I have over a decade of experience with cryptocurrencies, and at this point I have to advise that everyone stay away from it.

I keep getting burned by stolen cryptocurrency, despite being careful or not even taking any action and getting cryptocurrency taken from my wallet; for instance, I was using Atomic Wallet to store some of my cryptocurrencies, and even though I didn't do anything such as click on a link in a malicious email or on a website, somehow some hackers managed to nearly empty it. My first incident where I lost some bitcoin was from the Mt. Gox hack. My most recent incident was today, when I was trying to figure out how to claim an airdrop for a so-called "fork" of PEPE, or figure out if there actually is an airdrop for it (normally an "airdrop" means you automatically receive something if you already have something else, such as 1 BCH for each BTC you already have); I found a medium.com article led me to a bad website that apparently can hack Metamask wallets that connect to it.

Over time, I have come across or heard of case after case or stories of stolen cryptocurrency. If you are in law enforcement, you might be familiar with how bad it is. If you're not in law enforcement, just ask someone who you do know in law enforcement and ask them about it; I wouldn't be surprised if they told you that they know it's bad.

You probably are not ever hearing of any incidents of hacking, scams, or fraud involving cryptocurrencies in the news or any other media sources (with exceptions like FTX scam, because there was such a huge amount of money and a large number of victims involved), but you'll be able to find some information of many other victimized individuals or cases with some digging around on search engines - Google, etc.

Apparently, there are many victims of cryptocurrency theft who are either ashamed to admit that they've been victimized, or maybe even in denial that they've been victimized. I, myself, am not ashamed to admit that I've been foolish by believing that cryptocurrency is a sound financial system.


Cryptocurrency is a disaster and financially destructive to its victims; it's a failed experiment in terms of security to preserve digital assets. It's terrible right now, it's been gradually getting worse over time, and I suspect that it's going to get much worse at a much faster pace.

If you have any cryptocurrency, you might want to consider selling it off before it gets stolen from you. Tell anyone & everyone you know - family, friends, co-workers, neighbors, clients & customers (etc.), that right now it's a bad idea to mess around with cryptocurrencies.

Perhaps one day there will be solutions to fix the cryptocurrency environment, but right now it's broken; I'm not talking about the general conceptual technology per se, but even with that there are cases of problems, such as Terra Luna minting going completely out of control to try to prevent its "stable" coin from decoupling from the US dollar.

This is something that I really regret saying (because I'm not a fan of the Federal Reserve or any private central banking system that creates money out of nothing by loaning it into existence and charging interest for it, as well as because inflation is theft), but for now, just stick to conventional cash, banks, credit cards, and your checkbook.

Wouldn't touch crypto with a 10 terabyte pole.

Yeah, it's a no-go for me.

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I can see why people would trade on momentum, but to hold it? I don't think anyone should hate their money that badly.

(February 3, 2024 at 8:32 pm)Jackalope Wrote: I can see why people would trade on momentum, but to hold it?  I don't think anyone should hate their money that badly.

I gained a good portion of cryptocurrency from mining it, and I've basically held on to it ever since then and overall, it has performed way better than the stock market or anything else (owning gold, silver, etc.).

There are several different cryptocurrencies that I own, but I swapped some of the Bitcoin and Ethereum that I mined for them. I haven't sold any cryptocurrency for US dollars, and so far, I haven't purchased anything with it; I've been saving it to continue to take advantage of its continuing growth trend in the long run.

Cryptocurrency is also extremely volatile, but that has huge advantages for investors/traders if they know how to apply something to it referred to as "technical analysis."

The idea of cryptocurrencies is to have a medium of exchange with advantages over conventional money; for instance, the US dollar loses value to inflation; cryptocurrency has been doing the opposite in the long run. There are other advantages, such as being able to send and receive money over long distances quickly & inexpensively, and not having to deal with the same types of burdens as there are with gold, such as storing and transporting it.

The problem with cryptocurrencies is essentially that it's not practical or feasible for the average person because of its risks, complexities, and many other problems. Those issues have to be resolved in order for society to widely accept and adopt it as a medium of exchange.

