Crypto: The Good, The Bad, The Truth

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Every day, you hear another story about someone getting rich off cryptocurrency. One of the more famous cases is of a 12-year-old boy who invested $1,000 of his birthday money in Bitcoin when it was just $12 a coin. While these stories are true, crypto has no real intrinsic value. That is, cryptocurrency isn’t backed by banks or any real assets. Plus, you’d be surprised by who’s using it and for what.

Crypto (Mis)Use Cases

When was the last time you purchased anything using cryptocurrency? Chances are, you haven’t. If you have, you know the transaction fees associated with cryptocurrency can be steep. Taking a step back, you realize generally you can spend a dollar more easily and with less fees (taxes in this case). You’ve probably asked, what is a Bitcoin, who’s really using crypto and why?

Started as a decentralized system to avoid government overreach, Bitcoin’s original mission of giving people more control over their own money thrived. Since then, thousands of cryptocurrencies have been created, and most of them are just financial rug pulls.

For clarity, a rug is a type of scam where the creators of a new cryptocurrency heavily promote it to spark investment. When the coin goes up in value, the scammers sell their positions and leave the investors broke. Crypto is used for many crimes.

As the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime notes, crypto is popular for those seeking to launder money or make untraceable purchases, primarily for illegal products. One of the most notorious cases is that of Silk Road, founded by then-29-year-old Ross Ulbricht.

Operating on the dark web from 2011 to 2013 when Ulbricht was arrested, Silk Road was the most prolific dark site for trafficking drugs and guns, as Wired.com documents. To keep transactions confidential, buyers and sellers on the site used Bitcoin. According to ICE and the FBI, Silk Road was estimated to have completed $1.2 billion in sales, with Ulbricht earning $80 million in commissions.

Since taking down Ulbricht and the Silk Road, Federal authorities claim they seized nearly 70,000 Bitcoins worth close to $1 billion in 2020 linked to transactions from the site. The Department of Justice says it also seized an additional $3.36 billion tied to Silk Road in 2020. While trafficking drugs and guns is wrong, it’s done, and Silk Road isn’t an anomaly.

Those who don’t want to answer to justice use layers to hide their identity, and crypto helps, specifically to launder money. Before the rise of crypto, washing money, although not impossible, wasn’t as easy as buying some coins with an app. It used to require someone to be somewhere in the physical world. Crypto erased those challenges overnight.

If someone wants to buy crypto, they can easily do so through an app like CashApp or another without ever stepping foot into a traditional bank. They can open as many crypto wallets as they want and buy coins from any company to wash ill-gotten gains. The lack of transparency makes it easier for users to get robbed.

By circumventing traditional banks, nefarious crypto users skip standard verification. This verification is used to prevent fraud, theft or other abuse. Without it as some crypto users have learned, their accounts can be drained in seconds just by accidentally clicking a link within a text or email. Crypto isn’t FDIC insured, so no one gets their money back after getting scammed unless the authorities get it back for them. But the scams keep growing.

Commonly, many scammers are creating cryptocurrencies to perform a rug pull. They hype up a (meme) coin with the intentions of getting others to buy so they themselves can sell when the price rises. People behind rug pulls have started using celebrities to boost the coins.

Logan Paul caught heat when he posted about a coin that turned out to be a rug pull. He admitted that he thought “no one would care.” He said he looked at it as a regular promotion and that he promotes many products he doesn’t use. In his mind, it was just business. This “business” cost his fans and other victims over a million dollars. He’s not the only one.

While Kanye West posted on social media he had rejected a $2 million offer to participate in a rug pull, Argentinian President Javier Milei had taken a similar deal.

Milei posted about the $LIBRA coin on X. The coin surged in value, and the rug pullers got out rich. It is unclear if Milei took any money from those who had him post about the coin. Either way, cryptocurrency is being used to commit rug pulls. There are some good uses for crypto though.

Good Use Cases

Even though many are using crypto for illicit purposes, some use it for legitimate reasons. Traditional banks have rules meant to protect their clients, but those rules sometimes hinder their clients. In some cases, transactions are denied or delayed due to misunderstandings between banks and companies. Crypto can overcome these obstacles.

When wiring money internationally from a traditional bank, the process might take hours or days. People turn to crypto because banks operate on fixed hours during the weekdays and generally don’t complete wire transfers on the weekend. In 2025, the quickest way to send money is by way of crypto. Using crypto also helps the user avoid discrimination associated with some banks.

As previously mentioned, a person can open a crypto wallet without ever having set foot in a traditional bank. Cryptocurrency is all-inclusive and free of the racism and discrimination some customers encounter in these institutions. Instead of having their accounts frozen while being given the third-degree about a wire, customers are able to send money within seconds to a family member in need using crypto.

Cryptocurrencies also support blockchains that provide security in other areas such as pharmaceuticals. To read more about blockchains, read “Blockchain Security: Types and Real World Examples” by SentinelOne.

Overall, transactions happen quicker using crypto, and using it doesn’t involve interacting with discriminatory banking institutions. Because of this, crypto is excellent for sending money quickly without having to face a wall of stereotypes.

Crypto for Investors

If you want to make money investing in crypto, you can. Although it is used in crime, crypto can be a profitable investment. For it to be, you have to invest in the right coins.

As of right now, the best coin to invest in is the original which is Bitcoin. Over the past 12 months, Bitcoin has grown over 78 percent in value, going from just over $60,000 a coin to over $110,000 a coin. You don’t have to buy an entire coin though.

If you had invested $1,000 over the past 12 months in Bitcoin, you would have over $1,780. If you had cashed out, your net profit would have been over $780, nearly double what you committed notwithstanding transaction fees. $10,000 in the beginning would have brought you a net profit of about $7,800. That same $1,000 or $10,000 invested in an average meme coin would have been down over 90 percent by now.

That acknowledged, you can make money in crypto buying the right coin. For the moment, the right coin seems to be Bitcoin. It is still experiencing growth, and it is not a meme coin. It is the coin people are most familiar with, even if they don’t use crypto.

The Takeaway

Cryptocurrency is being used for illicit transactions to buy guns, drugs or other illegal goods. In other cases, celebrities are being paid to participate in rug pulls, where they promote a worthless coin. In these rug pulls, early investors make a huge profit, but the smaller investors are left broke.

Scams using crypto are a problem, but there are some good real-world use cases for crypto. Primarily, it cuts out the bank to make transactions quicker and smoother. It gives the consumer more autonomy over their money without having to answer to a third-party. And, if a person invests wisely, they can become richer than the 12-year-old Bitcoin millionaire.

FOLLOW the author Jermaine Reed, MFA on X @Jermaine Reed, MFA for his controversial but real hot takes.