Funny imagery about the flights to the moon. Although I am stricken by its actuality. People say this daily. They are"mooning" coins. The day a coin moons me, is the day I will moon the first news van I see- live.

I see that terminology every single day when I look at cryptocurrency news. This coin or that coin is "going to the moon," and is guaranteed, inevitably, to be a surefire winner. No coins ever go down except as an opportunity for the faithful to buy. New projects ever go away, unless "they are hacked," and that's just one more opportunity for people to buy low into the same failed systems.

It's one of the phrases that I use to recognize crypto cultists. They just don't seem to be able to help themselves.

The other thing that strikes me in your above quote @lextenebris is your sensible, non fuddy demeanor. I had not realized I was on the far opposite end of the trolling fud-brothers in crypto. I am, though. Arent I? I am of the section that candy coats it all then sprinkles glitter on it, just before I do a cute spin and dash off to impress the next onlooker. Obnoxious I am, and I think 7 out of 10 people like my ... obnoxiousism. Obnoxiality. Obnoxion. Whatever.

I've looked through a fair amount of your work – and yes. You're not a fullbore crypto cultist, at least not yet, but you do have a little bit of the whiff of associating with crypto cultists. I'm sure that a good portion of your fan base for your crypto work probably qualify.

I'm not saying that's obnoxious. There are plenty of obnoxious crypto cultists on Steemit to be used as examples, most of which are making 30 to 50 minute videos which essentially chant the right incantations to make their followers feel better, for which they are rewarded profusely.

You know who they are. I know who they are. In my heart of hearts, I hope they know who they are and they are pursuing their ends with complete, self-aware cynicism. The alternative is truly too sad to contemplate.

I just see an ABSOLUTE and REAL correlation between us and the market. In fact, there is no other comparable markets, in this way. I believe it is because the financial markets of the world are under the care and control of those with the most money ie most influence over that domain.

See – this is the sort of thing that edges you toward cultist behavior.

Yes, there are absolute and real correlations between the actors in a market and the performance of that market. The problem for you is that such is true of every market, everywhere, at all times. It's true of fiat currency trading. It is true of commodity trading (including delicious pork bellies). It's true of oil trading. It's true of book marketing.

Crypto markets are not special. I wish somebody with a real podium in the journalistic space would just take up this banner: "crypto markets are not special." They're markets. They perform like markets. They respond like markets. All markets. Everywhere, all times. Just markets.

Every financial market operates within a set of constraints. Experience with other financial markets or other large organizations gives line to the idea that "financial markets of the world are under the care and control of those with the most money" beyond the obvious truth of the matter. In crypto terms, all you've said is that "markets are largely under the influence of those with the most stake."

Does that sound familiar? It should. It's one of the central premises of the steem blockchain and one of the central ideas that the developers have used to sell it to investors over the last year. The idea that those who have the most stake in a system should be the ones who have the most influence over that system?

That's exactly what you're complaining about. That's exactly how real markets work. Goods, services, currencies, commodities – if you have the most investment, you get the most say.

On the one hand, you seem to be saying that isn't what you want. On the other hand, your holding up systems which exemplify that to an even more radical extreme and saying, "this is the Savior of our future!"

Maybe I'm a cynic, but… Does that seem right to you?

Crypto is young, crypto is distributed and crypto is reactive to immediate circumstances in a far more volatile way AND it is closely measurable when compared to consumer reactions and consumer exposure to negative media.

Do you want to know the only real and specific thing that sets a lot of cryptocurrencies apart from more traditional commodity trading?

Crypto coins are made of electrons. Worse, they are made of standing patterns of electrons, which can be endlessly replicated, have no mass to speak of, and can transit across national borders in myriad ways limited only by lightspeed – or they can be carried across inside tiny physical repositories which contain vast value.

And that's it.

Fiat currencies are distributed. Fiat currencies are reactive to immediate circumstances in quite volatile ways – and people have largely found that to be a reason to stay away from volatile currencies. Venezuela is a fine example, with runaway currency collapse because no one trusts that the currency they own will be worth anything tomorrow, and it probably won't. Cryptocurrencies are worse, in part because no one really uses them.

When you need to figure out how many buckets of cash to carry to the bar to buy a beer, and that number changes every day? People don't like that. They do something else.

Again, how you describe cryptocurrencies are exactly how you will currencies, fiat currencies, and commodity trading all work. Take a week and do a little historical research of the response of oil prices to reporting. I think you'll find it interesting. Your first reaction will be, "well, the journalists are just writing about stuff that has already happened or is currently happening and the prices are trailing those events." Some. But quite a lot of the reporting on one of the most important commodities of our age is very much like the reporting on cryptocurrencies – doing their best to drive prices up or down via fear, uncertainty, and doubt, or unmitigated glitter farts.

You can measure that effect. I'm sure there have been some really good for PhD thesi which have been all about that.

