Scenarios in gambling are rarely “purely random”. I.e. the likelyhood of winning in poker depends on what you already got dealt and what other cards got dealt and so on. What does “purely random” even mean? Like a lottery with equal chance of winning for all participants? Yea that’s gambling but just one kind of gambling.

Downvote and move on, if the name becomes familiar block them.

Sorry, but you forgot a step:

Downvote and move on, if the name becomes familiar report them and then block them.

Moderators should help so not all users will need to block these bad actors.

Everything on the fediverse really depends on where you go. That’s kinda the whole point.

I’m not really opposed to the idea of cryptocurrencies. I think being able to exchange value without having to go through any middle-men (i.e. banks) could be valuable. It’s kind of like cash in that sense but digital.

I am however very opposed to the execution so far:

1. Wasteful proof-of-work algorithms that spend way too much electricity.
2. Treating them more as stocks/investments gambling instead of as an actual currency.
3. New cryptocurrencies seem to crop up every day. This is more of a pyramid scheme than actual innovation at this point.

If those three improve, then maybe it will actually be okay. It’s unclear whether (1) will happen ever, as anyone leaving the proof-of-work cryptocurrencies behind for other less wasteful ones just make mining more valuable for the ones that are still mining the proof-of-work currency (as far as I understand). But maybe it will eventually be better, though it doesn’t seem that way right now.

(2) happening is a little more likely - it would likely slowly happen if people started using it for actual payments and goods. If goods had a price based on a cryptocurrency, the value of the cryptocurrency would be more stable (I would guess; disclaimer I am not an economist or anything like that). But still, this is not too likely to happen, at least it hasn’t happened yet in any big way.

(3) is also problematic and not likely to change any time soon. It seems like we will never agree on using just one of the cryptocurrencies and if we don’t, I can’t really see it taking off.

So generally, unless something changes with how cryptocurrencies are currently handled (ironically, maybe nations need to step in and “bless” a single one for anything to change), I don’t really see a bright future for cryptocurrencies.