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

Decentralized Woo Hoo

stephendiehl.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 295 posts

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#271

Post by TomSwirly »

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…

> It is a lost and shallow view made by people who have chosen not to engage or understand what they espouse on.

Translation: "I have no argument for why my Dunning-Krugerands should be worth anything, so instead I'll just be insulting and superior."

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#272

Post by GoblinSlayer »

addcninblue wrote: post #217
jw1224 wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Central banks can always stop inflation The central banks of Austria, Bolivia, Brazil, China, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Peru, Poland, Venezuela, and Zimbabwe have all failed to stop hyperinflation.

You're conflating the ability to do something with actually doing that something . Also, what's your point with regards to inflation and fiat currency? That seems tangential to the parent comment.

The conflation is appropriate as the original clam is that fiat currency is backed by trust that the nation won't default. If the nation defaults in both cases, they are equivalent.

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#273

Post by TomSwirly »

jw1224 wrote: post #144
billjings wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 to the status quo, or they choose not to educate themselves (try it) - neither is really valid response if you want to…

Fiat currency, in essence, is equally valueless. It only has inherent value because enough people agree that it does. Bitcoin is no different (and in fact has several advantages over fiat, giving it further value).

You know, I wish that there were a requirement for people to read just one book on economics before blathering about cryptocurrencies.

The idea that the US government's power to tax all of American commerce is "valueless" shows that you simply haven't thought for even a few seconds about anything in the field.

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#274

Post by jw1224 »

cslarson wrote: post #212
groby_b wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So your answer to the statement that most blockchain technology is exploitation of verbal ambiguity and appeal to emotion is... verbal ambiguity and appeal to emotion? The claim is that there is no traditional valuation model that assigns any value to cryptocurrencies. The only way to refute it is to show that yes, such a valuation model exists. Until then, it's Goop but for tech.

Cryptocurrency (dumb term) just means token - it is a very broad concept. Tokens can have stable value pegged to a fiat, or represent share of a company, or a non-fungible item like a house, or a fungible share of a house, or claim on profits from a financial protocol, or memecoin, or a way to pay for transactions. Of course traditional valuation models can be assigned - it just depends on the characteristics of the…

Exactly this. I see so many people conflating NFTs with “expensive JPEGs”… No, an NFT is a cryptographically-secured representation of ownership of an economic asset.

Yes… It also happens that there’s a ton of money being ploughed into weird, niche, expensive digital art. But this has now created an economic market in a space where previously one was not possible, by virtue of the fact you could never prove something was original, unique, or “yours”.

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#275

Post by TomSwirly »

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…

> "There is no use-case." and "It's a technology looking for a problem" are common phrases.

> I have no answer.

The answer is: ten years into it, there isn't a use case except crime.

And I was working in the field writing code, code that's still in use in XRP, in 2014. I'm not ignorant.

Doesn't it make you stop and think that you weren't able to come up with a use case?

----

> Just a thought: for someone living in the 90s, wouldn't something like Facebook have been also very difficult to conceive?

Oh, I can answer this question because I've been using computers since the 1970s!

The first time I saw email I was so blown away I couldn't believe it. Sending messages to people anywhere in the world, in an instant, for free?

The web, same thing.

YouTube, same thing.

Friendster, MySpace - same thing. I can hang with my friends, and maybe get laid!

Skype - free video conferencing? I was blown awawy!

----

But if you had told me in 2001 that in 2021, I could buy one of 7400 different currencies, issued by anonymous individuals, with absolutely no legal guarantees or safeguards, relying on computer code that even experts have trouble validating, with no market makers, no assets, no cash flows, no liquidation value, I would have asked, "Why would anyone do this?"

Crime. The only application for cryptocurrency is crime - tax evasion, money laundering, drugs, weapons, bribery.

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#276

Post by TomSwirly »

brabel wrote: post #230
deweller wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 onli…

> all we see them being used for is market speculation.

And crime. Don't forget crime.

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#277

Post by TomSwirly »

groby_b wrote: post #198
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…

So your answer to the statement that most blockchain technology is exploitation of verbal ambiguity and appeal to emotion is... verbal ambiguity and appeal to emotion? The claim is that there is no traditional valuation model that assigns any value to cryptocurrencies. The only way to refute it is to show that yes, such a valuation model exists. Until then, it's Goop but for tech.

> The only way to refute it is to show that yes, such a valuation model exists.

Ah, a rational person. Yes, I thought that argument would be unbeatable, but the counter-argument goes like this:

"Valuation models are worthless because all money is imaginary anyway."

It's really hard to refute someone who says that, like it's hard to refute someone who believes the world is entirely imaginary.

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#278

Post by fragmede »

jrm4 wrote: post #51
fragmede wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> decentralized here doesn't mean "decentralized" in the slightest. That's a bit much. There is a bunch of weird crypto hype surrounding web3, but when I can use a website without having to create a login, and my data that its showing doesn't exist on their servers, that's fundamentally a different Internet than the one we've come to know.

But not fundamentally different from the one we had 20 years ago! Maybe that's my issue here. So many of these Web3 clowns are promising slightly worse versions of the web we already had a while ago (which, fair, might be necessary) -- but while pretending it's something new and, perhaps this is the worst part, apparently aggressively ignoring the extent to which "Information wants to be free"/ GNU Manifesto/etc" typ…

Same thing happened when VPS hosting started being branded as this brand new thing called the cloud and now look at where we are with that. Go figure out how and where smart contracts get executed, and how web3 does decentralize things via a wallet, and tell me there isn't something there, hidden behind all of the marketing fluff of crypto conmen.

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#279

Post by jw1224 »

TomSwirly wrote: post #273
jw1224 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fiat currency, in essence, is equally valueless. It only has inherent value because enough people agree that it does. Bitcoin is no different (and in fact has several advantages over fiat, giving it further value).

You know, I wish that there were a requirement for people to read just one book on economics before blathering about cryptocurrencies. The idea that the US government's power to tax all of American commerce is "valueless" shows that you simply haven't thought for even a few seconds about anything in the field.

> You know, I wish that there were a requirement for people to read just one book on economics before blathering about cryptocurrencies

Well you’ll be pleased to hear I’ve read plenty of books on economics, and hey — I even hold a qualification in it!

Just like the “value” inherent in fiat currencies, we grant “power” to the government because enough people agree to do so. This is real value, but nonetheless arbitrarily granted. Hence why I qualified my statement by saying “in essence” — just a bit of vital nuance you happened to miss.

Thanks for the chuckle though, I did laugh at the notion that after 9 years in crypto, I “haven’t thought for even a few seconds” about it :)

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#280

Post by GoblinSlayer »

megameter wrote: post #196
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…

I think the analogy of cryptocurrency's position to the 90's internet is the wrong one to pick, because it describes an environment with some maturity and acceptance in its base technologies, primed for waves of consumer commerce to take hold. The proper example to pick is personal computing circa 1982. When you look at the envisioned uses of personal computing, the advertisements really reach: it helps your child le…

Interestingly gaming is as old as computers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OXO_%28video_game%29 https://videogamehistorian.wordpress.com/2014/01/22/the-prie...
Post reply on HN