give a shit.

The general rule of thumb is this:

If the profit that can be made from doing this shitty stupid thing is more than the fine we'll pay when the regulators find out, then do it.

That goes for all big businesses, including Google and Facebook, but that's a topic I've already explored.

The Maths is pretty simple at this point: Something spectacularly shitty happens generally every 8 years. The next crash will therefore be next year, probably. It's likely going to get even worse, so buckle up and brace yourselves.

How AIG and friends survived is no mystery: Governments bailed out the banks with taxpayer's money. (Well, that's the simplified version. You think that "your" money is yours, but it isn't; it belongs to the government and banksters, whom use it to keep you in debt bondage. That's why we have crypto: If it's in your account, it's yours and nobody can take it, at least in theory. Crackers have proven otherwise, but that's the fault of exchange and wallet technology/developers, not blockchain itself.) Honestly, how any entity that didn't get bailed out or a handout from government survived as long as it did is the big mystery.

The knee-jerk response to this, of course, is to acquire some more BTC and/or ETH, then, while we still can ... However, if you're one of those misguided fools whom still pays attention to the fiat price of crypto (id est, just about everybody), then you go put out that fire using a can of petrol, why don't you? It's not like the fiat price of BTC (or any cryptocurrency that follows it) is in any way influenced by normal tradfi markets ... Ah, yeah, that ... The thing is, though, that BTC price fluctuates relative to fiat (just like with any fiat currency vs another). Once you stop making crypto vs fiat comparisons, that's irrelevant, but fundamentally misunderstanding the point of crypto is a behaviour present in pretty much the vast majority of people buying crypto to begin with. 1 BTC = 1 BTC (if you ignore the fees for using it, not that anybody does). Because it's free from fees, 1 XNO really equals 1 XNO, always.

Given the low cost of BCH (the second-best choice for me), I'm happy to use XNO, BCH and even MATIC for normal day-to-day purchases (if only I had that option). Hell, people waste enough of it (XNO) adding videos to the queue on CVn (or BAN, the meme equivalent, on JTV). However, I wouldn't even consider using BTC, ETH, and pretty much any other of the top 10 in the same way. The cost of fees is just too damn high! As someone whom regularly converts what I bring in in XNO (from writing here, faucets, CVn and surveys on TipNano) to fiat to suppliment my regular income and pay my bills and expenses, I really wish the exchange(s) I use, or better, yet, the stores from which I buy things, supported XNO. As is, I convert it to BCH first and lose a little (~0.1-1%) on exchanging it to fiat, because that's the second-best option. I can live with that, given how much PayPal charges me for facilitating transactions with international clients whom won't pay in "dangerous and risky" crypto.

There will always be the crypto vs fiat comparison though, because the name of the game is to make lots of fiat from crypto holdings (at least, that's if you're one of the many losers whom fundamentally misunderstand the point of it, a point that seems pretty clearly expressed in the BTC whitepaper, but most people don't read those). Converting from crypto to fiat incurs loss in one form or another, which is why I state that doing so is for losers, even though being practical and living in reality forces me to do so.

Using Crypto for Payments is Still a Pipe Dream for Many

Judging by how many people still use MS Windows vs GNU/Linux, the technological superiority of a technology isn't a significant factor in getting people to change the tech they use, just as logic and reasoning doesn't get people to abandon religion or quit smoking. It has to do with psychology (FUD and marketing): MS is more a successful marketing company than it is a software company and Richard Stallman's radical/evangelical hard-line approach to pushing for free software usage (particularly by businesses, whom tend to view hackers as threats, unkempt and lazy drug-using hippies/radicals) doesn't help.

Sadly, we still need fiat to buy groceries. That's unless grocery stores (and other merchants/vendors) accept Bitcoin (or other cryptocurrencies, such as BCH), which most don't if you live outside of the Philippines. (Why do you think sites like Noise.app are full of people writing in Tagalog?) BTC, ETH and many other cryptocurrencies take a fucking age to confirm transactions (as opposed to the speed of banks?) and fluctuate so wildly in the very short term (few take the long view) that people hoard them and will never actually spend them, which is why I don't care much for BTC, ETH, LTC or even PIVX, ZCH and XMR (despite the fact the last three are privacy coins). I'm more interested in BCH and XNO.

There's the rub, though, isn't it? At least, it is until such time as merchants and vendors embrace crypto and abandon fiat. That's not going to happen any time soon, though, while banksters and FSPs, with spokesmen like Warren Buffet, spout nonsense like "crypto is rat poison" or "crypto is used for money laundering, by criminals" (or any of the other regurgitated FUD). HSBC and Swedebank launder more money per year than any criminals do, but you don't see that making international news without going looking for it, do you? Hell, the US Dollar has its share of use for money laundering, but tPTB aren't calling for a ban on it, are they?

Nano (XNO): The Perfect Real World Payment Method

In short, crypto currently isn't being used in the way that crypto was intended to be used. I mean, who in their right mind would buy a fucking pizza, of all things, using BTC?! Some doofus did, back when 1 BTC cost less than $0.01 ... It is the constant memory of this story that is why people hoard BTC and won't use it as a payment method. Exactly that, and the transaction fees are what undermine it (and ETH) as one. XNO would be (and arguably is) the perfect real-world payment method. It's fast and it's free. But no, the push is still for BTC and that's why the whole process fails to progress. AFAIK from reading about XNO, the whole reason it exists (and has no fees) is so that it can be used as "the perfect real world payment method", whether to pay for a sandwich or a lambo. Now I feel the need to make a sandwich.

People also forget/don't know that ETH isn't intended to be used as a currency. It provides an environment/platform for getting work done on a computer (the EVM). If you want to use it as the former, use a L2 solution like ARB, MATIC or OP.

Crypto Will Make you Rich

Blockchain has yet to find its footing and really take off. It's just there for crypto right now, and crypto is here purely to make people rich (or, at least, that's the mistaken perception people have). If that's the attitude you have, crypto will more likely make you bankrupt. To earn millions, put in billions. (Shhhh, no, don't tell anyone; crypto will only make you rich!) As Sugarfix has commented before, "cryptocurrency isn't even the most interesting use of blockchain technology", just as digital artwork isn't the most interesting use of NFTs.

Crypto is in a bubble right now, exactly the same as the dotcom bubble back in the early 2000s. "Cyber this, Internet that" has been replaced with "crypto this, blockchain that". I've yet to see any Web3 project that actually makes any sense and achieves something that only the blockchain could solve. Sure, there are applications and interesting ideas, but most still incorporate some (mostly unnecessary) aspect, like requiring integration with FB, Google or Twitter/X instead of a blockchain-/Web3-based thing like Hive or Torum (not that I like either of those, but that's beside the point) or Nostr (about which I know almost nothing). Please will someone explain to me how/why using centralised Big Tech in what is supposed to be decentralised tech (or at least pushing towards it) is a good idea or makes any sense? I just don't see it. As someone commented on one of my previous posts, "right now, Web3 tech is really just Web2 in different clothes".

People are too busy trying to cash in on the falling money (as with CashRain) to actually do something properly with what's available, IMO. Change my mind, if you can.