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The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

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Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#351

Post by secondaryacct »

koonsolo wrote: post #344
llimos wrote: post #301

Most people on HN are rational people who look at the world in a rational way. Bitcoin and friends are not operating in a rational market, therefore we don't understand them, and most of us would probably be pretty lousy investors since we would try to make decisions rationally instead of memeing and YOLOing. But, and this is a key point, that doesn't make us right and them wrong . It's just a different kind of marke…

Sorry, but please speak for yourself. Plenty of people here see the potential that cryptocurrencies and blockchains can offer. Let's find out where it takes us, but at this point, we're winning :D.

Winning what ? US dollards?

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#352

Post by tsimionescu »

joshmarlow wrote: post #157

I think a lot of discussions around the utility of blockchains misses (or just ignores) a really subtle but important point: smart contract networks (like Ethereum) could be thought of like public utilities that are implemented via markets. And I think that perspective can unlock a lot of innovation. If I want to launch a startup, I have to cover hosting costs, manage infrastructure (terraform, AWS/DigitalOcean, Dock…

> But if I can build my app using smart contracts, then they are always available to execute when needed - just pay to write/execute

Do you mean that you would build your app so that it entirely runs on the Ethereum network, basically using Ethereum like a cloud provider? This sounds like just a more expensive, difficult, and resource intensive way of running a lambda function...

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#353

Post by Zamicol »

agentultra wrote: post #319

I work in fintech and I don't see how a run on Tether will result in everyone getting their money back. The people financing it are hidden behind shell corps in shady countries with loose reporting and have not been playing ball with regulators. It's not reasonable to believe they have the reserves. The systems of payments we have today are social systems. They're built on a system of obligations, credits, debits, an…

Tether is rat poison, and from the very beginning most voices in the cryptocurrency community have refused to call it a "cryptocurrency". It's a private token controlled by a private ledger. I know no one in the space that has a favorable view of Tether.

USDC is regulated and sane centralized alternative. Dai is a sane distributed alternative.

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#354

Post by sjtindell »

llimos wrote: post #301

Most people on HN are rational people who look at the world in a rational way. Bitcoin and friends are not operating in a rational market, therefore we don't understand them, and most of us would probably be pretty lousy investors since we would try to make decisions rationally instead of memeing and YOLOing. But, and this is a key point, that doesn't make us right and them wrong . It's just a different kind of marke…

HN’s attitude is very surprising to me. I would think that they could get very excited about flash loans, decentralized exchanges (automated market makers), daos, and other concrete innovations coming out of crypto asset projects.

I think it’s mostly jealousy and a feeling that they missed the boat, so they want to see it sink. I think that because I’ve had the feeling many times.

They may not realize these are early days. The average person saw the bubbles in tech company stocks and even to this day I find myself having to argue with people who think that tech is in a bubble despite the fact that these companies are now some of the biggest, most profitable, and most powerful in the world.

Everyone on HN is asleep and a company offering a product called SushiSwap is a multi billion dollar unicorn. I think 99% of crypto projects are scams, but they are also exploratory. Even if they crash now, these decentralized apps are significantly more solid than pets.com ever was. Does HN really think that just evaporates?

I would ask anyone on HN who is doubtful to do this - go read the UniswapV2 contract. If you don’t think that’s a cool innovation, please come back and let me know, I’m interested.

The situation on HN really feels to me like one of “live long enough, see yourself become the villain.” They are playing the role of the old men in suits in the 90’s sitting around a table in New York and looking at those internet hippies in California saying “we build real things, not these internet funny money companies”.

And what happened? It’s like Zuckerberg said to the suits in the Social Network - “I could buy Mt. Auburn Street, take the Phoenix Club, and turn it into my ping-pong room.”

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#355

Post by secondaryacct »

mlcrypto wrote: post #340
pphysch wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rational/irrational is a vacuous distinction. Everyone has their own perspective on time and value. This doesn't address any of the OP's arguments, however.

Bitcoin is smart engineered gold. It's perfectly rational compared to the endless printing in fiat. Most engineers just accept keynesian economics because that's what they were taught. They have a narrow world view beyond their tech expertise. I saw somebody criticize BTC because they couldn't imagine using so much energy "just to secure money". I was like what you just took for granted is perhaps society's most impo…

The endless printing is more necessary than the strict stock control fot a currency. You cannot avoid people starving unless you do it, and you cannot live in peace unless you avoid people starving and getting desperate.

You do know there was no printing in the middle age. Good old days these all were.

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#356

Post by koonsolo »

PantaloonFlames wrote: post #339
llimos wrote: post #301

Most people on HN are rational people who look at the world in a rational way. Bitcoin and friends are not operating in a rational market, therefore we don't understand them, and most of us would probably be pretty lousy investors since we would try to make decisions rationally instead of memeing and YOLOing. But, and this is a key point, that doesn't make us right and them wrong . It's just a different kind of marke…

The issue is not whether a person can make money in a Ponzi scheme. We know it is possible. The issue is, is it a good idea?

Buying low and selling high is not a ponzi scheme.

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#357

Post by JuliusBranson »

dragonwriter wrote: post #304
JuliusBranson wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stablecoins are dangerous because they have the potential to change the current selection effects on the elite. For one thing, stablecoins subvert the ability of the Federal Reserve to print money and give it to their friends at Goldman Sachs et al --- normally this is supposed to result in their friends have a larger fraction of money than they previously had. You start with 1 dollar, David at Goldman Sachs starts w…

> When there's stablecoin, you just put your dollar in stablecoin before they print the money, the dollar inflates, stablecoin goes up proportionately, Printing fiat makes stablecoins denominated in the currency lose real value, not gain in it. (Stablecoins denominated in a different currency would gain nominal value in the printed currency, the same way direct holdings in the alternative currency would.) So, no, to…

>Printing fiat makes stablecoins denominated in the currency lose real value, not gain in it.

What's the case for this statement? In general, I don't expect to commodities to change value just because some currency was redistributed.

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#358

Post by Zamicol »

The cryptocurrency world is full of endless, technical publications. Yet what gets posted on Hackernews and upvoted are low quality political panderings from a cryptocurrency competitor.

Compare this post with something from Ethereum: https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/06/18/verkle.html

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#359

Post by chuckcode »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #311
chuckcode wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a little surprised that the author is missing the critical innovation of crypto which is digital trust and observability. Sure it is easy to make an argument that one cryptocurrency or another is a bubble, but don't underestimate the importance of being able to distribute work and verify trust at scale. Just look at how git has transformed software development by mapping code to a hash. Or how DNS + SSL has trans…

That sounds like regular old cryptography, which I don't think anyone would argue isn't important. It's a very different discussion than "crypto" a.k.a cryptocurrencies.

Author is making an argument against any blockchain or distributed ledger. To quote from article. "Any application that could be done on a blockchain could be better done on a centralized database. Except crime."

I'd like to see people look past the noise of cryptocurrencies to see how important digital trust and new applications of cryptography will be as we try to scale the ability of humans to work together effectively at scale.

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#360

Post by colinrand »

I appreciate the authors sentiments but I missed perhaps the most important one to me. Crypto has really re-invigorated interest in DIY/Tinkerer/random projects with no real purpose. These may appear pointless externally, but internally to the ones working on them they are incredibly fun, educational, and sure, potentially profitable. When industry / tech is in this chaotic phase, often the major benefit is figuring out what doesn't work, what fails, etc. If things were easy, everyone would do it, but when it's hard to get right, amazing innovation can happen along the way. Don't discount the random meandering towards solutions.
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