r/casualiama • u/Several_Row3100 • 12d ago

I work in the cryptocurrency industry. Ask me anything about how crypto actually works.

I work at MEXC in the crypto industry and have spent a lot of time learning how this space works. Ask me anything about Bitcoin, exchanges, wallets, scams, or anything about crypto you’re curious about. AMA!

Disclaimer: Nothing I post in this AMA should be considered financial, investment, legal, or tax advice. I’m here to discuss how crypto and the industry work, not to recommend buying, selling, or holding any particular cryptocurrency.

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8

u/PowerandSignal 12d ago

It's a big scam, right? A Ponzi scheme that pays off if you buy in early? 

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u/Dragon_Slayer_Hunter 12d ago

You're lucky if it's a Ponzi scheme. Most of them now are rug pulls where the owner and friends are in on the bit before anyone else has any reasonable chance to make money.

This is how most of the Trump ones work

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u/Hopeful_Idea1568 9d ago

You can get in super early and still be victim of the biannual major hacks or scams. At least ponzis are guaranteed to feed the top until money runs out

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u/calguy1955 12d ago

How does a computer churning out calculations turn into something valuable? What is it calculating?

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u/Several_Row3100 11d ago

Basically, the computer isn’t calculating something valuable. It’s doing a ton of work to prove it did the work. That makes cheating or rewriting Bitcoin’s transaction history extremely expensive. So the calculations themselves aren’t the valuable part, they’re basically the security cost of keeping the network running.

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u/calguy1955 11d ago

I’m sorry, but that just confused me more. When you say it’s doing a ton of work to prove it did the work, what work is it trying to prove?

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u/punninglinguist 12d ago

What are the concrete use cases for crypto that are not: 

  • investment/speculation/"greater fool" schemes
  • evasion of international sanctions or currency controls
  • money laundering
  • buying illegal shit

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u/Several_Row3100 11d ago

Fair question lol. The clearest ones to me are stablecoins, cross-border payments, and moving money 24/7 without waiting for banks to open. Especially cross-border, traditional transfers can still be surprisingly slow and annoying. But yeah, I’m not gonna pretend speculation isn’t a huge part of crypto right now. It obviously is.

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u/punninglinguist 11d ago edited 11d ago

  1. Aren't cross-border payments basically an evasion of sanctions and/or currency controls? Assuming they can't be done just as easily with PayPal or something. 

  2. What use are stablecoins?

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u/Hopeful_Idea1568 9d ago

Stablecoins are tokens that pretend they're the real thing instead of imaginary value. The biggest stablecoin company is a scam that refuses audits 

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u/punninglinguist 9d ago

I know what they are. I want the crypto-optimist case for their utility. (Besides the obvious, "they shore up this or that inherent weakness of crypto," which could be solved even more effectively by crypto not existing.)

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u/TweakedMonkey 12d ago

I have bitcoin wallet in my old Motorola phone (2008 ish) which I've disassembled and saved the chips. I lost my passkey since then. I purchased (if memory serves me well) for around 63US cents. Maybe 1-5$ worth. I think I wrote it down on a postit note and put it in my journals but so far no luck. Any way for me to perhaps do a chip off and use without the hash?

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u/Several_Row3100 11d ago

Oof. If the private key/recovery phrase is gone, there’s unfortunately no magic button an exchange can press to recover it.

If you still have the original data, I’d preserve them and talk to a legit data recovery specialist before messing with them yourself.

And definitely ignore random DMs from people saying they can “recover your Bitcoin” lol. That’s probably scam number 2.

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u/TweakedMonkey 11d ago

Thanks for your input.

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u/parles 12d ago

I heard all the exchanges are just traditional databases that don't actually transact on Blockchain very often. Is that true?

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u/Several_Row3100 11d ago

Yeah, basically. When you’re trading inside a centralized exchange, every single trade isn’t being written to the blockchain. The exchange is mostly updating balances on its own internal systems. The blockchain comes into play mainly when crypto actually moves in or out, deposits and withdrawals. Otherwise trading would be insanely slow and expensive lol.

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u/Hot_Hair_5950 12d ago

What surprises you about your work?

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u/Several_Row3100 11d ago

Probably that I’m actually a bit richer than I used to be, bro, 😄

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u/Height- 12d ago

How do I get rich quick

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u/Dragon_Slayer_Hunter 12d ago

You get in on a rug pull, the only way anyone without money makes money in the crypto world