Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 198 posts

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

#121

Post by mwerd »

warsheep wrote: post #105
mwerd wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about AAVE and their Arc product specifically? https://www.fireblocks.com/blog/permissioned-defi-goes-live-... You've got a fully compliant (in terms of anti money laundering), whitelisted counterparties only, decentralized lending and borrowing platform that completely eliminates the friction of a typical corporate treasury banking experience. You deposit dollars, you earn yield in dollars. If you want exposure…

Isn't this a circular argument? The question was what "useful" things do these crypto solutions/companies provide, and your example is a product which allows regulated entities to invest in crypto. "Why is X valuable? Because X allows you to invest in... X." Also, in this specific example (Arc), is the solution even considered DeFi? There's a centralized list of whitelister entities and you can only participate if yo…

No, the question was what in crypto isn't a scam.

Whitelisted counterparties borrowing and lending to each other without having to trust a third party to intermediate, such as fedwire, swift, or dtcc, is clearly not a scam. It's a b2b product with at least 30 sizable informed and willing institutional participants. They could take their capital anywhere else in financial markets but choose to take it to Aave.

It's the same platform Aave offers anyone else on Ethereum, polygon, arbitrum, and other chains coming soon. The customers of the arc product have a regulatory compliance burden that arc solves for them but the tech is the same.

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

#122

Post by exdsq »

davidbanham wrote: post #92
exdsq wrote: post #48

I work in crypto and have done for the last couple years. To be totally transparent, I worked on Cardano, then a couple random projects including a cosmos DEX and writing test suites for a qa consultancy, and now a startup DEX. I've been active in the scene (investing, reading papers, talking about crypto etc) since around 2016 and worked in it since 2019. I think there's a few things here. I don't believe that many…

I have a job satisfaction indicator I like to call “the barbecue factor”. You’re at a social event with friends and friends of friends. Someone asks “so what do you do?” and you answer. They either go “huh?”, “ooh neat!” or “oh, gee, yeah isn’t it awful how $industry is $negative_outcome?” Which of those answers you get can have a big bearing on your job satisfaction. It feels like the opinions of others shouldn’t be…

Thanks for the idea David, I think I'm going to take that into consideration a little bit more.

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

#123

Post by jlcoff »

lamontcg wrote: post #91
jlcoff wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have any problem cashing in my 6 figures paycheck when pezzonavantes (from any side since forever) cash out 9 to 10 figures own scams. Honesty is for the poor.

> Honesty is for the poor. The morality and ethics crisis in our country in a nutshell. We're building bigger and better systems to scam and exploit each other, meanwhile China keeps on getting better at building real stuff.

Don't give me that China bullshit, the poors have been explored tough morality and honesty forever by the various churches, nobility, ruling classes/party, INCLUDING in China.

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

#124

Post by jlcoff »

wtf_throwaway wrote: post #103
jlcoff wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you have come to the conclusion that the business you're engaging in is fraudulent [...] then you don't deserve any work in tech I do believe the whole tech industry is nothing but a giant scam, selling snake oil at a premium. You are as much the problem as I am. We very much live in a world where you are either the sheep or the wolf, and I ain't gonna be a sheep. I won't back down to bullies of your kind. > I for…

I'm with you brother. If you start to question the morality of who pays your salary, you will soon find that there are very little companies that you would allow yourself to work for. I can think of renewable energies, and not much else. In truth, I already work for an evil company. All companies I worked for in my long career were morally bankrupt one way or another. I never had any trouble sleeping at night. If it'…

> If it's not illegal it's fine.

A lot of today unicorns started illegally. Uber, Spotify, Airbnb. Yet, nobody comment about those because their goal was supposedly "noble". That's the problem with the variable geometry morality of the left.

"If it's moral from our point of view, but illegal, the laws are the problem. If what's you're doing is immoral from our point of view, but legal, then you should be ashamed of yourself and repent (or die)."

In other words, it's nothing but dogma and proselytism.

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

#125

Post by jlcoff »

cormacrelf wrote: post #111
wtf_throwaway wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm with you brother. If you start to question the morality of who pays your salary, you will soon find that there are very little companies that you would allow yourself to work for. I can think of renewable energies, and not much else. In truth, I already work for an evil company. All companies I worked for in my long career were morally bankrupt one way or another. I never had any trouble sleeping at night. If it'…

> you will soon find that there are very little companies that you would allow yourself to work for. That’s literally the idea. People doing bad things should find hiring minions difficult.

