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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

#431

Post by jfrunyon »

toyg wrote: post #328
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.

> Crypto is so large, complex and fast-moving that it takes thousands of hours to grasp. The thing is, regular money is, from a certain perspective, also a "scam". A lot of the financial system is effectively make-believe, with massive conflicts of interest at every corner and dynamics that keep working because everyone believes they should - until, for one reason or another, they stop believing, and then you have 20…

Fiat money has value because it is widely, almost universally, accepted in exchange for things of intrinsic value (food, shelter, toys, tools).

I'm not aware of any non-government-backed fiat currency which has gained widespread use in the history of humanity. And in fact all of the fiat currencies I know of originated as representative money.

Bitcoin is not widely accepted in exchange for things of values, and I see no reason to believe that will ever change. Being able to spend it is the "killer app" of cryptocurrencies, and none of them have actually implemented it, despite many, many attempts.

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

#432

Post by dang »

idlewords wrote: post #158
dang wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Edit: oh, the much simpler answer is that it was posted twice and both posts were on the front page. People flagged the dupe. That's fair. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27336405 . --- I think the submitted title probably had something to do with it; As a title, "the emperor has no clothes" is generic and baity. It's also false in the sense that there's no consensus view, so to the extent that the analogy is me…

Thanks for your honest broker moderation, here and in all the other places you do it. I do find it interesting that there's this putatively 100% tech topic that has the same dynamic as political threads.

It's certainly not a 100% tech topic? there aren't any (or hardly any) of those anyhow, no? but the main thing I want to say is thanks for that "putatively". Post HN I want to work on a society for endangered words.

Edit: well, one thought...IMO the dynamic that the explicitly-political threads and this sort of thread have in common is that people's identities are strongly vested in their position. The more we do that the more it feels like our existence is being threatened, rather than just our view. Then it's a fight to the rhetorical death.

That happens with emotional tech themes too, for example when people (god help us) identify strongly for or against some $BigCo or $celebrity.

Large sums of money being involved are a big multiplier of all this.

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

#433

Post by loveistheanswer »

kgraves wrote: post #365

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.

In what ways is the technology itself, rather than how it may often be used, a scam?

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

#434

Post by dopidopHN »

Tomte wrote: post #35
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…

> There were things to download, people to meet Same with LAN parties. I was thrilled to buy my first network card, and a tee connector. Even the fact that the first half of the day was mostly wasted with trying to get IPX and NetBEUI to work and TCP and UDP, and promising each other that we would not change anything until the next LAN party, and of course next time nothing worked either at first try. But it was fun…

I remember lobbying my friends to pool money so we can buy a router and use RJ45.

Living on the edge !

My parents still have fond memory of seing skinny teenager bringing computers on well barrel in their basement to play video game.

They were suspicious at first. But then they concluded they we were indeed playing video game.

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

#435

Post by kragen »

jfrunyon wrote: post #388
kragen wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I've been using Bitcoin to get paid for a couple of years at this point How do you turn your Bitcoin into food, housing, utilities, and other necessities? > And, yeah, 13 years after the internet's invention was 01982 The Internet was not available to virtually anyone in 1982 much less 1969. Nor was the ARPANET of 1969 even remotely similar to the Internet. TCP came about in 1974. IPv4 in 1982. > So why does Bitcoi…

> How do you turn your Bitcoin into food, housing, utilities, and other necessities?

I sell it for dollars to people in person; some of the dollars I have to change into Argentine pesos before I can spend them. Isn't that how everybody does it?

> The Internet was not available to virtually anyone in 1982 much less 1969

It was available to almost anyone who knew someone who had access, which is the same situation as Bitcoin. Precisely what Maciej is complaining about is that so little of the economy is hooked up to Bitcoin is that most of us can't buy a pizza with it without going through intermediaries.

> Nor was the ARPANET of 1969 even remotely similar to the Internet

It was remotely similar; it provided telnet over a packet-switched network, with routing. You could argue that substantial technical changes happened in Bitcoin over the last 13 years, too. Maciej did, in fact, make that argument: he pointed out in particular the dramatic shift to centralized intermediaries like Coinbase (the ANS.NET of Bitcoin?) and from CPU mining to GPU, FPGA, and then ASIC mining, as well as the proliferation of alternative cryptocurrencies. We could also mention segwit, the BCH schism, Lightning, BIP39 and Electrum seed phrases, and lightweight clients like Electrum. Those changes are not over yet. So the situations are in fact quite closely parallel.

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

#436

Post by qualudeheart »

kgraves wrote: post #365

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.

What are your arguments for this proposition?

How are Bitcoin and Ethereum ponzi schemes?

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

#437

Post by throwaway384028 »

idlewords wrote: post #30
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…

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…

You can still buy drugs with bitcoin :-)

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

#438

Post by paul_f »

npteljes wrote: post #164
segmondy wrote: post #125

Just gonna sound like a hater, folks worship success. They will listen to anyone who made millions betting on cryptocurrency over any smart person who didn't and is "jealous" for missing out. One mistake us "smart" folks make is thinking that investing is about understanding a system that's complete and smart. Most investments are not like black jack but more like poker where it all comes down to behavioral economics…

FOMO is real when I hear people talking about crypto. I feel the hype and I notice it in others too. Cool names flying around, there's a new type of coin for every coffee break we're having, the graphs go high, memes churned out every second. Colleague makes tenth of his salary with his GPU. Hard to remain neutral.

Brilliant point. I agree. Cryptocurrencies are fueled almost exclusively by FOMO. Tether is a joke and probably a scam, yet somehow has a $60B market value. SMH.

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

#439

Post by LegitShady »

losvedir wrote: post #420

I have a question: are there any "crypto-like" currencies? I do see value in being able to instantly exchange tokens which are generally liquid and convertible to local currency, with low fees, internationally, and in denominations that make sense to, e.g., tip a blogger for a post you like. The US could regulate the heck out of it, and the Venezuelan or Tanzanian farmer could use it more laissez faire. But none of t…

"Come buy my non-profit's company scrip" doesn't sound as appealing as "this could go waaaaay up in value, buy my speculation scam"

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

#440

Post by pen2l »

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…

You give convincing arguments in favor of BTC for folks living abroad in less-than-stable states. But these very arguments for which it is acclaimed have clear flip-sides that should be worrisome for those very same folks you claim it's suited for.

Safeguarding hard physical cash is something most everyone, old and young, technically literate or technically illiterate, poor or rich, intrinsically knows how to do. And when it is stolen or lost, there are viable approaches to pursue with favorable probabilities of a happy resolution: tell a police cop to see if they can catch the thief using detective work, you could try looking around if you think you might have misplaced it, etc.

With BTC on the other hand, ensuring your wallet isn't had by committed and technically proficient bad-actors or that your wealth isn't all erased in the blink of an eye with a hdd crash or a distressed acquaintance wiping your data away, you can't expect normal people to be up to the task of combatting all of this. And retrieving stolen BTCs from bad-actors living a continent away is a task that police cops are not up to doing or even the slightest bit capable of. You are a really smart guy kragen, I'm sure you won't forget your computer's password one day or have your wallet compromised, but someone like my mom or grandma would, and the thought that simple mistakes and viruses and computer illiteracy could and probably would be the thing that leaves someone's wealth irretrievably erased without much avenue of recourse saddens me, and makes me wish that people in our profession who understand this would stop encouraging its usage.

I come from a nation that ranks lower than Argentina in stability. My family went through this very dance of receiving money from abroad and having to go to WU to get it. The risk of a bad accident happening is infinitesimally small in that than with BTC.

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