The difference between theft and a scam is that a scam requires participation from the victim based on a false premise, whereas theft requires no participation from the victim.
>whether a bank issues bullshit fees, whether an employer doesn't pay fair wages, whether a con man tricks you into buying ape pictures.
So basically giving someone a bad deal is therefore theft? This isn't a principled idea to hold, it is pretty much a slippery slope to call any transaction you don't like theft afterwards.
One advantage of cryptocurrency is that it prevents parties from "renegotiating" deals like this after they've made them. Fraud is pretty uncommon on say, the silk road or something for the same reason it's uncommon on ebay or craigslist: when consumers have to actively consider the trust networks they are using, the market becomes more transparent and trustworthy. When you defer to some arbitrary, opaque authority to settle transactions, that's when you get situations like this.
> So basically giving someone a bad deal is therefore theft? This isn't a principled idea to hold, it is pretty much a slippery slope to call any transaction you don't like theft afterwards.
It's not about whether or not I personally like it, it's about whether or not it has the value it's ascribed to. NFTs are murkier in that some people believe they have value, and I guess that's fair. I think it's demonstrably false, but I doubt a person who believes they have value would consider an NFT purchase fraudulent, and therefore would not pursue it.
If however a given person was suckered into buying an NFT by someone, and later realized it was worthless, I think that's absolutely something that at least bears considering in terms of it being fraud, in a court of law. I don't see how it's different from any other situation where a given individual has sold worthless assets.
> One advantage of cryptocurrency is that it prevents parties from "renegotiating" deals like this after they've made them.
One huge disadvantage is that on any cryptocurrency with any decent amount of traffic as a currency is that the value of it shifts wildly from the beginning to end of the transaction. And that can bite either party to the transaction, which is why the only currencies that see substantial use as a currency are the ones with low adoption rates. It's basically pointless to accept, for example, Etherium as payment unless you yourself are speculating on it's future value. But that's not a currency then, not in any normies' definition. A hundred dollars is worth the same today, for all intents and purposes, as it was a year ago. Plus or minus a few percent for inflation. The $4 you plunk down for a fancy coffee is not going to be worth $0.50 or $400 by the time the barista hands you the cup, otherwise no one would use money.
> When you defer to some arbitrary, opaque authority to settle transactions, that's when you get situations like this.
Cryptocurrency defers to the blockchain, and the various software that interacts with it. This is literally no difference to deferring to any other centralized institution to form trust. The only difference is the layman has no way to seek justice from a blockchain.
I think the volatility of the currency is caused by a lack of it's use in real markets, not the other way around. In practice, the volatility isn't that big of a problem on an individual level.