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

#551

Post by noxer » Sun, May 30, 2021, 11:40 PM UTC

Could people just stop assuming cryptocurrencies == bitcoin.

Also DLT tech doesn't require a token with "value". There is no need to create an "alternative money" It can be just a DL (Distributed ledger). reducing everything to bitcoin and its forks is like reducing the whole internet tech stack to http and ignore everything else we can do with it.

DLT tech isnt going away an no one who seriously understand it would say so. THis is just another useless twitter BTC hate thread. People who actually understand the tech dont care about bitcoin. Its the dinosaur tech and its deprecated since like 2013 or so when the first alternatives appeared (XRPL) which dont need the whole energy wasting block lottery.

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

#552

Post by anm89 » Sun, May 30, 2021, 11:41 PM UTC

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…

I think it's time for us in the tech world to speak out and make it clear the emperor has no clothes here. _USD_ 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 _USD_ and our now hundreds of years of experience. It's not decentralized, it's not a good store of value, and it's not a promising piece of presidential portraiture.

_USD_ solves no problems that it didn't first create, and most of those it doesn't solve. Banks are neither of those things—at worst they're an API for fraud, or as I put it, self-funding institutional greed.

I think most of us in the industry gave USD a long leash because it's full of cleverness and seemed innovative just on those terms. But it's time we recognize that cleverness is being used as bait to defraud more people and perpetuate a con. Enough is enough.

The two things people need to know about gold are completely non-technical:

1. If it isn't backed by self-perpetuating value, it isn't worth anything outside of what people believe it is worth

2. If it works, it is only due to financial regulation

I'm not anti USD nor am I equating USD to gold or crypto. Just showing that these are mostly lazy arguments that can be applied to pretty much anything tradable on any market.

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

#553

Post by xpe » Sun, May 30, 2021, 11:41 PM UTC

shieVae4I wrote: post #502

tzumby wrote: post #162

What is surprising is how large the number of techies who don’t get this. It’s not about crypto currencies as much as it is about the game theory that allows it to run a distributed self replicating state machine that is Byzantine tolerant - this is the true innovation

It's not a particularly interesting Byzantine mechanism. Like every other such mechanism (in the absence of trusted computing and similar tricks) it has a n = 3f+1 limit. See the selfish mining paper for why it's not n=2f+1. It's just the Byzantine mechanism that happened to win. If anything, its innovation is that its n is based on hash power, not on number of users or nodes. And the cost? Having to drag an immutabl…

> It would be very difficult to construct something that would be self-replicating/hype-incentivizing but not reward early comers the same way.

Can you clarify what you mean by "the same way"? I wonder if you meant "reward the early-comers in _some_ way."

Yes, early miners of a cryptocurrency have an advantage, in the sense that there is less competition in computing resources. However, when you factor in risk (i.e. likely return on investment and opportunity cost), this "advantage" may not seem worth it. It depends on one's risk profile, awareness, opportunity, and skills.

Thinking along game theory lines, when designing a system that requires up-front work, it seems clear that early participants will look for risk-adjusted rewards downstream.

I don't know if I agree with the "very difficult" aspect of your comment. Many real-world systems exist that are not clearly explained by game theory; humans are more complex than their theories.

Just to give one example, family genealogists typically are more than happy to share their historical research and family trees with others without expectation of personal gain. They do it largely because they want their ancestors to be remembered in the context of history. Of course, there is also some incentive for the _ genealogist_ themself to be remembered and perhaps to be perceived as important. But my point stands -- family genealogists don't expect to be compensated at all, much less in a pyramid-scheme kind of way. They are happy to create something of value and share it. Of course, a big difference between these family trees and cryptocurrencies is that the former are non-rivalrous.

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

#554

Post by VonGallifrey » Sun, May 30, 2021, 11:41 PM UTC

giaour wrote: post #489

mthoms wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem like a very smart and highly technical person so I find it incredibly hard to believe you would have left vast sums of crypto on an unregulated exchange. You're either being dishonest here or you consider yourself extremely naive.

What regulated exchange existed in 2013?

The solution to the problem of not storing crypto on unregulated exchanges is not a regulated exchange. The solution is your own wallet/private key.

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

#555

Post by pornel » Sun, May 30, 2021, 11:42 PM UTC

tzumby wrote: post #162

What is surprising is how large the number of techies who don’t get this. It’s not about crypto currencies as much as it is about the game theory that allows it to run a distributed self replicating state machine that is Byzantine tolerant - this is the true innovation

I think part of the problem is that mining was a very clever solution to a logical puzzle that seemed impossible to solve. Like bloom filters, it's tempting to find a use for it, because the algorithm is so cool.

However, the theory and practice turned out to be very different. Neat algorithm can't be used as an excuse for the whole ecosystem that emerged around it: insatiable electricity usage of PoW, pump and dump, ransomware, money laundering, etc.

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

#556

Post by karaterobot » Sun, May 30, 2021, 11:44 PM UTC

Don't fall into the trap of thinking people disagree with you because they are ignorant. That never works, usually because it's wrong. Consider the possibility that most people who are into cryptocurrency are as aware of the many down sides as they would need to be, but have come to a different conclusion than you about them.

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

#557

Post by heurist » Sun, May 30, 2021, 11:44 PM UTC

shafyy wrote: post #263

bo1024 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do you have a source for this? For example, Erdogan flat out banned businesses from accepting cryptocurrency when he saw that people were putting their money in cryptos because of the inflation of the Turkish Lira. It's not like cryptos are a stable currency, either. Question: Wouldn't it make more sense for people in develping countries to buy more stable assets or currencies, or is it not possible to that because o…

One of the most common arguments used against Bitcoin is "it's only good in black markets." That's essentially what OP said. Do black markets not operate when Bitcoin is banned by government? Is this not the essential function cryptocurrency exists to serve? The outcome in Turkey for Bitcoin will be indicative. I have a timeline of 5-6 more years before I count it out.

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

#558

Post by aaron_m04 » Sun, May 30, 2021, 11:44 PM UTC

miles wrote: post #387

mandelken wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. Not OP, but I had the same question and did a few seconds of cursory searching to no avail. But rather than cognitive strain, I found it opened up a much larger vista on the perception of time and our seeming place in it. While I am unlikely to adopt it, perhaps the experience would be even broad…

https://longnow.org/

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

#559

Post by chx » Sun, May 30, 2021, 11:44 PM UTC

idlewords wrote: post #122

ashtonkem wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was no reason to believe it would move laterally, for both technical and social reasons. First, the underpinnings of Bitcoin are ideological, namely in Austrian economics. This means that any change that caused any inflation would be socially resisted. Second, most of the issues with Bitcoin stem from the lack of a central authority to do things like chargebacks and handle conflict resolution. It is not possibl…

Yeah, but when you took away the money part and just looked at the technical idea of a distributed chained ledger with no central point of trust, that was cool. At least, it was cool to me. It seemed like it might go in some interesting other direction.

> the technical idea of a distributed chained ledger with no central point of trust, that was cool.

So... like git?

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

#560

Post by AlexCoventry » Sun, May 30, 2021, 11:45 PM UTC

knorker wrote: post #530

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…

It's always so convenient that cryptocurrency/smart contract proponents "can't be bothered" to give actual arguments. Your comment here is a poster child of "I don't have time to explain, so please take these baseless assertions that you are wrong. Sorry I have to go now, for unrelated reasons". It's a cliche at this point.

It's not like pinboard made any actual arguments in his tweet storm, either, unless you count "we all know that cryptocurrency is a scam" as an argument.