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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

#111

Post by morelisp »

chrisco255 wrote: post #93
pavlov wrote: 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…

Have you been looking at the Maetaverse at all? https://www.sandbox.game/en/ https://decentraland.org/ These are 3D virtual world environments and people are using crypto to build an online economy. They are trading property, buying virtual artwork and creating galleries, setting up clubs and meeting spaces, etc. You can also explore decentralized finance, act as a peer-to-peer lender, provide liquidity in a marketpl…

> They are trading property, buying virtual artwork and creating galleries, setting up clubs and meeting spaces, etc.

This all happens in Second Life and doesn't need to burn the planet to do it.

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

#112

Post by greyface- »

chx wrote: post #97
dadoge wrote: post #86

Bitcoin is giving people in hyperinflation environments like Nigeria, Argentina, Turkey an out to their oppressive and corrupt govt banking system. If one looks at gold and asks themselves “why is gold worth 11 trillion dollars today?” How did it, over centuries and centuries obtain such a status? Bitcoin has better properties than gold does. It’s more scarce, scarcity means predictability, and predictability gives r…

> predictability have you reviewed what you are writing or is it just a Markov chain generating text?

I took this to mean that bitcoin's issuance rate is more predictable than the rate that physical gold is discovered and mined at. There are unknown unmined gold deposits out there, both on-planet and off-planet. There are no unknown unmined bitcoin deposits.

Also, https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html#comments

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

#113

Post by blast »

neither_color wrote: post #45

1. Promise a revolutionary technology ("self-driving cars are coming"!) 2. Use that promise as a pretext to ignore all regulation 3. Make a fortune 4. Drop the tech story The author lost me here. Completely subjective take on what Uber has done. They've completely improved ride-sharing and cab hailing within the whole industry, including non uber users. Depending on what country I travel to, Ill be using a different…

Yeah that Uber thing struck me as false too. It was obviously a ride-hailing app and provided a superior service to what existed before. The self-driving thing came up later and was always a sideshow. I suppose it helped them raise money but it was hardly their "pretext to ignore all regulation".

It's a side point to the thread though.

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

#114

Post by EliRivers »

dumbfounder wrote: post #71
idlewords wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm the author of the thread. For what it's worth, I grew up as a refugee whose mother had to find incredibly inventive ways to send USD to family back home, where it was illegal to possess. What I don't understand about the crypto remittances argument is how the people sending and receiving them are supposed to convert them into spendable currency. My hunch is that a lot of the value of cryptocurrency in those count…

I think NFTs will transform the concept of ownership, and take power away from major corporations in the process. This is just one aspect of crypto that I think more than justifies its value. But there is a ton of hype and a ton of bad stuff going on yes, but that will be pushed to the background as it goes more mainstream. All people inside the industry think this is just the beginning and there is a lot of value to…

I think NFTs will transform the concept of ownership

The current concept of ownership appears to be that if I own something, broadly speaking, that means people generally agree (and the state, and ultimately their monopoly on force, will back up) that I get to say what gets done with it and who gets to make use of it, and that it's not OK for someone else to take it away from me without my consent.

If NFTs are going to change that, I'm not sure I like it.

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

#115

Post by Geee »

john_alan wrote: post #13

Hacker news is holistically anti cryptocurrency. Which disappoints me. It has virtues. As someone who works in applied Cryptography and has also worked for the European Central Bank, we need “crypto”. 1) seigniorage is an abused privilege. Source: US debt ceiling at 27TRN. 2) permissionless money has value, I cannot send more than 5k a day using my bank. I can send any amount using crypto. I also don’t need two utili…

Yeah. I think these HN threads are either manipulated, or HN is full of idiots. Not sure which is more likely.

Cryptocurrency is maybe the most important innovation is human history.

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

#116

Post by chrisco255 »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #89
char8 wrote: 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…

> Sure Bitcoin suffers from high fees, but it serves well as a savings account. Does it? Your Bitcoin "savings account" would have lost over 45% of its value over the past month and a half.

A friend of mine paid another friend of mine $80 in BTC for a trip we did about 5 years ago. That BTC, never touched, is now worth $5000. At any rate, it's definitely volatile, because the asset class is still a small (but growing) potato in the grand scheme of commodities markets. One thing we can be sure of, it will never go negative in price, unlike oil.

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

#117

Post by charlesarthur »

blurbleblurble wrote: post #60

I can understand peoples' frustration with the artificial scarcity, but would like to see this same energy over the artificial scarcity of housing and free time. The oligopoly of national money systems is currently failing to provide people with basic access to capital. There's nothing intrinsic about cryptocurrency that will necessarily help this or exacerbate it, but the fact that I can get better interest on US do…

"the fact that I can get better interest on US dollars by depositing stablecoins on some defi platform"..

There was this guy called Madoff. He was able to get better interest than the markets for quite a while too. Those stablecoins are not contributing to the productive economy. They're not being invested in machines that make new cars, clear carbon from the air, produce cheaper food. Nothing about cryptocurrency will solve housing or free time, because those are political problems which require humans to come together with a common aim - not, in the complete opposite example, people just wanting more for themselves by "depositing stablecoins on some defi platform".

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

#118

Post by alecbz »

Isn't all currency more or less a "pyramid scheme" in the sense that Bitcoin is?

I wish we had more subtlety in our discourse. It feels like it's all either blind admiration or blind condemnation.

Bitcoin is trying to be a new currency. Currencies more or less operate on "collective delusion". I think many people scratching their heads at why Bitcoin is worth anything _are_ missing something, which is why any currency has any value at all, which is itself kind of surprising and unintuitive.

At the same time, I think it's fair to be a little more skeptical about what the value of a currency like Bitcoin is, precisely, and how much effort ought to be put into building it.

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

#119

Post by yownie »

idlewords wrote: post #57
neither_color wrote: post #45

1. Promise a revolutionary technology ("self-driving cars are coming"!) 2. Use that promise as a pretext to ignore all regulation 3. Make a fortune 4. Drop the tech story The author lost me here. Completely subjective take on what Uber has done. They've completely improved ride-sharing and cab hailing within the whole industry, including non uber users. Depending on what country I travel to, Ill be using a different…

I'm the author of the thread. For what it's worth, I grew up as a refugee whose mother had to find incredibly inventive ways to send USD to family back home, where it was illegal to possess. What I don't understand about the crypto remittances argument is how the people sending and receiving them are supposed to convert them into spendable currency. My hunch is that a lot of the value of cryptocurrency in those count…

maybe you should be talking to people in Nigeria, India and Venezuela then?

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

#120

Post by dadoge »

chx wrote: post #97
dadoge wrote: post #86

Bitcoin is giving people in hyperinflation environments like Nigeria, Argentina, Turkey an out to their oppressive and corrupt govt banking system. If one looks at gold and asks themselves “why is gold worth 11 trillion dollars today?” How did it, over centuries and centuries obtain such a status? Bitcoin has better properties than gold does. It’s more scarce, scarcity means predictability, and predictability gives r…

> predictability have you reviewed what you are writing or is it just a Markov chain generating text?

Generation of new coins is transparent, the total number of coins capped.

That’s predictability. Name one other asset on earth that is easily transferable and more predictable in that sense?

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