No, I read the whole thing. Twice. So are you saying that the only thing that Piper, in particular, and crypto "projects" in general, do is to turn real world money into Internet Magic Beans, and then cover it all in bafflegab to hide the fact that what they are actually doing is stealing? I mean, you said that you felt like the people that you were working with were earnest, and on the up-and-up, but what is it that they were actually working on that had any utility that justified people paying them real money, beyond enjoyment or gambling? Because, beyond simply stealing, I can't for the life of my figure out what these "projects" actually do that a bank or a Microsoft Access database can do better, faster and cheaper in the real world.
I apologize. I appreciate your careful reading. Yes, I am saying that as far as I can tell, the only thing that DeFi projects in general and Piper in particular do is turn real world money into play money tokens that can only be used to buy other tokens. When I say that the team was on the level, I mean that the project was not a rug pull, and that there was no outright fraud and theft a la FTX, Celsius and others. The platform performed as advertised: It allowed its 'depositors' to use Piper's tools to more efficiently find the highest yielding assets, similar to the way mutual funds or index funds do in traditional finance. Funny as it may sound, the people at Piper -- most of whom were software engineers, only a few of them were in marketing, etc -- seemed to sincerely believe that they were in the business of creating an alternative to the traditional financial infrastructure. I guess I would compare it to religion. Take the Catholic Church, for example. To outsiders it may look like an elaborate engine for transferring money from credulous, superstitious fools to a fabulously wealthy & powerful institution in exchange for magic connection to imaginary beings, but that doesn't mean that every priest or nun is a crook or a swindler. They sincerely believe there is immeasurable value in what they're doing. The engineers at Piper seemed to really believe in crypto. They invested lots of their own real money in it. But like I said, I came to believe as you do, that it's 100% bafflegab.
There was probably some kind of pro-forma NDA, I don't really recall. But the whole point of blockchain is that anybody can read the code. And there's nothing especially secret about anything I said in my post, if that's what you're hinting. Anybody can purchase a Piper token, and with that they get a say in all decisions taken by the Piper DAO.
I'll ask you what I ask about every crypto "project" that I encounter: Beyond taking real people's real money and turning into arcade tokens with no real world value beyond the equivalent of the enjoyment of five minutes playing Donkey Kong, what does the "project" actually, a) claim to do, in the real world, and b) actually do? I get the whole claim of, "you can earn yield," but I can do that without all of the hassle of dealing with crypto by just going to a bank. And "be your own bank" comes off as credible as, "be your own brain surgeon."
I'm not sure that KeninMN's question was answered by the article (which I did read). Because I don't think you tell us exactly what real-world benefit Piper claims to be offering to depositors, and by "real world" I mean money. It seems to me that it could work in one or both of two ways: (a) you will get more "fiat currency" out than you put in after, say, a year or (b) you will wait until Piper tokens become effectively a currency you can use to buy and sell real goods and then you'll be rich. If they aren't offering one of these benefits, then there is nothing there. Except option (c), which is money laundering for the criminal class.
Thank you for this comment. You and Kevin are correct that my essay didn't answer that question, but I did try to address it, at least a little, in my reply to his comment. I believe that most "depositors" to Piper -- basically *all* non-criminal people who buy crypto —— do it for your reason (a), on the 'greater fool' theory, that is, "I may be a fool to buy this useless thing for $5, but next year I'll be able to sell it to a greater fool at $10." However it's worth noting that 'true believers' in crypto, of which there are millions, believe in something that is very close to (b). That is, they believe, you might not ever be able to use Piper tokens to buy a quart of milk, but you may, someday (soon?), be able to use *Ethereum* tokens to do that -- and Piper tokens are easily convertible to Ethereum. You used to see a lot of that kind of utopian talk in the early days of Bitcoin, and especially in the early days of Ethereum and DeFi, which came a few years after Bitcoin appeared on the scene. But that kind of belief is basically a religious one, and I agree that other than 'greater fool' type speculation, the only proven use case for crypto is money laundering. I have a hunch that Bitcoin is more useful for that than Ehereum is, but that's a detail.
No, I read the whole thing. Twice. So are you saying that the only thing that Piper, in particular, and crypto "projects" in general, do is to turn real world money into Internet Magic Beans, and then cover it all in bafflegab to hide the fact that what they are actually doing is stealing? I mean, you said that you felt like the people that you were working with were earnest, and on the up-and-up, but what is it that they were actually working on that had any utility that justified people paying them real money, beyond enjoyment or gambling? Because, beyond simply stealing, I can't for the life of my figure out what these "projects" actually do that a bank or a Microsoft Access database can do better, faster and cheaper in the real world.
