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

#231

Post by dredmorbius » Sun, May 30, 2021, 9:32 PM UTC

yannoninator wrote: post #182

dredmorbius wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What fraction of all commerce is worldwide as opposed to local? What degree of that difference, if any, is a consequence of payment frictions rather than other factors (say: most activity and interactions are local). What preferences are exhibited by major international buyers and sellers for payment or credit systems?

These questions have no effect on crypto's adoption, perhaps these questions are an exercise to the reader.

If the questions have no effect on crypto's adoption, why should the claim that "crypto is worldwide" have any relevance?

If it does have relevance, then the questions do in fact matter.

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

#232

Post by chrisco255 » Sun, May 30, 2021, 9:32 PM UTC

ashtonkem wrote: post #87

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...

Something being wrong with the economy doesn’t preclude Bitcoin from being a scam. That’s a false dilemma you’re proposing.

This, this is a scam: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M1SL Notice the 5x supply increase without a corresponding 5x in economic efficiency. Bitcoin is what it is. It's worth what people think it's worth. Just like gold. Gold has minimal practical use in real life but it was used as a type of money off and on for 5000 years.

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

#233

Post by tzumby » Sun, May 30, 2021, 9:32 PM UTC

xpe wrote: post #195

tzumby wrote: post #162

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

Your comment is unclear. > What is surprising is how large the number of techies who don’t get this. What do you mean by "this"? Do you mean all of the points made by the author in the tweets? Or do you mean "the following" instead of "this", referring to what you think is most innovative about Bitcoin?

this = blockchain + proof of work / proof of stake , in my comment. The crypto currencies are a requirement to fulfill the Byzantine tolerance. They need to have value in order for the incentives to make sense

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

#234

Post by Graffur » Sun, May 30, 2021, 9:32 PM UTC

xpe wrote: post #195

tzumby wrote: post #162

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

Your comment is unclear. > What is surprising is how large the number of techies who don’t get this. What do you mean by "this"? Do you mean all of the points made by the author in the tweets? Or do you mean "the following" instead of "this", referring to what you think is most innovative about Bitcoin?

I've been asking for similar clarification on other comments. I think this whole thread has become useless.

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

#235

Post by dev_tty01 » Sun, May 30, 2021, 9:33 PM UTC

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…

Where is the "indisputable evidence" to dispute the claims of the article?

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

#236

Post by curtisf » Sun, May 30, 2021, 9:33 PM UTC

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…

> These are 3D virtual world environments and people are using (VIRTUAL CURRENCY) to build an online economy. They are trading property, buying virtual artwork and creating galleries, setting up clubs and meeting spaces, etc.

What you're describing here is Roblox (2006), which was launched 2 years before Bitcoin was conceived, and has attained a market cap of >$50 billion without any cryptocurrency nonsense. Or Second Life (2003). Or RuneScape (2001).

Cryptocurrency doesn't enable online trading with virtual currency -- if anything, it's dramatically _more_ difficult to use than either real plastic, or virtual currency sitting in a SQL table.

What it enables is theoretical trust in a shared ledger (handwaving that a Sybil attack isn't attempted by any of the massive mining pools); but this trust is assuming you're a computer scientist capable of auditing the clients and contracts. Yet, even professional programmers have lost hundreds of millions of dollars worth of crypto with programming mistakes and security flaws in their smart contracts and clients! If even professional crypto software developers can't take advantage of cryptocurrency's supposed benefits, how are the players of an online game supposed to?

The answer is of course that they have to relegate trust, in the same way that online shoppers relegate trust to Visa/Mastercard. The important difference being that only Visa/Mastercard guarantee your funds are returned if you're defrauded.

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

#237

Post by chrisco255 » Sun, May 30, 2021, 9:33 PM UTC

atomicnumber3 wrote: post #167

chrisbolt wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That US household net worth is falling despite the fact that real estate prices and stock prices are near all time highs.

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

#238

Post by ttepasse » Sun, May 30, 2021, 9:33 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…

An NFT is ... a digital receipt that “money” flowed at one moment in time. The referenced digital artwork or something is only referenced by an URI. That is ownership? Seems a very transformed concept to me.

My supermarket gives me an NFT in paper form every-time I buy something.

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

#239

Post by zzzeek » Sun, May 30, 2021, 9:34 PM UTC

mettamage wrote: post #217

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 on tech people to evaluate business impact or societal impact or economic impact. Sure, tech people could do that but most of our time is spent on designing or implementing software. Let other people (non-tech or hybrid) comment on the idea. They have time to think about this. Tech people can only help by explaining in understandable ways how blockchain/cryptocurrencies work. 3Blue1Brown has a good video on…

are you seriously advocating for a complete lack of ethical awareness on the part of engineers? Pretty sure Volkswagen engineers went to prison for interfering with emissions software so precedent is kind of not with you here.

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

#240

Post by sneak » Sun, May 30, 2021, 9:34 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…

The nice thing about Bitcoin is that it doesn't have a jurisdiction or location[1]; you can solve some problems in some places via a functioning government, but Bitcoin solves some problems in all places simultaneously.

[1]: this is not to claim, as some do, that it is unregulatable, although it may be.