Oh so THAT is what happened to my once perfect life. Optimism. Well I'll be damned.

That's how it happens. It sneaks up on you. You start expecting that the universe will justify your optimism, you stop looking at the jagged edges that you keep stepping blithely around, and eventually you get cut. If you deny that you can be cut, if you are emotionally bound to the idea that being cut by the universe is simply impossible – you bleed out.

People who are used to the universe giving them a raw deal aren't the ones that bleed out. You have to start from a position of perfect health.

Let me know when you have compiled enough facts to discredit my observations that the crypto sphere is

• Less confined to the traditional rules of finance - in at least this way: Centralized Banking is not the boss of it ( yet knock knock)

In an almost purely negative way. Sure, I'll let you have that one. Though I would say that centralized banking is absolutely the boss of pretty much every cryptocurrency out there – it's just not a traditional bank. It's a different kind of organization. It's a very different organization. But most of the cryptocurrencies are largely controlled by a very small core of heavy investors, which works in favor of some and against others. An investor who really wants the value of their investment to accrue, who wants to win, is going to be interested in stabilizing the currency, increasing the value of the commodity, and acting accordingly.

That kind of investor is in short supply.

Rules of yesterdays technology do not apply on all levels to the changes coming from this planet-improving-upgrade ( blockchain really is that cool).

That's completely wrong. I briefly considered looking for a more polite way to put it, but – it's just wrong.

The rules of yesterday's technology, but more importantly the rules of yesterday's economics? Still perfectly valid. Still perfectly applicable. Cryptocurrencies are reacting just as you would expect a commodity with the physical traits that it possesses to act. Maybe the problem is that very few of the people involved in cryptocurrencies really have any understanding of more traditional commodities, because it truly is a high risk environment and people with financial experience aggressively avoid that kind of trap.

This is not what anyone wants to hear who is sipping the Kool-Aid of the crypto cultists, but it's absolutely true.

Cryptocurrencies are one thing: as the US federal government puts it, "a distributed ledger technology." They are databases with distributed architectures which "reward" volunteer nodes who promise to help carry the burden of recording and verifying their transactions with a share of whatever token that they're supposedly crunching.

And that's all they are.

We've had holy electronic currencies being traded openly for quite a while before "blockchain" became the new tulip. Let's go back to one of the early nationally-recognized and debated ones: World of Warcraft gold. There have been large, vociferous arguments about how it should be accounted for, whether or not it represents a true commodity. Beyond that, the question of digital goods in general has been a hot topic for a long, long time. Cryptocurrency is just the latest in an incremental evolutionary pattern.

Again, maybe it is simply ignorance of history that leads people involved in cryptocurrencies to believe that they are somehow notionally special and engaged in a technology that "will improve the planet."

• History repeats itself when history is editable and thus forgotten...

If nothing else would demonstrate that, cryptocurrencies would. As I said, apparently those involved in cryptocurrencies have forgotten history – or worse, never knew it. They deny it.

Half the journalism involving the subject seems to be some writer studiously avoiding the lessons of history. It's really quite impressive if you're enough of a cynic.

• we may be on the starting line of something much more efficient than a "cycle"

We might, but it won't be because of the way cryptocurrencies are reported on nor the belief that DLTs are a world-saving technology.

Cryptocurrencies represent a new type of commodity, there's no question about that. But what you want is not to advertise their efficiency, because if we look at their efficiency what we see is that they convert useful, valuable resources (generated electricity, cooling costs, rare earth materials, high-tech manufacturing) into commodities which have hyper-volatile trade values rather than more enduring or useful effects.

Maybe they will turn into something which has a useful applicability. They are certainly not there now. In fact, the constant hype cycle which touts the inherent value of a cryptocurrency rather than what you can do with it, what it's used for, it's applications – that's erosive. That keeps cryptocurrencies from being respected as a useful part of the world. It looks ridiculous, and combined with the "to the moon" motifs right beside "HODL"…

You can't seriously tell me that reasonable people should look at the cryptocurrency community and do anything but point and laugh. I'm in it and all I can do is point and laugh. (Sometimes because the only other reasonable response would be to cry, but still.)

• It is possible that "The way that works" doesn't anymore.

You'll have to get back in touch with me when that's the case. Right now – everything else works just the way it always asked, well enough to keep you living in one of the most technologically advanced, well-funded, socially stable, diverse societies in the history of this bitch of a world. One which continues to proceed in the same general track, one where one of the biggest occupations of the moment is to work really hard to be offended by and pretend to be oppressed by the most minor of things.

So it's not possible that "the way that works" doesn't anymore. There's no evidence for that, we don't see that, and it's silly to suggest it.

• I am right and you are wrong neener neener

  Just kidding about number 5.

Don't be ridiculous. That's never happened in the history of the world, and the world's been around a long time. Like me.