Ask HN: Does Anyone else working in a crypto company feel this is all a scam?

I don't recall anyone getting prosecuted for fraud even though the democrats would have dearly loved to have done so. The bankers packaged mortgages and made a profit just like they always did. The difference was, local banks were pressured to loan to people with dreadful credit, and the guarantees by FNMA and the optimistic ratings by S&P made it easier to package and sell the mortgage backed securities. In the end, the homeowners got to default on their mortgages but the bankers lost their livelihood.

You're putting the blame in the wrong place. I'd start by looking at FNMA. Don't take my word - read up on it.

Hi, this is the story:

September 2020 a friend called me, he told me that 3 guys are working on cryptocurrency. I knew one of the names, was a guy that stole a users database from an open source project, "but that was when he was a teenager". The project owner was a bank something (can't remember what). The other guys are devs.

My friend was doing devops with another guy for them (a really nice guy, and smart as hell)

I'm sysadmin, I don't like doing ops, and I'm a really good manager, they were calling me for that.

Anyway, they start talking about the project, and my brother was doing an economics PhD talking about cryptocurrency. He started on that because me.. -_-, I loved the technology at the start, and how they improved the double-enrey bookkiping from Luca Pacioli and before.

I called my brother to join us. He was glad and started to work with the owner.

After some weeks were I was trying to organize them and see what the project was about I learned few things:

They were doing a wallet to connect banks and cryptocurrency exchange The project was delayed as hell. The owner talks too much saying nothing. They wanted to "become and exchange" They were looking for funds.

I wanted at least 2 more devs and wanted to see the code (nobody saw the code, just some presentations and demos, it was nice, but for me was basic)

After another weeks without answers, and the owner talking to me about the shares I will get, I was seeing how less work i will be doing in few weeks (we had our git working, I was pushing the devs to push the code there, i was seeing old code all time, we had the infra and metrics running, etc)

Anyway, they found a capital angel and they hired 3 marketing girls.

They started to sell smoke. They meeting started to be more about marketing and getting money than tech. I was.., angry as hell

I quit.

My brother keeps working with them ("go out from there as soon as you can"), they are doing some cryptocurrency courses.

The head dev disappear one day without push almost any code.

I felt dirty, really disgusted with that people, not to much with the devs, not with the devops, but the owner, the marketing team (that was bigger than the dev+devops team) and with myself for months.

They showed to me something I really don't like about economy and markets.

It is really hard to me to think about working on that area again, they looks like scammers, and I saw them thinking about that.

Have a good day.

If it was just a "scam" it would be easier to resolve this. Alas it is a complex and evolving mix of all sorts of factors:

* new software architectures based on cryptography and additional communication patterns (aka consensus) which may or may not have long term utility, but are "real"

* a loose "anti-systemic" ideology that is in part deserved but also part half-baked / / misinformed / delusional. In any case it creates lots of talking points in societies that are mismanaged and "angry"

* buy-in and (partial) legitimization from frustrated parties (eg NGO's) that want to "solve the world's problems" and think blockchain might be the tool to fix humanity's faults

* defensive engagement by systemic parties (the same people that have brought society to its knees) that want to embrace and extinguish (just in case it might actually work)

* opportunistic engagement by intermediaries that could not care less what "asset" they make a market in, provided they get a cut

* opportunistic engagement by marketeers that could not care less what channel they use, provided it generates some exposure for their clients (NFT)

* greedy techies that feel left out from the tech oligopolies and found an alternative exploitative path to riches (print your own money)

* a younger generation that is 1) flush with cash, 2) has never had experienced fleecing by smooth operators so has no behavioral immunity 3) thinks this is all very "tech-savvy" and modern and thus kosher

* actual scammers, that ride on all the above

Ted Chiang wrote beautifully about exactly this sentiment back in 2017, https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/tedchiang/the-real-dang...

His point back then was that corporations themselves create incentives that are indistinguishable from rogue AGI, but I honestly think it applies better to your sentiment about crypto systems

I would argue that futures (and options) are still gambling. You are literally betting a price of something will be over/under a threshold on a certain date. Sports betting uses over/under and scores as thresholds, this seems no different. People might say its different than sports gambling because it is chance/luck with a team but you can do in depth research on sports teams just as much as futures/options and at the end you are still guessing and betting money.

Cryptocurrencies trade like stocks and don't operate as an actual currency for the vast majority of use cases. I like to think the phase we are in now is like pre-dotcom bust where there were startups with silly plans getting VC money. I think there is some technology (maybe ETH smart contracts and decentralized apps?) that could come out of this and maybe some businesses emerge that are legit.