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

news.ycombinator.com

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

#221

Post by arcticbull »

dvt wrote: post #209
arcticbull wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not at all. Forex yes, futures yes, derivatives yes - these are speculative or hedging instruments. Not investments. I've never heard anyone advocate people HODL /NQ futures in their investment account and borrow against them as an investment strategy. Let alone calling them "the future of money." But this is basically what crypto is. Money market funds aren't investments, they're cash equivalents, but they still fac…

> Not investments. The idea that there's any viable technical reasoning behind TSLA trading as high as it is, or behind what happened with GME and AMC last year is simply fanciful. It's like you've never seen an IPO pump and dump. It's literally the exact same market behavior you saw with ICOs; side-note: it's even worsened now with the advent of SPACs. Yeah, you can argue until the cows come home that "equities are…

Again you're conflating a bunch of unrelated concepts.

Equities may trade above a fair valuation - individually, or as a group. That doesn't mean they're not as a group positive-sum instruments. You may lose money on a positive-sum instrument. They're also not money, and never claimed to be.

You're forcing a narrative around short timeframes. Equity markets are tied to the performance of the business in the full course of time which is tied to labor.

Crypto like futures and options are zero-sum or negative-sum instruments if you include the rake. Every dollar in appreciation comes from a new investor. Every, single, one. That's the difference. It's just trading bags of air back and forth.

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

#222

Post by cuteboy19 »

thrwn_frthr_awy wrote: post #132
thisisbrians wrote: post #117

Your assessment of affairs is drenched in obvious bias. The downsides of these new technologies get plenty of airtime (your post included), but completely fail to acknowledge the genuine and useful innovations that are now possible (yes, there are many). Why was there no similar outcry from the technology community over the invention and proliferation of machine learning? It can be used for good or evil (there are pl…

> the genuine and useful innovations that are now possible (yes, there are many) Not trying to troll, but can you explain some of them? Not in the abstract, but in end-user/product terms.

As a crypto critic, monero is basically the only useful innovation to come out of crypto. Unfortunately, most people buy crypto on exchanges so the idea of decentralised, uncensorable etc are really oversold

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

#223

Post by mike741 »

Victerius wrote: post #81
tomiplaz wrote: post #63

I don't think you understand what Bitcoin has brought to the table. Consider its fundamentals and its network effect. Other blockchain tech, most prominently permissioned blockchains, should be reprobated, since they don't require blockchain tech and could be better implemented using tech that relies on standard database systems.

What Bitcoin has brought to the table: - More convenient ways for malicious individuals to conduct ransomware attacks - Fraudulent exchanges - Persistent and global GPU shortages - Anonymity to criminals - Staggering consumption of real-life energy supplies, produced mostly with fossil fuels What Bitcoin has not brought to the table: - A store of value - A trusted unit of account - A widespread medium of exchange

All of those problems existed before Bitcoin, so Bitcoin evidently did not "bring them to the table"

And if Bitcoin is not a store of value, why are the Bitcoin I own seemingly maintaining (and increasing) their original value?

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

#224

Post by arcticbull »

mattwilsonn888 wrote: post #204
arcticbull wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The answer is pretty straight-forward. Every time we tried this before it collapsed into a giant ball of flame. Nothing crypto is producing is new. We've had stablecoins before in the form of wildcat banks. [1] They were backed at some point by barrels of nails with a few flakes of gold on top, and what little gold there was, was spirited around from bank to bank in front of the inspectors. That ended predictably. We…

Why is it that everything a crypto die-hard says is held to the flame but when you are a skeptic you are allowed to be ignorant and obtuse? The space needs hard looks for every claim said, not just the positives. Most people in crypto are aware of why Tether is bad. In fact a huge portion of stable-coins are handled algorithmically and backed by their network asset. You are building strawmen, likely out of ignorance.

> Most people in crypto are aware of why Tether is bad. In fact a huge portion of stable-coins are handled algorithmically and backed by their network asset. You are building strawmen, likely out of ignorance.

haha, I strongly suspect I know much more about this space than your average coiner. Simply because you disagree doesn't make my positions wrong. You haven't actually indicated anything wrong with my position other than your frustration and a few ad hominem attacks.

Algorithmic stablecoins are (a) a tiny fraction of the stablecoin space and (b) pegs. Pegs are honey pots for attackers. This is true in classical finance too - and attacking the peg can be extremely lucrative. Just yesterday MIM and UST got knocked off their pegs. I'm led to believe this isn't the first time UST got knocked off its peg and required airdropping hundreds of millions onto it. And knocking the GBP off its peg is how Soros made his money.

Fractionally reserved stablecoins that never lose their peg are a perpetual motion machine. [1]

[1] https://bennettftomlin.com/2021/07/27/my-second-appearance-o...

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

#225

Post by thrwn_frthr_awy »

cuteboy19 wrote: post #222
thrwn_frthr_awy wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the genuine and useful innovations that are now possible (yes, there are many) Not trying to troll, but can you explain some of them? Not in the abstract, but in end-user/product terms.

As a crypto critic, monero is basically the only useful innovation to come out of crypto. Unfortunately, most people buy crypto on exchanges so the idea of decentralised, uncensorable etc are really oversold

Can you explain that more? I'm not familiar with Monero. What apps couldn't be made without it?

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

#226

Post by emtel »

I dislike this kind of consensus-building rhetoric and I don't like seeing it on the front page of HN. By all means present critiques of crypto/web3, but don't make false claims along the lines of "all right-thinking people agree that X is a scourge upon the earth".

It's equivalent to starting a conversation off with a loaded question - a useful tactic if you're trying to score points, but not likely to lead to anyone learning anything.

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

#228

Post by rwilson4 »

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…

TIL: https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/paperclip-maximizer

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

#229

Post by slater »

blunte wrote: post #220

> the entire scope of these technologies is promoting fraud, scams, and Greater Fool schemes With this statement the author shows bias and a lack of serious interest in discussion. Indeed most cryptocurrency projects are frankly illegitimate, but certainly not all.

Which are which?

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

#230

Post by doedoedoedoe »

logicalmonster wrote: post #68

> what a nightmarish step backwards it is for developers concerned with cost, speed, privacy, safety, and ease. 1) There's a lot of research and development into blockchain technology by very smart people. The systems are improving. What technology we'll have 5, 10, or 25 years from now is going to be much different than what exists now. It's a lack of imagination to think that because crypto is "slow" now (and not a…

This strikes me as a pretty bizarre argument, like a reverse slippery-slope fallacy, and I've heard it repeated by advocates. You are staying that yes, the technology is awful and scam ridden, but maybe sometime in the future in some way no one can think of it will be ok. This is obviously not a meaningful argument.

In regards to censorship, trust, and any other perceived benefit of blockchain technology for applications, those benefits rely solely on the organization that controls the application - ultimately landing users in the exact same space. Blockchain is hailed as a way to build decentralized applications without any regard to the fact that those applications would still need to be built by a central organization.

The final note that advocates seem to profess as some great proof of why blockchain is ok is that other systems are flawed, as if proving that some other system is flawed is proof that it's ok for their system to be a sesspool of fraud and waste.

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