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

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

#171

Post by VoodooJuJu »

gonehome wrote: post #26

You’re asking this on HN so are likely to get 95% of people agreeing with you from confirmation bias alone. Median HN hates cryptocurrency. I’d probably suggest this: https://www.matthuang.com/bitcoin_for_the_open_minded_skepti... I think it’s not “all a scam”, but there are definitely scammers in the community which add a lot of noise to what’s a pretty cool new capability to handle decentralized state. https://danr…

>confirmation bias

I wouldn't dismiss HN's concerns on anything tech, finance, or business related. Fact is, much of HN is technically-inclined, many here are financially-inclined, and many are both at once.

When you have people who are both tech-savvy and finance-savvy giving their thoughts on a novel financial technology, you would be wise to listen.

And when this tech & finance-savvy community is bearish on a finance technology, you better be as well, unless you're the one at the top of the pyramid. Then by all means, enjoy your fools.

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

#172

Post by gonehome »

VoodooJuJu wrote: post #171
gonehome wrote: post #26

You’re asking this on HN so are likely to get 95% of people agreeing with you from confirmation bias alone. Median HN hates cryptocurrency. I’d probably suggest this: https://www.matthuang.com/bitcoin_for_the_open_minded_skepti... I think it’s not “all a scam”, but there are definitely scammers in the community which add a lot of noise to what’s a pretty cool new capability to handle decentralized state. https://danr…

>confirmation bias I wouldn't dismiss HN's concerns on anything tech, finance, or business related. Fact is, much of HN is technically-inclined, many here are financially-inclined, and many are both at once. When you have people who are both tech-savvy and finance-savvy giving their thoughts on a novel financial technology, you would be wise to listen. And when this tech & finance-savvy community is bearish on a fina…

HN is famously dismissive of new ideas that go on to become billion dollar companies or products (the iPod and dropbox for two easy examples).

HN is better than average, but still pretty poor at recognizing something good until there's mass consensus. Even then there's often users complaining about niche technical details despite obvious success.

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

#173

Post by cormacrelf »

piva00 wrote: post #170
jlcoff wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, only ad-hominem against people carrying the Gospel are frowned upon. There has been plenty of ad-hominem against me and I don't see you condemning those.

I believe that HN is very far from left-wing, not sure why you feel singled out, ad hominems are frowned upon anyone here, call them out and move on. This defensiveness is really off putting, it seems like the only argument you can carry is "the left has a Gospel and I'm against it" and I still have absolute no idea what exactly you refer to and why you are against whatever you are referring to. You just feel victimi…

Ad hominem is when you say someone’s argument is wrong because they’re a bad person. Ad hominem attacks are frowned upon because they cause good discussion to devolve into a shouting match.

In contrast, this thread has simply been establishing that jlcoff is a bad person. It’s not a fallacy or a derailment of the discussion to do so, rather it was the discussion. I can imagine why they feel attacked, it’s because they are literally being told they’re a bad person for their personal views. It would be implausible to expect a debate about the morality of working at a place you believe to be a scam, with such a person, to go without challenging them for it. And I wouldn’t expect such a person to respond without raising some form of “let ye without sin cast the first stone” defence and eventually just dribble out insults. My point is: you don’t have to worry about using community standards or HN policy to protect me from ad hominem attacks from them; all of this was priced in. It is inseparable from the nature of fraudulent schemes and the people who push them.

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

#174

Post by fizzledbits »

jlcoff wrote: post #164
fizzledbits wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s the spirit

That your remarks are counter-productive ? Congrats, you've leveled up at being useless !

You should aspire to be merely useless since by your own admission, you're even less than that. Every one of your posts is some dumbass movie villain cliché - "who cares that I'm a scammer, everything's a scam, maann."

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

#175

Post by googlerx »

jlcoff wrote: post #167
googlerx wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might have a point if the only negative outcome of 2008 was that a lot of people lost homes they could never afford. It was the banks' and regulators' responsibility to not allow bad loans to be issued and resold as mis-labeled AAA investment vehicles. That is the part that broke the global economy.

