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

411–420 of 704 posts

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#411

Post by wyager »

louwrentius wrote: post #312
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…

We are perfectly capable to decide what is better because it isn't magic. For every gain, somebody literally has to lose. All crypto money is just other people's money. The people who win are vocal. The people who lose, stay silent, often in shame And even if you disagree, those gains are not worth the destruction of our planet.

The people losing money to bitcoin are bagholders in inferior monetized assets like USD, real estate, etc.

It's still a net gain for society though - introducing good hard money is extremely positive-sum.

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#412

Post by AlexandrB »

rawtxapp wrote: post #389
AlexandrB wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't you make the same argument for pets.com stock in early 2000? "Diversification" is a conveniently vague reason to invest in something when there are no "fundamentals" that can be evaluated. At the very least pets.com had some assets that could be sold off after the company went under. Bitcoin can't even claim to have that.

If this was 2013, I would agree with you, because the risk of it being worth nothing was much larger, but today the Bitcoin blockchain moves thousands of bitcoin per day (worth billions of dollars in value) and it's network effects are stronger than ever before and you can see usage go high through on-chain metrics (like # wallets, transfers) and increase in lightning network usage (1ml.com). So I would say, investin…

I think this is actually an argument for investing in crypto.com, other exchange companies, or some of the huge bitcoin mining operations. These are the entities creating value by keeping the bitcoin network running and moving $millions worth of bitcoin around between wallets. Owning bitcoin itself does not grant you any equity in these profit-making entities that actually make bitcoin work.

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#413

Post by lubonay »

bradwood wrote: post #369
PantaloonFlames wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

And how is fiat not a Ponzi scheme?

And how IS fiat a Ponzi scheme? You don't buy into the US dollar expecting your "share" of dollars to go up. You just use it to pay for stuff.

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#414

Post by somesortofthing »

moolcool wrote: post #236

What about gaming? A huge problem in gaming now is that once games are no longer profitable, the servers go offline and they become unplayable. In-game assets simply disappear, and DRM servers go offline on the whim of the publisher. With the right architecture, crypto could solve both of these problems. Disclaimer: I don't like DRM or microtransactions, I think both of them make the gaming experience in 2021 pretty…

What use are records of your in-game assets if the servers where you play the game are down?

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#415

Post by nice_byte »

anonymoushn wrote: post #11

This particular source is extremely low quality and is motivated by the author's undisclosed competing product. I would like to see higher quality sources on the front page of hacker news one day.

explains why that particular person's entire personality seemed to be based around anti-cryptocurrency sentiment.

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#416

Post by HWR_14 »

andrewla wrote: post #103

If anything, I think stablecoins are way more dangerous than the author indicates. People talk about things like Bitcoin as a threat to sovereign currencies, and they are, as competitors, of sorts. But stablecoins are another matter entirely. One huge aspect of the value of sovereign currencies is that they are instruments of law -- courts will settle in them as a lowest common denominator, and it is safe to use them…

> That means that if banks (which are businesses) are not good at doing business, the government is essentially forced to treat them as dollar-equivalents by making them whol

The federal government also charges the banks for that insurance. It usually is not a loss for the government.

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#417

Post by wyager »

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?

"Modern" banking systems still suck if you want to move large amounts of money, move money globally, move money without asking for regulatory permission and waiting for regulatory delays, avoid having your assets temporarily seized because the comptroller makes a paperwork error, etc. etc.

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#418

Post by wyager »

stevebmark wrote: post #247
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?

Crypto is used as a commodity and for scams, very rarely as a currency. Given that transferring crypto is hard, slower, more expensive, riskier, public, and more wasteful than real banking, I don’t see why these would be related.

> Given that transferring crypto is hard, slower, more expensive, riskier, public, and more wasteful than real banking

Literally none of this is true except maybe "riskier".

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#419

Post by almostkorean »

dvdcxn wrote: post #323
moolcool wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instead of hitting the publisher's endpoints, they'd hit a web3 endpoint to get the list of digital assets owned by the player

What use is that if the servers running the rest of the game are turned off?

Most (not all) web3 games don't have a server. Just frontend interacting with a smart contract

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#420

Post by verdverm »

JackFr wrote: post #85
horsawlarway wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that ledger isn't accurate. It's just distributed and difficult to change. I technically am the owner of (quite a few) bitcoin that were being processed by MtGox when they imploded. The wallet they were in at the time was emptied and no longer exists. I still receive the relevant court documents as the case continues still. As far as the ledger is concerned - they are no longer mine. --- So question to you: How d…

This exactly. Turns out there is some utility to a central authority.

Proof of Authority systems
Post reply on HN