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

#781

Post by acjohnson55 » Mon, May 31, 2021, 3:49 AM UTC

Vanclief wrote: post #772

I really don't understand the mindless bashing of cryptocurrency by Hacker News. Normally discussion here is quite rational and level headed, but there is something regarding crypto that makes people get very polarized. First of all, I am not a Bitcoin maximalist, nor I am "brainwashed by a multi-level marketing sale pitch". Bitcoin is just a prototype for a P2P consensus algorithm that has stood the test of time. It…

I'm not at all sure blockchain tech will change how we do finance. Literally every finance or finance-adjacent company has been trying to figure this out for the better part of the decade, and it just doesn't add up.

Ethereum is very cool. Aave and Compound are very cool. But today, the whole ecosystem is super insular. Crypto loans and derivatives have to be overcollateralized with cryptoassets, and so the only use case for them is levering up cryptoasset exposure. Flash loans are a unique aspect of DeFi, but they're only really useful for arbitrage of cryptoassets.

There remains a huge disconnect between cryptoassets and the real world. Things like NFT attempt to bridge, but it's basically just pretend. Owning an NFT generally provides no actual control or rights over the asset it refers to.

Until institutions start creating assets natively on the blockchain, none of this stuff has any impact on the outside world. And it's not at all clear to me that this is going to happen, because there are potentially insurmountable hurdles in figuring out how to harmonize law and the blockchain. This entire ecosystem may turn out to be a dead end, outside of the clearly demonstrated use cases of speculation and crime.

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

#782

Post by top_post » Mon, May 31, 2021, 3:53 AM UTC

That's some cojones.

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

#783

Post by jude- » Mon, May 31, 2021, 3:54 AM UTC

No one said you have to use the technology for illegal things, or even as money. Even Bitcoin-the-blockchain is only a timestamping system (seriously, even the Bitcoin whitepaper explicitly states that this is the purpose of the blockchain -- a peer-to-peer timestamper), which uses a token to prioritize transactions for consideration when the network is congested. I can think of non-financial uses for that!

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

#784

Post by roca » Mon, May 31, 2021, 3:54 AM UTC

K0balt wrote: post #735

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…

Hmm. It’s interesting to note that skeptics seem much more invested in being right about crypto being a scam than proponents are in it being here to stay. The more time passes, the shriller the cries of skeptics become, leading me to believe that skeptics are emotionally invested to the extreme in the failure of crypto. I rarely see any carefully considered, informed opinions just tulips and drugs and money launderin…

Every time a Musk tweet swings the value of BTC by 20% --- in either direction --- Bitcoin loses credibility as a store of value. "Price greater than zero" is not enough to make something a good store of value.

BTC as a means of payment is a joke. Most Bitcoin fans I engage with have actually given up on that. In fact, the scaling limitations of Bitcoin transactions are now touted as a good thing because that bounds the eventual energy usage of the network.

The Bitcoin cult is strong enough that I have no doubt Bitcoin is here to stay. It's sad, but it doesn't bother me. On the other hand it's obvious why Bitcoin HODLers have a deep financial interest in crypto being "here to stay".

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

#785

Post by baby » Mon, May 31, 2021, 3:56 AM UTC

sedatk wrote: post #765

baby wrote: post #734

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And he is wrong. Plenty of cryptocurrencies are fast, with low fees, and with minimal energy consumption.

Yes but not the overwhelmingly popular ones.

I think it depends on how you want to rank popularity, but I’d say the most popular coins in the field are

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

#786

Post by baby » Mon, May 31, 2021, 3:58 AM UTC

acjohnson55 wrote: post #763

baby wrote: post #688

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Avalanche, cosmos/tendermint, ethereum, mina, celo, dfinity, axelar, etc.

I've studied some of these, in varying depth. But it honestly seems like we've built a tremendous amount of impressive technology that currently has very little impact outside of its own ecosystem, in terms of enabling new industries or consumer services.

I’m not sure how you’re qualifying impact. A lot of people seem to have unrealistic expectations for these currencies to take over right away. It’s just not possible without massive adoption, stability, etc. It takes time to get there, technology-wise, and ecosystem-wise.

If I wanted to be more optimistic I would look at the level of adoption today as insane compared to 5y ago.

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

#787

Post by elliekelly » Mon, May 31, 2021, 4:01 AM UTC

eli wrote: post #513

acjohnson55 wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Did you ever get it? Because I still don’t really get it and would be very interested in hearing an explanation from an uninterested party.

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

#788

Post by acjohnson55 » Mon, May 31, 2021, 4:02 AM UTC

jude- wrote: post #783

No one said you have to use the technology for illegal things, or even as money. Even Bitcoin-the-blockchain is only a timestamping system (seriously, even the Bitcoin whitepaper explicitly states that this is the purpose of the blockchain -- a peer-to-peer timestamper), which uses a token to prioritize transactions for consideration when the network is congested. I can think of non-financial uses for that!

It's very interesting. But it's also noteworthy that there are very few gamechanging use cases for the consumer or business worlds, despite an enormous amount of attention and investment.

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

#789

Post by Sargos » Mon, May 31, 2021, 4:03 AM UTC

magila wrote: post #478

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…

People have been saying this for over a decade now. Mainstream applications are just around the corner, wait and see! We have waited, and all we've seen is baseless speculation (which you call "wealth savings/growth") and scams. I see no reason to think this is going to change any time soon.

>People have been saying this for over a decade now. Mainstream applications are just around the corner, wait and see! We have waited, and all we've seen is baseless speculation

DeFi isn't even 2 years old yet. This whole space really only started building applications in the last few years. Ethereum itself isn't even 6 years old yet.

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

#790

Post by ajkdhcb2 » Mon, May 31, 2021, 4:07 AM UTC

shkkmo wrote: post #494

ajkdhcb2 wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's like saying pizza isnt scarce because you can cut one into 1000 tiny slices. Or gold isnt scarce because you can cut 1 bar into 1 tiny million pieces. Pretty hilarious misconception

Except pizza and gold both have fundemental value as you decrease the size. Bitcoin has exactly the same techinical functionality regardless of the size.

Does a 1 cent coin have the same value as a $100 note?