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Decentralized Woo Hoo

stephendiehl.com

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Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#11

Post by capableweb »

krisrm wrote: post #7

Mirrors my feelings on the crypto-craze. As "decentralized" as some may want crypto currency to be, there are some inherently "central" activities (exchanges being one of them) that tend to be skirted around by proponents. Also, Decentralized Woo Hoo sounds like a great band name. Or something naughty from The Sims.

That centralized exchanges exists doesn't somehow make decentralized cryptocurrencies less decentralized. Just like how centralized social media doesn't make decentralized social media less decentralized.

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#12

Post by foobarbecue »

The argument that "observer" as used in physics is misunderstood by laypeople makes sense. He then argues the same is happening with the word "decentralized" which makes no sense because laypeople don't know that word. I guess he's arguing that people see "decentralized" and read "democratized," but he fails to make that argument.

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#13

Post by gopiandcode »

whitepaint wrote: post #3

OP seems to have no idea about DeFI. You can lend and borrow on compound.finance, aave. You can play no-loss lotteries like PoolTogether. You can bet on your beliefs and hedge your investments on markets platforms like Polymarket. You can gamble. More on: https://ethereum.org/en/dapps/ . All of this without any arbitrary restrictions imposed by governments or companies, you just need an internet connection. How can y…

Stephen seems to be a perfect example of how being an expert on one subject doesn't mean that someone has any kind of deeper insight or experience about unrelated areas. If you look at the history of his blog, for the entire last year his mind has seemingly only been filled with hatred for crypto - the man seems to have a serious ideological hatred of the technology and obstinately refuses to ever reconsider his position.

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#14

Post by amin »

whitepaint wrote: post #9
amin wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In DeFi, most of the yield comes from speculators who are using your money as leverage to bet which cryptocurrencies will go up. It's not like a regular loan, whereby a company uses your money to expand, innovate, hire and train new employees, to build and sell something people want.

So? You still earn way way more than what banks offer and you can withdraw at any point. It's been working very well for quite some time now.

1. If you think about it, there is no reason why banks should always offer free money to cash hoarders in the form of interest. During a recession, central banks lower interest rates to incentivize spending and productive investment, which benefits the rest of society.

2. DeFi yield relies on Greater Fools essentially gambling their money on cryptocurrency pairs. It might not last forever. I'd rather have 5% yield in corporate bonds, denominated in a currency that I can pay rent and groceries with, than 20% in a shitcoin which might be worthless tomorrow.

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#15

Post by WJW »

whitepaint wrote: post #9
amin wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In DeFi, most of the yield comes from speculators who are using your money as leverage to bet which cryptocurrencies will go up. It's not like a regular loan, whereby a company uses your money to expand, innovate, hire and train new employees, to build and sell something people want.

So? You still earn way way more than what banks offer and you can withdraw at any point. It's been working very well for quite some time now.

You can withdraw at any point, until suddenly you can't anymore. That is the very core of investing: being rewarded for taking the risk of not receiving your money back at all. In particular, the mechanisms most DeFi tools use are vulnerable to the contract being hacked and/or the devs doing a rug-pull. This is clearly a risk that most investors deem quite likely, because if it was a very low risk then the interest rate on DeFi products would not need to be quite that high.

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#16

Post by tantalor »

capableweb wrote: post #10

Maybe the title should be updated. It doesn't have anything to do with decentralization per se, but about cryptocurrencies, which is just a technology that happens to use decentralization as a technology. I actually thought the article was gonna be about decentralization (as in P2P technology, like BitTorrent), but instead it's about the authors distaste for cryptocurrencies. Edit: Maybe it's just me, but the article…

> clear conflict of interest

That's not a conflict of interest.

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#17

Post by capableweb »

gopiandcode wrote: post #13
whitepaint wrote: post #3

OP seems to have no idea about DeFI. You can lend and borrow on compound.finance, aave. You can play no-loss lotteries like PoolTogether. You can bet on your beliefs and hedge your investments on markets platforms like Polymarket. You can gamble. More on: https://ethereum.org/en/dapps/ . All of this without any arbitrary restrictions imposed by governments or companies, you just need an internet connection. How can y…

Stephen seems to be a perfect example of how being an expert on one subject doesn't mean that someone has any kind of deeper insight or experience about unrelated areas. If you look at the history of his blog, for the entire last year his mind has seemingly only been filled with hatred for crypto - the man seems to have a serious ideological hatred of the technology and obstinately refuses to ever reconsider his posi…

> If you look at the history of his blog, for the entire last year his mind has seemingly only been filled with hatred for crypto - the man seems to have a serious ideological hatred of the technology and obstinately refuses to ever reconsider his position.

If you take a look at what company he currently works at (and founded), it's pretty obvious where his hate for cryptocurrencies come from.

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#18

Post by capableweb »

tantalor wrote: post #16
capableweb wrote: post #10

Maybe the title should be updated. It doesn't have anything to do with decentralization per se, but about cryptocurrencies, which is just a technology that happens to use decentralization as a technology. I actually thought the article was gonna be about decentralization (as in P2P technology, like BitTorrent), but instead it's about the authors distaste for cryptocurrencies. Edit: Maybe it's just me, but the article…

> clear conflict of interest That's not a conflict of interest.

The company (Adjoint, Inc) is described as "digitises cash and settlement processes", something that cryptocurrencies aim to do as well. His company clearly doesn't use decentralization (since why would he make a post against it?), which cryptocurrencies do. How is that not a conflict of interest in this specific blogpost?

Reading the post it seems like he has no stake in the outcome of what people think about cryptocurrencies and decentralization, but that's not true, as a founder he has a huge stake in the outcome.

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#19

Post by whitepaint »

amin wrote: post #14
whitepaint wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So? You still earn way way more than what banks offer and you can withdraw at any point. It's been working very well for quite some time now.

1. If you think about it, there is no reason why banks should always offer free money to cash hoarders in the form of interest. During a recession, central banks lower interest rates to incentivize spending and productive investment, which benefits the rest of society. 2. DeFi yield relies on Greater Fools essentially gambling their money on cryptocurrency pairs. It might not last forever. I'd rather have 5% yield in…

You can lend stablecoins such as USDC and have 3-10% APR returns.

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#20

Post by whitepaint »

WJW wrote: post #15
whitepaint wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So? You still earn way way more than what banks offer and you can withdraw at any point. It's been working very well for quite some time now.

You can withdraw at any point, until suddenly you can't anymore. That is the very core of investing: being rewarded for taking the risk of not receiving your money back at all. In particular, the mechanisms most DeFi tools use are vulnerable to the contract being hacked and/or the devs doing a rug-pull. This is clearly a risk that most investors deem quite likely, because if it was a very low risk then the interest r…

$27,000,000,000 is deposited in AAVE's protocol alone. It's been working pretty well for quite a while now.
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