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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

#511

Post by shkkmo »

itisit wrote: post #451
shkkmo wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The twitter thread mostly uses the full term "cryptocurrency", which is not ambigous. Using the term "crypto" to refer to cryptocurrency is amigous and misleading.

> Using the term "crypto" to refer to cryptocurrency is amigous and misleading. To whom? “Crypto” is the colloquial shorthand for “cryptocurrency”. And I believe those thinking otherwise are reacting to the new usage encroaching on the old. Petty hill to die on…

> To whom?

To everyone outside the cryptocurrency social bubble.

> And I believe those thinking otherwise are reacting to the new usage encroaching on the old. Petty hill to die on…

I think it is pretty silly to deliberately use an ambiguous term when better ones exist.

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

#512

Post by ggreer »

jedberg wrote: post #393
alecbz wrote: post #118

Isn't all currency more or less a "pyramid scheme" in the sense that Bitcoin is? I wish we had more subtlety in our discourse. It feels like it's all either blind admiration or blind condemnation. Bitcoin is trying to be a new currency. Currencies more or less operate on "collective delusion". I think many people scratching their heads at why Bitcoin is worth anything _are_ missing something, which is why any currenc…

Fiat currency is backed by courts and regulation, which is backed by a literal army, and the threats of violence that army brings. If someone steals your fiat USD, there will eventually be someone with guns removing you from society if you don't return them. Cryptocurrency has no such backing.

> If someone steals your fiat USD, there will eventually be someone with guns removing you from society if you don't return them.

That's true for any type of property, including cryptocurrency. US police have returned stolen cryptocurrency to its rightful owner.[1]

The wrinkle is that police can only recover property if they know where it went. Cryptocurrency makes that harder in some ways (pseudonymity/anonymity, mixers) and easier in others (transaction history on the blockchain, lots of electronic records in exchanges).

Over my life, I've had a half-dozen things stolen from me that were worth more than $1,000. Only in one case did the police recover my property (a motorcycle) and only because the thief committed other crimes while riding it. I had to pay $200 to get it out of San Francisco's impound lot. (It would have been $400, but the city gave me a 50% discount because I was a resident.) It was only after paying the money that I could see the bike. It was totaled.

1. https://www.nj.com/news/2019/09/nj-man-tried-to-send-apology...

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

#513

Post by eli »

acjohnson55 wrote: post #496
eli wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The extremely messed up incentives make it impossible to even have an honest conversation about it’s merits or issues. If there are any legitimate uses for blockchain (and that’s an if) they’re lost in the noise of 10,000 get rich quick schemes, outright frauds, and bad actors.

100% this. It's the world's greatest machine for generating motivated reasoning. People buy in during the pump and get incredibly motivated to join the immune system for their chosen coin.

I spent a long time giving NFTs the benefit of the doubt because I didn’t really get it and I couldn’t get anyone to explain it to me who wasn’t also VERY invested in their outcome and unable to concede the possibility of any downsides.

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

#514

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

tzumby wrote: post #247
xpe wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

If you don’t believe that there is value in a distributed self replicating Byzantine tolerant state machine, that’s fair, everybody is entitled to their opinion.

Considering that it hasn't produced any value of note in 13 years, I'm gonna go out a limb here and say I don't think it's worth 2% of the entire world's wealth - and certainly not 3% of the world's energy.

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

#515

Post by jacquesm »

viraptor wrote: post #499
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…

OT, but how come you use 01982 rather than 1982? Is that a personal / subculture / locale thing?

It's Y10K proof ;)

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

#516

Post by mandelken »

hmrtn wrote: post #462

I think it's time for us in the tech world to speak out and make it clear the emperor has no clothes here. _Gold_ is sustained by a mix of money laundering, human slavery, fraud, ransom, 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 claims of _gold_ and our now thousands of years of expe…

Clever analogy. Let me quickly give some background on actual the use of gold as a store of value, besides the obvious point that gold does not rust (decay) and that it is somewhat rare.

As you know, gold is also shiny and has been used for jewelry for thousands of years in many cultures. Some anthropologists have reversed the causality of value and jewelry, arguing that gold is precious _because_ it is used as jewelry. Indeed, in many cultures different types of jewelry [1] were used as a basis for currency (as in unit of accounting).

Therefore, one of the most basic human features, dressing up within a social hierarchy might be at the basis of gold and currency.

I don't see any such use case for cryptocurrencies (yet).

[1] besides pearls, beads, necklaces, it could also be rare make-up material or even feathers. I recommend the work of anthropologist David Graeber in his book Debt: the First 5000 years.

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

#517

Post by wmf »

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.

Completely eliminating any risk of chargebacks mostly shifts risk back onto the customer; I don't think it's a net benefit. Some businesses seem to intrinsically have sky-high chargeback rates but I'd prefer that those businesses simply not exist rather than put up with the existence of crypto.

I once bought donuts from a food truck with BTC and the donuts were good but the payment process was really slow.

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

#518

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

bo1024 wrote: post #175
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…

Actually, my understanding is that cryptocurrencies are having impact in developing countries. They can address hyperinflation, access to financial services, general friction in exchanging money etc.

> Actually, my understanding is that cryptocurrencies are having impact in developing countries.

Which country specifically would be a good example of this? If there are in fact any examples of this.

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

#519

Post by faitswulff »

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…

> After all, Elon is so cute when he's enthusiastic! But yeah he probably knows it's a scam too, what was I thinking.

Judging by how quickly Tesla stopped accepting Bitcoin, I would say he definitely knows.

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

#520

Post by danbolt »

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…

The assets available for those games are ultimately at the mercy of the proprietary Unity client. If the company developing it decides to stop doing so or supporting certain assets, you might find the things you previously had become unusable overnight.
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