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Ask HN: Why does cryptocurrency subjects on HN lack curious conversations?

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Re: Ask HN: Why does cryptocurrency subjects on HN lack curious conversations?

#21

Post by rootsudo »

I think it's because this community doesn't need/enjoy the speculation side of it. Most cryptocurrencies reflect on buy today, worth more tomorrow. Especially when you hop onto reddit or 4chan /biz/ communities. They don't necessarily want to understand, how or why - just that it's new and treat buying today as getting early on an IPO (like an ICO, before those were mostly barred.)

The above could be mostly because the community on here, doesn't necessarily need/want to survive on pure speculation. Sure you can do forecasting and projections, but when compared to traditional investment methods, e.g. compounding, load averaging and buying "blue" chip stocks - it seems high risk, low reward.

--

Now if the conversation was more on blockchain, and what problem it solves, I can see it gain traction on here, especially when Visa wanted to hire "blockchain engineers" and when they even purchased other companies in that similar space. Also, startups, well, when they were "startups" like coinbase adding a new coin, and such, etc.

Re: Ask HN: Why does cryptocurrency subjects on HN lack curious conversations?

#22

Post by scandox »

It's because we're all a bunch of salty nocoiners that spend our days wishing we had got in on the ground floor.

As the famous saying goes: "It's hard to make a man understand something when he could have been a millionaire if he'd only understood it sooner."

/s

Re: Ask HN: Why does cryptocurrency subjects on HN lack curious conversations?

#23

Post by spapas82 »

rapsey wrote: post #8

Because after ~13 years, mind boggling amount of money and development time, it is still just as useless in the real world as it ever was.

Actually no it is not useless in the real world! Using crypto makes it very easy to send and receive money very quickly, without the need to rely to the "system" of banks, governments etc. I can't think of a more useful application, for me it's more of a revolution!

Re: Ask HN: Why does cryptocurrency subjects on HN lack curious conversations?

#24

Post by throwaway554 »

DrNuke wrote: post #10

> Is there any particular reason cryptocurrencies are so divisive while other subjects are not? At this day, end 2021, for what concerns the daily life of billion people worldwide, they are still a very small niche for first-world, trading-like unauthorised gambling? From a technical point of view, sufficient progress has been made… it is politics now, geopolitics and environment, if you like, preventing wider, globa…

I have a hard time processing this comment. Is it because I'm ESL or is it legitimately incomprehensible?

Re: Ask HN: Why does cryptocurrency subjects on HN lack curious conversations?

#25

Post by onion2k »

MadeThisToReply wrote: post #9
onion2k wrote: post #4

I'm going to attempt an answer, but as with all things this is only my perspective and I obviously don't speak for all HN readers. HN is largely for founders who want to build things. That's certainly how it started, and there's still traces of that vibe around in the Show HN and startup-y threads. There's a lot more going on here now, like more code topics, AI, electric vehicles, environmental things, a little futur…

> There absolutely are good uses for crypto, and even for things like NFTs What do you think are the good uses for crypto and NFTs? (This is a genuine question; I've never been sure what to think about crypto.)

Crypto solves a problem around distributed trust. If you have a bunch of people who need to trust something is correct, but don't trust each other, putting that data on a verifiable blockchain that you pay people to cryptographically sign is a good solution. The thing is though, that's a really unusual problem that few people actually have. If you're buying diamonds or bananas or cobalt, and you need a provable supply chain though.. yeah.. it fits.

NFTs could enable people to transfer digital assets between platforms without needing the platforms to talk to one another. I could buy an NFT of a 3D model of some Yeezy sneakers, and then bring that NFT to Fortnite for my avatar to wear there, and to the Metaverse to show off there, and to a sneakers forum to verify my ownership in the community there as well. That could be quite useful. 3D cosmetic assets for games and stuff is a massive market, and using NFTs would enable people to transfer goods between those markets. It'd only really work if the asset itself is stored in some sort of distributed architecture though (IPFS for example.)

Re: Ask HN: Why does cryptocurrency subjects on HN lack curious conversations?

