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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

#341

Post by neonological »

xpe wrote: post #141
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 di…

I hate this voting thing. People are quick to judge and It leaves no room for respectful disagreement and drives people away.

How do I tell someone that I value his input even though I respectfully disagree? It's pretty much impossible on HN without writing a post.

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

#342

Post by lifeisstillgood »

Graffur wrote: post #245
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #24

I am not sure why this is flagged - it seems a reasonable and timely opinion piece. Cryptocurrency is a subject that has to have a deep and public debate. What the OP is saying (which I take to be "the tech world has a duty to point out the flaws in cryptocurrency to avoid giving an impression of a clean bill of health to every ICO out there") - that is a valid socially useful debate. There are valid real world uses…

It's flagged because it's flame baiting. It's posting opinions and acting like it's representing the "tech world". This is just some unknown twitter account

I mean he is not famous but not quite unknown.

Here for example is The Economist on his bookmarking site:

>>> Mr Cegłowski runs Pinboard, a paid social-bookmarking service which allows subscribers to store web links with annotations and share them with others. In broad terms, it is similar to Delicious, which Yahoo! acquired in 2005.

https://www.economist.com/babbage/2011/04/04/stick-a-pin-in-...

But yes, this is a controversial subject. It shouldn't be. It should be an easy yes / no. But something is wrong. We should not be afraid of the discussion about what is wrong.

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

#343

Post by seibelj »

joepie91_ wrote: post #251
meowkit wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Considering that almost all legitimate users have been priced out of the market due to ever-increasing transaction fees and increasingly draconian regulations (often stricter than for non-cryptocurrency) and the resulting interoperability issues... Yeah, I think it's safe to say that the primary use of cryptocurrency nowadays is as either casino chips or a money laundering mechanism. The economics no longer make any…

Is it so worthless that no one uses it, or so useful that only the highest-value transactors are willing to pay the fee?

It’s like arguing the most popular restaurant is so crowded, no one goes there anymore.

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

#344

Post by char8 »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #89
char8 wrote: post #62

Seems lobsided. Sure Bitcoin suffers from high fees, but it serves well as a savings account. We've also started accepting litecoin payments on our site: I set it up once, and forgot about it. With Paypal it's a never-ending rigamarole. I've recently closed my bank account, and started using something a bit more up-to-date (Revolut). I believe Bitcoin is the single biggest innovation driver in the tech sector right n…

> 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.

Depends on your timeframe.

Yes i've lost a lot of my net worth compared to last month.

Compared to last year, i'm up 3.5x.

That's one of the things i like about using Bitcoin as a savings account, it makes me think more longterm about my finances.

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

#345

Post by heurist »

Graffur wrote: post #225
ashtonkem wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin didn’t regress, what actually happened is that its fundamental flaws ended up eventually dominating whatever early enthusiasm allowed them to be ignored. It was never going to work, for a variety of reasons that were incredibly apparent at the time. “Why did it regress” is much less interesting than “why did anyone ever fall for this?”

What are the fundamental flaws you're talking about? (I assume throughput but I'll wait for your reply). What do you mean by saying people fell for "this"? I assume you mean it's a scam but I will wait for your reply.

I'm confused about why Bitcoin is being discussed in the past tense when both usage and price have both grown significantly over the last year. Is it already dead? Could have fooled me.

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

#346

Post by mondoveneziano »

seibelj wrote: post #301
mondoveneziano wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am essentially pasting an old comment of mine: The Internet was always something where demand--and desired applications--were vastly over capacity and capability. From the moment computers were networked, more people wanted to do more things over those networks, and both infrastructure and underlying technology had to grow to barely keep up (or, in fact, could not keep up--many long desired applications only became…

Fees of blockchains are at times very high because the demand vastly exceeds their current transaction capabilities

In the case of the Internet, people were doing either new things, or existing things more efficiently (e.g. sending emails vs. postal mail and fax, or transferring files vs. swapping disk media or printouts). As the Internet progressed, efficiency increased.

In the case of cryptocurrencies, people are doing existing things that can already be done quickly and efficiently vastly less efficiently, in a system that is purposely designed to be less efficient, where efficiency is in fact actively counteracted. Databases and online money transactions were possible before, at a fraction of the total cost inherent to the system and at vastly higher performance.

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

#347

Post by shiftpgdn »

titzer wrote: post #316
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…

> The early Internet was infinite times more fun. Holy crapballs, yeah it was! I remember when I learned HTML in 1996 and put up one of those blinkety animated GIF homepages on the hosting space given (for free!) by my local dial-up ISP. They had a local chatroom and I spent hours and hours chatting with locals from the same city--even met some of them! I read the hacker's manifesto and about phreaking and all of tha…

The early internet was overrun with this stuff too. Remember Bonzai buddy? Or the ad serving tools that’d claim to pay you for every hour you’re connected to the internet?

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

#348

Post by char8 »

ashtonkem wrote: post #69
char8 wrote: post #62

Seems lobsided. Sure Bitcoin suffers from high fees, but it serves well as a savings account. We've also started accepting litecoin payments on our site: I set it up once, and forgot about it. With Paypal it's a never-ending rigamarole. I've recently closed my bank account, and started using something a bit more up-to-date (Revolut). I believe Bitcoin is the single biggest innovation driver in the tech sector right n…

> I believe Bitcoin is the single biggest innovation driver in the tech sector right now Not gonna lie, I laughed at this.

Yes sorry it was a typo. I meant to write:

> I believe Bitcoin is the single biggest innovation driver in the *fin*tech sector right now.

Obviously not the biggest driver in tech; i don't blame you fr laughing at this statement.

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

#349

Post by Bayart »

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…

>working democracy

That's a sizable assumption to begin with. Democracies are less and less, well, working because the Internet itself has eroded trust significantly and is moving the parameters of epistemology around. That is a problem caused by tech, so how is it not a tech problem ? The work done in the blockchain space on trust is IMO very important.

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

#350

Post by danboarder »

lottin wrote: post #325
Graffur wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the fundamental flaws you're talking about? (I assume throughput but I'll wait for your reply). What do you mean by saying people fell for "this"? I assume you mean it's a scam but I will wait for your reply.

> What are the fundamental flaws you're talking about? For a payments system, the fact that all transactions are final is pretty bad. I'd say this, by itself, makes the system unusable in the real world.

Except that transactions are not final, your scenario is exactly what crypto is great at, there are many ways you can set up an escrow for any transaction to protect multiple parties, for example by using a multisig wallet (1).

(1) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multisignature

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