A cryptocurrency, or crypto, is a digital asset that was meant to be used as a decentralized medium of exchange, but that hasn't really worked out, so it's mostly used for speculation¹⁾ by upper-class adult men²⁾ with excess disposable income and a high tolerance of risk.³⁾

These communities are usually 'pretentious' and will invent sesquipedalian words to sound smart, pretending to care about technology, and allows middle-aged men to pretend that they aren't being 'left in the past'. In a way, it's like a modern midlife crisis of sorts.

“The Times 03/Jan/2009
Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks”⁴⁾
– Bitcoin's genesis block

In the late 2000s, the housing bubble burst, sparked the Great Recession, and the banks were given a controversial bailout. The anti-capitalists logically began Occupy Wall Street, but the hyper-capitalists believed interventionism was the issue,⁵⁾ and conceptualized a decentralized 'unregulatable' currency. This would become Bitcoin and the events were etched into the 'genesis block' as a reminder.⁶⁾

However, it was mostly a niche amongst ideology-driven libertarians for the early 2010s, then came the whole Ethereum surge that ran until 2017.⁷⁾ It crashed,⁸⁾ but the stragglers would congregate at Twitter,⁹⁾ then came the COVID-19 pandemic, with the media fussing over NFT sales and the unusual amount of celebrity endorsements.¹⁰⁾¹¹⁾ As awareness rose, it'd naturally see major pushback.¹²⁾

The blockchain is basically a 'decentralized activity log', which acts as a distributed ledger and relies on a consensus mechanism, like proof of work or proof of stake. Neither are efficient.^{15)16)17)18)19)20)} Meanwhile, mining relies on processors,²¹⁾ a mining pool, and a wallet, but it's not the early 2010s anymore, so you'll spike your electricity bill, plus countries with 'cheap electricity' have already wisened up.

A crypto wallet is needed to hold cryptocurrency, but there are many types of crypto wallets available. Most of the commercial wallets that get advertised, outside the Twitter echo chamber, are usually custodial wallets. However, there are crypto wallets that give you a 'wallet address', which you could use to exchange crypto with other wallets or exchanges. The main four wallet types are listed below:

From there, you'd have to find a cryptocurrency exchange (e.g. Binance, Coinbase, Kraken, etc.) or use a Bitcoin ATM. If you are meticulous, be warned that most exchanges follow know your customer guidelines that are meant to combat money laundering, so you will risk the 'de-anonymization' of your wallet as everything is public, nothing is private on the public blockchain, though this is partially by design.

In the past, cryptocurrency had a reputation of having highly volatile transaction fees, so you probably weren't going to use it to pay for anything important or tangible.²²⁾²³⁾ However, times have changed since the days of NFTs and discussions of dApps replacing banks, now you can get a 'crypto debit card' with implied transaction fees. How much does this actually change? The fuck if I know.

During the 2010s, new ransomware would start asking for cryptocurrency,²⁴⁾²⁵⁾ and while telemarketing scams (e.g. refund scams, tech support scams) still rely on victims buying an unusual amount of gift cards, it has since been documented that these gift cards are laundered over a crypto exchange where it loses almost half of the value.²⁶⁾ As a result, some countries have high taxes on crypto to combat this.²⁷⁾

Decentralized finance (DeFi) is a 'blockchain-based ledger' which plans to remove third-party intermediaries and service fees from financial transactions, relying on some decentralized application (dApp) to execute smart contracts to record said transaction on the blockchain, though fees and interests rates still apply. The obvious downside is everything is public, nothing is private, plus it's a hacking target.²⁸⁾²⁹⁾

A non-fungible(interchangable) token (NFT) is an encrypted URL which had 'artificially scarce collectable' status following alleged high-profile sales in 2021,³⁰⁾ but crashed since memes are finite,^31)32)33)34) then came the weird 'crypto art' movement. As many have warned, you wouldn't own what it represents,^35)36)37)38) the asset image can vanish^39)40)41) or be stolen,⁴²⁾ they don't sell well,⁴³⁾ and there's a lot of art theft.^{44)45)46)47)48)}

There is a rough total of 15,000,000+ cryptocurrencies. However, most of these 'altcoins', 'memecoins', or 'shitcoins' aren't worth mentioning, unless you're a weirdo who treats them like penny stocks. In order to keep this manageable, this section will mostly focus on notable cryptocurrencies that have been 'mentioned in the media' that I've been around, or relevant to the subjects I've written about.

In short, the cryptocurrency phenomenon has mostly overstayed its welcome,⁵⁹⁾ and the 'ideal times' to enter have long since passed, yet it continues to linger. Before Big Tech eventually realized that Web3 was not Web 3.0 and pivoted towards artificial intelligence, below is a short recap of what 'crypto mania' was like during the pandemic, the backlash, and a few observations that I thought were worth mentioning.

• Twitter is an echo chamber and does not reflect real life. It should not be considered neutral when its owners have bought in, past^60)61)62) and present,⁶³⁾ and houses a sizable crypto community.⁶⁴⁾
• Gorillaz never sold those NFTs. This was massive news when the fad began,⁶⁵⁾ but the media just forgot to report that it was silently cancelled after the substantial backlash.^66)67)68)
• Discord's founder had teased crypto integration⁶⁹⁾ and people, at the time, fucking hated it.^70)71)72)
• Square Enix attempted a pivot to blockchain^73)74)75) and sold off several of their IPs.⁷⁶⁾⁷⁷⁾ Matsuda then stepped down after almost a decade as president.⁷⁸⁾ Final Fantasy XIV was unaffected.⁷⁹⁾
• The Mozilla Corporation, which had accepted crypto donations since 2014,⁸⁰⁾ decided to shelve this donation method indefinitely due to overwhelmingly negative attitudes towards crypto.^81)82)83)
• Gumroad hinted at an NFT pivot,⁸⁴⁾⁸⁵⁾ but the backlash would send them into damage control.⁸⁶⁾

• This is an informative article. This should not be interpreted as financial advice.
• If you're actually serious: mind the hype and speculation, identify the support level instead of being another greater fool who buys at the top, and try to avoid succumbing to the groupthink.
• The alleged Bitcoin founder's name, Satoshi Nakamoto, is rendered in katakana (サトシ・ナカモト), but there is a full kanji variant (中本哲史) which would say 'central origin, wise history'.
  • Satoshi can be interpreted as 'intelligent', which has led to jokes about the name meaning CIA, but an issue with this theory is that it technically assumes the surname is last instead of first.
• Historically, Kabosu (Doge)⁸⁷⁾⁸⁸⁾ and Balltze (Cheems)⁸⁹⁾ have both promoted NFTs.
• Personally, I think any investor using 'gm' for 'good morning' is in too deep. If you bring this to me, I will joke about it meaning General Manager, Gamemaster, General Motors, etc.

• Stock market

• Coin360 - Cryptocurrency heat map. Similar to the stock market heat map.
• Fear & Greed Index - An ominous gauge calculating the general mood around cryptocurrency.
• Web3 is going just great - News feed on the “future of the internet” that some claim.