Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

On anti-crypto toxicity

blog.mollywhite.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 734 posts

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#51

Post by egeozcan »

You cannot solve contract/legal problems and wrong transactions through decentralization. You can't also make a democratic system act on every conflict. You assign a central authority to act on them and you select that authority through a democratic process, which is what we already have.

- I want to have a beer!

- ok, scan this QR, and accept the transaction

- there you go!

- thank you, here are your 5 beers

- oh, did I just pay for 5? I wanted 1! can you refund me and take these back?

- no can do! pretty sure you said 5!

You can convince the 51% to cancel the transaction or you can call the police. What would you do?

Bitcoin may fix some friction issues if it's integrated into the current financial system, but it'd then just be a very small cog in a giant machine.

You may not agree, it may also be that you do not want to agree, and it's ok.

Now if you start calling people toxic because they state what's obvious for them, you can never get a proper discussion. It's also a little red flag that should make you question if you are in a cult.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#52

Post by tarkin2 »

gwd wrote: post #45
tarkin2 wrote: post #11

Why must we use the loaded term 'toxicity'? It starts your argument with: "Those who disagree with me are poison".

She said "toxic" because she's talking about poison. She basically said: "I myself am anti-crypto. But I don't think that we anti-crypto people should be poisonous in our interaction with pro-crypto people." I'd like to say more, but HN has a clear "Anti-Didn't-RTFA Toxicity" policy.

Framing conversations and discussions and disagreements as poison is troubling.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#53

Post by brianolson »

I'm grumpy about Visa/MC taking 3% of every transaction. I want a technofix for that. There are new blockchains that cost less than a penny per transaction use about a millionth of the wattage of bitcoin and I hope they turn out to be non-BS. I just want an efficient low-cost barrierless payment network.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#54

Post by igorkraw »

Ekaros wrote: post #16
k__ wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me it had leftist anarcho roots, but whatever floats their boat, I guess.

For me it is rather hard to separate the Libetarians and Anarcho people... Other one might be right and other left, but there is some weird commonality when it comes to state and control of financial system...

It's really not that hard. Libertarians, minarchists and "anarcho-capitalists" take one of the things which inherently need a state to uphold it (private property) and use it as the conceptual foundation of their social order - while not liking "the state". All other anarchists don't and hence get labeled as "left". That's the main difference, and the reason why "anarcho-capitalist" is inherently paradoxical.

There is also another conversation to be had about minarchist/libertarian ideas basically wanting to remove all the good bits of the state (creating public goods, giving weaker participants of a system protection, internalising externalities via regulation etc.) but keeping the bad parts (police and military with their massive potential for rent seeking and state capturing of money pots, not to speak about violence and abuse).

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#55

Post by Quindecillion »

yu-carm-kror wrote: post #5

> Despite crypto’s unquestionably right-libertarian roots I had trouble reading beyond that in the second sentences. You can’t just retroactively assign a political affiliation to the origin of an algorithm application.

While Satoshi certainly had libertarian leanings, I don't see how anyone could possibly assign him to the "right" side of the political compass

> “It’s very attractive to the libertarian viewpoint if we can explain it properly. I’m better with code than with words though.” - Satoshi Nakamoto

The impression you get from Satoshi's writing and the people he associated with (e.g. Hal Finney) is that he seemed more left-leaning if anything.

There's a strong right-wing bent to the community NOW, I don't think there's any doubt of that, but to call its ROOTS "right" is unfounded

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#56

Post by johnny22 »

Steko wrote: post #49
bedobi wrote: post #2

Waaay back, I thought Bitcoin was a cool technology, and convinced some friends of mine with businesses to accept it. We had a lot of fun with it - it was really cool to pay for your beer by scanning a QR code and seeing the transaction come through this public, distributed, tamper proof ledger, like magic, with no need for money, banks or any of the other financial infrastructure we're used to. Sadly, the "crypto sp…

> mostly just been abused as a vehicle for crazy, baseless manias The whole movement came out of monetary crank-ism, those people were always there. Let me know when there’s a mainstream non-scam MiltonCoin or KeynesCoin that isn’t deflationary and automatically models semi-optimal central bank policy.

me three!! exactly what i've been waiting to hear about.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#57

Post by ggm »

What level of economic activity in crypto is unrelated to speculative gain.

If you want to stop angry responses to claims for the value to economic process you need to be honest about the extent to which crypto is a game for massive speculative gain, pump and dump, washing and money laundering.

Use of public signed ledger to audit value flow and provide certainty to low doc activity like cash in Africa, payments to farmers worldwide, ending the game of 90 day credit and discounting for prompt payment, reducing rent seeking. All laudible.

But please instead of just listing them, give us some numbers.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#58

Post by yu-carm-kror »

simias wrote: post #17
yu-carm-kror wrote: post #5

> Despite crypto’s unquestionably right-libertarian roots I had trouble reading beyond that in the second sentences. You can’t just retroactively assign a political affiliation to the origin of an algorithm application.

I don't think it's retroactive at all, unless you believe that the message in the origin block "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks" is coincidental. Beyond that Bitcoin's design decisions (deflationary currency, trustless) embed a political ideal. Algorithms can very well be political, it's absurd to argue otherwise. For example taxes are, effectively, algorithmic in nature and I do…

My point is the author claims that it’s origin is such and such political affiliation “unquestionably”. Prove it.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#59

Post by andrepd »

guywhocodes wrote: post #27
bedobi wrote: post #2

Waaay back, I thought Bitcoin was a cool technology, and convinced some friends of mine with businesses to accept it. We had a lot of fun with it - it was really cool to pay for your beer by scanning a QR code and seeing the transaction come through this public, distributed, tamper proof ledger, like magic, with no need for money, banks or any of the other financial infrastructure we're used to. Sadly, the "crypto sp…

Largely crypto seems to fail at being distributed internet money. If a project is fast and cheap enough for it that correlates with being too niche to be viable. We have seen BTC and ETH lose their function as internet money as transactions and prices have gone up.

Monero is the closest thing to "internet cash", sadly it's not as popular as other alternatives.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#60

Post by brianolson »

bertil wrote: post #25

The largest and easiest argument against crypto is the environmental impact. It’s completely ignored in that piece.

There are new blockchains based on technology a million times more efficient than Bitcoin. Ethereum is trying to upgrade. Bitcoin is terrible, but this is fixable by using things other than bitcoin.
Post reply on HN