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

#361

Post by Popegaf » Sun, May 30, 2021, 10:18 PM UTC

fleddr wrote: post #264

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…

The link is to a twitter (aka the cesspool of the internet). I do not expect anything non-binary to come out of there.

The most sensationalist tweets get posted here all the time. It's not worth anybody's time taking them seriously.

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

#362

Post by texaswhizzle » Sun, May 30, 2021, 10:19 PM UTC

Graffur wrote: post #243

texaswhizzle wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not artificial scarcity, it’s outright fake scarcity. The total supply of Bitcoin is 21,000,000 coins. However, every single coin is 100,000,000 individual assets. 21,000,000 sounds pretty finite. But 21,000,000,000,000,000 sounds a tad less finite. The price of Bitcoin relies on the fundamental false premise that it’s scarce.

1 = x 1/100,000,000 = x/100,000,000 "stacking sats" is a common phrase so it's not really a secret that a bitcoin can be subdivided. In fact, a lot of bitcoin supports would support people learning this fact.

There is nothing special or important about a single entire Bitcoin. It’s completely arbitrary. The question is whether Bitcoin is scarce. If there are millions of trillions of tradeable assets, it’s not scarce.

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

#363

Post by mandelken » Sun, May 30, 2021, 10:19 PM UTC

kragen wrote: post #285

idlewords wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't agree with your point hard enough. Really useful nascent technologies all have this pattern—they grow incrementally more interesting and constantly gain applications. Bitcoin followed this pattern for a while. But then at some point it started to regress on that axis. You could no longer buy a pizza with it, you could no longer mine it, and it got too flooded by scammers to use safely. There's nothing to real…

I've been using Bitcoin to get paid for a couple of years at this point (programming work for overseas clients), and I haven't gotten scammed yet. I'm not engaged in money laundering, vaporware, fraud, ransomware, or gambling, and only the usual amount of delusion. And I don't even buy illegal drugs! And, yeah, 13 years after the internet's invention was 01982; not only couldn't you get so much as a weather report on…

Thanks for sharing your point of view.

What is unclear to me, is how these remittances work in practice. I get that in the US you can exchange USD to Bitcoin with a credit card and then send that to a person in, say, Venezuela (or share the wallet password). But how is it converted back to Venezuelan Bolivar? I can't imagine you buying a pizza with bitcoin in Caracas.

Side question, why do you write your years with a leading zero? I've never seen that before and it has quite a cognitive strain for me.

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

#364

Post by sombremesa » Sun, May 30, 2021, 10:20 PM UTC

I don’t really give a crap about any crypto, and I agree that much of it is a pyramid scheme.

However, I think people don’t understand that Bitcoin is first and foremost a brand. A brand doesn’t have to be “useful” to have value, it just has to be recognizable to enough people. A lot of altcoins have appeared, but not a single one of them has the brand strength of Bitcoin - not even the “tech fave” ethereum.

On the flip side, one doesn’t have to participate in any kind of crypto, including Bitcoin, to leverage the brand - since the brand doesn’t rest on the value of the currency itself.

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

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Post by kgraves » Sun, May 30, 2021, 10:21 PM UTC

Absolutely, I have seriously thought long and hard about cryptocurrencies and have also come to the conclusion that it is a definitive scam.

Now is the time we must shut it down. Bitcoin, Ethereum, all of it.

Even ponzi schemes have it's limits and this one has been reached and been illegally allowed to run rampant.

It was nice when it started, not while it lasted. It didn't work and now it's time for it to go.

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

#366

Post by onelastjob » Sun, May 30, 2021, 10:21 PM UTC

seoaeu wrote: post #269

onelastjob wrote: post #44

If you're in rural India and don't have access to a bank account, but you do have internet access via a smartphone, then I could definitely see cryptocurrency being valuable to you. And that doesn't even take into account countries like Venezuela that are experiencing hyperinflation, where cryptocurrency would be much more useful. There are cryptocurrencies that are energy efficient and have low (or even zero) transa…

How exactly do you imagine that an unbanked person living in rural India would be able use cryptocurrency? It isn't like they can just enter their credit card into a website and buy some. Not to mention that even if they someone managed to acquire some, the $5+/transaction fees are going to make something like bitcoin or ethereum completely impractical.

Nano has free transactions. Other cryptos like Stellar and Solana have low cost transactions. People can use sites like localbitcoins to exchange cash for crypto.

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

#367

Post by pa7x1 » Sun, May 30, 2021, 10:22 PM UTC

idlewords wrote: post #297

fleddr wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's a hash tree with a vape cloud around it, not quantum chromodynamics. I think most people on this technical forum understand it just fine.

The hard part is not the data structure behind it (Merkle tree) but the economics. An entirely new branch of economics has spun of it and it's far from trivial.

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

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Post by Jarwain » Sun, May 30, 2021, 10:22 PM UTC

crummy wrote: post #189

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.

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.

I think the interesting use is more in the blockchain than the currency. Public, verifiable, tied to an identity, decentralized statements that can be used as public records or provide an audit trail. Cryptographically & blockchain secured bodycams is an example that I've been looking into recently

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

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Post by aeternum » Sun, May 30, 2021, 10:23 PM UTC

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…

"A lot of observers", "Many people say", "Everyone says". Let's stop using weasel words, if you consider yourself a techie, come up with some real evidence-based arguments.

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

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Post by eli » Sun, May 30, 2021, 10:23 PM UTC

tuesdayrain wrote: post #330

wmf wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a tech guy. I've spent years experimenting with crypto and it isn't fit for any legitimate purpose.

You're not very good at experimenting then. I first bought BTC in 2013 because of a legitimate purpose: to pay for online goods (legal software) to a seller who wanted to completely eliminate any risk of chargebacks.

And 8 years later the fees no longer make it viable for even that niche use case.