"Stars" do provide a nice signal about whether something sees wide use or not. I typically check out most dependencies I add to my projects, but I will give a lot more attention to a project with 9 stars than a dependency with 9,000 stars.
And it also gives a good indication what common de-facto standards are within an ecosystem.
Literally, it's about preventing taking a second, paid job during vacation from your first employer. So it's not entirely clear whether this is about protecting employers or employees. As far as I know, non-competes for blue collar workers are uncommon (or at least they used to be).
100% of it is a scam, the only reason you said 99.99 is because blockchain as a technology is worth something. But crypto coins themselves have no value at all in the real world.
One pizza place here, and one bitcoin ATM there does not make a difference. As long as you can't trade real goods and services for crypto coins it is absolutely worthless. And that is why any association with crypto makes intelligent people scared. Because it's inflated by confidence, like a true scam.
The only real goods and services that have kept bitcoin going is a black market of illegal goods and services.
Your last point directly contradicts the claim that "100% of it is a scam". People do actually buy and receive those illegal goods and services; you might not like that fact, but it certainly isn't a scam at that point.
And just so that we're clear, said "illegal goods" include, for example, generic drugs from other countries.
I don't think Silk Road etc constitute the actual majority of the black and grey markets enabled by cryptocurrency. It's just where most of the media attention is because of stuff like "assassination brokers" etc. Most of it is really mundane stuff, mostly drugs (of either kind). Which is also where long-term repeat customers are valuable, so sellers are hesitant to lose reputation through outright scams.
> As long as you can't trade real goods and services for crypto coins it is absolutely worthless.
As long as you can sell it for USD it's not worthless - you don't other goods/services - although that said the list of those is still growing.
The fact that I can send money (liquid fiat) to a friend without going through paypall/zello/etc. is valuable.
The only thing that could make it a "scam" is the promise of money, which I 100% agree that using crypto to "make money" is stupid and is a massive problem.
> The fact that I can send money (liquid fiat) to a friend without going through paypall/zello/etc. is valuable.
You can do that only because Bitcoin is currently underregulated. Governments will eventually regulate it to enforce money laundering laws and starve DPRK, and then Bitcoin will become even more expensive relative to other options.
> You can do that only because Bitcoin is currently underregulated... Governments will eventually regulate it and then Bitcoin will become even more expensive relative to other options.
Sure, and if that happens then it's value as a liquid fiat will decrease. The idea that "it only goes up and to the moon!" is what has made everyone declare it a scam.
If it currently has a use case then it has value. The currency is not a "scam" but this horrendous idea of treating it as an "investment" is delusional.
I think cryptocurrency has a few very valid use cases, but I think it's been shoved onto everything when it's not even needed (CSGO has been fine without NFTs).
> If it currently has a use case then it has value
The use case is not due to the technology having any benefit but due to current underregulation. The reason people declare it a scam is that the technology does not solve any practical problems better than centralized ledgers.
It isn't just that though. Anything crypto coin related attracts scammers, and changes people's posting incentives. Instead of pandering to the userbase for likes and upvotes, it'll now be for crypto coins.
The site hasn't been updated since 2021-08-02 per the footer, and probably sparsely before that. I think this site was most popular around when Snowden did the leaks and hasn't had as much hype since then.
A more modern alternative is https://www.privacytools.io/ but I haven't checked it in a while and can't vouch for the current contents.
