471–480 of 650 posts
The Hacker News community has long been anti-crypto, and as someone deeply involved in the space, these long threads of complaints and diatribes are difficult to handle. Everyone is missing so much context. Ethereum gas prices are astronomical because there's unprecedented demand to use the network: NFT art and collectibles are exploding (NBA TopShot, Foundation, SuperRare, Rarible, OpenSea, etc.) at the same time De…
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What do you see as the killer use case for crypto currency/blockchain/smart contracts, etc.? I mined a few Eth in the very early days, and hung onto it until selling recently. I sold because I couldn't convince myself they had any value not based on the "greater fool theory". Was I wrong?
I have the same question too. Beyond speculation/greed, what are real world use cases of blockchain that can't be done with existing/mature tech? Nano seems nice for instant fee-less transfer. Other than that?
Before you start with the morality of the situation, just ignore that. You wanted to see a real use case, and I am telling you about it.
As it turns out, not everyone shares your moral code, or lives in the similar legal system which allows them the similar property rights.
Replace that person with a Venezuelan whose currency is completely destroyed and Venezuelan Americans are trying to provide their families with money.
Building something useful on something that is primarily used as highly volatile financial speculation instrument always rubbed me the wrong way. The whole crypto scene is just about making quick dough with a technology, that for some reason remains hyped through and wrapped in mysticism. Face it, there is no sexy killer app for the masses. Wait. There is one: Crypto trading to... make quick dough. And the cryptonerd…
The crypto killer app is using the money to buy illegal drugs. It always has been. Most of the people I knew who were into crypto early used it to buy weed online, not as an investment.
The Hacker News community has long been anti-crypto, and as someone deeply involved in the space, these long threads of complaints and diatribes are difficult to handle. Everyone is missing so much context. Ethereum gas prices are astronomical because there's unprecedented demand to use the network: NFT art and collectibles are exploding (NBA TopShot, Foundation, SuperRare, Rarible, OpenSea, etc.) at the same time De…
I'm part of a community that's currently being overtaken by the crypto art craze, and I'm still convinced it's "all for a quick buck".
The crypto art economy seems to be driven by "collectors" who will drop thousands of dollars on anyone who can get them more exposure. People who have no followers and aren't tweeting about NFTs every day generally don't get their art bought. Some of these kids who made $10,000 off a png then feel some social pressure to put some of that money back into the community, so they purchase more crypto art with the proceeds.
Some collectors openly advertise their ongoing bids on social media. They want people to see that they're dropping big money on art. If it was a true art collector, wouldn't they not want to be outbid? Wouldn't they be hoping that there were as few people in the auction as possible? None of it smells right to me.
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I'm going to agree https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=599852 The only surprise is that HN is still a terrible place to discuss crypto. Not many posters or commenters seem to have much knowledge, which is strange for HN
Maybe somehow they simultaneously have plenty of knowledge and don't agree with you. So in the spirit of education - what amazing things are there about ethereum or Bitcoin that will change my mind about their intrinsic value that I don't already know? (My current opinion is that the intrinsic value of PoW systems is negative due to low actual utility and very high cost.)
Every year the USD is worth less. Every year BTC is worth more.
Hope that helps.
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A failure of tether would certainly cause a ton of market volatility, but there's enough tether substitutes for the markets to adjust pretty quickly. Sure, the failure might freeze a lot of funds and depress market caps a bit in the process.
Personally I doubt it. Look at the market volumes -- everyone who wants to trade shitcoins just does it with BTC pairs, and most of the big boy exchanges support USD-BTC directly.. tether was a good idea when exchanges didn't want to mess with USD but that's not really the case anymore.
This is doubly true for people outside the US, not to mention people who are trying to skirt capgain taxes. Of course, an argument could also be made that a tether failure would cause people to flee to BTC or ETH and paradoxically cause prices to rise.
