Live data from Hacker News

On anti-crypto toxicity

blog.mollywhite.net

381–390 of 734 posts

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#381

Unfortunately, given: "How can we create a more equitable financial system, where everyone has access to banking services? How can we reduce the power that a small few currently hold over the web? How can we improve data privacy and ensure that people have control over their personal information? How can we create reasonable privacy in the financial system? How can we make information more available to everyone? How…

Bootstrapping a new cryptocurrency where 90% of the coins go to relatively few early adopters is the worst possible way to fix financial inequality. The crypto holders would love if the world switched to using the cryptocurrency they’re invested in because it would make them extraordinarily wealthy relative to the average person buying in late. I don’t understand how anyone can honestly suggest that a gradual changeo…

While trying to not regularly call the majority of cryptocurrencies (the term currency misappropriated) an MLM-Ponzi scheme, I've started to realize that an easier or perhaps better way to state the problem with them is to use one of the key values that is virtue signalled against them: it's claimed that Bitcoin et al are anti-inflation, when in fact the inflation is just built into it - and only benefit the early/earlier adopters, the burden of inflation otherwise being shifted and weighted away from the earlier adopters towards the latest adopters.

The crypto holders not only would love if the whole world switched but they actually depend on it to realize their profits, and for the latest adopters to not be left holding the bag, which at least the last 50% of adopters will be holding some portion of the bag/losses before and once it collapses; the wealth transfer will already have happened to the early adopters, and so whether the "community" or army of HODLers pity themselves and keep dabbling in it to keep their dream alive or not, will be interesting to watch at least, perhaps if it's not too embarrassing for the majority; the ones who exited with millions to $100s of millions, at least some of them of course will proudly showoff their gains by being in the MLM-Ponzi scheme(s) early - not being shameful of the unknown harm and losses their gains caused others and society as a whole. A lesson, to say the least.

But the above is why those of us who see what Bitcoin et al are for what they are need to take a stand because regulatory/systems and policy capture will happen and is attempting to happen, perhaps the most extreme example of this so far being El Salvador - where their current "elected" leader at one point brought in military with guns into their parliament to threaten their parliament if they didn't adopt whatever he is/was gunning for; then you have a government/organization that's shown an example of what they're willing to do wanting to then influence the rest of the world (by whatever nefarious/violent means they may be so inclined to do) in order for a global-decentralized financial database to be required to be used, to then realize their gains, which richness wise, if they succeeded at getting the world to adopt - would make them as relative early adopters, very rich indeed - at least those in government who actually control the keys to their kingdom's crypto vault.

Once I saw a significant portion of the mainstream VC-finance industrial complex buy into it, arguably heavily lead by USV with their Coinbase and other ecosystem investments - gaps they knew someone would have to fill, including funding a crypto lobbyist organization, then I knew things would get too serious to ignore. The solution however simply seems to be thoroughly educate the population so they understand the mechanisms - as most of what they will have seen or heard about is easily considered propaganda to hype up to sell more of whatever flavour of MLM-Ponzi scheme they can convince/trick you into buying.

Edit to add: Forgot to link to article re: "Heavily-armed police and soldiers enter El Salvador parliament" - https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-51439020

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#382
post #46

I think toxicity from the anti-crypto crowd is basically inevitable at this point. It has been a decade of dumb claims and ridiculous assertions from the pro-crypto crowd. None of their claims have materially panned out. There's some promise in some places - mainly in the most nerdy corners of ETH, but it's still only promises. Meanwhile, this long protracted failure has been accompanied by a massive increase in stup…

> None of their claims have materially panned out. * Starknet is running a Turing complete VM using nothing but zero knowledge proofs. It's now possible and practical to trustlessly prove general purpose computation with O(logN) proof sizes. * Uniswap processes nearly $2 billion of trading volume a day. For reference that's about as much as the Australian stock exchange. In an entirely decentralized, non-custodial, t…

> * Uniswap processes nearly $2 billion of trading volume a day. For reference that's about as much as the Australian stock exchange. In an entirely decentralized, non-custodial, trustless manner.

An overwhelming majority of these are bot trades.

> * The Solana network processes 65,000 transaction, about equivalent to the entire Visa network.

