YC/HN missed out on crypto and it's all hate, nothing constructive.
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Blockchain is not only crappy technology but a bad vision for the future
121–130 of 202 posts
Re: Blockchain is not only crappy technology but a bad vision for the future
#122Let's be real. The vast majority of pro-cryptocurrency arguments break down to something like this: "I have Bitcoin, I want it to become the currency of the future so that the price will go up an I will become rich. Here are $reasons why that should become true, which all my fellow Bitcoin hodlers agree are very good reasons". We are now many years past not only the creation of Bitcoin but also past it going "mainstr…
one of the best use cases is that it reduces the control state actors have using the banking system. Crypto can bypass arbitrary governmental walls for moving money across country borders. It can allow transactions that are banned or heavily discouraged (taxed) by govts. This will be illegal behavior, but not all things that are illegal are immoral. International wire transfers and even stock purchases require days t…
> but not all things that are illegal are immoral.
It's fine to believe that but at this point the scams, tax-evasion, social-darwinism, techno-libertarian grift, and criminal enterprises are NOT the exception. They're very much the rule and dominate the way crypto works.
Of course, somewhere buried deep in all that funny-money, there's genuine innovation begging to be used for a legit purpose. It doesn't look good for the future. I fear that the worst thing that could happen would be for crypto to continue along its current path and actually "replace" real currency retaining all it numerous dysfunctional and unethical properties. All it would take is for enough people to "get-rich" so they could F the rest.
Re: Blockchain is not only crappy technology but a bad vision for the future
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are people legally prevented from holding USD. Take a look at Argentina [0]. They're legally banned from holding USD and if they have an account with USD it'll get taken by the state and converted to quickly depreciating bonds. Of course there is a black market for USD but holding substantial amounts of USD under your mattress in order to preserve your wealth is impractical and dangerous. [0] https://www.washin…
This is the exception not the rule. Also making this as your main argument for why crypto is a net positive is telling because you understand that there are 0 uses for crypto in a functional democratic society.
You have a very limited view of the history of capital controls. In the history of the world, capital controls are very common. It's a cycle. The state controls the money supply, they debase it through printing (dilution during gold standard), the value depreciates and everyone panics. One of the first things they do is restrict the ability of people to transfer money out of their currency. When everything is stable, you don't see this happen. But when its not (i.e. what its most advantageous) capital controls are applied. You see this happening in Turkey right now:
> Turkey had an 80% foreign currency surrender requirement in place from September 2018 to late 2019 during a previous iteration of a currency crisis and has also used other “soft” capital controls including changing fees charged on currency conversions and adjusting the requirements for currency hedging.
There are financial assets I cannot hold due to the accident of geography. For instance, I can't hold Chinese stocks. I cannot easily and safely send money to family in Cuba, Iran or North Korea. There are a lot of places I cannot hold real estate.
Capital controls and monetary debasement are very much the rule on a long enough timespan.
[0] https://worldview.stratfor.com/article/turkey-takes-first-st...
Re: Blockchain is not only crappy technology but a bad vision for the future
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
Tbf, blockchain is the dark matter of technology. People are never allowed to criticize it without the same, repeated feedback “If that’s what you think blockchain is, then you don’t understand it.” Why doesn’t someone, then, who actually understands their almighty blockchain god, illuminate us, mere mortals, on the wonders of blockchain and how it can be good for society in the foreseeable future. You know what’s re…
Blockchain is being used in supply chains (IBM tradelens) for immutable record keeping, NFT's (outside of selling URLs to jpgs...) are a good application for certificates of authenticity (some artists are selling their NFTs WITH a physical copy and using the NFT as the certificate of authenticity). Any application where you need an immutable ledger is a good application for blockchain. Just because crypto enthuisiast…
A merkle tree is an excellent way to represent an immutable record. Adding a cryptocurrency does nothing to the system that makes it more immutable. You only need the currency bit if you want to create a financial incentive for the strangers to store your immutable record for you. Which you only really need if you need to send said currency via strangers as a sort of courier. However that comes with it's own set of very real problems.
1. That currency is going to be heavily speculated because it's unregulated by design.
2. That currency is going to be used to bypass regulations that do in fact protect people.
3. That currency will be used to bypass an international system that is designed to allow nations to punish other bad national actors without resorting to war.
If you want to foster anarchy and to create an expectation that any individual is on their own and are actually prevented from getting assistance when they lose everything then a cryptocurrency is an ideal ideological fit. If you want something more balanced then merkle trees might be a useful tool but leave the currency aspect out of it.
Re: Blockchain is not only crappy technology but a bad vision for the future
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
Quoted post unavailable.
How does crypto solve that problem? Bitcoin has had a 1 year minimum of $30,000 and a maximum of $68,000. Etherium has had a 1 year minimum of $1200 and a 1 year maximum of $4800. I don't know about you but putting all my savings into a "currency" that is so volatile. "Stablecoins" don't seem all that stable either. Plus you have the high cost of transactions for many of these "currencys".