Building something useful on something that is primarily used as highly volatile financial speculation instrument always rubbed me the wrong way. The whole crypto scene is just about making quick dough with a technology, that for some reason remains hyped through and wrapped in mysticism. Face it, there is no sexy killer app for the masses. Wait. There is one: Crypto trading to... make quick dough. And the cryptonerd…
The crypto killer app is using the money to buy illegal drugs. It always has been. Most of the people I knew who were into crypto early used it to buy weed online, not as an investment.
I've never used a darknet market.
I read an article on slashdot in 2011 called "Bitcoin Mining for fun and profit" I bought a graphics card, it paid itself off in 21 days.
I bought 12 more graphics cards and sucked down 3kW for 24 months.
I do not regret this and every single person here that doesn't understand proof of work, doesn't understand a deflating asset with 8 (10 million) decimal places of trading precision against fiat currencies with only 2 decimal places...
Well I can't help people on the internet do math and make money, no one pays me to do that.
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https://www.forbes.com/sites/shehanchandrasekera/2020/07/21/...
This is more applicable to liquidity providers or things like AAVE and compound where your crypto is actually loaned out. With maker, your crypto doesn't move anywhere and isn't loaned out to anyone. For what it's worth, if you use AAVE or Compound, you also have to declare interest income on what you've earned. With maker, you'd be responsible for capital gains if it was liquidated because you fell below the 150% mi…
I guess the difference between me and someone who would use these DeFi apps, is that they are using crypto as a speculative investment (which is fine, I speculate with other assets all the time). But most people do not have a significant portion of their net worth in crypto tokens. For me, it is much cheaper/easier/safer to just get a traditional loan.
I really, really don't understand where cryptocurrencies are going. Billions have been poured in this technology for almost no actual return technologically wise. And I understand, because interest are not aligned. It really seems like nobody actually care about advancing the state of art, except actual researcher who work in universities and not in crypto startups... Cryptocurrencies had a goal and a usefulness when…
> And no, "stable coin" is not an answer since the only thing they have been used for is to trade between crypto... Our (blockchain-adjacent) company received millions in equity investment in the form of stablecoin transfers. Those investors were so heavily “in” crypto, that they didn’t have any liquidity of useful size in any actual fiat currency, so they wouldn’t have been able to invest in us in “real money.” We o…
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Technology removes the need for middlemen, and hence any trust needed for the middlemen. Allegiance to the tribe means following the customs/social ordering/rules of the tribe. For example, how well would a gay/non religious/etc person fare in tribes that don't believe in civil liberties?
> Technology removes the need for middlemen, and hence any trust needed for the middlemen. Unfortunately, I see what happens when 'We' use technology to remove middlemen... Apple: https://www.macrumors.com/2021/01/02/amphetamine-app-store-r... Google: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22348568 (person 17h ago on HN talking about google acct ban remediation https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26218795 ) https://ww…
Automated solutions do not preclude having human reviewers, and I do not think it's unreasonable for the government to step in and mandate quality (such as subjecting the automated solutions to a small claims court style jurisdiction).
>With the hawaladars, their word, ethics, and livelihood is on the line. You have a real human who can handle the squishy and nigh-unautmatable parts. And they can talk with the person trying to transfer money in case there is problems unforseen.
While there's plusses, there's also minuses. What happens when something goes wrong with a $100M+ transaction? What happens if your hawaladar or the other one burns you? There's 7B+ people in the world, eventually some organization to manage reputation will develop, maybe even by the hawaladars themselves, and you end up back where you started.
>But this seems like a veiled way to attack a way of moving money around solely because the name is Islamic.
I specifically wrote "etc" so I didn't have to specify each and every instance of discrimination, and my example of "gay" would certainly include the KY county clerk, so I don't see how you could claim I was attacking an Islamic concept because it's Islamic.
I'm not even attacking it, it's a perfectly valid way for transactions to work. In fact, my family has done it many, many times when they immigrated and they did it between various African countries, UK, USA, AUS, NZ. But that was during a time when transferring money was more costly and they didn't have another option. Now they might choose to use transferwise.