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Ask HN: Why is HN so aggressively anti-Bitcoin?

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Re: Ask HN: Why is HN so aggressively anti-Bitcoin?

#61

Post by andirk »

conception wrote: post #12

For me personally, I think it's the fact that Bitcoin and especially other cryptos, are far far less secure than people think from attacks. The amount of money you need to move the market or execute at 51% attack ( https://www.crypto51.app/ ) especially if you are working with other large investors is trivial. For a group that loves independence from "big banks" and "Fiat" and the democratization of money, they seem…

Consider that those with the ability to invest in a blockchain >50% are probably not going to destroy the thing theyre making money from.

Re: Ask HN: Why is HN so aggressively anti-Bitcoin?

#62

Post by deweller »

PaulHoule wrote: post #3

Personally I like Ripple. I like permissioned blockchains. Why is it that blockchains weren't invented sooner? I'll contend that you'd be laughed out of any distributed systems conference if you suggested any protocol where the workload capacity doesn't increase when you add nodes. If you have ten traders who trade under a buttonwood tree, then having ten copies of the database makes the system bulletproof. If you ha…

Check out Facebook-sponsored Libra. It is a federated, permissioned blockchain that uses some concepts pioneered by Ripple.

Re: Ask HN: Why is HN so aggressively anti-Bitcoin?

#63

Post by mstaoru »

Many on HN had experiences with investment, or are themselves, investors. We need to see either enormous traction (beyond speculation) or solving of an actual customer problem. So far not a single "X but with Blockchain" startup did not deliver anything of true value.

Personal anecdote: a friend of mine was working on a project to utilize extremely counterfeit-resistant holographic tags to authenticate organic produce in China (where anything can be faked). 2-3 years and he still didn't have any significant customers. Enter Blockchain. They replaced the tag with a QR code, "blockchain cannot be faked" mantra, and within 6 months got $4 million investment and some customers. So when you scan the QR code, it opens a web page that shows some fancy data like id, date of packaging, etc. Who provides this data? The company. Who provides the web page? The company. Who can alter this data in any way they want? The company. And now the punchline: there is no blockchain in the code. Zero.

Re: Ask HN: Why is HN so aggressively anti-Bitcoin?

#64

Post by smt88 »

andirk wrote: post #60
smt88 wrote: post #26

My take is that it's several things: - Lots of crypto links posted to HN are scams or have no technical merit - No one has come up[1] with a use case for blockchain that actually requires blockchain, outside of cryptocurrency (which is something non-technical people and speculators don't understand or won't admit) - Because of rampant scams and speculation, a lot of online blockchain/crypto conversations have a high…

Vehicle history. Health care history. Or any type of history storage, really. The fact the data is everywhere means it cant be easily destroyed, and doesnt have only one gatekeeper.

How does blockchain help? Why do I want "consensus" (let alone distributed consensus) on any of those histories?

It's easy to create data that can't easily be destroyed. Back it up. You don't need a cryptographic, anonymous data mutation algorithm to do that. Just copy it to more places.

And as far as not having one gatekeeper... none of those things have one gatekeeper anyway. Who is lamenting that there's a single gatekeeper for their health history? If anything, people are lamenting the opposite -- that it's such a mess where multiple people have to cobble it together from disparate records formats.

To paraphrase something once said about JavaScript: the useful aspects of blockchain aren't new, and the new aspects aren't useful. Immutable (aka append-only), distributed, encrypted databases are useful! They are not blockchains, though.

Re: Ask HN: Why is HN so aggressively anti-Bitcoin?

#65

Post by jki275 »

lostmsu wrote: post #44

Bitcoin, for being the original. Ethereum, for providing smart contracts, that enabled many ICOs. Monero/ZCash for being private. All other currencies are mostly just clones of the 3 (meaning they can suffer from 50%+1 attacks), or remove the main feature: trustless transactions. In general, unless a currency provides a novel consensus algorithm, that brings something new to the table, it would actually be better off…

There are many cryptocurrencies that are not clones of those three. Monero and ZCash aren't even related to each other. Cardano is not a clone. Tezos is not a clone. Stellar is not a clone. Qtum is not a clone. NEO is not a clone. I could go on all day with cryptocurrencies that are not clones of any of the three you mentioned.

ETH enabled a vast amount of scammers and BS artists. Monero isn't actually private, it's been broken. Bitcoin is the original, but even it has changed many times over the years.

Re: Ask HN: Why is HN so aggressively anti-Bitcoin?

#66

Post by jki275 »

conductr wrote: post #22
jamroom wrote: post #11

I think a lot of HN users like to think of themselves as early adopters of new technology and are disappointed for missing out on the crypto highs at the end of 2017. I think they feel if they could have been in the loop at that time they could have cashed out. Thus crypto discussions are going to have a lot of negativity in the comments since the best way to make yourself feel better about it is to pretend it was a…

Or if your like me, you bought at $10 held until $20000 and decided was time to sell. That’s when I found out the wallet file format was no longer readable by the bitcoin client. So my coins are in cryptopurgatory. Maybe someday I’ll hire a dude to come help me. But he will probably steal my coins instead.

Just extract the keys. Your wallet is nothing more than a vehicle to hold the keys. If nothing else, just download an old version of electrum or the bitcoin client and export your keys that way. That's trivially easy, you don't need anyone to help you do it.

Re: Ask HN: Why is HN so aggressively anti-Bitcoin?

