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

The blockchain/cryptocurrency space is mostly fraudulent

davidgolumbia.medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 88 posts

Re: The blockchain/cryptocurrency space is mostly fraudulent

#51

Post by zwarag »

Daishiman wrote: post #42
zorked wrote: post #34

Anyone old enough to remember what the press said in the 90s about the Internet will recognize the similarities. The Internet is full of fraudulent websites. It's full of porn. Email isn't as warm as a hand-written letter. Communicating online isn't professional. Etc. Guess what, all those things were true but they turned out not to matter. You can do whatever else you want in a network that also carries porn. You le…

Internet-in-the-70s was incredibly, astoundingly useful, and people weren't in it for the potential, but because it was offering them something, _today_. I'm not seeing a single BTC enthusiast who's out for the utility of it. They are, quite literally, all of them into it for the speculatory potential.

> I'm not seeing a single BTC enthusiast who's out for the utility of it.

Isn't that the point of BTC. If you could see them, it would not be `pseudoanonymous` right?

Re: The blockchain/cryptocurrency space is mostly fraudulent

#52

Post by worik »

YetAnotherNick wrote: post #30
wyldfire wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> very damaging to the environment That's not accurate: not all cryptocoins are secured by an ever-escalating proof-of-work.

proof-of-work is supported by value of cryptocurrency, and does not something of inherent value. Contrast this with stocks, for which trading value depends on technical analysis and is slightly random, but in the end it is supported by some concrete thing.

No, value of stocks is independent of "technical analysis".

TA does not work, except in special circumstances, and then only until the "secret" is revealed.

Re: The blockchain/cryptocurrency space is mostly fraudulent

#53

Post by pmiller2 »

worik wrote: post #47
dnautics wrote: post #6

was ready to give this a shot, but what?? > They do not meet any of the standard tests for money (especially the three classic criteria of store of value, medium of exchange, and unit of account) That's a really difficult claim to swallow. Especially without further explanation than a wall of citations that I'm not going to bother chasing because I know the claim is false. At least provide a quick synopsis/summary fo…

Only a medium of exchange. Too volatile with no source of trust to be a store of value or a unit of account. Fiat money relies on the trust generated by the central bank. Non existent in crypto. So is not money.

No, it (specifically BTC) is not a medium of exchange, according to the author. And, really, how many people out there are actually buying and selling things using BTC? From the article:

> The major original claim for Bitcoin was that it would soon become widely used for buying and selling goods and services, the “medium of exchange” function, which might in fact have justified calling it currency. That claim has in every way failed to be realized.

Re: The blockchain/cryptocurrency space is mostly fraudulent

#55

Post by alphachloride »

dnautics wrote: post #27
dnautics wrote: post #6

was ready to give this a shot, but what?? > They do not meet any of the standard tests for money (especially the three classic criteria of store of value, medium of exchange, and unit of account) That's a really difficult claim to swallow. Especially without further explanation than a wall of citations that I'm not going to bother chasing because I know the claim is false. At least provide a quick synopsis/summary fo…

I'll take a shot at least at refuting the claims in the first bulleted point: "they are deliberately incompatible with the rest of the financial system" so is the north korean won (or the venezuelan bolivar, or, on the other side of the "good faith" spectrum, the brazilian real at its inception), but you wouldn't claim that they aren't currencies. "Most merchants who accept cryptocurrency aren’t actually accepting cr…

So theoretically it may be a currency, but pragmatically it is not.

Re: The blockchain/cryptocurrency space is mostly fraudulent

#56

Post by goldcd »

nwah1 wrote: post #25
dnautics wrote: post #6

was ready to give this a shot, but what?? > They do not meet any of the standard tests for money (especially the three classic criteria of store of value, medium of exchange, and unit of account) That's a really difficult claim to swallow. Especially without further explanation than a wall of citations that I'm not going to bother chasing because I know the claim is false. At least provide a quick synopsis/summary fo…

Many who were even pro-bitcoin like Peter Thiel gave up on the idea that it is a good platform for transactions, and instead argue that it is like "digital gold." A wildly volatile digital gold, of course, given that it has no other uses beyond speculation. But you are correct. It is bad at transactions but not incapable of them. Just as it is bad at storing value. As for being a unit of account that seems more theor…

Although to be fair, gold is quite volatile. Over last 9 years - Gone from $1800 an Oz, to $1000, to over $2000

Not something I invest in, but (for example) I'd no idea it was now worth more than platinum and has been for a very long time. Nor platinum seems to be on a slide currently, as gold spikes. Aside from you explaining novel industrial uses, it appears speculative.

Re: The blockchain/cryptocurrency space is mostly fraudulent

#57

Post by ztjio »

marcell wrote: post #44

This is a good example of gish gallop: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop

Nobody is "overwhelmed" by the points in this article as there is no time frame limiting any response. Indeed, nobody has agreed to respond at all. Therefore, "Gish gallop" is not applicable here.

Re: The blockchain/cryptocurrency space is mostly fraudulent

#58

Post by ztjio »

worik wrote: post #48
newyankee wrote: post #8

Cryptocurrencies are an innovation and they have value. We can debate the extent of this and what practical applications can really be built. However, outright dismissing them as garbage does no justice to the debate. Bitcoin is a good , fairly decentralized expression of digital scarcity at the very least and can be a store of value.

Good? Good for buying drugs on Silk Road (back in the day)

Also good for utterly wasting an enormous amount of power and contributing to global warming.

Re: The blockchain/cryptocurrency space is mostly fraudulent

#59

Post by pavlov »

Daishiman wrote: post #42
zorked wrote: post #34

Anyone old enough to remember what the press said in the 90s about the Internet will recognize the similarities. The Internet is full of fraudulent websites. It's full of porn. Email isn't as warm as a hand-written letter. Communicating online isn't professional. Etc. Guess what, all those things were true but they turned out not to matter. You can do whatever else you want in a network that also carries porn. You le…

Internet-in-the-70s was incredibly, astoundingly useful, and people weren't in it for the potential, but because it was offering them something, _today_. I'm not seeing a single BTC enthusiast who's out for the utility of it. They are, quite literally, all of them into it for the speculatory potential.

The same goes for all the other blockchains. Ethereum, EOS — all of them made fabulous promises of applications just around the corner, but nothing has materialized except shitty gambling and Ponzi schemes.

EOS alone raised over $1 billion in its year-long ICO. A startup that spent this much money and delivered so little actual utility would be out of business long ago. But these coins just keep going because end-user value was never the point, they're all about siphoning money from new suckers whenever there's a "crypto boom". The endless refrain of "maybe it's like the early Internet, you never know!" is an important part of this scam.

Re: The blockchain/cryptocurrency space is mostly fraudulent

#60

Post by pmiller2 »

tphyahoo2 wrote: post #14

"“Any time the author mentions “central banking”, he seems to only be referring to the “US Federal Reserve” as if that was the only central bank in the world. The fact is that many central banks have failed in the past, and is failing today (see Venezuela). That is not a leftist or rightist position, that is just reality. He also makes a huge and inexcusable omission of the 2008 financial crisis and the Occupy moveme…

Uhh. The author explicitly mentions China's "digital yuan" under the section on central banking.
Post reply on HN