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

#171

Post by idlewords » Sun, May 30, 2021, 9:18 PM UTC

chrisco255 wrote: post #116

jakelazaroff wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Oil prices didn't go negative, the price of a financial derivative did.

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

#172

Post by dadoge » Sun, May 30, 2021, 9:19 PM UTC

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…

Or the CSO of the Human Rights Org? https://www.google.com/amp/s/bitcoinmagazine.com/.amp/cultur...

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

#173

Post by msoad » Sun, May 30, 2021, 9:19 PM UTC

chrisco255 wrote: post #70

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…

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…

some of us were here and read it a while ago[1]. it is clever indeed but we have seen it can't be a currency as it originally claimed

[1][https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1251519]

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

#174

Post by morelisp » Sun, May 30, 2021, 9:19 PM UTC

chrisco255 wrote: post #133

morelisp wrote: post #100

> They don't see the huge silent majority of tech people who know it's a scam. That's on us Serious question: What does "not silence" looks like? Anyone who asks me gets my viewpoint on cryptocurrency and blockchains generally (which is more or less the same as Maciej's). My relatives all know it, but they also know another relative (who also thinks it is a scam!) made a couple K back in the first bubble because he w…

How sustainable do you think this is: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M1SL That's a chart showing the M1 money supply increase by the Fed. It has more than quintupled in the past two years. That chart looks like a true scam to me. And it shows in the US household net worth data: https://mobile.twitter.com/RaoulGMI/status/13987339019132641...

See! Look! This is exactly my point! Nobody is ever going to convince the guy who sealioned into a random subthread with some random charts to make an unclear point. Nothing a human can say will stop this army of even-more-nerdy Ross Perots.

The only thing that speaking up ever does is generate more noise, which frustratingly then generates more interest. This probably even applies to Pinboard's appearances - anything, pro or con, to keep cryptocurrency on the air.

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

#175

Post by bo1024 » Sun, May 30, 2021, 9:19 PM UTC

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…

Actually, my understanding is that cryptocurrencies are having impact in developing countries. They can address hyperinflation, access to financial services, general friction in exchanging money etc.

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

#176

Post by Swizec » Sun, May 30, 2021, 9:19 PM UTC

Hamuko wrote: post #143

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?

It’s the same data structure. Bitcoin just added the proof-of-work idea to extending the chain and attached the concept of “value” as a social construct.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merkle_tree

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

#177

Post by 0x0 » Sun, May 30, 2021, 9:20 PM UTC

judge2020 wrote: post #129

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…

> "only gives them the utility of the land itself"

"only"?

I'd say the "utility of the land" IS the only value of "having" land.

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

#178

Post by kemonocode » Sun, May 30, 2021, 9:20 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.

A not so insignificant part of me wishes Tether would crash already so it'd kill that argument dead for crypto detractors. It'd be interesting to see how Bitcoin's value would look after. I really doubt it'd be zero.

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

#179

Post by MrRadar » Sun, May 30, 2021, 9:20 PM UTC

codehalo wrote: post #152

MrRadar wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The environmental harms of cryptocurrencies hurt everyone . It's a classic externality.

Even worse than coal mining and ICE vehicles right? I don't see all this righteousness for those.

I want to see those things go away too, but we're going to need to significantly increase the energy efficiency of our entire society to be able to achieve that. Cryptocurrency mining is anti-efficient, by design. How much coal generation could we retire just by eliminating the energy demand from cryptocurrency mining? I suspect the answer to that question is more than zero.

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

#180

Post by c01n » Sun, May 30, 2021, 9:20 PM UTC

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…

> 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.

The final goal is not to be able to convert crypto to fiat, the goal is to keep everything in crypto. Do you think all this infrastructure is being build just to convert it back to fiat, what cypherpunks want is to destroy fiat.