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

701–710 of 734 posts

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#701

Post by trutannus »

shkkmo wrote: post #673
trutannus wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You make a law that everyone must be served by the banks. Easy. Here is the "just pass a law" line. I've summarized a line that makes this exact point. I see no straw-men here. Can you point out where I make a straw-man? Genuinely interested in why you see this as creating a straw-man in my summary. I fail to see how else you can interpret other than 'just pass a law'.

"just pass a law" is longer than "make a law" and is thus not a summarization... Quotations marks imply a quote or a refernce to a term / phrase. When you deliberate misquote someone and then repeat that all over the thread as the basis for your argument, that is a strawman at best and pure bad faith at worst. I see nothing in the line you are referencing that indicates any sort of blind trust is suggested. Even simp…

> When you deliberate misquote someone

Yeah, I'm done with this. I told you my objective was to summarize, you have decided I'm maliciously twisting someone's words. I'm not. I've told you as much. My misuse of quotation marks isn't proof in the pudding. I've explained multiple times, to you no less, my point but you've ignored it and have actually strawmanned it yourself. This is what you're doing right now actually by accusing me of random things.

I suggest you look into the "principal of charity". Its fine to disagree, but being hostile and accusatory isn't.

Read these while you're at it: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#702

Post by trutannus »

Kbelicius wrote: post #688
trutannus wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not suggesting we replace the banking, just pointing out how this path you suggest is still not going to be an easy fix. There's no easy fix. Again, not advocating for crypto as a solution. Just asking people to consider more deeply the issues of saying "use the government to solve it!".

GP said "easier", not "easy". Number of people that display an inability to read a few sentences and parse them correctly is frightening.

> You make a law that everyone must be served by the banks. Easy.

This is the one I'm specifically discussing, its from a different user. This is the line that started the thread. Plenty of users are discussing this specific line I believe.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#703

Post by trutannus »

cinntaile wrote: post #666
Jordrok wrote: post #650

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose you could call them weapons of environmental destruction.

I suppose you could call everything produced by man weapons of environmental destruction, but that doesn't make it very useful.

You dilute the meaning of the word at that point. Weapons are specific tools that are used with intent to cause harm. If something happens to cause harm without intent, and you define it as a weapon, the word becomes useless.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#704

Post by trutannus »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #657
trutannus wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You make a law that everyone must be served by the banks. Easy. Here is the "just pass a law" line. I've summarized a line that makes this exact point. I see no straw-men here. Can you point out where I make a straw-man? Genuinely interested in why you see this as creating a straw-man in my summary. I fail to see how else you can interpret other than 'just pass a law'.

I suspect because "make a law" conveys some sense of the actual process of legislating, whereas "just pass a law" sounds as if it deliberately minimizes the process and makes it sound as if it is something trivial to do.

I thought it was a fair summary, but I can also see how someone would arrive at your conclusion. I read it as minimizing, but you make a fair point.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#705

Post by giaour »

trutannus wrote: post #702
Kbelicius wrote: post #688

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GP said "easier", not "easy". Number of people that display an inability to read a few sentences and parse them correctly is frightening.

> You make a law that everyone must be served by the banks. Easy. This is the one I'm specifically discussing, its from a different user. This is the line that started the thread. Plenty of users are discussing this specific line I believe.

FWIW, I thought the "Easy." you cite was meant sarcastically. The full context is:

> The same as national health insurance. You make a law that everyone must be served by the banks. Easy.

and national health insurance is famously a fiendishly hard public policy issue (albeit one for which several competing models exist and have been put into practice). Working from an existing public policy model (like using France's example of offering bank-of-last-resort services through the postal service) still seems way easier than just deciding to solve it with crypto.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#706

Post by shkkmo »

trutannus wrote: post #701
shkkmo wrote: post #673

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"just pass a law" is longer than "make a law" and is thus not a summarization... Quotations marks imply a quote or a refernce to a term / phrase. When you deliberate misquote someone and then repeat that all over the thread as the basis for your argument, that is a strawman at best and pure bad faith at worst. I see nothing in the line you are referencing that indicates any sort of blind trust is suggested. Even simp…

> When you deliberate misquote someone Yeah, I'm done with this. I told you my objective was to summarize, you have decided I'm maliciously twisting someone's words. I'm not. I've told you as much. My misuse of quotation marks isn't proof in the pudding. I've explained multiple times, to you no less, my point but you've ignored it and have actually strawmanned it yourself. This is what you're doing right now actually…

The principal of charity is why I suggested you are stawmanning rather than actively trolling. You asked for am explanation and I provided it.

You've never explained how you got to the assumption that anyone here is suggesting "blind faith" in the government. Please go ahead and do that or don't claim you've "explained multiple times."

