Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Cryptocurrency is something people tell lies about in hopes of getting richer

defector.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 411 posts

Re: Cryptocurrency is something people tell lies about in hopes of getting richer

#91

Post by fksadfji12 »

Synaesthesia wrote: post #87
brianolson wrote: post #69

Cryptocurrency gives people something they want. At best it might a new decentralized leaderless censorship-resistant free-as-in-freedom finance platform. At worst it might be a new decentralized leaderless pyramid scheme where we don't even need a Bernie Madoff because now we have The Algorithm. If I am simultaneously cynical and hopeful, maybe it will have an adolescence of B and mature into A.

Except its not very decentralized and leaderless. It is dominated by a few ultra rich players, to an even greater extent than the stock market. And that didn't democratise finance either.

Thats not true at all.

Re: Cryptocurrency is something people tell lies about in hopes of getting richer

#92

Post by fksadfji12 »

space_rock wrote: post #31

The rebranding of MySQL as blockchain was a brilliant move for sales. Bit torrent is decentralized and it doesn't use "blockchain". "Blockchain" only works for money and nothing else

Money was the entire point...

Re: Cryptocurrency is something people tell lies about in hopes of getting richer

#93

Post by elzbardico »

xutopia wrote: post #86

Not going to say that no one lies about it but I had to transfer a sizable amount of money between two banks at about the same time I did a transaction from my home with BTC that took all but 20 minutes without the need for fax machines. There are advantages to cryptocurrencies and one can very much want a future where currencies they would use isn't hampered by government.

Transferring huge amounts of money between accounts, specially when you own both is not a problem unless you live in the US. For most of Europe, Asia and even latin america this problem has been solved almost two decades ago. Around the same time the banks on those countries retired their fax machines.

Re: Cryptocurrency is something people tell lies about in hopes of getting richer

#94

Post by bo1024 »

I think NFTs are really dumb, a scam, and/or vectors for money laundering. Then again, I think the same thing about multimillion dollar private artwork and politicians' "nonprofits".

I think most cryptocurrencies and tokens are really dumb or a pyramid scheme. Then again, I think the same about multilevel marketing and much of the modern real estate and stock markets.

But I also see the really exciting potential and promise of blockchain tech. People are working on expanding access to capital and systems to countries with unstable currencies. They're working on the future of the corporation beyond capitalism with DAOs. Enabling micropayments for creators. Much more. It's tiring seeing all these articles harping on the downsides without acknowledging or looking into the upsides.

Probably because the system works fine for these authors -- they're somewhere with a stable currency, their 401k is going up, etc. Blockchain is a space where people are actually dreaming of something different and better instead of accepting the status quo. Meanwhile in the U.S. we have a Fed printing trillions of dollars to prop up asset prices, we have wars to support USD hegemony. In other countries their wages inflate away before they can spend them, etc.

I don't know a lot about all this stuff but I really respect the part of the blockchain space which is about broadening access, decentralizing power, and envisioning new systems.

Re: Cryptocurrency is something people tell lies about in hopes of getting richer

#95

Post by oyf »

voidray wrote: post #49

If you take every long-refuted criticism of Bitcoin along with cherrypicked examples of cringe celebrities endorsing it, and you combine that with misinformed neo-Marxism and an unquestioning acceptance of government officials, you get this article. If your average sports writer actually wanted to understand the space, they could read something with real data: https://nydig.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/NYDIG-Bitcoi…

> Since 1920, at least 55 hyperinflation events have taken place, destroying savings and creating economic hardship... Bitcoin offers the world an alternative – a sound monetary system outside the control of governments and central banks.

The paper you linked doesn't exactly get off to a good start, considering there are ~1600-2200 dead/worthless cryptocurrencies (see below) and Bitcoin itself is incredibly volatile. It's somewhat absurd to claim Bitcoin is the stable alternative to fiat currencies, or the solution to cases of currency collapse. The rest of the summary is just speculation on how the carbon footprint of Bitcoin might be reasonable in the future. Would you mind pointing out the parts that you feel refute the article's criticisms?

https://www.coinopsy.com/dead-coins/ https://deadcoins.com/

Re: Cryptocurrency is something people tell lies about in hopes of getting richer

#96

Post by marban »

ipaddr wrote: post #82
analog31 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's lacking is an agreed upon mechanism for distinguishing the real artists from the hacks, and the real buyers from the flippers.

Real art is what you agree in your mind is real art. If you are trying to find something to filter out art that will not skyrocket in prices that's different. You need to find out what people are buying and only buy those. Each subgroup will be buying different types of art so research is required. Anything is real art. A rock you brought in or a painting made by a computer. As long as you see it as art, special and…

"Art is what you can get away with", to quote Andy Warhol.

Re: Cryptocurrency is something people tell lies about in hopes of getting richer

#97

Post by doomroot »

wpietri wrote: post #63
space_rock wrote: post #31

The rebranding of MySQL as blockchain was a brilliant move for sales. Bit torrent is decentralized and it doesn't use "blockchain". "Blockchain" only works for money and nothing else

I mean, if you look at transaction cost, settle time, user friendliness, and currency risk, it doesn't even work as a medium of exchange, which is the definition of money. More than a decade on, approximately nobody uses Bitcoin for normal transactions. Compare with Venmo or MPesa, both of which launched around the same time, to se what actual digital money looks like. Both of those do way more transactions than Bitc…

Why does the bitcoin blockchain need to be used for normal transactions? Do you not think a neutral payment rail/unit of account between nation state level actor’s could be valuable?

Re: Cryptocurrency is something people tell lies about in hopes of getting richer

#98

Post by aazaa »

> The hucksterish utopian rhetoric and blustering ambient scuzz of the broader cryptocurrency thing as it exists in this moment—the clammy slew of posturing experts, the open mendacity and barely concealed rube-running bad faith, the actual criminality and simple goonery that define its day-to-day—do the idea at the center of it no favors, but that is, more or less, the thing that always happens to any idea once people get ahold of it. Again, this is something that most people understand without really understanding how they understand it. At some point, when you are being lied to all the time and everywhere, you just know when it’s happening.

There are way too many words in that article, yet the author manages to say almost nothing that hasn't been said before. I suggest removing all adverbs and adjectives, then re-writing.

Re: Cryptocurrency is something people tell lies about in hopes of getting richer

#100

Post by 21eleven »

TomGullen wrote: post #84
marban wrote: post #5

The whole NFT craze lost me when tech founders I once highly respected started pushing and showing off their ugly gifs and trading cards on Twitter. Bad taste of the bored rich is not a new thing, but I hope NFTs won't become a noble tradition.

I must be getting old because I just don't get NFT's. They look stupid and I don't get why anyone would buy them. Declining tech companies and startups seem to be trying to crowbar them into their products much like Blockchain when it was new and shiny. Perhaps younger me would of seen something I can't anymore.

The thing about NFTs is that many people who buy them "don't get NFTs".

All an NFT is is a token that represents ownership, like if the title to your car or house deed was on a blockchain.

NFTs have some sane use causes like designating the owner of a valuable asset or creating electronic tickets that can be resold or transferred without some centralized entity like ticketmaster.

Prior to NFTs existing, would you purchase the ownership rights to a gif or tweet? Probably not. And that is what is dumb about the excitement around NFTs, some people with more money than sense seem to think that now that you can represent ownership on a blockchain some things, like crappy jpegs, have suddenly become valuable assets.

Post reply on HN