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It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency

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Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency

#61
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The screenshot is of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27335940 >, which is a duplicate of this thread. This thread was previously [flagged] [dead], but is now back to normal. I assume via moderator action?

Yes, but I missed that it was being flagged because it was a dupe. Merging the threads now. Thanks!

Appreciate the unflagging. Sending 0.2 BTC now as agreed

Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency

#62
Seems lobsided. Sure Bitcoin suffers from high fees, but it serves well as a savings account. We've also started accepting litecoin payments on our site: I set it up once, and forgot about it. With Paypal it's a never-ending rigamarole.

I've recently closed my bank account, and started using something a bit more up-to-date (Revolut). I believe Bitcoin is the single biggest innovation driver in the tech sector right now.. but sure.. it's a scam.

Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency

#63
post #21

“But it’s like the early Internet!” shouted the Emperor’s coinholders. “The Internet wasn’t yet useful a mere, um, thirteen years after its invention either.” I can see how people in their twenties would fall for this argument because they can’t remember. The reality is that the internet was immediately extremely interesting (either useful or fun) for practically everyone who got access. Email and ftp alone were kill…

I can't agree with your point hard enough. Really useful nascent technologies all have this pattern—they grow incrementally more interesting and constantly gain applications. Bitcoin followed this pattern for a while. But then at some point it started to regress on that axis. You could no longer buy a pizza with it, you could no longer mine it, and it got too flooded by scammers to use safely. There's nothing to real…

Bitcoin didn’t regress, what actually happened is that its fundamental flaws ended up eventually dominating whatever early enthusiasm allowed them to be ignored. It was never going to work, for a variety of reasons that were incredibly apparent at the time.

“Why did it regress” is much less interesting than “why did anyone ever fall for this?”

Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency

#64

These two resonated with me: > A lot of intelligent observers look at cryptocurrency, see that it makes no sense, and reasonably infer that they must be missing something profound on the technical level. Tech culture has a nice tradition of not deriding new ideas, but we need to break it here and speak out > [non-tech people] don't see the huge silent majority of tech people who know it's a scam. That's on us It is o…

> I'm pretty sure it's nothing but a pyramid scheme, but I always gave the enthusiasts the benefit of the doubt.

So go find out? I’m quoting you here for the “pretty sure” part. Do a deep dive. I’be done deep dives on Bitcoin, Ethereum, Cardano, Monero, Nano, Iota, Hyperledger, BSC, Uniswap, Tether, Chainlink and cursory glances at dozens of other coins/tokens.

I’m a tech guy. I work on an operating system/embedded systems. Nothing about blockchains, DLTs, crypto, at its core is a scam to me. The author saying the “silent majority tech people” know its a scam is such nonsense to my experience. Every tech person I know thinks either A) its neat/super cool, or B) they don’t know anything about it besides memes.

Sure there are tons of misinformation, scams, and bullshit going on. That’s everywhere and is not special to crypto.

Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency

#66
post #35
post #21

“But it’s like the early Internet!” shouted the Emperor’s coinholders. “The Internet wasn’t yet useful a mere, um, thirteen years after its invention either.” I can see how people in their twenties would fall for this argument because they can’t remember. The reality is that the internet was immediately extremely interesting (either useful or fun) for practically everyone who got access. Email and ftp alone were kill…

> There were things to download, people to meet Same with LAN parties. I was thrilled to buy my first network card, and a tee connector. Even the fact that the first half of the day was mostly wasted with trying to get IPX and NetBEUI to work and TCP and UDP, and promising each other that we would not change anything until the next LAN party, and of course next time nothing worked either at first try. But it was fun…

Business, education, research, and defence users were finding 3 Mbps coax revolutionary for decades before LAN parties were a thing.

Internet and Ethernet were useful immediately.

https://www.hpe.com/us/en/insights/articles/the-birth-and-ri...

Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency

#67
Without getting into the specific issue of Bitcoin, I’m absolutely uninterested in calls to “speak out about” something because I work with computers. No.

We do not share a politics because we both know python or whatever. Leave me alone.

Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency

#68
Cryptocurrency is like some sort of economic viral weapon.

It presents itself as a techno-utopian vision of freedom, takes advantage of greed to replicate itself throughout the financial system, and mutates to use as much energy and as many resources as possible.

If it were designed for that purpose, it would be the most cynical indictment of capitalism conceived.

Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency

#69
post #62

Seems lobsided. Sure Bitcoin suffers from high fees, but it serves well as a savings account. We've also started accepting litecoin payments on our site: I set it up once, and forgot about it. With Paypal it's a never-ending rigamarole. I've recently closed my bank account, and started using something a bit more up-to-date (Revolut). I believe Bitcoin is the single biggest innovation driver in the tech sector right n…

> I believe Bitcoin is the single biggest innovation driver in the tech sector right now

Not gonna lie, I laughed at this.

Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency

#70

These two resonated with me: > A lot of intelligent observers look at cryptocurrency, see that it makes no sense, and reasonably infer that they must be missing something profound on the technical level. Tech culture has a nice tradition of not deriding new ideas, but we need to break it here and speak out > [non-tech people] don't see the huge silent majority of tech people who know it's a scam. That's on us It is o…

It's not. It's an economy. If you haven't engaged with the technology or even have a surface level understanding of traditional financial tooling like derivatives, options, futures, precious metals trading, etc. then you shouldn't parrot what someone on Twitter says. Take the time to understand the existing system and how smart contracts work and some of the blue chip protocols like https://aave.com/ or https://chain.link/ and then make an informed opinion.
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