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Decentralized Woo Hoo

stephendiehl.com

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Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#221

Post by kranke155 »

shoto_io wrote: post #118
cslarson wrote: post #103

> Yet if we value these assets in terms of traditional valuation models we find they should be worth absolutely nothing. This is the core tenet that these skeptics get lost with - the premise that there is no real central value to blockchain technology. It is a lost and shallow view made by people who have chosen not to engage or understand what they espouse on. Maybe this person just has too much to lose from change…

I've been a huge skeptic myself until a friend almost forced me into going down the rabbit hole. I have since been wondering why we tech people are so unbelievably critical. "There is no use-case." and "It's a technology looking for a problem" are common phrases. I have no answer. Just a thought: for someone living in the 90s, wouldn't something like Facebook have been also very difficult to conceive? "What's the val…

The media has been conducting a half decade hit job on crypto and people bought it.

To quote someone smarter than me on Twitter - the world was FUDded out of the biggest investment opportunity in their lifetime.

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#222

Post by Karrot_Kream »

gipp wrote: post #26
capableweb wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 crypto…

"Conflict of interest" here would require that he's in a position that gives him some special power over whether people continue to invest in crypto (or "decentralization" generally). Writing a blog post is something anyone can do. The fact that he's put a financial stake in his views doesn't make it unethical to express them the same way as everyone else.

It's not that he shouldn't express his views in a blog. The part that feels shifty here is that he's not disclosing his position in the space in his articles. I think most people are at least somewhat susceptible to "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it." so a disclosure of interest is useful to frame thoughts on a topic.

I didn't know about any of this until @capableweb brought it up. It explains a lot more about this series of blog posts.

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#223

Post by kranke155 »

cslarson wrote: post #137
cslarson wrote: post #103

> Yet if we value these assets in terms of traditional valuation models we find they should be worth absolutely nothing. This is the core tenet that these skeptics get lost with - the premise that there is no real central value to blockchain technology. It is a lost and shallow view made by people who have chosen not to engage or understand what they espouse on. Maybe this person just has too much to lose from change…

in the last 24hrs i, - funded an Afghan refugee friend in Turkey with ETH. they have no bank account. - joined a dao to bid on the last privately held copy of the US Constitution. - claimed an airdrop representing some control of a protocol i had used - borrowed stables against volatile collateral - repaid loans, shored up collateral (market went down) - many token swaps (stable stable, volatile stable) the hn crowd…

HN has decided to completely fail at crypto collectively. They are missing out on the entirety of the Next Big Thing .

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#225

Post by mistermann »

kcabdelta wrote: post #114
mistermann wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I hear this all of the time, but the people and projects “reshaping the economy and politics” are rarely ever named. I know very little about this space, but I get a very strong "real deal" feel from Charles Hoskinson. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Hoskinson https://twitter.com/IOHK_Charles https://roadmap.cardano.org/en/ I am most optimistic about blockchain based innovation with respect to direct/liquid/e…

@mistermann: "I am most optimistic about blockchain based innovation with respect to direct/liquid/etc democracy." Please stop pushing this snakeoil!

I'm curious why you consider these ideas to be snake oil.

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#226

Post by nathias »

twic wrote: post #154
shoto_io wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been a huge skeptic myself until a friend almost forced me into going down the rabbit hole. I have since been wondering why we tech people are so unbelievably critical. "There is no use-case." and "It's a technology looking for a problem" are common phrases. I have no answer. Just a thought: for someone living in the 90s, wouldn't something like Facebook have been also very difficult to conceive? "What's the val…

> Just a thought: for someone living in the 90s, wouldn't Facebook have been also very difficult to conceive? No, it would have been obviously cool. Those of us who were online already had IRC and newsgroups, and later instant messaging, home pages on GeoCities, etc. A service which rolled all of that up together and made it easy to use would have been rad as hell.

as someone that was on IRC at the time, no it wasn't obviously cool, it was and remains worse in every aspect to irc. FB succeeded because it ignored the internet as it existed and conquered it for normies.

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#227

Post by brabel »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #142
shoto_io wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been a huge skeptic myself until a friend almost forced me into going down the rabbit hole. I have since been wondering why we tech people are so unbelievably critical. "There is no use-case." and "It's a technology looking for a problem" are common phrases. I have no answer. Just a thought: for someone living in the 90s, wouldn't something like Facebook have been also very difficult to conceive? "What's the val…

Part of the problem is that much of the cryptocurrency hype, some might even say most, actually is just a bunch of scams and pump and dump nonsense. The people who are in it for a get rich quick scheme are the enemy, and most of the people who expect to get rich quick will end up on the bottom of the pyramid. But that isn't to say that there's nothing there. It's like saying that the internet is worthless and should…

> the internet is worthless and should be destroyed because it has pornography and copyright infringement.

Tangential to the topic, but pornography is not a crime like copyright infrigement, or even something intrinsically bad as you seem to imply, for whatever reason! There's a lot of good taste porn out there. It has a high value of entertainment to a lot of people... I would compare it to something like gaming or sports rather than copyright infrigement.

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#228

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

kranke155 wrote: post #223
cslarson wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in the last 24hrs i, - funded an Afghan refugee friend in Turkey with ETH. they have no bank account. - joined a dao to bid on the last privately held copy of the US Constitution. - claimed an airdrop representing some control of a protocol i had used - borrowed stables against volatile collateral - repaid loans, shored up collateral (market went down) - many token swaps (stable stable, volatile stable) the hn crowd…

HN has decided to completely fail at crypto collectively. They are missing out on the entirety of the Next Big Thing .

If it is your intention to convince people on HN that you're not running a scam, refraining from FOMO-based tactics would be a good start.

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#229

Post by elwell »

jamespitts wrote: post #48

I have been participating in the Ethereum community for many years and I agree that there is a widespread belief that decentralized tech and economies run on smart contracts can substantively address social problems. Additionally, in the wider crypto community there is a widespread belief that these networks are a way to restore fair money. In most cases I don't think that these beliefs are post-hoc rationalization.…

> but IMO widespread adoption of platforms like Bitcoin and Ethereum will also lead to many new and terrible social problems

I suspect this as well. Would be curious to see your list of possible issues.

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#230

Post by brabel »

deweller wrote: post #128
shoto_io wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been a huge skeptic myself until a friend almost forced me into going down the rabbit hole. I have since been wondering why we tech people are so unbelievably critical. "There is no use-case." and "It's a technology looking for a problem" are common phrases. I have no answer. Just a thought: for someone living in the 90s, wouldn't something like Facebook have been also very difficult to conceive? "What's the val…

So true. Every technology revolution seems like a toy at first. Consider the personal computer, the spreadsheet, the internet, the smart phone. Only time will tell if cryptocurrencies will join this list.

All those things became mainstream in a matter of a few years from the time they became affordable and available to most people.

Crypto currencies have existed for well over a decade now, have been available to anyone who wants in for a long time, but still, all we see them being used for is market speculation. I would've loved to use digital money to buy stuff, but it simply isn't a serious option today in most online shops as far as I can see... even if it was, I currently see zero reason to use that instead of my credit card (which has almost no interest, very low fees, and the guarantee of my bank that fraud will be reverted).

Given that, why the hell people still believe it might eventually take over the world??? It just won't! It's pretty clear IMHO that it is, and will remain for probably a long time, a ponzi scheme of sorts, or to be a bit more generous, a gambling platform.

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