"bad things" is a subjective concept. A former roommate was building a website in the mid 2000 for a dildo company. You probably don't care, but a religious zealot might consider it "bad".

We're gonna make a deal, I'll let you work in ad-tech, and you let me build tool which allow people to shoot themselves in the foot.

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

#126

Post by jlcoff »

piva00 wrote: post #112
jlcoff wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (2) You cannot explain away 2008 as being the fault of the people who couldn't pay their mortgage. WTAF dude. When you are subprime rated, you would have to be a complete moron to take a variable loan on you life. But sure, poor them, it's not their fault, it's the mean evil banker who gave them a tool to shoot themselves with ... That the difference between you and me. I'm gonna give people the freedom to shoot th…

> When you are subprime rated, you would have to be a complete moron to take a variable loan on you life. And loads of people were that moronic, do they really deserve to have suffered because some other people wanted to profit as much as possible from their stupidity? It's not like these morons had the tools to really assess what the fuck they were doing. Not excluding the fact that many of these loans were basicall…

> ...humanity is not there yet.

Especially with the dogmatic left at the helm.

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

#127

Post by exdsq »

nutmeg37184 wrote: post #85
exdsq wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's sad to hear. I actually worked on Cardano at IOHK and thought the community was great from my interaction with them.

So this is ironic, but from what I've seen, IOHK or Charles and this company went from liking each other to hating each other now. But Charles himself cannot call out the company.

Shame you can't hint who it is

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

#128

Post by Animats »

drexlspivey wrote: post #113
mattbrewsbytes wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

> I would argue that futures (and options) are still gambling. And you would be wrong because those instruments were designed to hedge (reduce) risk. If you are a grain producer and you are worried that the grain price might go down before your next crop you sell a future to lock the price, if you are a flour mill and worry that the price will go up you buy a future. Can all financial instruments be used for speculat…

And you would be wrong because those instruments were designed to hedge (reduce) risk.

That tail now wags the dog. The futures markets in commodities are much larger than the actual markets.

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

#129

Post by lowkey »

cormacrelf wrote: post #111
wtf_throwaway wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm with you brother. If you start to question the morality of who pays your salary, you will soon find that there are very little companies that you would allow yourself to work for. I can think of renewable energies, and not much else. In truth, I already work for an evil company. All companies I worked for in my long career were morally bankrupt one way or another. I never had any trouble sleeping at night. If it'…

> you will soon find that there are very little companies that you would allow yourself to work for. That’s literally the idea. People doing bad things should find hiring minions difficult.

But how far are you as an individual willing to go?

- Apple uses exploitative labor practices to manufacture iPhones [0]

- Google is increasingly being recognized as a surveillance and manipulation platform. They have even been caught manipulating elections [1]

[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/12/29/lens-te...

[1] https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/download/epstein-testimony

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

#130

Post by nouveaux »

Animats wrote: post #59

Much of modern finance was illegal 50 years ago. The first financial future was traded on May 16, 1972. Before that, futures were confined to agricultural commodities, where they were used mostly by farmers and buyers of agricultural products. The first junk bond was sold in 1986, and it achieved the largest percentage gain on the NYSE, then in 1987 suffered the largest percentage loss. Until 1999, banks and brokerag…

US GDP in 2020 was 20.94T. According to Statista[0] "Finance, insurance, real estate, rental and leasing" accounted for 4.59T. Manufacturing accounted for 2.27T. While "Finance, insurance, real estate, rental and leasing" accounted for ~20% of GDP, I think its still a stretch to say that "in the US, industry is almost a support function for finance - just something to generate numbers to bet on, like horse racing."

"China's government has kept finance in its box, focusing investment on actually making real stuff."

What's happening with Evergrande is the opposite of keeping finance in its box. Evergrande borrowed money from banks and took money from consumers before building a condo. They then took the money and "invested" in things like football players and stadiums.[1] Consumers are left without homes. [2]

[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/248006/real-value-added-...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evergrande_Group#Sports

[2] https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20210914-evergrande-dr...

Post reply on HN