I'm on my second watch through of Sousou no Frieren. If I can be so greedy as to give this article a soundtrack, I would want to set it to "A Waste" in part because of how mournful the song is and how mournful a normal person ought to feel about the victims of these scams, but also, because shitcoins really do be a waste of intellectual effort to create narratives around in order to sell in the first place nevermind the effort to combat them.

Paltering: To be deceitful while only using truthful statements.

In the article How To Deceive Others With Truthful Statements (It's Called 'Paltering,' And It's Risky) also mentioned is lying by commission (just actively lying outright) and lying by omission (leaving out important information)

This article also mentions this paper, so go ahead and give that a read as well. Artful Paltering: The Risks and Rewards of Using Truthful Statements to Mislead Others

Why do shitcoiners sometimes show strong convictions? Very often the uninitiated will see a Bitcoin maxi calling out a shitcoiner as a liar and a scammer. On the surface level one might think this implies that we're saying the scam artist is lying by commission. Often that is the case, but it would leave you unprepared if that were the only lies you were able to spot.

The most famous example of shitcoin paltering is the use of the word "cryptocurrency". Strictly speaking in the most literal sense of its definition it is true and correct. A currency that uses cryptography. Cryptocurrencies like digicash (as in the Chaumian mint e-cash before Bitcoin I mean of course) and e-gold. Ah, but by pointing out these cryptocurrencies, suddenly an objection "That's not what we mean by cryptocurrency though, we mean something decentralized" Thus, you see the palter. You can get a sense for why people would feel scammed. You said cryptocurrency and gave someone a database entry in a now bankrupt company. "I thought it would be something like Bitcoin where there is no company or central authority" the poor victim would complain.

So, instead, the paltering shitcoiner might refine that definition a bit. "Something with a blockchain". Hey, can someone tell those stupid ass crypto exchanges to kick iota off of their platform for not having a blockchain already? sheesh. However, this definition is still a fucking scam. "Wait, when you said it had a blockchain, I thought you meant it was decentralized and didn't have a company behind it" and the paltering scammer shilling their bags explains that even though their coin has hardfork software updates that change the rules of the network that can not be resisted by its community of users, its still decentralized because it runs on AWS instances run by people who sign in with different accounts.

So now its time to talk about NFTs. I mean look my initial reason for getting into Bitcoin was because its like cool video game money that you could spend in any game you play. As a kid getting a prepaid Visa card to spend money online wasn't exactly easy. I had a bank, but I don't know I don't think they give debit cards to minors. The children of this generation get paid their allowance in Robux because its the cool video game money that you can spend with your friends who also play the game.

As you can see in this video, some Japanese person was sent to jail because they hacked their switch to create pokemon to sell on the internet. There are many card games who's intended play involves having cards created by the company behind the card game (rather than using user created copies of the cards) to play the game legitimately. So why not have a digital rights management system that ensures items were obtained fairly in some way?

And yet, fuck NFTs. Why? because of the palter. Their intended purpose is not what I described in the previous paragraph as the ideal usecase.

I think a lot of people stay stuck in a bubble. This has been talked about before on SN, although it is usually in regards to "being openminded" to shitcoins. You wanna break out of a bubble? How about we take a look outside of the scammers who want all of our attention on them.

Overall, I would say the business model of modern day NFTs is a hyper version of the Star Citizen business model. Sell overpriced overhyped DLC for YEARS with lackluster game updates. I mean really, Star Citizen is boring. They really have you sit in the vaccum of space trying to go from planet to planet and then you have to park your ship at an actual fucking airport terminal and then you have to navigate that airport terminal to get to the one city block wide city to buy a damn jacket.

And yet, NFTs are WORSE than Star Citizen. That game might be lazy about their updates, but NFTs just up and abandon their promises once their sales are made because its just easier and more profitable to market the next thing than it is to actually make good on any promises. If you're a newer gamer, remember, DO NOT BUY PREORDERS. The gamers who have come before you have done it and regretted it and wish to pass this wisdom onto you.

No Man's Sky was an overhyped preorder that scarred many gamers into learning a lesson. Although it has now redeemed itself, it took a few years after launch day to do so.

As Upper Echelon points out, NFTs as they exist today, have anti-consumer intentions. They put the cart before the horse. They are designed with the Star Citizen business model in mind (but worse). Most games with DLCs and microtransactions have a GAME that is good for users to play and sell trinkets on the SIDE. NFTs as they exist today sell trinkets first, and sometimes maybe might have something that resembles a game that can be played lol.

They are a grift. A peddling creations onto people with the sales pitch being an appeal to greed.

That all goes without mentioning the method by which NFTs are made. Why do they exist on-chain? Its just a bad user experience. A non-investment, non-grift video game trinket would cause a gamer to punch their monitor if you told them they needed to pay a microtransaction to send their video game trinket to a friend or to trade their video game trinket for another user's video game trinket. I've said before that I think taproot assets are probably the best way to do NFTs and I said that because I know we're taking our Bitcoin onto lightning so it made sense at the time, but actually no its not. Maybe RGB is a better solution? I'm not really sure though. With their design right now, it seems they can only ever work as a grift.

All of these things and more, make a shitcoin. So, if you've ever caught yourself paltering when telling someone about Bitcoin, if you've ever caught yourself selling Bitcoin to people with the sales pitch being an appeal to greed, I would go as far to say that you too are a shitcoiner. These are the kinds of things that give people an impression of Bitcoin that make shitcoins seem like reasonable things afterall. There's something very real we have with Bitcoin. A community of independent people who agree to the same set of rules. People who would work harder to earn Bitcoin than a dollar. Practical international trade like buying coffee from an El Salvadorian farmer who would otherwise only be able to sell for the 30% markup of Western Union. Don't make Bitcoin feel cheap and scummy when you tell people about it. Remember this when you celebrate the halving with your overhyped new people this weekend. They probably came to your meetup with the wrong impression right out the gate and that needs corrected immediately.