I apologize. I appreciate your careful reading. Yes, I am saying that as far as I can tell, the only thing that DeFi projects in general and Piper in particular do is turn real world money into play money tokens that can only be used to buy other tokens. When I say that the team was on the level, I mean that the project was not a rug pull, and that there was no outright fraud and theft a la FTX, Celsius and others. The platform performed as advertised: It allowed its 'depositors' to use Piper's tools to more efficiently find the highest yielding assets, similar to the way mutual funds or index funds do in traditional finance. Funny as it may sound, the people at Piper -- most of whom were software engineers, only a few of them were in marketing, etc -- seemed to sincerely believe that they were in the business of creating an alternative to the traditional financial infrastructure. I guess I would compare it to religion. Take the Catholic Church, for example. To outsiders it may look like an elaborate engine for transferring money from credulous, superstitious fools to a fabulously wealthy & powerful institution in exchange for magic connection to imaginary beings, but that doesn't mean that every priest or nun is a crook or a swindler. They sincerely believe there is immeasurable value in what they're doing. The engineers at Piper seemed to really believe in crypto. They invested lots of their own real money in it. But like I said, I came to believe as you do, that it's 100% bafflegab.
Sounds like a 21st C Ponzi scheme. BTW did they require that you sign an NDA?
There was probably some kind of pro-forma NDA, I don't really recall. But the whole point of blockchain is that anybody can read the code. And there's nothing especially secret about anything I said in my post, if that's what you're hinting. Anybody can purchase a Piper token, and with that they get a say in all decisions taken by the Piper DAO.
If you haven't seen "Line go up" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ_xWvX1n9g&t=3s&ab_channel=FoldingIdeas you really should. It's a bit dated, and focused on NFTs, but it's two hours of great explanation of why all of "crypto" is just one giant scam.
Yes, thanks. I watched that twice when it came out. It's a very good explainer that requires no computer science or finance background to understand.
Yep, just what I thought. Good to have it confirmed by someone with the toolbox to look into it.
At your service, mum.
I'll ask you what I ask about every crypto "project" that I encounter: Beyond taking real people's real money and turning into arcade tokens with no real world value beyond the equivalent of the enjoyment of five minutes playing Donkey Kong, what does the "project" actually, a) claim to do, in the real world, and b) actually do? I get the whole claim of, "you can earn yield," but I can do that without all of the hassle of dealing with crypto by just going to a bank. And "be your own bank" comes off as credible as, "be your own brain surgeon."
I'm going to take it by your comment that you did not read the essay. Cheers!
I'm not sure that KeninMN's question was answered by the article (which I did read). Because I don't think you tell us exactly what real-world benefit Piper claims to be offering to depositors, and by "real world" I mean money. It seems to me that it could work in one or both of two ways: (a) you will get more "fiat currency" out than you put in after, say, a year or (b) you will wait until Piper tokens become effectively a currency you can use to buy and sell real goods and then you'll be rich. If they aren't offering one of these benefits, then there is nothing there. Except option (c), which is money laundering for the criminal class.
Thank you for this comment. You and Kevin are correct that my essay didn't answer that question, but I did try to address it, at least a little, in my reply to his comment. I believe that most "depositors" to Piper -- basically *all* non-criminal people who buy crypto —— do it for your reason (a), on the 'greater fool' theory, that is, "I may be a fool to buy this useless thing for $5, but next year I'll be able to sell it to a greater fool at $10." However it's worth noting that 'true believers' in crypto, of which there are millions, believe in something that is very close to (b). That is, they believe, you might not ever be able to use Piper tokens to buy a quart of milk, but you may, someday (soon?), be able to use *Ethereum* tokens to do that -- and Piper tokens are easily convertible to Ethereum. You used to see a lot of that kind of utopian talk in the early days of Bitcoin, and especially in the early days of Ethereum and DeFi, which came a few years after Bitcoin appeared on the scene. But that kind of belief is basically a religious one, and I agree that other than 'greater fool' type speculation, the only proven use case for crypto is money laundering. I have a hunch that Bitcoin is more useful for that than Ehereum is, but that's a detail.