#67

Post by JoshTriplett »

panarky wrote: post #58
JoshTriplett wrote: post #29

I don't think HN is anti-blockchain. HN is anti-hype. Bitcoin and blockchain are not the solutions for every problem; HN can sometimes respect the hustle of "say blockchain so that you get more VC money", but that doesn't mean HN won't criticize the actual technology if it's "X but with Blockchain!!". And HN can go either way on "technical solutions for social/legal problems", so it's at least controversial to sugges…

> HN is anti-hype This is part of it, but that's faulty reasoning. Just because there's a lot of hype and fraud surrounding the technology and network does not mean that the technology and network is hype or fraud. Another factor is that we're very talented at finding all the reasons something new won't work, and not so good at understanding how something flawed can still be useful. Exhibit A is the infamous Dropbox…

I never suggested that Bitcoin or Blockchain were entirely hype. I'm suggesting that many uses of them, and many articles about them, are, and HN treats them accordingly. I'm talking about the 23rd article on "let's do medical records but On The Blockchain, which will solve every problem with medical records". I'm talking about people who seriously suggest that Bitcoin will make existing currency and governments obsolete. I'm talking about comments that decry the slightest criticism or moderation as "the nattering nabobs of negativism".

Re: Ask HN: Why is HN so aggressively anti-Bitcoin?

#68

Post by lostmsu »

jki275 wrote: post #65
lostmsu wrote: post #44

Bitcoin, for being the original. Ethereum, for providing smart contracts, that enabled many ICOs. Monero/ZCash for being private. All other currencies are mostly just clones of the 3 (meaning they can suffer from 50%+1 attacks), or remove the main feature: trustless transactions. In general, unless a currency provides a novel consensus algorithm, that brings something new to the table, it would actually be better off…

There are many cryptocurrencies that are not clones of those three. Monero and ZCash aren't even related to each other. Cardano is not a clone. Tezos is not a clone. Stellar is not a clone. Qtum is not a clone. NEO is not a clone. I could go on all day with cryptocurrencies that are not clones of any of the three you mentioned. ETH enabled a vast amount of scammers and BS artists. Monero isn't actually private, it's…

I am still very skeptical of PoS. To my knowledge, no PoS system provided an adequate proof of correctness as of today.

Stellar is not trustless.

> ETH enabled a vast amount of scammers and BS artists.

I believe this is not relevant to a technical discussion.

You are probably right about Monero's limits in comparison to ZCash. But, TBH, I am not following their development, because I prefer lack of anonymity.

Re: Ask HN: Why is HN so aggressively anti-Bitcoin?

#69

Post by jki275 »

lostmsu wrote: post #68
jki275 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many cryptocurrencies that are not clones of those three. Monero and ZCash aren't even related to each other. Cardano is not a clone. Tezos is not a clone. Stellar is not a clone. Qtum is not a clone. NEO is not a clone. I could go on all day with cryptocurrencies that are not clones of any of the three you mentioned. ETH enabled a vast amount of scammers and BS artists. Monero isn't actually private, it's…

I am still very skeptical of PoS. To my knowledge, no PoS system provided an adequate proof of correctness as of today. Stellar is not trustless. > ETH enabled a vast amount of scammers and BS artists. I believe this is not relevant to a technical discussion. You are probably right about Monero's limits in comparison to ZCash. But, TBH, I am not following their development, because I prefer lack of anonymity.

I didn't say anything about POS, but if you want to discuss it IOHK has done a significant amount of academic work in the field, which has been deployed with Cardano. Tezos is in operation now and has been for over a year doing delegated POS, and they're at the same level of academic rigor as the IOHK team.

My comment about ETH is an explanation of why it causes people to be anti-cryptocurrency. Its only actual working purpose is to enable scams. That's certainly relevant in a technical discussion. BTW, ETH didn't do smart contracts first. They were in bitcoin back at the very beginning, then were removed as a security problem. ETH proved Satoshi right, they've showed the world exactly how not to implement smart contracts.

Re: Ask HN: Why is HN so aggressively anti-Bitcoin?

#70

Post by lostmsu »

jki275 wrote: post #69
lostmsu wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am still very skeptical of PoS. To my knowledge, no PoS system provided an adequate proof of correctness as of today. Stellar is not trustless. > ETH enabled a vast amount of scammers and BS artists. I believe this is not relevant to a technical discussion. You are probably right about Monero's limits in comparison to ZCash. But, TBH, I am not following their development, because I prefer lack of anonymity.

I didn't say anything about POS, but if you want to discuss it IOHK has done a significant amount of academic work in the field, which has been deployed with Cardano. Tezos is in operation now and has been for over a year doing delegated POS, and they're at the same level of academic rigor as the IOHK team. My comment about ETH is an explanation of why it causes people to be anti-cryptocurrency. Its only actual worki…

The academic part would be interesting. The time of operation matters less, as if there is a fundamental flaw, it would go in flames over night. Anecdotally that point was demonstrated by a 50%+1 attack on one of PoW clones, which worked fine until someone actually bothered to make it happen.

I still don't think your comment on ETH and scams is either objective, or relevant to a technical discussion.

As for smart contracts - Turing completeness is a substantial difference from the development point of view. The idea of gas seems to be novel. The fact, that people made mistakes in the contracts themselves only shows their incompetence in developing serious contracts. It has nothing to do with the platform.

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