When I was growing up and playing outdoors without boiling alive was a thing, the peer pressure most fun thing ever was hanging out at the mall. Dispensable income was at an all time high. A lower middle class family could afford a home. And the mall had all the fun stuff to blow your extra money on. Tacky Spencer’s Gifts black light posters, dropping quarters into Space Invaders, the food court that actually had all food establishments, the fountains, the elderly morning exercisers in the air conditioning.
And the kiosks. The little spots outside an actual mall store, clogging up the walking areas. And a super popular business for those was the growing cell phone market. Because at that time people having a rotary dial phone was still a thing. And despite the gematria of all that nostalgia not having changed the thought of playing arcade games, eating greasy pizza that wasn’t dropped off by DoorDash or dialing zero to talk to a human being that wasn’t dedicated to a single business (dialing anything at all instead of pressing smartphone keys) is alien to multiple generations. As for the cell phone kiosks, there was a strange lack of endorsement coming from the sellers. They weren’t leasing space in the mall long term. Just a cheapo little kiosk where the salesperson badgered anyone who walked by with anything resembling a gaze they might be interested in purchasing a cell phone. And if you got your first phone there, odds are they used the old technology of the land line instead of their own product. Isn’t that a little odd?
Now the internet is the mall. Empty commercial office space whose best purpose now is money laundering and tax loss write offs. And the scammers are screaming for your business. And while you’re here on the internet looking at ads for $300 glasses that supposedly cure color blindness, taking horse dewormer for Covid and pretending you can win money based on a quartback’s birthday and the team mascots gematria, why not USE THE LATEST AND GREATEST CURRENCY! See here good people, step right up and buy bitcoin with actual money and pretend that it’s real money!!
These are your new kiosk salesman, who aren’t really using their own product. Not by choice, don’t get me wrong. There’s a lot of legitimate thinking that crypto is awesome. But as we stand right now cryptocurrency is a misnomer. It is not actually a currency. This is from the definition of what a currency actually is:
Currencies are issued by governments and central banks and are usually accepted at face value.
Currently there are no countries that let you pay your federal income taxes with crypto. You can whine all you want that your jar of fake pennies is legal tender but the would be receiver doesn’t have to accept them. And if governments don’t accept crypto, why should anyone else? So far there are three U.S. states that do:
Utah uses a third party processor. Sure. Because nothing says actual trust like claiming you take it but needing to actually jump through more layers to get the transaction done. When these extra layers are added it’s a whole other level of things that can go wrong.
Concurrent with the Honey scam I just talked about, the Yotta scam recapped in that video details people losing their life savings based on financial tech related grift. Do you really need another layer of South Park style “Oops, it’s gone!” banking instead of government insured stamp of approval on your money actually being money? Every cryptocurrency stash is potentially a ticking time bomb of, “No, it’s not $250,000 you have, it’s worth $0.”
I take comfort that my financial advisor firm does not delve into cryptocurrency at all. The official line is that it’s too speculative which I think is politically correct speak for “this is not actually money.” When things go wrong with deregulation, lack of regulation and Ponzi scheme political lobbying for less regulation - they go spectacularly wrong.
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