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#707

Post by ea550ff70a »

bertil wrote: post #683
ea550ff70a wrote: post #603

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Environmental impact is only an issue if the energy source is dirty (which is becoming less of an issue as cost for renewables goes down and green energy mix in the grid increases) and or if you see no value in it. I agree with the former but at the same time I think the issue is not crypto in specific but ANYTHING whose energy source is dirty. The latter is obvi subjective and at the end of the day irrelevant as, li…

You are confusing speculative investment and adoption.

Well of course there is plenty of speculative investment going on in this field (also not unique to cryptos, just look at what's has been going on with tech stocks and the Nasdaq), there is no doubt about that. But at the same time all adoption metrics have been increasing like crazy. Two things can be true at once here. There are plenty of people gambling (no bueno) and there is also plenty of other people using the tech/network/etc with other intentions as well. You have governments (at regional and country level) adopting the tech (like it or not), you have people in South America using it inflation hedging (yes it works for this when you country's currency devalues like crazy on a weekly basis) and for remittances, etc. The speculation part fuels the volatility, but it is also obvious that it has proven to withstand many bubbles while at the same time increasing its reach an adoption as this (like it or not) fills a need. A need for an alternative that while not the most efficient, is inclusive, fair, and open by design.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#708

Post by HWR_14 »

crypthrowaway1 wrote: post #523
HWR_14 wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fail to see the difference between what I said and "Bitcoiners hate NFTs mostly because they give the whole space a bad rap." Anyway, you have your choice of what money to use. I prefer USD and Euro myself. And I really still don't understand any use case for someone in a first world country to use crypto. I grant that 3rd world countries without banking systems may, may need it, but I don't know why we just wouldn…

> And I really still don't understand any use case for someone in a first world country to use crypto. Hi. Here is a use case you can carry on to future discussions. There is a flourishing scene of dark net markets where people can purchase drugs using cryptocurrency. Merchants have reviews, products have reviews, and the whole process is much safer, secure, and convenient than meeting a drug dealer in real life with…

If your goal is to ensure crypto isn't cracked down on by governments, finding legal uses would be valuable.

Clearly crypto is valuable to break the law. After all, look at the number of crypto scams. Or ransomware attacks.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#709

Post by reedjosh »

rvz wrote: post #621
reedjosh wrote: post #547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin Lighting Network and Monero ftw. Bitcoin is not yet perfect. Hopefully someday. Monero however is pretty great privacy wise.

> Bitcoin Lighting Network and Monero ftw. Two things: 1. Bitcoin Lightning is not Bitcoin and is in fact a centralized by design layer 2 system which the transactions are off-chain [0][1], a direct contradiction to what Bitcoin was designed for. A peer-to-peer on-chain electronic cash system. 2. Monero and the other privacy coins are getting delisted and banned from exchanges due to increasing regulations. [2][3][4]…

> 1. Bitcoin Lightning is not Bitcoin and is in fact a centralized by design layer 2 system

Yes, but I personally have node equipment sitting in my closet waiting to be setup. (time constraints) It's not so centralized that it's obviously destined to be controlled by Governments and Corporations. I would put proof of stake down as being much more controllable by monied interest.

> 2. Monero and the other privacy coins are getting delisted and banned from exchanges due to increasing regulations.

That's sad, but it leads me to two thoughts. One, I'm glad I don't live in the UK or EU, and I think it's gross that something like that happens without the input of the people. Not that I'd put it entirely past the US to do this either (sigh). Two, hopefully Uniswap and other decentralized exchanges will allow for people to swap into privacy coins without a regulated exchange, but I agree there are probably numerous ways to penalize or track the entrance and exit thereof.

I think really this comes down to getting off exchanges asap and trying to actually use the currency. My local community has a group that actively uses the currencies for exchange, but who knows how strongly that would survive if the currencies couldn't off ramp to fiat.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#710

Post by bertil »

pshc wrote: post #346
bertil wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a million times more efficient than Bitcoin That is still a million times less efficient than existing solution and still horrifyingly wasteful. Blockchain principle is that if you have as many people as possible waste an astounding amount of computation and energy, you make over-ruling most of them too wasteful to be possible. You are not solving anything that way, just showing off that you have never heard of Kwa…

I wouldn’t say the energy use of non-proof of work chains is millions of times worse than existing traditional finance and web2 solutions. Probably comparable. There is much energy wasted in the products themselves and knock-on effects. Machine learning for ads and analytics, for example. Banks using thousands of warm bodies to push around excel spreadsheets. Google might build some of their data centers up in Icelan…

> I wouldn’t say the energy use of non-proof of work chains is millions of times worse than existing traditional finance and web2 solutions. Probably comparable.

Then you would not know what you are talking about.

> Google might build some of their data centers up in Iceland, but that’s not the full picture.

No, they have dozens of data centers, on every continent, and all of them are in areas with cheap, carbon-neutral supply. You think that you are being smart by being dismissive about their effort, and the effort of dozens of companies who host their own infrastructure, but that condescension and lack of expertise is just one more example of why Crypto advocates are so unconvincing.

Post reply on HN