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

The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

stephendiehl.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 704 posts

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#131

Post by dqpb »

bgroat wrote: post #39
bradhe wrote: post #29

Author's not wrong. I've seen some seriously cringe-inducing "talks" about what blockchain is and is not, and what it can or cannot unlock for you. I also find NFTs to be just...just...confusing. But mostly I don't care. Do whatever you like as long as you're not hurting anyone. On average people are getting misinformed about some technologies, at worst willingly grifted. But I've seen worse technology trends come (a…

The problem is that PoW is hurting everyone via greenhouse emissions.

Algorand is carbon negative.

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#132

Post by ravenstine »

Scarblac wrote: post #38

I wonder how much of the Crypto hype is because the US banking system still lives in the 1980s or thereabouts. If everybody in the US had access to bank accounts with easy electronic transfers within 5 seconds for no charge, no chargebacks and so on, as people are used to in the EU, would people still be excited about Bitcoin?

I think that's certainly a part of it, but it's not the whole story, and I suspect it's perhaps responsible for 1/3 of the story.

A bigger motivation, and perhaps the most quixotic one, is financial security.

No, I don't mean that cryptocurrencies haven't been highly unstable in value.

But the more that the cabal chooses to truly enter the 21st century, the greater the danger of that technology being used as a means of coercion. This has already been seen in the porn industry (both amateur and commercial) and, say what you want about the possible ethical issues with it, but people have the right to produce pornography in the United States and also participate in the same economic system as everyone else. The danger of companies like Visa and Paypal exercising political control over their customers for other reasons is non-zero, and I would even predict that the danger is at least moderate.

Whether you agree with that perspective is another thing. Many crypto enthusiasts, whether they are explicit about it or not, like the idea of creating an economic system that everyone can participate in that doesn't involve countless middle-men. If that wasn't the case, there wouldn't be a big push to create the Lightning network.

The other part of the desire for crypto, from my perspective, is a desire to be a part of a new frontier. We had the personal computing revolution, the internet, the web, web 2.0... and for those who missed out on those or merely miss them, crypto fills that void and provides a new realm of possibilities to explore.

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#134

Post by CyanBird »

bobmichael wrote: post #73
keyanp wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the ability to trust that the ledger is accurate seems extremely valuable Maybe it "seems" valuable, but why exactly is it valuable? For what use case and which situation (besides crime)? I think the issue is that many don't see value in its "primary value proposition" because the features they want from banks are already there (stability, FDIC insurance). The only thing I personally see missing is no/low-fee insta…

One IMO realistic use-case is providing a wealth preservation mechanism for people living in a country with a corrupt government that's experiencing hyperinflation, for example Lebanon.

> One IMO realistic use-case is providing a wealth preservation

Any other fiat currency already provides this such as usd, euro, Israeli currency etc and they are at least currently far easier to aquire and done have any gas feeds other than consumption tax if any

On Lebanon where electricity is unreliable seems like a particularly bad idea to use any sort of Crypto, let alone the user friction as a consequence of network gas prices

On real world scenarios, if a country is having issues relating to inflation or is a small market to begin with, consumer prices are denominated on Usd or some other currency anyway

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#135

Post by gfodor »

padobson wrote: post #17
IronIvan wrote: post #8

> Any application that could be done on a blockchain could be better done on a centralized database. Except crime. After all as we all know: If you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear. And look at how inefficient all these permissionless, trustless protocols are! What a waste! Let's just all trust a central authority and think of the savings and the children.

Yeah, this is what I don't understand from the naysayers. Anyone who says blockchain-driven assets don't have intrinsic value seems to ignore the value of trust - the ability to trust that the ledger is accurate seems extremely valuable. The author of the article skips over the question entirely, maybe he's addressed it elsewhere, but if the crypto skeptics continue to ignore one of its primary value propositions, I…

It turns out in history lots of people committed crimes where the evil party was not the criminal, but the state deeming their actions criminal.

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#136

Post by can16358p »

h2odragon wrote: post #9

Dogecoin started out as an explicitly value-free "let's play with this without risk or seriousness" fork of Bitcoin. The speed with which the scams took it over was instructive and I think indicative of everything that's played out since then... In that sense, Dogecoin was a rousing, complete, wonderful success.

I remember reports telling Dogecoin was one of the safest cryptos to invest in, as it doesn't promise anything, accepts itself existing only for a meme, and all the reports were underlying its honesty, telling "it is what it is". Then it skyrocketed and became a purely speculative one, of course it's not Dogecoin's fault but more like Elon's.

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#137

Post by brazzy »

maneesh wrote: post #28
IronIvan wrote: post #8

> Any application that could be done on a blockchain could be better done on a centralized database. Except crime. After all as we all know: If you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear. And look at how inefficient all these permissionless, trustless protocols are! What a waste! Let's just all trust a central authority and think of the savings and the children.

This is why I always have thought that election voting would be a perfect use case for a blockchain. Imagine a way that you could look up the blockchain with your key (SSN?) that is somehow one-way-hashed to show you the result of your vote. The value param would be plain-text. Someone else wouldn't be able to see your vote without your key, but you could confirm yours was recorded properly. Anyone could tally the va…

Of all the things you could do with a blockchain, it's probably the worst.

The legitimacy of voting outcomes depends critically on everyone understanding and in principle being able to verify how it works, and it being resistant to tampering at scale.

Very few people would understand a blockchain based voting mechanism well enough to really verify, and any implementation error could give an attacker complete and untraceable control over the results.

Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/2030/

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#138

Post by mym1990 »

rawtxapp wrote: post #107
bildung wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that those people can honestly see and use crypto as speculative assets, which is fine (if we ignore externalities for a second), not making up use cases.

Once you accept that the future is unknown, you'll see that every asset is a speculative asset, no? For the longest time, real estate was assumed to be 100% safe until 2008, etc.

Just because the future is uncertain doesn't mean you can't do research to make a reasonable forecast. Typically speculation is specifically buying/selling without any reasoning other than 'I think someone will pay higher for this in the future'.

Many assets don't even have to appreciate. A car is an asset if I have paid it off. I don't expect someone to pay me more than I paid for it unless it is a collectible or I live in the year 2021.

On your last sentence, I don't know who thought real estate was 100%, because nothing is 100% safe as a store of value, but I guess they paid for it in the end.

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#139

Post by alcio »

> Any application that could be done on a blockchain could be better done on a centralized database. Except crime.

In a weird way, this quote is a good explanation of why cryptos exist: they give the possibility of creating systems evading state controls.

Crime is a relative thing: moving money outside of certain countries is prohibited, in others it's owning property for certain category of people.

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#140

Post by 3np »

can16358p wrote: post #121

Not being pegged to a centralized, state-controlled currency is a dealbreaker for me. It's still in infancy and it's true that 99% of the projects are get-rich-quick schemes with no intrinsic value. Though, I think the author lives in a country with a trustworthy government because that's not the case for many people including me. In the last two days my country's currency has shaken much more than crypto and I don't…

> Not being pegged to a centralized, state-controlled currency is a dealbreaker for me

Pretty sure you mean the opposite

Post reply on HN