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Ask HN: Feel bad about working in crypto, what to do?

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Re: Ask HN: Feel bad about working in crypto, what to do?

#111

Post by egorfine »

mudrockbestgirl wrote: post #105
egorfine wrote: post #102

I work in DeFi development as well and I can feel your pain. Two things that I have to constantly keep in mind: 1. I have worked in stock markets for years before crypto and felt the same: I have been criticized in a similar fashion by laymen who don't necessarily have the proper understanding of what a stock market is and what value does it bring to the society. And yes, people who lost money were of course the most…

> One such example was for me when I fell on hard times and had to borrow on Aave to provide for the family Can you explain how that worked? Aave loans are overcollateralized, so doesn't that mean you actually had capital available? That seems very different from a regular loan where you don't need liquid collateral since it's tied to your identity / credit score.

Yep, I had some bitcoins to put up as collateral. Didn't want to sell it.

Re: regular loan: see, I live in a country other than the US.

Re: Ask HN: Feel bad about working in crypto, what to do?

#112

Post by whiplash451 »

highwaylights wrote: post #33
whiplash451 wrote: post #5

The crypto dent is on your resume now. At this point, you may as well stick around and make a dent in the crypto world. Find a way to have an impact. Write blog posts. Get a serious project delivery under your belt. As to what you (or other people) think about your resume: don't be so hard on yourself. You made this choice for a decent reason. Follow your intuition and try to have fun / have an impact somewhere.

Not sure this is the best advice, although it’s clearly well intentioned. If op doesn’t believe in what they’re doing, and knows it’s not for them, throwing more of your energy and time into it could just be a waste. (This is true of any career. More time invested means better prospects means harder to start over because you’d be starting over without experience for likely less pay. Breaking that cycle will get harde…

That's a good point. Reading my comment in the hindsight, I agree with you that it might be misunderstood.

My point was _assuming_ that the OP believed in what they are doing right now.

If not, that's a very different story.

Re: Ask HN: Feel bad about working in crypto, what to do?

#113

Post by thematrixturtle »

ETH_start wrote: post #95
Thlom wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ETH has been a legitimate technology with real use cases for a decade now and all we’ve got is jpeg’s of apes. With the amount of real money, talent and hard work being pumped into this space we should have seen the use cases materialize by now. But there’s nothing. I’m sure someone uses it for something real, but I haven’t seen crypto actually solve a real problem any better than a plain old database. Please correct…

ETH launched in 2015, which is 7 years ago, and has been working through fundamental limitations of the technology, building out the technological primitives that will enable mass-consumer blockchain applications in the future. A list of areas where Ethereum has made huge progress: * building secure smart contracts - more sophisticated auditing programmes by more experienced companies, improvements in programming lan…

Your bullet points list a bunch of navel-gazing crypto improvements for crypto, but the previous poster was asking for examples where "crypto actually solve[a] a real problem any better than a plain old database". Got any?

Re: Ask HN: Feel bad about working in crypto, what to do?

#114

Post by ogogmad »

ETH_start wrote: post #95
Thlom wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ETH has been a legitimate technology with real use cases for a decade now and all we’ve got is jpeg’s of apes. With the amount of real money, talent and hard work being pumped into this space we should have seen the use cases materialize by now. But there’s nothing. I’m sure someone uses it for something real, but I haven’t seen crypto actually solve a real problem any better than a plain old database. Please correct…

ETH launched in 2015, which is 7 years ago, and has been working through fundamental limitations of the technology, building out the technological primitives that will enable mass-consumer blockchain applications in the future. A list of areas where Ethereum has made huge progress: * building secure smart contracts - more sophisticated auditing programmes by more experienced companies, improvements in programming lan…

I'm still not sure why all of that is useful. A lot of clever infrastructure, but for exactly what?

Also, it's worth reminding people that ETH might be useful, but still worth less than its current price. There's a ton of speculation propping up the current price.

Re: Ask HN: Feel bad about working in crypto, what to do?

#115

Post by mudrockbestgirl »

egorfine wrote: post #111
mudrockbestgirl wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One such example was for me when I fell on hard times and had to borrow on Aave to provide for the family Can you explain how that worked? Aave loans are overcollateralized, so doesn't that mean you actually had capital available? That seems very different from a regular loan where you don't need liquid collateral since it's tied to your identity / credit score.

