Crypto means hidden. The word is of Arabic origin, as is the word Algebra.
The excellent Silicon Curtain YouTube channel has published a video which raises some concerns for the international community, regarding Elon Musk's behaviour and apparent beliefs in the legitimacy of "crypto", with words like "crypto coup" making another debut, which for the purpose of discussion here means crypto (ie; hidden) currency, and all denominations-of with Bitcoin being the largest. There is a kind of double-entendre in "crypto" part of "crypto coup" here.
The relatively-innocent, early days of crypto being synonymous with cryptography or Internet culture are long gone. The colloquial definition of "crypto" leans on cryptography's good reputation to grant legitimacy to Pyramid (aka Ponzi) schemes. Pyramid schemes are illegal in most jurisdictions, whether or not they are obfuscated using imaginative rewording like "multi-layer" marketing, or any other deceptive technobabble that invokes a facade of socio-economic progress through technological innovation.
Hidden money influencing US politics is by no means a new concern, and the loudest voices on this issue are the American people themselves. But not being a US voter, it is hardly for me to criticize the people's choice of any US President, however, basic human behaviour and foreign policies are issues that cross borders and there is a concern for the USA I have, that further integrating "crypto" will risk making economic catastrophe highly likely.
The reason I suggest it is highly likely, by the intelligence yardstick definition of over 50%, is the growing skill gap between proponents of cryptocurrency and people educated on, or skilled with the intrinsics of cryptography. The basic graph function knowledge required to profit from markets is not comparable to the complex, mathematical construction of hash functions, but due to the assumption "crypto" might have anything to do with cryptography, there seems to be a popular belief that being good at "crypto" might be a transferable skill into the domain of computer security. Blockchains only use existing cryptography, they do not innovate or bring new hash function designs to market. As for science, Bitcoin and blockchains etc are marketing or psychological science, in the economics scope they may be studied as examples of fraud or criminality, but they have little more to do with computer science than the engineering school does with a burglar who made a crowbar.
The only cryptographic "innovation" is work functions, which are just wasting energy to cost time. Even that is not an invention of Satoshi or the community, as claimed by HashCash, the idea of wasting time on puzzles (or winning money in lotteries) is as old as time. Fun is subjective, if people want to boil whole lakes using the water for cooling for "mining" for fun I will disagree, but in High school we would load up the stacks on our graphic calculators to do the same thing and have 'calculator races'. It's immature entertainment to cost time: "mining" is not serious cryptography that comes out of dilligent threat modelling.
But the security of the whole thing is based on this completely flawed assumption.
As I have previously written, Bitcoin relies on a deprecated hash function to secure all of it's balances. This function is comparable to SHA-1 in terms of brute-forceability, not even the cheapest Huawei router has that enabled by default anymore (DropBear SSH recently disabled it), and this basic Drupal website employs stronger password hashing. SHA-1 is slightly better than it but not up to spec with the current SHA-2 standard. It should go without saying, using deprecated hash functions in new designs is the type of thing that would never pass security review. However, reports by financial institutions gloss over this massive vulnerability, presumably because of conflicted interests or perhaps not wishing to be the person saying the 'emperor has no clothes' on the subject of Bitcoin, but I can only speculate about intentions.
Because Bitcoin is weak, and is the largest denomination within the wider world of "crypto", the underbelly of the whole "crypto" (hidden) economic environment can be said to be soft. If Bitcoin was to fail most other "crypto" denominations would be unlikely to benefit from it's collapse. And there is cross-border systemic risk, with Canadian financial institutions like Fidelity holding significant amounts as part of retirement and investment schemes. Here in New Zealand the KiwiSaver provider Koura has also exposed retirement funds to fake Internet money.
It is a mistake to put a cent into any Pyramid scam and I have a duty to warn. The proponents of "crypto" lack technical knowledge, and apparently their minds are also vulnerable to Russian propaganda. There is an interesting but separate discussion about Bitcoin being hostile and possibly part of 'active' measures against the western economy, but ignoring that for now, the technical debt and reluctance to even admit Bitcoin could be vulnerable brings risk to all it's users, and even people who do not directly use it but may have exposure due to investments directed into it via managed retirement, exchange traded and index funds.
Due to the volume of arbitrage and trade between denominations, a vulnerability in Bitcoin means a vulnerability in the whole scam. A new strategic reserve of "crypto" or a US Treasury blockchain/crypto bond offer would carry the risk Bitcoin does for this reason also.
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