NO, it's not the job of the government to save people from shooting themselves.

I never said or implied that it was.

But (in the US at least), it actually is the government's job to keep the economy stable in order to "insure domestic Tranquility [... and...] promote the general Welfare"

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

#176

Post by itake »

mikeyouse wrote: post #42
itake wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if I had a 'legit' startup, I would not let my parents or grandparents invest their life savings into it. Startups are not for retail investor's retirement funds.

There's the difference between investing in the startup (taking shares in a specific company) and investing in crypto though, right? I'd happily encourage my parents or grandparents to invest in an 'index fund' of startups in a bunch of different fields. I can't say the same about an index of crypto companies, and especially not in an index of crypto assets.

AFAIK, there is no such thing as an 'index fund' of startups.

But even if there was, purchasing a L1 coin is similar to investing in a wide swath of coins, because if the value of startups build on the coin increase in value, then there will be higher demand of that coin.

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

#177

Post by acdha »

zeppers wrote: post #147

You are posting this question into what is mostly an anti-crypto echo chamber. It's a bit like asking "is the internet just a big scam" in 1998 at a magazine and newspaper trade conference. The people here are too engrossed in the world they built and lack the imagination for how it could be completely transformed to offer you an objective answer. My opinion is that 98% of crypto is either a scam or just bad ideas th…

> It's a bit like asking "is the internet just a big scam" in 1998 at a magazine and newspaper trade conference.

1992, maybe. By 1998 all kinds of organizations had seen significant customer demand and business improvements — not just selling penny stocks to each other but finding new customers, reducing costs and delays, offering services which weren't feasible before, etc. In contrast, cryptocurrency is 13 years in without a single success story. Even something as simple as “due to competition, PayPal had to lower their fees” would be a bigger win, forgetting whether there's enough room to recover all of the VC money.

That's the key difference: in 1998, yes, there were obviously doomed dotcoms but they weren't the only thing going on in the web space. You probably even read about this on the websites which had already siphoned off a ton of traffic because investors found it far preferable to go to a website than either wait until tomorrow's newspaper arrived or paying a ton of money for access to one of the paid services.

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

#178

Post by acdha »

gonehome wrote: post #172
VoodooJuJu wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>confirmation bias I wouldn't dismiss HN's concerns on anything tech, finance, or business related. Fact is, much of HN is technically-inclined, many here are financially-inclined, and many are both at once. When you have people who are both tech-savvy and finance-savvy giving their thoughts on a novel financial technology, you would be wise to listen. And when this tech & finance-savvy community is bearish on a fina…

HN is famously dismissive of new ideas that go on to become billion dollar companies or products (the iPod and dropbox for two easy examples). HN is better than average, but still pretty poor at recognizing something good until there's mass consensus. Even then there's often users complaining about niche technical details despite obvious success.

> HN is famously dismissive of new ideas that go on to become billion dollar companies or products (the iPod and dropbox for two easy examples).

That's a pretty misleading conclusion to draw: for example, here's the whole Dropbox thread:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863

One guy says “you can already build such a system yourself” but that point was immediately contested on quite accurate grounds. Someone else had the correct take (“This is genius. It's is problem everyone is having, and everyone knew it”) and the rest of the thread is similar – lots of use of terms like “great”, various technical questions, comments on how to improve their presentation, etc.

Re: the iPod, are you sure you're not confusing HN with Slashdot.org? The iPod launched 6 years before HN.

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

#179

Post by lebaux »

zeppers wrote: post #147

You are posting this question into what is mostly an anti-crypto echo chamber. It's a bit like asking "is the internet just a big scam" in 1998 at a magazine and newspaper trade conference. The people here are too engrossed in the world they built and lack the imagination for how it could be completely transformed to offer you an objective answer. My opinion is that 98% of crypto is either a scam or just bad ideas th…

> the remaining 2% will be the foundation the future of commerce and technology will be built on.

It has been 13 years and truly useful and innovative application of blockchain is yet to be found. You have the echo chamber beteween the ears.

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