On anti-crypto toxicity • Hacker News Board

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#411

Post by soco » Wed, Apr 20, 2022, 2:21 PM UTC

Crosseye_Jack wrote: post #95

egeozcan wrote: post #51

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, d…

Same could be said about paying in cash. Order a beer, hand over a 20 expecting change, bartender gives you 5 beers and no change. In that case you can convince the bartender (who allready said no can do) or call the police (though it might be a civil issue rather than criminal, so calling the cops won't produce any results and you will have to take it up with them via the civil court system). BUt I get your point, I…

On the other hand, I had over time a few credit card disputes, and the existing system worked just fine.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#412

Post by scottLobster » Wed, Apr 20, 2022, 2:22 PM UTC

reedjosh wrote: post #364

gwbas1c wrote: post #311

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…

Politically working in sound money (no printer go brrrr) is governmentally forbidden. Bitcoin subverted the corrupt political process and has brought that choice back.

Bitcoin will only be "sound money" when I can pay my taxes in it. Or at least pay for my oil change. Sure it's artificially limited in quantity. Great! Doesn't make it money. It's a commodity like any other.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#413

Post by mr_spothawk » Wed, Apr 20, 2022, 2:23 PM UTC

topranks wrote: post #331

Capira wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin is a groundbreaking invention. All the "cryptos" and NFTs are just scams.

Bitcoin is no different than the other “cryptos”. Most of them are literally forks of it.

but, you're wrong.

there are forks of bitcoin, to be sure... but the majority of "cryptos" out there are GPU mineable coins, because there's hardware that can be exploited to mine "profitably". not to mention the need to pre-mine shitcoins so they can be given to grifters and shills who pump & dump.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#414

Post by ulzeraj » Wed, Apr 20, 2022, 2:24 PM UTC

OGWhales wrote: post #272

sofixa wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ruble's course doesn't matter because it's close to unusable. The Russian economy is cut off from vital supplies, and will soon have all sorts of shortages of all sorts of high tech/quality things - vehicles, phones, computer parts, sensors for their precious resource extractions. China and India cannot fill all the gaps, there's too many of them. As for the oligarchs, they're still rich, but much less so, and th…

> Yes, the average Russian citizen is excluded from the rest of the world, and will bear the brunt of the impact. As they should, because they're the ones who mostly sat idly and allowed all of this to happen. I have zero sympathy for the average Russian whose inaction made them unable to purchase a new phone or car. What do you expect the average Russia to have done exactly? I’m curious what you would have done in t…

IMO we should do the opposite. We should bombard those countries with our shit. Our cheap services, our shows, our food, our way of life. Hire their engineers. Give them tech like Uber and crupto to create a nightmare for their control freak governors. Erode and drain their funds. Capture the hearts of their young. But instead Russians are listening to their government say "See I told you they hate us".

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#415

Post by theamk » Wed, Apr 20, 2022, 2:25 PM UTC

rglullis wrote: post #372

falcolas wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, I haven’t seen one “Web3” application. All I ever see is folks singing its potential from the rafters. Loudly. Perhaps the “web 3” evangelists can switch to show more of these apps, and the real world value they provide.

Quoted post unavailable.

This is a prime example of what others were saying!

We asked for an example of "good/useful/entertaining websites", and you are giving us technology demos, something that is only interesting to Web3 people.

How about some real-life useful stuff? Don't give me youtube, show me Kurzgesagt channel. Don't talk about Javascript, DOM and browser optimization, show me Google Maps.

Right now, all the stuff Web3 people produce is only interesting if you are into Web3 as well.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#416

Post by tkfu » Wed, Apr 20, 2022, 2:25 PM UTC

miohtama wrote: post #342

malthaus wrote: post #183

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…

Cryptocurrencies might not answer to all of these questions. However there is one question where it gives an answer. It is how to create more efficient financial system. And part of this answer might lead to rebalancing some of distribution of the wealth, mostly by reducing operating costs and profit margins of the current Wall St and other local oligopolic financial institutions. Blockchains do create fundamental va…

I just had to laugh at this one:

> Maybe the shadiest form of these deals comes from the public equity markets from a no-fees online broker Robin Hood and its Payment For Order Flow (PFOF) because of the conflict of interest of a broker making more profit when it is "saving in customer transaction fees." > > In decentralised markets, such shenanigans do not exist.

MEV is an extremely well-known, well-studied empirical phenomenon that happens today and does not have a known solution, and it's exactly analogous to front-running. It's especially funny that you put out this blog post almost exactly on the 3rd anniversary of the publication of the Flash Boys 2.0 paper.

What I want to know is, are you just ignorant of MEV-related problems, are you trying to mislead your readers, or do you have some sincerely-held belief that MEV front-running is somehow morally okay in a way that PFOF isn't?

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#417

Post by dgb23 » Wed, Apr 20, 2022, 2:25 PM UTC

aww_dang wrote: post #214

the_only_law wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and so much focus on buzzwords The “blockchain” thing killed it for me personally. Only so long I could just sit and see people naively wave around blockchain as a solution to every goddamn technical and social problem they can think of.