Yep, I had some bitcoins to put up as collateral. Didn't want to sell it. Re: regular loan: see, I live in a country other than the US.

"I have assets but I don't want to sell them" is very different from "I need a loan to provide for my family" - the latter is what banks typically provide, U.S. or not, while the former is just a financial instrument to manage exposure.

You didn't have hard times, BTC is quite liquid, you just wanted to keep the exposure.

Re: Ask HN: Feel bad about working in crypto, what to do?

#116

Post by Simon_O_Rourke »

latchkey wrote: post #63

I've been in crypto since 2014. I just had the California Franchise Tax Board literally steal money out of a bank account of mine without any warning or notice. They left $0.01 in there and charged a $125 fee. I found out today they are claiming I owe taxes from when I wasn't even living in the country (and I was paying taxes then too!). In 2021/2022, I paid more taxes than I ever have in my life. I even over paid ju…

Had similar experience when I was out working in Berlin. I had a gym membership in one part of the city (paid up 12 months in advance in cash). Moved to a different part of the city and didn't go back. Fast forward about six months, two bald headed goons came knocking at my old address looking for me, with a 1850 euro bill.

Gym membership for the next year plus a 900 euro service charge because I hadn't written a letter starting my intention not to renew by 90 days of the time of an automatic roll over.

Luckily for me, the Aussie guy staying in my old place told them I'd moved into a squat and they'd have to serve notice on two dozen angry punks if they wanted their money. Never heard from them again.

But I was lucky, if I'd given them a bank account the full amount would have been charged straight away, with no comeback or way to get my money back for a service I didn't use, and the bank would be absolutely fine with that. Shortly after I moved much of my funds into crypto, and would do it again for the security from arbitrary seizure.

Re: Ask HN: Feel bad about working in crypto, what to do?

#117

Post by sshine »

granddemolisher wrote: post #66
latchkey wrote: post #63

I've been in crypto since 2014. I just had the California Franchise Tax Board literally steal money out of a bank account of mine without any warning or notice. They left $0.01 in there and charged a $125 fee. I found out today they are claiming I owe taxes from when I wasn't even living in the country (and I was paying taxes then too!). In 2021/2022, I paid more taxes than I ever have in my life. I even over paid ju…

> Today, I ended up going to my other bank and pulling all of my money out as cash. I can't trust the system to not steal even more money from me. That's messed up. Because monday is a bank holiday, now I have to wait until tuesday until my accountant can deal with this bullshit. What kind of broken system is this? Same. It's insane how little control and power you have as an average person. Your bank accounts can be…

> You have no privacy. Is that not insane? You could be jailed for having a financial transactions on grindr in some countries in the world.

That’s because privacy against the state is at odds with enforcing the state’s laws. From a state-centric perspective, money is “good citizen behaviour” points. If you maintain a job deemed valuable, the bank prints you money to buy a house, etc. You have to know what people used their money on to assess if that’s good behaviour or not.

Re: Ask HN: Feel bad about working in crypto, what to do?

#118

Post by that_guy_iain »

> If crypto fails, which is a real possibility in my mind, will I be unemployable because I spend several years in the scammy crypto industry?

There will be companies that will refuse to hire you if you've been working in an industry they considered to be scammy. But those compares are a few and far between.

Re: Ask HN: Feel bad about working in crypto, what to do?

#119

Post by ls15 »

> If crypto fails, which is a real possibility in my mind, will I be unemployable because I spend several years in the scammy crypto industry?

I would say that there must be a wide range of possible activities in the crypto space. From well- to ill-intended. From crypto altruism over scientific crypto research to creating new crypto ponzi schemes on a weekly basis. Working on crypto does not automatically turn you into a scammer, but working on scams does.

Re: Ask HN: Feel bad about working in crypto, what to do?

#120

Post by wanderingmind »

Most of them here work in someway related to adtech and social media that is polarising communities across world, enabling fake news and allowing governments to snoop into private lives. But no one seems to care. At the end of day its just a job. Your objective must be to maximize your $/hr.
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