Stablecoins are perfectly stable, right up until the moment they aren't. They're only as good as the legal regime actually forcing the stablecoin provider to fulfill their promises of backing.
At that point, why not just bank with the legal regime you're already implicitly trusting?
Re: Blockchain is not only crappy technology but a bad vision for the future
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not but its a lot easier and safer to hold digital currency than wads of cash in your floorboards. Easier to acquire, receive from abroad and verify as well. It allows for a form of civil disobedience against unjust laws
Is it though? If I hold wads of cash in my floorboards, you need to actually break in and take it. If I hold something in a digital wallet, I can never be sure I've eliminated all the ways to take it remotely and anonymously.
You can print out a seed phrase and hold it under your floorboards as well, or better yet, memorize it. It takes up less space. You can split the phrase up and give it to a few trusted parties. You can do multi-sig. It's easier to transport, etc etc etc
Re: Blockchain is not only crappy technology but a bad vision for the future
#127HN really loves to hate cryptocurrency!
To me it's more like, even HN hates cryptocurrency! HN!
Re: Blockchain is not only crappy technology but a bad vision for the future
#128Let's be real. The vast majority of pro-cryptocurrency arguments break down to something like this: "I have Bitcoin, I want it to become the currency of the future so that the price will go up an I will become rich. Here are $reasons why that should become true, which all my fellow Bitcoin hodlers agree are very good reasons". We are now many years past not only the creation of Bitcoin but also past it going "mainstr…
I owned a pretty decent amount of crypto back in 2012, but sold all of it and own essentially none now. I think what you’re missing here is that there is actually potential in the space and that there are a decent amount of people trying to solve real problems that exist today. The two big ones I can think of are payments and ownership. Payments has always been a difficult part of the web. Multi billion dollar compan…
> I own a number of videos on Amazon, but why can’t I take that ownership right with me to view them on Hulu, or some other service.
Do you? Terms probably state you bought a license. The incentive is for producers and platforms to silo content to maximize sales. Why would they agree to use a less centralized platform unless forced by law or coordinated market demand?
Re: Blockchain is not only crappy technology but a bad vision for the future
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
Tbf, blockchain is the dark matter of technology. People are never allowed to criticize it without the same, repeated feedback “If that’s what you think blockchain is, then you don’t understand it.” Why doesn’t someone, then, who actually understands their almighty blockchain god, illuminate us, mere mortals, on the wonders of blockchain and how it can be good for society in the foreseeable future. You know what’s re…
> Having the promises of blockchain sold to us for years now without a single, useful purpose for it in sight other than, well, cryptobros. the issue is that we show the things being made and hn calls them all scams and ponzis and fraud. we show the rates adoption, and the growth in use and hn says its all speculation and fraud and needs to be made illegal. we point out that crypto is in many ways doing better than o…
Adoption... Bitcoin has roughly 500K transactions per day with an estimated 80% of them being trades (with an estimated 77% of those trades going through the "big three" exchanges). Visa has 1B transactions per day and virtually every single one of them is someone purchasing a good or service.
Credit cards were "invented" in 1951. By 1970 51% of US households had at least one. All happening well before the internet. Even with all of the hype an estimated 13% of American households even traded crypto last year. Want to guess how many households used it to purchase a good or service?
Globally we're more connected than ever. It's been 13 years - if bitcoin was actually superior for anything other than speculative trading people would be using it for something other than speculative trading.
Regarding the abuse here on HN - tweet something negative about blockchain and I think your perspective on the "abuse" coming from the HN community will change. By nature "cryptobros" and other people pumping these things are doing so for their own financial gain. People that are negative about crypto typically don't have any skin in the game and even if they do (somehow) their ferocity pales in comparison to the portions of the population that are expecting to retire with it.
Re: Blockchain is not only crappy technology but a bad vision for the future
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
I owned a pretty decent amount of crypto back in 2012, but sold all of it and own essentially none now. I think what you’re missing here is that there is actually potential in the space and that there are a decent amount of people trying to solve real problems that exist today. The two big ones I can think of are payments and ownership. Payments has always been a difficult part of the web. Multi billion dollar compan…
I've been commenting a few times about this already, but you're just arguing for interoperability, and blockchains don't help in that regard.
I probably agree with a chunk of this, but there is a level at which blockchains, specifically smart contract platforms help enormously with interoperability - they force those using them to provide standard, transactionally interoperable APIs to their services. If someone provides a financial service on ethereum for example, then it will have an api that can be used by other services on ethereum. This is a shocking level of interoperability compared to what we had before, where even with government stepping in and making things like OpenBanking mandatory, it's still surprisingly painful for a normal developer to create services that interoperate with their own bank accounts.