151–160 of 164 posts
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You hate it because you missed out on the gold rush. It's called jealousy. Simple as that. I hate it too for the same reason but at least I'm honest about it.
I don't hate it out of jealousy. I hate it because so many good people have been scammed and because it is dreadful for the environment. Wasting power for seemingly no purpose.
I hate blockchain so much and I can’t even exactly say why. Not because of the technology itself. I care about it as much as any other technology. I think it’s because of the sleazy non-tech people that suddenly turned into “experts” raising money for their BC startup, people organizing meetups, becoming “consultants” and of course the whole crypto craze... I really wish it will die soon.
I don't think it will die, newer blockchain protocols like MimbleWimble are highly interesting and pure math and cryptography. The ICO shillers are disappointing, I was younger in the dot-com era so I do not remember much, but I assume there was a similar vibe around that time with everyone getting rich with any website idea. For example, the recent BitTorrent ICO disappointed me, although it pumped 10x from ICO pric…
The big difference is that with dot-coms the scams and shady characters were in a minority, whereas with blockchain they are the vast majority (so much so that it is hard to separate the signal, if there is indeed any, from the noise). Don't think anyone would debate that point. Another (albeit more debatable) difference is that dot-coms were pretty focussed on users, while blockchain development seems to put very little genuine thought into how ordinary people would benefit from any of it - it is mostly about "building out the ecosystem" (which sounds suspiciously like "recruiting new members to our multi-level marketing scheme"). In my view these differences are because the dot-coms were driven primarily by the technology and the exciting new things you could do with it, while blockchain development is driven primarily by money (to make matters worse, psuedo anonymised money which was originally used almost exclusively for illicit purposes) hence bringing out the worst elements of human nature.
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Questions like this. Don't sea lion. http://wondermark.com/1k62/
This is spot on. It's the repeated conversations with evangelists to re-prove something mundane that really sucks all the air out of the room. The "Just Asking Questions" faux civility is sometimes referred to as JAQing off.
Is that some kind of hyper progressive safe space thing?
Please explain. I'd like to be a good citizen.
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There were 5-Million BTC in 2011, and there are now over 15-million BTC today. BTC has inflated 300% in the past 7ish years. There will be 657,000 BTC added to the system in the next year, or roughly 4.5%. Which means BTC is "inflating" more than USD right now (with your definition of 'inflation', which isn't very good IMO). The next halfening won't happen until 2020 or so.
That's not my definition you're using! I wouldn't count a hypothetical Satoshi dump as inflation, nor do I count new coins mined as inflation. Again, think of Bitcoin as analogous to gold (and ignore the fact that we can technically make prohibitively expense gold now, as economists of the past were not considering modern alchemy when defining inflation). We don't claim that gold has inflated when more is mined, beca…
Historically, I disagree. There was a big gold / silver crash that could only be described as inflation when the Conquistadors returned from the "New World" in the middle-ages.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_revolution
We're talking about a change in Gold / Silver prices which lasted for two CENTURIES. Yes, Gold / Silver is effectively finite on Earth. But it is wrong from an economics perspective to ignore the "short term" impact that can last centuries.
I'd argue that most people are probably concerned about time-scales roughly relating to one's life.
I hate blockchain so much and I can’t even exactly say why. Not because of the technology itself. I care about it as much as any other technology. I think it’s because of the sleazy non-tech people that suddenly turned into “experts” raising money for their BC startup, people organizing meetups, becoming “consultants” and of course the whole crypto craze... I really wish it will die soon.
I hate blockchain so much and I can’t even exactly say why. Not because of the technology itself. I care about it as much as any other technology. I think it’s because of the sleazy non-tech people that suddenly turned into “experts” raising money for their BC startup, people organizing meetups, becoming “consultants” and of course the whole crypto craze... I really wish it will die soon.
I'd hope for HN to be a place where we can actually ignore the noise and discuss about the interesting research being done around blockchains.
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This is spot on. It's the repeated conversations with evangelists to re-prove something mundane that really sucks all the air out of the room. The "Just Asking Questions" faux civility is sometimes referred to as JAQing off.
I don't fully understand the concept of sea lioning. Basically asking any question at all is "sea lioning", if the person being asked doesn't want to answer? OP made one statement, I asked one question, and it is sea lioning? Is that some kind of hyper progressive safe space thing? Please explain. I'd like to be a good citizen.
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>On the other hand, fiat money is constantly being secretly manipulated. Crypto can be secretly manipulated in the exact same way fiat can. The only thing different about crypto is that there's no central bank that can literally print money. Instead we get defacto authority with no legal framework in place.
> The only thing different about crypto is that there's no central bank that can literally print money Satoshi's pile of ~1 Million bitcoins disagrees with you. The entire BTC economy innately trusts Satoshi to not ruin the fun for them. If Satoshi decides to liquidate his holdings of BTC, it would crash the market harder than the next 10-years worth of mining. Satoshi's pile of 1-million bitcoins acts as a centraliz…
If you're a technical person, you don't need to trust Blockchain technology; you can verify that it works on your own. If you're not a technical person, you can find independent technical experts to verify it for you. Much of the value of a cryptocurrency can be attributed to the fact that it's difficult to coordinate a large number of people to agree on changes. Also, because most blockchains are public ledgers; it'…
>Cryptocurrencies have the potential to greatly improve the financial system by making it simpler, fairer and more transparent. When anyone will be able to launch their own cryptocurrency, we will have a chance to free ourselves from the coercive influences of debt, venture capital and corporations. When "anyone will be able to launch their own cryptocurrency" it will become completely useless. This is what many tech…
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Except the author is Bruce Schneier, world top security guru, if not arguably the most influential of it. And also your "quick" example talks about stuff outside or in the future to happen, while the article is based on current state of bitcoin in particular. Between believing Bruce and you guess who I'm going to trust in.
You obviously didn't read my other comments here if you think this is "future" stuff and not already working in real-world scenarios. Also the title does not say anything about Bitcoin, it uses the term Blockchain technology. For someone who is so professional and partial to the space, I WOULD ABSOLUTELY EXPECT a title and terminology to reflect the actual content and not to so casually and carelessly lob all Blockch…