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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?

#61

Post by anonymoushn »

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…

lots of PoS chains are live today.

As I regularly post whenever it comes up, SPL USDC is a dramatically better payment experience than wire transfers or debit cards or whatever, and I wish I could accept all payments this way and pay all bills this way.

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

#62

Post by ThalesX »

pennaMan wrote: post #12
ThalesX wrote: post #7

There’s only so much to be said for retaining my curiosity after years and years of getting shouted about it by people who have no understanding of what they are peddling. I’m actively involved in the space, I explored my curiosity through designing a few DApps, building some coins, the usual. The tech is interesting, the approach is worthwhile, the whole FOMO pyramid on top of it is just noise and I wish it would st…

That s like arguing that because things like scrum masters are a thing in the software world then the whole software industry is valuless bullshit

No, that’s like arguing that it’s bullshit to expect people to keep fighting whether SCRUM is bullshit or not.

When I go work for a company that does SCRUM, they inform me and I accept or not. I don’t expect to battle on ideas and wits regarding the subject and then one of us to declare defeated that there’s no longer curiosity regarding scrum mastering.

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

#63

Post by gjulianm »

prohobo wrote: post #42
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…

Yeah, I'd say your entire approach is antithetical to healthy discussion: insinuating anyone who is interested in crypto is technically inept, and turning the discussion into a 2-sides polarization. There's no use in talking about crypto in a sincere way now because of the way its been politicized. I tried recently to explain to someone that cryptographically codifying law and contracts can be beneficial in a lot of…

> I tried recently to explain to someone that cryptographically codifying law and contracts can be beneficial in a lot of ways (like transparency/enforcement in governance)

There's another trend with crypto discussions which relates to this idea you said. I see a lot of discussions on applications that follow the template: X has not been done, and X can be done with crypto, so now that crypto is available X will be done. It is very hard to discuss that maybe X wasn't done before not because of technology, but because of other issues.

For example, the problem of transparency and enforcement in governance is not that we lack the technology: it's that we lack the initiative and the detailed procedures. I also see a lot of discussions around NFTs being used to sell used digital games: again, it hasn't been done not because tracking ownership is difficult but because allowing that would take a large bite of game sellers/developers profits. 99% of the applications I see discussed can be done without blockchain, but people never seriously ask themselves why is that and instead say that crypto will solve it.

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

#64

Post by svennek »

prohobo wrote: post #42
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…

Yeah, I'd say your entire approach is antithetical to healthy discussion: insinuating anyone who is interested in crypto is technically inept, and turning the discussion into a 2-sides polarization. There's no use in talking about crypto in a sincere way now because of the way its been politicized. I tried recently to explain to someone that cryptographically codifying law and contracts can be beneficial in a lot of…

Actually I agree with you that a "blockchain of law" would be great..

But that could also be done just by putting all law on somewhere public like github...

Or by having a block chain with a hard limit of 10 khashes/second per country (detecting cheaters is easy as far as I understand) and you can have a network of 200 raspberrypi zeros running it for around a single kilowatt..

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

#65

Post by rocqua »

So, there is a camp of people who think that cryptocurrencies are inherently bad. For these people the interesting discussions left are moot, because they do not address their main problems.

At the same time, nuanced discussion / curious discussion requires talking about downsides. Any mention of downsides also draws in the people who think its a bad idea. Moreover, it is my sense that a lot of discussions are filled with people trying to hype up their investment. These people will try to play down any downsides mentioned. The people who dislike cryptocurrency notice the people trying to downplay the downsides, and that overpowers any other discussion.

Edit: A point made by ThalesX also seems quite on point to me: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29295405 In summary, people are tired of the over-hype that existed. Making them suspicious of any new discussion.

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

#66

Post by leroman »

ajg4 wrote: post #14
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…

Why will proof-of-stake never happen?

Not op but will give my thoughts-

The only theory I'm aware of, which the "proof-of-stake" approach is based on, is some form of "game theory", my translation - "people won't do evil stuff since it's against their interest", which generally aligns with people being rational and basing economic theories on top of this thesis.

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

#67

Post by jacknews »

spapas82 wrote: post #23
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!

That's a bit like saying that paragliders allow you to fly from one country to another, without the 'system' of aviation, airports, passports, customs, etc. Apart from the fun of it, or for smuggling drugs, it's not that practical for everyday use - just use 'the system'.

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

#68

Post by Ekaros »

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.

Burning electricity as heat just so our currency is little bit more resilient doesn't really seem in anyway efficient way to do things. And any efficiency gains are negated because we will just do more of it.

Any other industry including financial one will try to minimise the waste if it becomes unreasonable. Not so with proof of work crypto.

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

#69

Post by throwaway554 »

gjulianm wrote: post #27
onethought wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 co…

56% of energy used for Bitcoin mining is coming from renewable sources of energy.

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

#70

Post by mrweasel »

spapas82 wrote: post #23
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!

Given the very limited scale of cryto currency, and limited usability in the real world isn’t it pretty much a failed revolution?

Bitcoin is still the biggest crypto currency, and compared to Euro, dollars and other currencies, it’s practically useless. The network can’t compete on scale, compared to VISA, MasterCard or AMEX. The crypto currencies try to solve problems much of the western simply don’t have.

The tech will live on an small pocket, such as money transfer between banks and large organisations, but it won’t be useful to the public at large.

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