There's an old truism that goes something like "you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear."
In essence, if what you have is crap, making it pretty will only succeed in making it pretty crap. It's stil crap.
Whereas that is an inescapable reality, here in the Cryptosphere there are still lots of people who try to accomplish just that. Or, at the very least, try to deceive others into believing that their sow's ear is actually a silk purse.
Of course, this is not really a post about pig ears so let's get to the point here.
People don't use their heads very much when they are promised "amazing things" in the cryptosphere.
Now, I'll be the first to admit that what I like to call the "feasibility threshold" has been pushed considerably in this industry because we can point to actual examples of projects whose tokens went 10x in a relatively short time.
As such, outlandish promises suggestions get more consideration and traction here than they would elsewhere. That is to say, in the legacy financial markets, if we are shown an investment that promises a "90% APY" it's almost a given that we are dealing with a scam designed to catch the inexperienced and gullible.
But in crypto? 90% returns in a short time do happen... so why shouldn't we believe the pitch person of promising some sky high ROI on our hard earned savings?
Of course, these are difficult times when many people are desperate to make a little extra money... but be careful out there.
Just because something involves crypto and blockchains doesn't automatically make it exempt from the old "If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is" truism!
But people seem to "lose their brains" in ways that are hard to comprehend. It's a bit like buying your cousin a pair of sneakers and thinking that makes him as fast as Usain Bolt.
So Why Doesn't It Work?
In many ways, it's common sense... a bit like debunking those old "chain letters" that used to do the rounds in the 1980's, promising people riches for mailing a handful of letters.
Well, if it worked and were that easy, then everyone would be doing it. And if everyone were suddenly able to double their investment every year, you could be pretty sure that the cost of everything would also start doubling every year... meaning that nobody's actually better off, relatively speaking.
Most marketplaces — be it crypto or your local farmer's market — tend to be "zero-sum games." When someone gains something, typically someone else gave it up. Even if that "loss" isn't what we'd consider "real," there's an opportunity cost.
So What's My Point, Here?
Much as we might like to think otherwise, anything more than a "fair profit/rate of return" is unsustainable, because we have this "corrective mechanism" known as market forces.
It would be lovely to think that we could earn a 20% return rate per month. Some people might be able to, in the very short run... until those market forces take hold and bring things back into balance. Those 1980's chainletters? If you could really make a million dollars as a result of mailing 100 letters, then everybody would have a million dollars... but, moreover, having a million dollars would become meaningless.
Of course, there are probably those who'll chime up with "But Web 3.0," but even that is not as it appears.
Ironically, many Web 3.0 evangelists preach The Gospel of Web 3.0 Prosperity (appearing seemingly out of thin air) while lambasting the legacy financial system for trying to create wealth by printing money. Pardon me, but isn't that just two different versions of "money for nothing?"
As I have said before, it's time for the Cryptosphere — and its many projects — to grow up! It's no longer good enough to just "be in crypto," it's time to start working on what you can DO with crypto and building businesses around crypto, where it's the business that makes you rich, not the crypto, itself.
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CuratorCat 3rd September, 2023