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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

#621

Post by bufferoverflow »

Taniwha wrote: post #483
daniel-cussen wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's become gold. Preferred by criminals, untraceable (gold is a single stable isotope, basically untraceable). A store of wealth. And you can't buy a pizza with gold, either, and there are tons of scammers who love gold (I remember, about Thailand, the scammers would conspire to get people's gold, a few would talk loudly about how jewels were going up, then someone else in your trip would just happen to mention, des…

Gold also has a fatal flaw, there's only so much of it, building a currency based on gold (ie the US dollar on the gold standard) limits the size of the economy, it can't grow if you can't pay for stuff - it's why we left the gold standard. Bitcoin by design only has a fixed number of coins available, eventually the miners will have mined them all. It has the same limitation that gold has and basing an economy on it…

That's nonsense. Bitcoin is not limited to whole coins. The total number of satoshis is crazy big, more than the dollars in the world.

Bitcoin is limited by the block size and the lack of working L2 solutions (lightning is permanently broken).

But other currencies, like BCH don't have that problem, and can easily represent the whole US economy.

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

#623

Post by mthoms »

knorker wrote: post #477
mthoms wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "early internet" comparison is usually presented when talking about how clumsy and slow the technology is in its current state. The argument is certainly not presented in the context of how "fun" it is. There's nothing "fun" about finance (and there never will be). In the context of technological state (how brittle and obtuse the tools are), the comparison between the two is right on the money IMHO. I once config…

No, it's not a good comparison. The internet was always state of the art and better at solving actual problems the worse solutions were tackling. Fidonet was always, on a technical level, a worse experience than the internet. BBSs have their charm, but were absolutely obviously worse at what they did that the internet. Cryptocurrencies are just awful at solving real problems, compared to existing solutions. Why are y…

It's a good comparison insofar as the tools were/are primitive and only usable by experts. A lot of domain knowledge was required.

You can hate crypto and still agree with me on the above point. It's a pretty innocuous observation.

I'm not going to engage the rest of your argument which has no bearing on the point being made.

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

#624

Post by EricMausler »

ffggvv wrote: post #581
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 problem is there’s always someone knew who hasn’t been fooled by it, and it can sound good at first. i remember i believed in it in 2013 before becoming disillusioned. but there’s people who first bought it in 2020 who tell me i don’t understand ot

Smart contracts seem legitimately useful. Am I missing something here?

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

#625

Post by baby »

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…

I’m in the field and I would be careful with OP’s pov. I don’t trust the opinion of a bitcoin maximalist as much as I don’t trust the opinion of someone who has little clue about the field.

Someone saying that crypto will replace the USD = someone saying that crypto has no usecase and is only used for fraud.

Unfortunately it really takes a lot to have an opinion on the field imo. Money is very abstract and so you need an understanding of crypto, of economics, and of how payments work in the world today.

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

#626

Post by B1FF_PSUVM »

CPLX wrote: post #546
B1FF_PSUVM wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> go downtown to a travel agent Phones were out, too? ("You kids" should realize that most of the stuff done on the web today was done by mail or phone during most of the XX century, especially in a country as spread out as the US. Ring up the merchant with the order, sing out the credit card, done, was the MO from the 70s to the late 90s.)

I mean, yes. You’d need to go get the paper tickets. Obviously there were variations on how people would do things and mail order existed but I’m speaking literally, that’s how we used to do it and when the internet came along it got way way better.

> need to go get the paper tickets.

Darn, no mail service either. That's harsh.

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

#627

Post by 52-6F-62 »

pontus wrote: post #614

Well, crypto is either going to be a huge success or a big flop. Whichever it is, whoever was espousing that side of the story will feel vindicated and talk about how it was obvious all along. Sadly(?) I belong to neither camp. I definitely see how clever the underlying technical/mathematical ideas are, but I also have a feeling in my gut that this is just smoke and mirrors (although, I have similar feelings for othe…

I’m in the not sure camp. I’ve had more positive gut feeling about some projects over others. I can’t stand tech bro culture in general so most of it turns me off pretty easily.

I think there may be something there, but that the current state of “crypto” isn’t it.

I’m encouraged to see discussions happening around banking and other open financial processes there. People who just can’t gain access to market where money they make can actually accumulate and help them are usually invisible. I want to see something come of that.

These are expensive lessons, though—financially, ecologically, and socially.

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

#628

Post by ipnon »

thirsteh wrote: post #606
ipnon wrote: post #587

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you think your bank manages to make billions of dollars in profit every year? Do you think the money that millions of Americans lend to them for effectively 0% returns has anything to do with it? What do you imagine they do with that money, and how does it differ substantially from what DeFi calls yield farming?

Yield farming carries a similar or greater risk to investing in stocks and sector ETFs, and that is certainly not what retail banks do with customer funds (that was outlawed by the Volcker Rule in Dodd-Frank), nor is retail banking how investment banks make money. Nevermind that there obviously is no FDIC insurance for these crypto "savings accounts". You're asking good questions, but be careful not to jump to easy a…

My point is that a bank is essentially a commissioned matchmaker for lenders and borrowers, and that depositing your hard earned money in a traditional big bank savings account is effectively a free cash flow for them insured by the U.S. government. So while I agree with you that a Citibank savings account and a Yearn USDC deposit have frankly incomparable risk profiles, in the sense that if the bank ever needs to claim FDIC insurance then shit has truly hit the fan, I disagree that these two positions generate income (or lack thereof) in any fundamentally different way.

I would not recommend my grandmother uses Yearn, but I also wouldn't recommend that my little cousin who knows how to program saves her money in a Wells Fargo account either.

Regardless I appreciate your considerate comment. I always know something interesting is afoot when HN relentlessly downvotes both pro and con comments.

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

#629

Post by xpe »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #514
tzumby wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

From what I can tell, much of this discussion seems to be characterized by people miscommunicating.

> Considering that _it_ hasn't produced any value of note in 13 years...

What do you mean by "it"? Do you mean (a) Bitcoin in particular; (b) some/many/most/all cryptocurrencies; (c) a distributed self replicating Byzantine tolerant state machine? Or something else?

The comment by tzumby meant (c). Generally, the HN thread was about (b), best I can tell.

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

#630

Post by NamTaf »

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 the long date concept, promoted by the Long Now foundation [1] which promotes long-term thinking and gives a nod to this by writing years in 5-digit format.

The irony with the GP’s post is that I can’t see using Bitcoin, with its current incredibly-high power usage and associated environmental destruction, as long-term thinking in any way, shape or form.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Now_Foundation

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