Tech does this generally. "Cloud" is another all encompassing buzzword. There are plenty of cloud solutions which are arguably ridiculous. Some here buy that kool-aid. Where's the self-righteous outrage? People buy all kinds of financial products which may not work out for them. There's an entire industry of OTC pink sheet stocks. Again, where's the outrage? There's plenty of bad actors anywhere, but it becomes toxic…

> Tech does this generally. "Cloud" is another all encompassing buzzword. There are plenty of cloud solutions which are arguably ridiculous. Some here buy that kool-aid. Where's the self-righteous outrage?

Criticizing over-engineered cloud solutions is done all the time. At the same time there are a ton of useful and pragmatic cloud solutions.

> People buy all kinds of financial products which may not work out for them. There's an entire industry of OTC pink sheet stocks. Again, where's the outrage?

This is being criticized all the time. At the same time there are useful financial products that are quite important for many.

> Wherever there's a disruption people take offense. In a word it is a hysteria over changing norms.

There is no disruption taking place. That's the issue. It's all just pure hype that quite obviously creates more problems that it claims to solve. People are tired of hearing the same arguments and excuses since years.

This is not like the Internet (or anything similar that has been used as an analogy) that was not taken seriously at the beginning, typically by established players who then got surprised shortly after.

Quite the contrary. It has been taken seriously but it didn't turn out to be what was promised. Just yet another hype, and "this time it's not like the last time". The negativity surrounding these topics came from insiders and initial adopters who started to speak out.

There are maybe some useful things in here that get overshadowed, but to be taken seriously those parts need to very clearly distance themselves from the rest.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#418

Post by maccard » Wed, Apr 20, 2022, 2:26 PM UTC

xvello wrote: post #164

maccard wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where are you located that visa and MasterCard are charging 3%? In the EU the fees are limited to 0.3%, and in other areas (e.g. the UK) it's 1%. As a card holder I'm pretty happy to pay a ~0.3% service fee to know that I have recourse with a merchant, for example. > I just want an efficient low-cost barrierless payment network. Whats low cost to you then?

> Where are you located that visa and MasterCard are charging 3%? I am guessing the good old unregulated free market of the US of A: https://www.valuepenguin.com/what-credit-card-processing-fee... There, banks and credit card companies offer huge perks and cash-back to card holders. That money must come from somewhere, and that's from the transaction fees paid by merchants (and transitively customers, as merchants st…

I don't know who ValuePenguin are, but those rates are definitely misleading. The interchange setup in the US is nuts, but only the highest tier of rewards cards are 3%, when used to purchase travel (see mastercard [0]). The vast majority are 1-1.5% ish. I will admit that this is higher than I expected, but MasterCardaren't taking a 3% cut of every card transaction.

> AMEX has even higher transaction fees, which is why some businesses don't accept it.

Given the opacity of the fees (or "discounts") as amex calls them, I don't know how to believe this. Lots of retailers in the EU don't accept them, yet amex are bound by the same interchange limits as Visa and Mastercard. How much of this is actually true and how much is "well it was true 30 years ago and I've not questioned it"

> You don't need a "technofix" for that, you need regulations that cap interchange fees like the EU.

Agreed. And using crypto to limit network fees is a terrible idea. I just had a quick look and the current gas fee for ethereum is $20!

[0] https://www.mastercard.us/content/dam/public/mastercardcom/n...

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#419

Post by agentultra » Wed, Apr 20, 2022, 2:26 PM UTC

Ok... so the political and economic foundations of the crypto ecosystem are flawed. It's a movement driven by fascists and criminals posing as libertarians. It's based on the Austrian school idea of, "sound money," itself a poorly conceived idea with roots in racism and fascism. If that doesn't corrupt the entire enterprise, what are the good parts?

In the pursuit of this, crypto supporters have blasted exorbitant amounts of excess CO2 into the atmosphere for very little work done in over a decade.

And it literally doesn't do anything. It was adopted as a national currency by one country and hardly anyone who lives there seems to use it. It doesn't by-pass international sanctions. It's not free from government regulation like the criminals want.

All it seems good for is divesting money from technologically illiterate rich people who jumped on the bandwagon, advertised their crypto holdings, and have poor or non-existent opsec. It's a scammers' dream: it's way easier and far more profitable to rip these people off than to run a scam against a bank or old people.

If your goal is truly altruistic and you want to see more transparency in the financial system, access for people from all economic and diverse backgrounds, etc: get into politics, banking, or just vote. Start a non-profit think-tank and hire analysts to help inform positive policy changes.

The technology behind this stuff is pretty useless at providing financial services because those systems are social/political systems. Technology is but a small part of supporting them.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#420

Post by mr_spothawk » Wed, Apr 20, 2022, 2:27 PM UTC

HWR_14 wrote: post #374

sharperguy wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny because the bitcoin community hates NFTs just as much as the anti-crypto community.

That's because NFTs are competing with BTC to lure in the newest money.

It's because NFTs are garbage, and only serve to enrich the preminers and shills.