291–300 of 1001 posts
I could waste a huge amount of time refuting the author's points, but will make it more of a meta comment. Crypto is vast, complex, and inherently not suitable for binary thinking. I've studied the space for months and have come to the conclusion that crypto is two-sided in almost every aspect. Many/most coins are speculative, which you can associate with words like "greed" and "casino". Yet also provide wealth savin…
It's also a bogus attempt to imply a broad consensus where there is none. As someone in tech myself, my personal opinion is that most of the twitter thread is nonsense.
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You're actually almost right. While Bitcoin was launched with lofty goals, it was pretty quickly overtaken by capitalist vultures who saw a low-regulation industry to extract money from people. Importantly though, it's not an either/or. Capitalism is problematic and cryptocurrency is problematic. Both can be true at the same time.
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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.
What problem does Bitcoin solve?
How to pay a drug/malware/CP dealer?
How to receive a bribe without physical exchange/trail?
Cash doesn’t work well for any of these use ases, while crypto (esp. Monero) is just perfect!
Tweets like those are why Pinboard is one of the few Twitter accounts I've blocked. On certain issues, the author loves to righteously sneer. It annoys the hell out of me because when he's not sneering, he can be a knowledgeable and clear thinker. He's like a glass of wine with a single fly in it. This behavior isn't just annoying to others; it's harmful to his own goals. If Maciej had hedged his bets and accepted Bi…
This argument makes me hate cryptobros even more - people who have an interest in cryptocurrencies have direct financial benefit from talking about how good they are.
> He could have used that money to further causes he cares about, such as climate change and social issues.
Financial benefit from something doesn't make it right or morally acceptable, it only makes you rich.
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I disagree with the characterization that the primary use is a scam. That’s like saying the primary use of email is to receive ads and phishing mail.
Are there numbers on what the primary uses of cryptocurrency are? I would guess remittances, purchasing illegal things, purchasing legal things, and ransomware - but I'm not sure in what order.
Some of them opt out of more environmentally unfriendly stuff like Ethereum for sure
Personally I've developed systems for paying for everyday things like your bus fare or phone bill using crypto in a country where there's a hell of a lot less confidence in fiat (Brazil) -- hell check out the history of the Brazilian Real if you want an idea of what real candycorn money looks like
Personally I just feel a hell of a lot of privileged bullshit out of people arguing that crypto is some good for nothing shit. Yeah sure great try living in a country where your government is fucked. We truly don't live in some francis fukuyama neoliberal fantasy world where we can trust stuff like traditional financial markets which have gone and failed us in the non english speaking world time and time again. I welcome any and all alternatives
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…
This huge silent majority that know it is a scam doesn't exist. Crypto is so large, complex and fast-moving that it takes thousands of hours to grasp. If I'd make a list of 100 questions regarding crypto, an exam so to speak, I am reasonably sure that this silent majority can't even answer 5% of the questions. Because they don't know crypto. At all.
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…
Local Taxi hailing apps were first. Uber adopted this and their disruption of many local markets happened only after offering cheaper alternatives by burning money.
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…
This huge silent majority that know it is a scam doesn't exist. Crypto is so large, complex and fast-moving that it takes thousands of hours to grasp. If I'd make a list of 100 questions regarding crypto, an exam so to speak, I am reasonably sure that this silent majority can't even answer 5% of the questions. Because they don't know crypto. At all.
There are non-technical heuristics that we can all employ, through our knowledge of history and sociology, that allow us to identify late stage bubbles (and the pyramids and ponzis that accompany them).
I don’t have a taxi driver but I do have taxi driver equivalents in my life that are currently giving me all the signals I need.