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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

#161

Post by delaaxe »

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…

Ownership is information, not the underlying asset

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

#162

Post by tzumby »

What is surprising is how large the number of techies who don’t get this. It’s not about crypto currencies as much as it is about the game theory that allows it to run a distributed self replicating state machine that is Byzantine tolerant - this is the true innovation

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

#163

Post by lefrenchy »

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…

If i’m correct you can get upwards of like 5-10% interest on those platforms?

Can you simply explain to me where that money comes from? That just seems like an absurd amount of interest. Considering the crypto/inflation hawk intersection, i’d presume people would be skeptical of all this “free” money?

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

#164

Post by npteljes »

segmondy wrote: post #125

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…

FOMO is real when I hear people talking about crypto. I feel the hype and I notice it in others too. Cool names flying around, there's a new type of coin for every coffee break we're having, the graphs go high, memes churned out every second. Colleague makes tenth of his salary with his GPU. Hard to remain neutral.

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

#165

Post by xpe »

Geee wrote: post #115
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.

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

Or perhaps neither.

Some other simple explanations include:

1. People see it differently than you do.

2. People are not engaging in conversation as a way to learn from each other; rather they are talking past each other.

I'm inclined to think it is a mix of both.

Like I mentioned in a comment nearby, people on HN seem to vote based on different criteria. The lack of clarity can make it hard to extract clear meaning from votes.

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

#166

Post by meowkit »

forwardslash wrote: post #123
meowkit wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Tether is an application, not a core technology. Stablecoins would fit that quote.

Tethers management is the problem - obfuscation and using other crypto as collateral instead of just USD.

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

#167

Post by atomicnumber3 »

chrisbolt wrote: post #84
chrisco255 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, U.S. household net worth is near all-time lows in Fed balance sheet terms and people think crypto is the scam: https://mobile.twitter.com/RaoulGMI/status/13987339019132641...

What does “in Fed balance sheet terms” mean?

I think they're referring to the ratio of household wealth to total value of the fed balance sheet. Which is a number easy to calculate and his claim is factually true (mostly because the fed balance sheet has never been bigger).

But while his claim is true, in a Boolean sense, I don't know what exactly we're supposed to conclude about the world based on it. This isn't a ratio I've ever seen talked about before.

I'm guessing they're insinuating that the size of the feds balance sheet is somehow related to inflation, which it is only in a fairly loose sense.

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

#168

Post by sedatk »

amingilani wrote: post #8

> Cryptocurrency is sustained by a mix of money laundering, vaporware, fraud, ransomware, gambling, and delusion. It has no social benefit except helping end first dates fast > What we especially need to stress to regulators is that there's no relationship between the technical claims of cryptocurrency and our now over 13 years of experience. It's not decentralized, it's not a currency, it's not a store of value, and…

> Those are a lot of hasty statements made without indisputable evidence.

That reminds me of that guy who didn't receive his package and filed a complaint to the store he bought it from. They asked for a proof that the package didn't arrive, and he replied with the photo of his empty hands.

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

#169

Post by alecbz »

willhslade wrote: post #145
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.

> The implicit value of a currency is backed by being able to tax the citizens.

Elaborate? Not sure why this would be true.

I'm pretty sure there are plenty of "commodity currencies" (shells, salt, even gold) that achieved value without some central agency controlling the currency that could also levy taxes.

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

#170

Post by EliRivers »

Geee wrote: post #115
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.

Cryptocurrency is maybe the most important innovation is human history

Electricity? The wheel? Money? Sulfa drugs? Spoken language? Counting? Agriculture? Written language? There's a long, long list and to put cryptocurrency on it seems awfully hubristic.

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