It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency • Hacker News Board

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

#141

Post by xpe » Sun, May 30, 2021, 9:12 PM UTC

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…

> EDIT: downvoted again. I’m not contributing here anymore.

Have you reviewed the HN Guidelines at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html ?

> Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.

I'll offer my two cents in case it gives another perspective you haven't considered. The meaning of voting on HN is far from obvious. Various people downvote for different reasons.

Maybe they are unimpressed by your comment, maybe they disagree with it, maybe they think it is inappropriate somehow, maybe they don't like that you plugged a particular cryptocurrency, or something else.

In any case, I recommend not worry about the votes, up or down. At times, it can be helpful to see if what you are writing is perceived as useful, if you can take the feedback in that manner without taking it personally.

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

#142

Post by captn3m0 » Sun, May 30, 2021, 9:12 PM UTC

knolan wrote: post #51

When I first heard of cryptocurrency I was reminded of when people started idling in Team Fortress 2 to get content drops. It was such a daft cart before the horse approach, but of course those dropped items could be sold for fractions of a penny and people can be dumb. It also reminded me of Folding at Home. Here people completed by virtue of their personal compute resources. Of course crypto serves as neither a for…

I’ve come to the conclusion that Bitcoin was a perfect “isolated” P2P currency system. If it was just considered Monopoly money, that is. The moment you try to find its worth by buying/selling it against Fiat - you get the exact same thing you get when you allow real world trading on any game currency - scams.

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

#143

Post by Hamuko » Sun, May 30, 2021, 9:12 PM UTC

Swizec wrote: post #132

Git is the most wildly successful and broadly useful application of the ~blockchain~ merkle tree data structure. It’s fantastic and here to stay. The digital money angle? Eh it’s okay. Everyone loves a gullible population that prefers to be paid in not-money. Eventually crypto will have to invent all the overhead and governance it was trying to escape. You know, so things like Musk’s little pump-and-dump the other we…

How is git an application of blockchain when it predates Bitcoin by several years?

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

#144

Post by dumbfounder » Sun, May 30, 2021, 9:12 PM UTC

EliRivers wrote: post #114

dumbfounder wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I meant to say concept of ownership of digital content. My wording was ineloquent.

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

#145

Post by willhslade » Sun, May 30, 2021, 9:12 PM UTC

alecbz wrote: post #118

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 currenc…

This is and is not true. The implicit value of a currency is backed by being able to tax the citizens. This is why there are federal but not state / province level currencies as the friction of conversion is a dead weight loss.

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

#146

Post by xXx_uwu_xXx » Sun, May 30, 2021, 9:13 PM UTC

skrebbel wrote: post #50

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…

[flagged]

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

#147

Post by davidgerard » Sun, May 30, 2021, 9:13 PM UTC

idlewords wrote: post #122

ashtonkem wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Bitcoin was a fascinating technical trick, but it's also been a worked example of the difference between "interesting", versus "feasible" or even "a good idea".

As soon as it claimed to be money, then it was all about the money. If you look at early BitcoinTalk, you'll see a pile of scams that are extremely similar to the jargon still used in crypto to this day - the scammers got in very early indeed.

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

#148

Post by c01n » Sun, May 30, 2021, 9:13 PM UTC

hilbertseries wrote: post #15

vimy wrote: post #11

Written from the perspective of someone in a first world country. Edit: https://www.statista.com/chart/18345/crypto-currency-adoptio...

What’s the advantage of cryptocurrency over mpesa?

- Decentralized (Not controlled by a single company)

- Phone number not required

- Crypto-coins work in more countries countries then mpesa

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

#149

Post by idlewords » Sun, May 30, 2021, 9:13 PM UTC

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 don't understand the belief that any of this takes power from corporations. If you look at NFTs right now, big participants include the NBA, Sotheby's, and a whole lot of venture capital. What's the dynamic that's going to shut them out as they become more lucrative?

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

#150

Post by alecbz » Sun, May 30, 2021, 9:13 PM UTC

idlewords wrote: post #136

alecbz wrote: post #118

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 currenc…

When I say pyramid scheme, I don't mean it in the sort of philosophical way that you could apply to all fiat currency, but in the "OMG look at Tether" way.

Ah, I might be out of the loop. tl;dr?