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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

#121

Post by alkonaut »

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…

> They've completely improved ride-sharing and cab hailing within the whole industry, including non uber users.

They only did that in some places where there were poor Taxi markets (medallions etc). In places where you could hail a cab follow it and pay for it with your smartphone years before Uber, they did nothing. They didn't exactly invent that. They just said that because magic fairydust they could do that also in cities where the law said they couldn't. Which is kind of strange when you thinnk about it.

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

#122

Post by idlewords »

ashtonkem wrote: post #101
idlewords wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but a lot of early technologies move laterally in some unexpected direction, and it was reasonable to expect blockchain stuff to do the same. Maybe the original idea could never fly (even in 2008 you didn't have to be a genius to see that evading financial controls would be the chief use of a working cryptocurrency). But likely someone would find a really neat twist on it and find the blockchain equivalent of V…

There was no reason to believe it would move laterally, for both technical and social reasons. First, the underpinnings of Bitcoin are ideological, namely in Austrian economics. This means that any change that caused any inflation would be socially resisted. Second, most of the issues with Bitcoin stem from the lack of a central authority to do things like chargebacks and handle conflict resolution. It is not possibl…

Yeah, but when you took away the money part and just looked at the technical idea of a distributed chained ledger with no central point of trust, that was cool. At least, it was cool to me. It seemed like it might go in some interesting other direction.

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

#123

Post by forwardslash »

meowkit wrote: post #99
forwardslash wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How have you done a deep dive on Tether and not seen it as deeply troubling?

Did I say I did not find it deeply troubling?

You said

> Nothing about blockchains, DLTs, crypto, at its core is a scam to me

Which I took as an implication that you didn’t see Tether as a deeply troubling or a scam

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

#124

Post by cinntaile »

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…

Crypto is a touchy subject, right up there with religion and politics. I wouldn't worry too much about the downvotes.

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

#125

Post by segmondy »

Just gonna sound like a hater, folks worship success. They will listen to anyone who made millions betting on cryptocurrency over any smart person who didn't and is "jealous" for missing out.

One mistake us "smart" folks make is thinking that investing is about understanding a system that's complete and smart. Most investments are not like black jack but more like poker where it all comes down to behavioral economics and psychology. Doesn't matter how stupid the actually game is, it's about the meta game with the crowd.

Plenty of tech folks making money in crypto know this, wallstreet going into crypto knows this. Most of us in tech are too autistic to play on that level. So focused on the correctness of the tech.

For the players it's a big casino and they know it. The lucky winners will be rewarded for having heart and playing

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

#127

Post by yoloyoloyoloa »

I see more and more tweets and articles like this posted here on hackernews that echo the sentiments of the world economic forum on how they feel about cryptocurrency. Remember they are the very people that say you should:"Own nothing and be happy".

If you think cryptocurrency is a scam then you havnt looked into the technology behind it and the economies that have been built using these technologies.

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

#128

Post by lreeves »

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…

Second Life did this 3D virtual world stuff almost 20 years ago, and even managed to use real money with an exchange rate as well to do exactly the things you're saying are now new with crypto and blockchains.

Also for your other points - the games in this space are universally unfun to play with hardly anyone actually playing them; I can pay normal money to commission artwork; and I can use a zillion platforms that already exist to raise money.

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

#129

Post by judge2020 »

shafyy wrote: post #96

The issue of the "promise" of cryptos (and blockchain in general) is that it tries to solve problems that are not tech problems. They are mostly political/governmental problems that are solved by a working democracy. In countries where there is no working democracy, the dictator won't give two shits if this NFT proves that you own this piece of land before taking it from you. Blockchain in itself is not something tha…

If everything is considered ‘owned’ based on NFTs, and other stuff relies on that to verify ownership and provide services, then the government talking the physical land only gives them the utility of the land itself, and not the other stuff (eg. The ability to sell the property) - plus, the government superseding a fictional blockchain-backed real estate market is likely to cause a market crash.

Blockchains and NFTs make sense only when the blockchain becomes the source of truth, and it does solve real problems - it just doesn’t work for cryptocurrency when someone’s $1 could be worth 30 cent or 6 dollars in just a year. Nobody wants that amount of uncertainty.

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

#130

Post by crgi »

Fully agree. The current/legacy financial infrastructure is actually 10 times more decentralized than any DLT: DLT is the same software run on multiple nodes. SWIFT in contrast is a protocol, that anyone can implement. So its hundreds of software teams, building and operating their part of the infrastructure and integrating with each other. The SWIFT protocol itself is maintained by the member organizations, anyone can bring in proposals. The complexity of it does not come from technology, but the regulatory requirements which differ vastly across the world.
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