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Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against blockchain technologies

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Re: Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against blockchain technologies

#151

Post by sudosysgen »

dnautics wrote: post #100
sudosysgen wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Capital in general is a paperclip maximizer, not just Bitcoin. All investors are slaves to their capital that takes a mind of its own, a sort of real-world Egregore. Bitcoin is a flagrant example of this property of capital.

Isn't this statement trivially true for any sort of social system, where you can stand in social capital for Capital.

For social capital, the statement is tautological and has no meaning. Social capital is generally defined as the set of all interpersonal relationships and shared or individual ideas. This isn't a paperclip maximizer nor is it meaningful that groups of people are compelled to act in ways that follow what people in that group believe, do, and how they interact with each other; it's a tautology.

I think that the fact that this applies to capital in general and to abstract SHA256 capability in particular is much more interesting. After all, a bitcoin ASIC is not an interpersonal relationship or a goal of anyone or any group of people.

Re: Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against blockchain technologies

#152

Post by SCLeo »

dns_snek wrote: post #135

Labeling the entire sector as dangerous and fraudulent is incredibly short-sighted, dismissive, and at the end of the day, a lie. I don't buy into the crypto craze of Web 3.0 and NFTs (in terms of digital art), but I do think the technology already has applications that are useful to many, and many that still remain to be discovered. I agree that we should inform people about the risks and scams that are currently co…

Literally everyone (100%) I knew that are into cryptocurrencies are primarily using them as speculative asset. That alone is not a problem. The problem is when they advocate cryptocurrencies or blockchains, they always talk about "decentralization", "uncensorable", "privacy", "future of web" or some other crap that they are not use the cryptocurrencies primarily for. That is what makes cryptocurrencies fraudulent.

If most (in my personal observation, 100%) use cases of such sector seems fraudulent, I do believe it is justified to generalize to the entire sector.

Re: Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against blockchain technologies

#153

Post by betwixthewires »

You're already doomed to work with them.

I think you're right though. It is your responsibility as a skeptic to speak your mind, engage in discussion, offer compelling points, discuss technical details and social consequences and whatever else is important to you, and it is my responsibility as someone who understands and believes in (some of) this stuff to speak as well. And through it all, it is both of our responsibility to ourselves and those around us to be willing to learn from one another.

Re: Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against blockchain technologies

#154

Post by exolymph »

throwhauser wrote: post #31
exolymph wrote: post #6

Alright, go for it. Speak out all you want. Cryptocurrency users will continue ignoring and/or deriding you. Telling people that you don't like what they're doing is not an effective way to modify their behavior. You need to provide competing incentives, and somehow I doubt y'all are up to that.

The point isn't to convince cryptocurrency users, the point is to convince the average person ("the public").

That only works until they see other people getting rich by not listening to you.

Re: Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against blockchain technologies

#155

Post by jimbob45 »

I think this is just the price you pay when talking about things people have vested financial interests in. I imagine there was a great deal of spin on BBS' around 2000 about dotcoms.

Unless you're going to ban talk around topics where spin and sway can directly make people money, you're just going to see this kind of thing. The best you can do is to engage honestly and openly with others and do your best to understand their viewpoints. Hopefully they do the same with you.

Re: Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against blockchain technologies

#156

Post by exolymph »

CJefferson wrote: post #40
exolymph wrote: post #6

Alright, go for it. Speak out all you want. Cryptocurrency users will continue ignoring and/or deriding you. Telling people that you don't like what they're doing is not an effective way to modify their behavior. You need to provide competing incentives, and somehow I doubt y'all are up to that.

There is no "competing incentive" for those organising pump+dumps and other assorted cons. We can only warn those who could fall victim to them.

Sure — complain all you want, it's gonna keep happening. Even if I agreed with the classification that all crypto buyers are greater fools, it's not like standard finance is hurting for idiots who want to get rich quick.

Re: Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against blockchain technologies

#157

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

rschachte wrote: post #28
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many are using the technology to facilitate scams and overpromising, but that doesn't make the technology fundamentally useless or bad. True enough, but since I have yet to see a use for the technology that isn't pretty much just a means to scam people, I'm totally fine calling the entire space a giant scam.

Blockchain is an immutable ledger. Sure there are scams, just like there are on the regular internet, however, I think there is a lot of potential for blockchain. We're in the early phases of it, but there is more to blockchain that just the currency aspect of it.

People keep saying that and yet when pressed for some hypothetical application that might make sense to do with a Blockchain they just put forth ideas that don't stand up to scrutiny like deed management or transferable game assets.

Re: Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against blockchain technologies

#158

Post by dns_snek »

spacechild1 wrote: post #144
dns_snek wrote: post #135

Labeling the entire sector as dangerous and fraudulent is incredibly short-sighted, dismissive, and at the end of the day, a lie. I don't buy into the crypto craze of Web 3.0 and NFTs (in terms of digital art), but I do think the technology already has applications that are useful to many, and many that still remain to be discovered. I agree that we should inform people about the risks and scams that are currently co…

> but I do think the technology already has applications that are useful to many For example?

Many top cryptocurrencies serve as a way to transfer funds internationally at incredibly low cost, Monero serves as fungible digital cash, Ethereum has smart contracts that can be used to build e.g. decentralized exchanges.

Re: Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against blockchain technologies

#159

Post by betwixthewires »

jonwalch wrote: post #18

I find it strange that people keep promoting that YouTube documentary. Ignoring tone issues, there is a lot of cherry picking and other logical fallacies. For example, he talks about how terrible Tether is and then completely ignores USDC. He also claims that none of the popular blockchains can scale, but Solana is frequently in the top 5 most popular cryptocurrencies. It seems to me that people that do an hour of re…

I've begun to watch the video, I'm about 15 minutes in. Already I've seen an admission of bias against "hypercapitalism" as a cornerstone to the entire viewpoint, several obvious attempts to gloss over inconvenient details that the filmmaker is clearly aware of and understands, and a sequence of ad hominem attacks against prominent capitalist figures in the industry. Still, I'll hold judgment on the documentary as a whole until I've completed it, which I will.

Re: Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against blockchain technologies

#160

Post by hi5eyes »

brown9-2 wrote: post #145
jonwalch wrote: post #18

I find it strange that people keep promoting that YouTube documentary. Ignoring tone issues, there is a lot of cherry picking and other logical fallacies. For example, he talks about how terrible Tether is and then completely ignores USDC. He also claims that none of the popular blockchains can scale, but Solana is frequently in the top 5 most popular cryptocurrencies. It seems to me that people that do an hour of re…

didn’t Solana have an outage this weekend?

SOL has been ddosed multiple times, its laughable that people consider solana anything but a centralized vc shitcoin

the point of blockchain technology is decentralization, the chain going down over some "features", design flaws; barely qualifies it as a layer 1

"you know you've done something wrong when a blockchain has a status page"

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