Visa does 597 million consumer transactions per day. Not only is that magnitudes more, I would wage to guess that >75% of Solana's transactions aren't consumer purchases.[0][1]

[0]: https://www.blockdata.tech/blog/general/bitcoin-volume-maste... [1]: https://s1.q4cdn.com/050606653/files/doc_financials/2021/q4/...

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#384
post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The laws of mathematics are very commendable, but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia." --Malcolm Turnbull, Australia Prime Minister (2015-2018) There are some people who see attitudes like that in the government and think how can [things backed by math] survive a coordinated government onslaught that'll happen any year now? And then those that just look at such statements as the unlettere…

And if no one else accepts my bank? If selling things to US citizens for cryptocurrency is criminal, and enforced?

They're not obligated to, just as I'm not obligated to accept a check from your bank and can demand cash or some other form of payment. Your question is like asking what if no one wants to talk to me with PGP or some other secure message protocol.

What if selling things to US citizens via any means is criminal, and enforced?

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% agree, and I must add: Those are all political problems. Technology does not solve political problems. Politics solves political problems. All cryptocurrency does is obfuscate the politics behind its monetary system. As flawed as our monetary system is, the politics behind it are visible and under control of a government. In my country, my government is elected, and I'm an active and informed voter. Thus, I thin…

> Technology does not solve political problems. Politics solves political problems. I don't think this is true, bluntly. Technology does not automatically solve political problems. But technology does sometimes render bad political actions unviable. I would argue that a large part of the widespead acceptance of homosexuality in Western society was due to the deconstruction of singular media gatekeepers by the move of…

> technology does sometimes render bad political actions unviable

Put another way, technology allows groups to organize who otherwise wouldn't have been able to. In Bitcoin's case, it's largely libertarians.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#387
post #198
post #46

I think toxicity from the anti-crypto crowd is basically inevitable at this point. It has been a decade of dumb claims and ridiculous assertions from the pro-crypto crowd. None of their claims have materially panned out. There's some promise in some places - mainly in the most nerdy corners of ETH, but it's still only promises. Meanwhile, this long protracted failure has been accompanied by a massive increase in stup…

> None of their claims have materially panned out. Well, I can send arbitrarily large amounts of money across the planet, to any country with internet access, for tiny sums, safely, irreversibly, to anyone. Many people have sent many millions to Ukraine, for example. Transnational, permissionless internet money is quite handy. That wasn't possible before, and that's pretty useful, so I think the basic claim (that cry…

> Many people have sent many millions to Ukraine,

As I understand it, somewhere around 20MM was sent to Ukraine via crypto. The National bank of Japan sent 100MM the first day with lower transaction costs (fees, electricity, complexity). And the Ukrainians still have to convert the crypto to money to use it.

Meanwhile, everyone could just send money to Ukraine via the standard banking system if they wanted to.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#388

"How can we create a more equitable financial system, where everyone has access to banking services?" The same as national health insurance. You make a law that everyone must be served by the banks. Easy.

[deleted]

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, provide some evidence for that claim. Because again, that's the claim of "Well crypto is doing amazing things" but it needs actual evidence. I know it theoretically could happen if you ignore all the glaring problems in practice. But does it actually happen? What has cyrpto provided that you can't provide via Paypal or bank transfer? Hell - here's a paypal address for a bunch of guys who want to buy Ukraine a f…

> Okay, provide some evidence for that claim. Because again, that's the claim of "Well crypto is doing amazing things" but it needs actual evidence. I know it theoretically could happen if you ignore all the glaring problems in practice. But does it actually happen? Which part of the claim are you refuting here? It is a fact that one can send very large sums of value between two addresses for a trivial transaction fe…

For most trade questions, and that's what Ukraine is using the funds for, international finance is a solved problem. When it comes to tax evasion, large scale fraud, money laundering and so on it is definitely not. Unfortunately, crypto is only making the unsolved problems worse.

And regarding the case with the guy in Nigeria: How much access do people in the developing world have to crypto? And don't start with the crap scam Sam Altman came up with.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is like saying that you dismissed the web after you saw the 100th clone of the million dollar home page.

For some of us the web is more than the million dollar home page.

And for most of us, web3 is more than overpriced JPEGs as NFTs.
Post reply on HN