The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto • Hacker News Board

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#701

Post by mclightning » Mon, Nov 29, 2021, 11:53 AM UTC

sjtindell wrote: post #354

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…

I have exactly the same observation and personal experience, and commented the same thing a while back on another crypto-hatred thread here on HN.

Below commenters are just switching the tables around, not seeing absolute radical cynicism towards crypto/blockchain on HN.

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#702

Post by mclightning » Mon, Nov 29, 2021, 12:11 PM UTC

mvkel wrote: post #698

I think this fundamentally ignores what’s guaranteed to happen in the future: corporate ownership of… everything. The only thing we own these days is our identity. That said, our digital identities are largely owned by user data companies like VISA, Google, et al. If applications can run on the blockchain, and users have the ability to immediately and irrevocably “nuke” the personal information stored on the block ch…

I'm very much deep in crypto, "have skin in the game" big time. But are you being honest there?

A majority of coins are owned by corporations. Some coins already have governance through staked amount of coins. ETH2.0 and PoS will centralize the power to the majority holders of ETHs.

When that happens, corporate/"whale" investors will decide the future implementations. Either through governance voting, or just by basically clogging the execution & blockchain through a strike.

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#703

Post by senjin » Mon, Nov 29, 2021, 5:15 PM UTC

AlexandrB wrote: post #451

briantakita wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using the phrase "woo woo" along with various strawmen & many omissions of why crypto is being adopted was the extent of his criticism, hence low quality. He does not understand crypto & is trying to sell his competing product. If he were to talk about decentralization/distribution vs centralization along with who controls the fiat money supply & who benefits & who does not benefit from the fiat central bank policies…

> He does not understand crypto & is trying to sell his competing product. This is the repeated refrain of crypto believers. "You just don't get it." And yet when I ask someone to explain it to me (not the technology, the economics) I get hand-waving, self-contradicting promises (e.g. universal identity + resistance to censorship), and appeals to greed ("you must like being poor"). When faced with this, I'm often rem…

This might help https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9TXVjYBM3U

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#704

Post by okhobb » Tue, Nov 30, 2021, 7:08 AM UTC

danielmarkbruce wrote: post #697

tim333 wrote: post #696

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but re mental models you combine that with "...Mr. Market’s quotations will be anything but. For, sad to say, the poor fellow has incurable emotional problems. At times he feels euphoric and can see only the favorable factors affecting the business..."

Sure. But old Ben Graham also said that in the long-run the market is a weighing machine. Note above I said "long term". If Tesla stays long term at current prices or above, I've completely misunderstood several things in a pretty fundamental way. As an example - gold has stayed at prices which don't make much sense to me for a very long time. So my mental model for that market is "it's crazy town, stay away". That's…

The market assumes that Tesla will be much more than selling cars. The scope is more "anything electricity or climate change related" (i.e. very broad) combined with a focus on vertical integration in each business unit.