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this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2023
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Asklemmy
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If you really wanted a conversation, you wouldn't be talking like a condescending douche as you did in the above quoted part. It wouldn't fly offline, or very far outside of
. At all.
Sure, but you keep dae le devil's advocating for it anyway, under pretenses of what it could be if only so many things were different to the point that there's nothing left but pretenses of DAE LE SCIENCE(tm) in such a fantastical different world. In short, I'm accusing you of bad faith argumentation and I haven't seen anything to convince me otherwise.
No wonder you don't want bullshit, because you brought a heavy heaping steaming pile of your own, and it involves either credulously buying into the lie, or spreading the lie, that your transactional number magic is totally key, essential, or somehow just very useful, pinkie promise, for taking that world for... who exactly? Roughly the same group of rich assholes that have staggering majority stakes in the blockchain magic you keep hyping up, even while supposedly accepting how damaging and problematic it actually is in the living world that actually exists and not the fantastical alternate scenario you keep hinting at where the pedantically-pure number magic is allowed to work its miracles and somehow does it without further burning the planet down and wasting even more energy?
I don't believe what you claim your intentions really are, you've already gone full
in sheer condescending arrogance in your last comment, and even if I took what you said at face value, what you're talking about doesn't even really seem productive, meaningful, or even interesting if you totally don't believe cryptocurrency grifts but just want to argue for the sake of arguing about what they could be if so many variables were changed that cryptocurrency (and the sheer energy and pollution disaster that is currently applied blockchain technology) is best not being a factor at all.
TL;DR You're just congratulating yourself at this point with sheer
arrogance and announcements about how you're refining the sharp katana of your wit so you may cut down the ignorant and show them the light of The True Uncorrupted Blockchain or... whatever. I don't want to give you a hand with that. 
Alright, here it is without any of the bloat. My argument, and then more importantly, why calling out incorrect terminology even matters:
[click to expand]
A scam is a fraudulent scheme. (That's not some obscure technicality, that's what OP meant, and what business articles and English dictionaries generally define it as.)
Cryptocurrency, such as Bitcoin, isn't fraudulent (it acts as consumers expect it to: a valuable item capable of digital anonymous exchange).
None of this is defending cryptocurrency. I am not defending it, and I keep saying that I agree it's bad. I am saying it is not a scam, people use it and they aren't being swindled.
.
The reason why making this kind of distinction matters is that critique of anything should be relevant. That's a bit abstract, so I'll illustrate with a much more extreme example that I've seen from other people.
If someone ignorantly supports Joe Biden, labeling them a literal neo-Nazi has zero rhetorical value there, but also zero analytical value. Anyone with a basic knowledge of what Nazis are will understand this is inaccurate and either an ignorant accusation or bad faith name-calling, and will probably dismiss their further points. But also, someone who actually believes Biden is a neo-Nazi will not be as effective in combating Biden's regime (this will be explained later).
Pointing out that Biden is a racist, nationalist, fascism-enabler and the head of a genocidal regime, and therefore supporting them is harmful, on the other hand, is much more realistic. It still conveys that Biden is disgusting and deserves a bullet. It still conveys most of the same ideas. But this time, the critique makes a more accurate and therefore convincing and sturdy claim.
Having a more accurate understanding of Biden will allow us to better predict how they will act, and how to prepare. Biden isn't going to say "Death to the Jews, let's put the trans in camps". Biden is going to slip out shit like "you ain't Black", make laws that hurt the disadvantaged in more subtle ways, and will fail to act to defend trans people. Biden is going to be more subtle than any neo-Nazi. A neoliberal and a neo-Nazi will do different acts and require different approaches to get mainstream people to realize how horrific they are.
Maybe Biden is a strange example for prediction, but another case would be DeSantis and Trump. Yes they're both horrible, horrible fuckers who deserve the same ending. But, how will they both act differently? Will one be more concerned with corruption, self-image and self-gain than enacting ideological goals? Will one be more effective in implementing their goals than the other? That can be the difference between life and death for many, many people.
It's not just a trivial technicality, using appropriate crits is the difference between being credible and being ridiculous, and applying the right classifications can be the difference between understanding something and misinterpreting it. And that will have serious consequences.
Is there even a purpose to your "the bad thing is actually good if almost everything about how it's being used and what it's doing to society and the planet was different somehow with very different societal conditions" devil's advocacy, besides sharpening the katana of you wit or whatever you're going on about then?
Your motives here at this point seem trivial and ridiculous to me, especially if I take your claims at face value about how you're not actually supporting cryptogrifting,
then throw dictionaries at me about what fraud actually 
is and how SCIENCE!(tm) can totally be furthered by way of the planet burning carbon dumping cumulatively worse waste of electricity that is technically not fraud at a coding level so that makes it innocent of all the fraud done with it. 