The crypto scam: still nothing but a con for crooks

Mission District, SF

According to NBC News:

Today a growing number of people in the United States have crypto kiosks at their local grocery stores or gas stations. There are roughly 30,000 bitcoin ATMs (BTMs) in the United States, according to Coin ATM Radar, a website that tracks them. The Coinstar machine where they haul in loose change for cash might now also sell bitcoin. Bitcoin Depot, North America’s largest BTM operator, has kiosks in 48 states and is still expanding. The operators can charge users hefty transaction fees, and the stores often receive payment for hosting the BTMs.

These machines (and other brands) are in every corner store in my home neighborhood which is full of poor workers and immigrants. Can't blame the folks who take a flyer on this thing; I've even seen charities boasting they'll take contributions in crypto. It must be real, right?

Nope, it's not. Here's economist Paul Krugman with the true story: 

Crypto Is Still for Criming

... the entire crypto enterprise is corrupt. Money-laundering and scams that exploit naïve investors aren’t unfortunate behavior that taints a potentially useful enterprise. For crypto, they are the whole game, more or less the only reason cryptocurrencies exist.

That may sound like an extreme statement, but you should bear in mind that Bitcoin, the original cryptocurrency, was created in 2008. That makes cryptocurrency ancient by tech standards — not much younger than the iPhone, much older than Apple Pay. Ever since crypto’s invention, enthusiasts have promised that blockchain tokens will find widespread legal use cases, displacing conventional means of payment, any day now. But it keeps not happening.

At this point, 17 years after crypto arrived on the scene, there are still no — I repeat, no — significant legal use cases. This is despite many efforts to make crypto a real medium of exchange. ...

But if crypto has no legitimate uses, why are crypto assets worth more than $3 trillion? Well, the marketing of crypto has been brilliant, with many small investors in particular still being sucked in by the combination of technobabble and libertarian derp. Promotion of crypto by legitimate enterprises, which profit from crypto sales, has been relentless. Venmo is a digital payment system that actually works and is in widespread use — even the fruit and vegetable stand around the corner from me takes it. But every time I use Venmo it tries to sell me crypto:

And while crypto has failed to find legitimate uses, it has flourished as a vehicle for illegitimate uses: extortion, money-laundering and, as we’ve seen, bribes to politicians....

Ah, now we know why Donald Trump and his merry band of crooks have become crypto evangelists. Just another way to rob the American people ...