Since I retired 9 years ago, my money people have managed to make those bubble gum wrappers nearly double in value. I vetted them by watching what they did with my wife's parents' money. When I asked them about crypto, I was told that it is unregulated and they can't invest in it. Good enough for me. I made my living in engineering, and rely on proven people to do the money part. I used to do our taxes, but when we moved 47 miles from my workplace, I pressed my wife into doing them. She used TurboTax, which I used prior to the turnover to her. We now have a real tax accountant, since we're both out of our depth. Recommended by our money people. It doesn't cost that much, and we know that they know the laws, since even my money people use them. Investing is risky enough, without going the high risk route.

(February 3, 2024 at 10:23 pm)Fireball Wrote: Since I retired 9 years ago, my money people have managed to make those bubble gum wrappers nearly double in value. I vetted them by watching what they did with my wife's parents' money. When I asked them about crypto, I was told that it is unregulated and they can't invest in it. Good enough for me. I made my living in engineering, and rely on proven people to do the money part. I used to do our taxes, but when we moved 47 miles from my workplace, I pressed my wife into doing them. She used TurboTax, which I used prior to the turnover to her. We now have a real tax accountant, since we're both out of our depth. Recommended by our money people. It doesn't cost that much, and we know that they know the laws, since even my money people use them. Investing is risky enough, without going the high risk route.

This. I am far too close to retirement for the kind of volatility and risk associated with crypto.

(February 3, 2024 at 10:34 pm)Jackalope Wrote:

(February 3, 2024 at 10:23 pm)Fireball Wrote: Since I retired 9 years ago, my money people have managed to make those bubble gum wrappers nearly double in value. I vetted them by watching what they did with my wife's parents' money. When I asked them about crypto, I was told that it is unregulated and they can't invest in it. Good enough for me. I made my living in engineering, and rely on proven people to do the money part. I used to do our taxes, but when we moved 47 miles from my workplace, I pressed my wife into doing them. She used TurboTax, which I used prior to the turnover to her. We now have a real tax accountant, since we're both out of our depth. Recommended by our money people. It doesn't cost that much, and we know that they know the laws, since even my money people use them. Investing is risky enough, without going the high risk route.

This.  I am far too close to retirement for the kind of volatility and risk associated with crypto.

Same.

(February 3, 2024 at 10:12 pm)neil Wrote:

(February 3, 2024 at 8:32 pm)Jackalope Wrote: I can see why people would trade on momentum, but to hold it?  I don't think anyone should hate their money that badly.

I gained a good portion of cryptocurrency from mining it, and I've basically held on to it ever since then and overall, it has performed way better than the stock market or anything else (owning gold, silver, etc.).

There are several different cryptocurrencies that I own, but I swapped some of the Bitcoin and Ethereum that I mined for them. I haven't sold any cryptocurrency for US dollars, and so far, I haven't purchased anything with it; I've been saving it to continue to take advantage of its continuing growth trend in the long run.

Cryptocurrency is also extremely volatile, but that has huge advantages for investors/traders if they know how to apply something to it referred to as "technical analysis."

The idea of cryptocurrencies is to have a medium of exchange with advantages over conventional money; for instance, the US dollar loses value to inflation; cryptocurrency has been doing the opposite in the long run. There are other advantages, such as being able to send and receive money over long distances quickly & inexpensively, and not having to deal with the same types of burdens as there are with gold, such as storing and transporting it.

The problem with cryptocurrencies is essentially that it's not practical or feasible for the average person because of its risks, complexities, and many other problems. Those issues have to be resolved in order for society to widely accept and adopt it as a medium of exchange.

Technical analysis is bullshit, it never worked for actual investments and it doesn't work for cryptocurrencies which have nothing behind them to analyse.

99.999999999999% of all crypto schemes are or were scams, and with the FTC's pre-christmas ruling to allow indirect trading of bitcoin in the US I fully expect that to be exposed as a scam too in the not too distant future.