92
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 06 Feb 2026
92 points (98.9% liked)
World News
39338 readers
477 users here now
News from around the world!
Rules:
-
Please only post links to actual news sources, no tabloid sites, etc
-
No NSFW content
-
No hate speech, bigotry, propaganda, etc
founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
Cryptocurrencies have various use cases:
In most cases, they do more harm than good.
About medicine:
https://www.darkowl.com/blog-content/dark-web-pharmacy-and-illegal-px-medication-sales/
This appears to be a sweeping statement that would be very hard to confirm or deny.
Yeah this is what you have to deal with when governments prioritise profits over the people's health. It's just a matter of risk management.
The burden of proof is on who makes the initial claim, in this case, the seller. In traditional markets the state forces pharma companies to prove their claims, but in the dark web it's the wild west. Great way to scam people.
In traditional markets, I'm denied entry because I don't have a prescription my doctor refuses to give to me. So idk what the benefit of traditional markets is supposed to be to anyone in the same situation.
And once you find a good seller, you can stick to them and spread the word. Obviously there are risks of scams and fake product, but this is the fault of the government barriers to traditional markets rather cryptocurrencies.
Hell, even if it wasn't the government's fault, it would be nature of black markets, rather than crypto currencies (the latter which is just a tool).
People on this post act if crime and black markets were invented by the schmeing Mr. John Bitcoin or something.
Lmao that's priceless. Sorry you gotta deal with this system. Medical care should always be free and accessible.
Paying for criminal activities does not necessarily only include spy movie shenanigans. Lots os banned pharmaceuticals are sold through crypto, including abortion pills and HRT hormones. I doubt we're ever going to agree on sanctions, but hopefully we can still find a middle ground on people getting access to necessary pharmaceuticals in countries that ban them, even if it is a crime.
Though to be fair most of that is done on more stable and cheaper currencies like Montero.
Replace crypto with cash and all those things are true, and yet...
The point of crypto is to remove control of currency, so does it do that or not?
The point of crypto is it is controlled via programmed rules, depending on the type, which in theory would make it more fair if coded properly.
You're talking about programming control, I'm taking about macroeconomic control. Switching to crypto removes many of the levers of macroeconomic control, or it shifts the control over to exchanges, mediators (courts), miners, validators, whales, and - probably not what crypto boosters want to hear - governments, who remain the power brokers and can easily assume these roles. Moreover, if crypto boosters think banks won't use their enormous capital, power and overall economics expertise to shift into one of these roles, they're delusional. I feel like crypto boosters think that banks just "don't get it", and this is ludicrous...banks have hundreds of years of institutional economic knowledge and experience. Economics doesn't just get invalidated by crypto.
All of this ignores the fact that crypto is highly susceptible to volatility and scamming overall. Crypto has a larger more complex attack surface at the application layer, and this makes it substantially more risky particularly as malicious technology advances in that domain and can quickly outpace the technology required to secure against it.
Look I don't have time to point by point give my takes, however I find it very funny when volatility and scamming are brought up as if that's not rampant in literally every economic system.
I also don't see how a transparent ledger with programming to ensure payments complete as expected is more risky then the opaque banking system also running nearly entirely online just behind closed doors in banks is any better.
Haven't we already learned security through obscurity is not actually security?
I will say, the corporate/banking takeover of BTC happened over a decade ago now, so agree with you there, which is why it's now "digital gold" instead of its original stated intent of digital cash.