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BBC:
The lure of making a quick buck has always attracted young people to invest in risky assets. For Generation Z, it is the volatility - and the decentralised nature - of digital assets such as cryptocurrency and NFTs which appeals. But they are unregulated, meaning there is little investor protection.
"All my friends were talking about [cryptocurrency] so one day I just decided why not just jump in and see if I can make some money," says 20-year-old Paxton See Tow.
All he needed was his phone and trading thousands of dollars' worth of assets was only a click away.
The gamification of trading is cited as a key attractant for Gen Z investors. Is that good, because it draws more people into investing, or dangerous?
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How Gen Z is Hooked On Cryptocurrency and NFTs
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(Score: 5, Insightful) by number11 on Friday May 20 2022, @12:33AM (3 children)
One could argue that most fiat currency doesn't either. But the difference is, fiat currency is useful. You can go to the store and buy stuff with it. Transaction costs are nil, or if you're using a credit card, a few percent absorbed by the merchant. Crypto has a lot of transaction friction, transaction costs are high and there are delays, and most merchants won't accept payment that way. What the hell can I buy with 0.01BTC? It's turning out that it's not even super useful for money laundering, they can track your transaction if they want to badly enough. It isn't "decentralized" in any real way, it's just that the places where it is centralized don't answer to anyone but themselves. At least with fiat you can vote a government out, or haul out the guillotines.
So it's like tulip bulbs. The value is that somebody else might give you more money than you paid. Or not. At least you could use the damn tulip bulb to decorate your lot with, even if that isn't worth much money.
Some people believe UFOs are interplanetary aliens, or that you could run your internal combustion engine on water, or crypto. If Gen Z wants to put their money there, it's their choice. Eventually they'll have to come to me, because I've got a working perpetual motion machine and they don't. Just don't come whinging to the rest of us when a software bug makes your "investment" evaporate. Or that it fizzes even if everything is working perfectly.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 20 2022, @04:08AM
Fiat currency has a state behind it.
Depending upon the circumstances of the particular state, there is anything from a lot more backing the fiat currency to a fuck ton more backing the fiat currency than with cryptocurrencies.
States have tax receipts, current and future.
States have assets.
States have armies and police to enforce the usage of their currency.
Most* nations have the ability to control their money supply
*not EU common currency ones, though, nor the several small nations that have adopted the US dollar after their own currencies were devalued to zero value.
(Score: 1, Troll) by darkfeline on Friday May 20 2022, @06:00AM
The fun thing with fiat is that the government can just print a bunch of currency and devalue the currency that you possess. Or authorities can prevent you from sending or receiving money. Zero transaction costs doesn't help you when your assets are frozen.
"But I have nothing to hide!"
You had better not find yourself in the wrong place at the wrong time then, like in the vicinity of a peaceful wrongthink protest.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Friday May 20 2022, @06:27AM
I think the real difference between crypto and fiat is that there are powerful entities that require I transact in fiat. Countries recognize various things as currencies, and if they don't then there's no compelling reason to deal in them. This is why the El Salvador thing was such a big deal for Bitcoin--it takes away this argument, but just a little. A quick googling reveals that in addition to BTC, USD and the local currency are still valid currencies there (although the local currency is not used) so you don't *have* to have BTC to function in their economy [elsalvadorinfo.net].
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