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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

#161

Post by SCLeo »

cc9one wrote: post #148
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…

Well said. These POW/ energy waste arguments are getting really old. They act as if there aren't existing solutions. Take Algorand for an example, which is carbon negative and (Pure) Proof of Stake...

Until you realize the largest two cryptocurrencies are still using POW. Also, let me guess, who has stakes in this Algorand thing you mentioned.

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

#162

Post by dns_snek »

SCLeo wrote: post #152
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…

Decentralization, privacy, and censorship resistance are indeed goals of blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies. In addition, they also serve as speculative assets.

What's fraudulent about that? Cryptocurrencies do in fact provide all of that (not all of them provide all of these guarantees, but some do).

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

#163

Post by SCLeo »

dns_snek wrote: post #162
SCLeo wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Decentralization, privacy, and censorship resistance are indeed goals of blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies. In addition, they also serve as speculative assets. What's fraudulent about that? Cryptocurrencies do in fact provide all of that (not all of them provide all of these guarantees, but some do).

You completely missed my point.

Simply put: People use cryptocurrencies as speculative asset while they claim they are using them for decentralization and other properties.

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

#164

Post by dns_snek »

SCLeo wrote: post #161
cc9one wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well said. These POW/ energy waste arguments are getting really old. They act as if there aren't existing solutions. Take Algorand for an example, which is carbon negative and (Pure) Proof of Stake...

Until you realize the largest two cryptocurrencies are still using POW. Also, let me guess, who has stakes in this Algorand thing you mentioned.

Not everything needs to happen immediately, Proof of Work isn't some existential threat to human kind and Ethereum is already moving to PoS.

It's still early days for blockchain/crypto world. Alarmist comments don't really add anything to the discussion.

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

#165

Post by tablespoon »

dnautics wrote: post #134
elmomle wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Capital has tended to trump social capital in the long term, particularly since sufficient capital can shape the public discourse.

Economic capital is interesting because 1) it's not a zero sum game. Most exchanges of economic capital result in the betterment of both parties. 2) in order to get some, you usually provide a good or service to someone else. These things are not necessarily true of other forms of social capital; you can definitely accrue political capital by killing people (or in a less dramatic sense, by being feared by people).

> Most exchanges of economic capital result in the betterment of both parties. 2) in order to get some, you usually provide a good or service to someone else.

It's easy to misread that as something like everybody wins, but it's worth noting that such exchanges can still be extremely exploitative.

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

#166

Post by dnautics »

tablespoon wrote: post #165
dnautics wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Economic capital is interesting because 1) it's not a zero sum game. Most exchanges of economic capital result in the betterment of both parties. 2) in order to get some, you usually provide a good or service to someone else. These things are not necessarily true of other forms of social capital; you can definitely accrue political capital by killing people (or in a less dramatic sense, by being feared by people).

> Most exchanges of economic capital result in the betterment of both parties. 2) in order to get some, you usually provide a good or service to someone else. It's easy to misread that as something like everybody wins, but it's worth noting that such exchanges can still be extremely exploitative.

Exploitativeness is extremely ill-defined and often used to push an agenda that is not really aligned with the interest of the party "being exploited". In any case, acknowledging that exchanges can be "unfair" for some definition of "unfair", I did use the word "Most". Capitalism/free markets do not guarantee that humans are not shitty but I challenge you to find a social system that does.

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

#167

Post by RedBeetDeadpool »

johnday wrote: post #33
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 OP doesn't say complain to crypto users. It says that we need to inform the general public so that they are immunised against the draw of these schemes.

Immunized against what exactly though?

Is there even one thing about owning crypto that people need protection from?

Its an asset class like any other and if you want an NFT buy an NFT. If you want to buy a pokemon card, buy a pokemon card. If you'd rather spend it on a car, buy a car.

You're gonna get fraudsters with any asset. People will sell you houses that have bug problems hidden from you. Car dealerships will fleece you and have been since the first car salesman existed. Scammers have been counterfeiting dollars since they have been printed. McDonalds has been selling tasty unhealthy foods since they became a franchise. Mail order brides have been scamming the purchasers of their wife and money.

Are we supposed to now shout out about every scam in existence? What makes crypto so unique among scammable things (literally everything) that it needs an army of anti-cryptocurrency advocates running down the streets with pitchforks and cardboard signs?

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

#168

Post by disruptalot »

arcticbull wrote: post #119
yrral wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The answer is pretty straight-forward. Every time we tried this before it collapsed into a giant ball of flame. This is availability heuristic. Many financial innovations work out well and power everything we do today without a second thought. Credit cards, internet banking, mobile banking, etc etc etc. Should we ban all financial innovations because a subset can cause collapse? For stablecoins, the difference here…

> This is availability heuristic. Many financial innovations work out well and power everything we do today without a second thought. Credit cards, internet banking, mobile banking, etc etc etc. Should we ban all financial innovations because a subset can cause collapse? All of these tools are strictly regulated specifically to avoid that collapse. Because we learned from when they collapsed before not to let them ru…

> Trustlessness can by definition only extend to what can be wholly represented on chain. Stablecoins cannot.

Many algorithmic stablecoins like DAI can be fully audited on chain and have proved to be robust (so far, 4 years). They let you trustlessly borrow USD, top up your collateral and whatever else you would do with a loan but with no middlemen.

I've been reading your comments for a while, and have been getting real value from it but I think you are missing the mark on the detail. Unfortunately to really tell the difference, it requires an indepth exploration, preferably actually coding it. I know this is a cop out for an argument, but from experience it takes dozens of replies to really get to this depth.

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

#169

Post by SCLeo »

dns_snek wrote: post #164
SCLeo wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until you realize the largest two cryptocurrencies are still using POW. Also, let me guess, who has stakes in this Algorand thing you mentioned.

Not everything needs to happen immediately, Proof of Work isn't some existential threat to human kind and Ethereum is already moving to PoS. It's still early days for blockchain/crypto world. Alarmist comments don't really add anything to the discussion.

I am willing to bet in 5 years time, the largest crypto currency will still be BTC and it will still be POW.

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

#170

Post by tablespoon »

jupp0r wrote: post #98
ohazi wrote: post #32

Like many people back then, I also found the whole proof-of-work / blockchain concept to be interesting from a theoretical computer science / distributed systems perspective. But these days, I can't help but think that we've inadvertently created a paperclip maximizer without even bothering to create an AGI first. Humans are the AGI, and we're going to happily use more and more energy to play this stupid game for as…

Incentives are key to bring the technology back into the realm of usefulness (in the grand scheme of things). Externalities need to be priced into energy costs. In principle there is no problem with using the electric power of a small country for proof of work purposes, as long as the production of that energy is not harmful to everybody via global warming or pollution. In the end, more efficient ways of achieving th…

> Incentives are key to bring the technology back into the realm of usefulness (in the grand scheme of things). Externalities need to be priced into energy costs. In principle there is no problem with using the electric power of a small country for proof of work purposes, as long as the production of that energy is not harmful to everybody via global warming or pollution.

I disagree. Pricing externalities into energy costs isn't sufficient, because proof of work is basically pissing massive amounts of irreplaceable energy resources into the wind in order to play a stupid, unnecessary game. I think it's better those resources stay in the ground or be used for a more productive purposes, and making miners pay more for energy isn't going to change the fundamental wastefulness of their activity.

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