#26

Post by larrysalibra »

svennek wrote: post #3

I think basically because there is nothing interesting left to discus. One camp (where I am in) basically believes it is an environmental disaster, unsuitable for its stated purpose and most likely as scam by the "whales" manipulating the price, and with a potential 51%-disaster. The other camp believes that it is the future of money, untraceable wealth storage and inflation/"confiscation proof" and that all the envi…

In fairness to the present, the first post on HN about bitcoin[1] had 3 comments:

1) this is amazing and will save humanity

2) this is dumb no one will ever use it

3) this is confusing

That ratio doesn’t seem that much different than recent posts.

I think you’re right that most people at least on HN have decided what they believe when it comes to bitcoin.

Ultimately money is a belief and not just any belief but one so central to our identities that we often organize our lives around how we can get enough money.

Strong beliefs get tied into our identities so that threats to those beliefs will be viewed as many as attacks on their identities.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=599852

Re: Ask HN: Why does cryptocurrency subjects on HN lack curious conversations?

#27

Post by gjulianm »

onethought wrote: post #15
svennek wrote: post #3

I think basically because there is nothing interesting left to discus. One camp (where I am in) basically believes it is an environmental disaster, unsuitable for its stated purpose and most likely as scam by the "whales" manipulating the price, and with a potential 51%-disaster. The other camp believes that it is the future of money, untraceable wealth storage and inflation/"confiscation proof" and that all the envi…

The environmental argument is a straw man, and not really related to crypto, but actually related to our energy mix. If crypto was mined only on renewables there is no environmental argument. Ergo, not related to crypto technology itself.

It's not a straw man. Yes, if the energy mix was only reliant of renewables, energy usage wouldn't be as much as a problem. But it is not, and won't be in years, decades, so we can't just brush off the energy usage of crypto as "well it's the energy mix fault". You cannot evaluate a technology in isolation of its real world, practical context.

Not to mention that even with renewables, energy usage would be still a concern. Renewables will still have issues around distribution, power peaks, energy storage, price, and crypto wouldn't be helping any of them. A discussion of how would crypto affect the rest of the people compared to the benefit it brings would still be relevant.

Re: Ask HN: Why does cryptocurrency subjects on HN lack curious conversations?

#28

Post by delusional »

svennek wrote: post #3

I think basically because there is nothing interesting left to discus. One camp (where I am in) basically believes it is an environmental disaster, unsuitable for its stated purpose and most likely as scam by the "whales" manipulating the price, and with a potential 51%-disaster. The other camp believes that it is the future of money, untraceable wealth storage and inflation/"confiscation proof" and that all the envi…

I think it goes a little deeper.

The whole discussion basically mirrors real life politics. One camp want's more collective action to help the unfortunate, the other wants absolute freedom for the individual.

Re: Ask HN: Why does cryptocurrency subjects on HN lack curious conversations?

#29

Post by joe-collins »

onethought wrote: post #15
svennek wrote: post #3

I think basically because there is nothing interesting left to discus. One camp (where I am in) basically believes it is an environmental disaster, unsuitable for its stated purpose and most likely as scam by the "whales" manipulating the price, and with a potential 51%-disaster. The other camp believes that it is the future of money, untraceable wealth storage and inflation/"confiscation proof" and that all the envi…

The environmental argument is a straw man, and not really related to crypto, but actually related to our energy mix. If crypto was mined only on renewables there is no environmental argument. Ergo, not related to crypto technology itself.

If crypto was only mined on renewables and there was sufficient (and sufficiently distributed) renewable energy that the presence of crypto did not otherwise detract from our desperately overdue de-carbonization efforts, then sure, whatever, knock yourselves out melting your processors to do funny math.

But that isn't the reality we live in.

The environmental aspect is manifestly a part of how crypto phenomenon, and attempts to separate the underlying technology from the manner in which it is (and for the foreseeable future, will continue to be) used, are disingenuous at best.

Re: Ask HN: Why does cryptocurrency subjects on HN lack curious conversations?

#30

Post by Semaphor »

svennek wrote: post #3

I think basically because there is nothing interesting left to discus. One camp (where I am in) basically believes it is an environmental disaster, unsuitable for its stated purpose and most likely as scam by the "whales" manipulating the price, and with a potential 51%-disaster. The other camp believes that it is the future of money, untraceable wealth storage and inflation/"confiscation proof" and that all the envi…

There is a 3rd camp I count myself in that sits somewhere in the middle and stays out of most HN CC discussions because there seem to be almost only extremists discussing.
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