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

defector.com

241–250 of 411 posts

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

#241
post #238

This article conflates NFTs with cryptocurrency, in a way that looks to me to be intentional in order to bolster his argument that crypto is for rich people to conspicuously consume and to pump and dump on the plebs. NFTs aren't money, or currency and just because they can be created on some blockchains doesn't make them so. I also don't see a genuine effort from the author to really understand why proponents think t…

> Bitcoin is open source, the original founder is nowhere to be found, there were no VCs involved in its creation or in the distribution of the coins and the entire network is run out in the open. The Bitcoin network is a commons. Hmmm. You've conveniently danced around any suggestion or mention of the fact that the "creator" of bitcoin mined 1.1 million - 1/20th of all bitcoins that will ever exist(!) - coins in pri…

And he never spent them. It's the most selfless act I've witnessed in my life.

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

#243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the equivalent of someone seeing how much a Picasso sells and wondering if they should become an artist. For every success, there are 10,000 failures.

s/Picasso/Rothko/

To make that nft would take me - or my 8 year old niece - no more than 2-3 hours to craft.

Learning to mix paint like Rothko would take years.

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

#244

This article conflates NFTs with cryptocurrency, in a way that looks to me to be intentional in order to bolster his argument that crypto is for rich people to conspicuously consume and to pump and dump on the plebs. NFTs aren't money, or currency and just because they can be created on some blockchains doesn't make them so. I also don't see a genuine effort from the author to really understand why proponents think t…

What has happened in those 12 years has been a great deal of scams, get rich quick scheme a and instability. Bitcoin has also become dominated by a few major players and is a power structure in itself, not really benefitting ordinary people much at.

the ecosystem from 12 years ago is radically different from what it is now. Heck, it's radically different from what it was just 2 or 3 years ago.

And well, it benefits (smart) ordinary people. That is, those who have invested or are investing. Smart money is here - and small investors are here too. And I'm saying purposefully "investing" as opposed to "trading". The former doesn't require any technical skills.

As for "ordinary people" not versed into technologies doing what their government is telling them to do (bans, warnings, hackers, criminals, murderers, ...), well... I'm feeling sorry for them, but crypto cannot just replace local country currencies without government consent. Now think again: who is to blame?

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

#245
post #238

This article conflates NFTs with cryptocurrency, in a way that looks to me to be intentional in order to bolster his argument that crypto is for rich people to conspicuously consume and to pump and dump on the plebs. NFTs aren't money, or currency and just because they can be created on some blockchains doesn't make them so. I also don't see a genuine effort from the author to really understand why proponents think t…

> Bitcoin is open source, the original founder is nowhere to be found, there were no VCs involved in its creation or in the distribution of the coins and the entire network is run out in the open. The Bitcoin network is a commons. Hmmm. You've conveniently danced around any suggestion or mention of the fact that the "creator" of bitcoin mined 1.1 million - 1/20th of all bitcoins that will ever exist(!) - coins in pri…

Those coins have never moved in all these years. You would think that Satoshi would want to spend and enjoy some of his riches right? To me this points towards Satoshi likely being dead (e.g. him being Hal Finney).

Also, AFAIK those were mined because Satoshi was the first miner, not because he purposefully kept it private in order to get the most for himself before anyone else could participate.

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

#246
post #241
post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bitcoin is open source, the original founder is nowhere to be found, there were no VCs involved in its creation or in the distribution of the coins and the entire network is run out in the open. The Bitcoin network is a commons. Hmmm. You've conveniently danced around any suggestion or mention of the fact that the "creator" of bitcoin mined 1.1 million - 1/20th of all bitcoins that will ever exist(!) - coins in pri…

And he never spent them. It's the most selfless act I've witnessed in my life.

Might not be especially hard to use them as collateral for a loan, though. Live like a king and then eventually sell them, repaying the loan from the (now rather generous) proceeds.

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

#247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true, but in the Picasso scenario I actually need to learn to do art. In the NFT case, apparently a 3rd grade level of photoshop skills would do.

You could also tape a banana to a wall and sell it for $120k in the traditional art world. https://news.artnet.com/art-world/maurizio-cattelan-banana-c... Don't mistake extreme technical skill as being the sole reason humans value things. Sometimes, it's just about being the first to effectively convey a new idea, and the crudeness of the execution doesn't matter. And there are plenty of extremely skilled artists tha…

In hindsight, I was making a joke that seeing the value of an NFT has convinced me to make NFT's - and that this is the very cycle which has made NFT's valuable.

I was not actually implying that I would literally start making NFT's right now.

I did however forget that jokes and humor were against Hackernews rules, and for that I thank you kind sir for the reminder.

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

#248

This article conflates NFTs with cryptocurrency, in a way that looks to me to be intentional in order to bolster his argument that crypto is for rich people to conspicuously consume and to pump and dump on the plebs. NFTs aren't money, or currency and just because they can be created on some blockchains doesn't make them so. I also don't see a genuine effort from the author to really understand why proponents think t…

I don't see any such conflation, nor do I see any rejection of cryptocurrency's future potential. This article is primarily about what is happening with cryptocurrency right now:

> Whatever cryptocurrency might someday be For All Mankind, it is most urgently and avidly in this moment something that people tell weird lies about in hopes of getting richer.

You seem intent on spreading such get rich quick and utopian dreams on cryptocurrency. How much do you have invested in the ecosystem?

Edit: In my opinion, people who genuinely care about the revolutionary potential of Bitcoin need to avoid feeding the hype train that helps normalize the sketchy lieing behavior in the ecosystem and simply work on building that future instead.

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

#249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The same account could be used by multiple independent services and this removes the need for a signup process altogether. This is only marginally better than SSO with Google/Apple/Facebook/whatever. It dodges the "Google closed my account" problem, which is a meaningful improvement. But I'm not fully certain why you need the public key to be part of a blockchain for this to work. Couldn't you just publish your pub…

- Resistant to centralized censorship (as you pointed out) - It allows you to use the same passphrase for all services without compromising security since your passphrase never needs to leave your own machine; it is never sent over the wire. You just send signatures to different services. - The cost associated with purchasing tokens needed to initialize an account on the blockchain would serve as a spam prevention me…

> - The cost associated with purchasing tokens needed to initialize an account on the blockchain would serve as a spam prevention mechanism; an alternative to SIM cards which most centralized services rely on today as a cost barrier to limit the creation of spam accounts.

Doesn't seem like that to me. If I get banned I can just move my cash to another account and start again, and assuming multiple services does this I can amortize the cost over all of them.

The rest seems to me like something mTLS could solve better.

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

#250
post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bitcoin is open source, the original founder is nowhere to be found, there were no VCs involved in its creation or in the distribution of the coins and the entire network is run out in the open. The Bitcoin network is a commons. Hmmm. You've conveniently danced around any suggestion or mention of the fact that the "creator" of bitcoin mined 1.1 million - 1/20th of all bitcoins that will ever exist(!) - coins in pri…

Those coins have never moved in all these years. You would think that Satoshi would want to spend and enjoy some of his riches right? To me this points towards Satoshi likely being dead (e.g. him being Hal Finney). Also, AFAIK those were mined because Satoshi was the first miner, not because he purposefully kept it private in order to get the most for himself before anyone else could participate.

Some of those coins moved in the last year or so [1]. Just because they haven't moved for a long time doesn't mean they won't tomorrow.

1. https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/satoshi-is-that...

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