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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?

#291

Post by rglullis »

andruby wrote: post #287
rglullis wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you choose where you live (and where to pay taxes) like you choose where/how you work?

Good point. Definitely not to the same degree. But to some small degree, you can choose to move. You can also chose to vote a certain way. Although with a 2 party system, especially when both seem to support the military industrial complex, you don’t really have an alternative. Sorry for the tangent: are most Americans content with a 2 party system? From the outside it feels so dysfunctional and divisive. (and, dare…

I am not American, though I lived there. All I can say is that this polarization is a XXI century thing. People used to look at the parties less like part of their identities and more like something that a choice of values and trade-offs.

Anyway, I think that this has little to do with the main point. Left or right, the main issue is that the idea of "The Corporation" has helped tremendously to improve productivity, but it is used as a moral shield by individuals to justify their acts. No matter how high in the ladder someone is, as long as they want to go up, they are all complicit.

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

#292

Post by latchkey »

medvezhenok wrote: post #286
latchkey wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why bitcoin and ethereum are so awesome. It gives this power back to the people and there is not a whole lot that governments can do about it except watch the flow of funds. Of course we can argue over finer details, but the overall course has been set. It is just a matter of innovation now. Having the combination of bitcoin as the single limited entity (simple is valuable) and eth as the programmable, more co…

I’m not sure that I would want people to hold all of that power - there’a a reason that the state has a monopoly on violence in the first place - turns out that having people roam the streets with guns is a less pleasant reality to be in for most people (look at Russia in the 1990s for what that looks like). Not to go all black-mirror, but imagine someone anonymously putting up a $X million dollar bounty on someone’s…

> imagine someone anonymously putting up a $X million dollar bounty on someone’s head, backed by a smart contract promise or something (I know that it can’t be guaranteed at present, but imagine). Or other nefarious things that most of the society considers harmful - and having no way to stop those from happening.

With or without crypto, nothing prevents that from happening today. Number one currency for nefarious actions is (and likely will always be), USD. Likely perpetuated by the US govt itself.

> There is a reason why we have the current system, and while there are large issues with it, Bitcoin/Crypto solves very few of them

I don't think they are trying to solve for those issues though. I'm more than happy with the issues they do solve, for me, today. Namely, more control and flexibility over my own funds.

I can take any amount of my dollars in my bank, convert them to a decentralized stablecoin (and I'm not talking shit like UST), fly to another country, and then access those funds locally without anyone telling me what I can and cannot do.

If that means that others can do the same and they might use that to do something awful, it doesn't really matter to me because if they really wanted to get away with it in today's standards, they could. Jamal Khashoggi is a prime example of this.

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

#293

Post by arbol »

roca wrote: post #39
roenxi wrote: post #18

> However, the constant backlash from the public is nagging me. There isn't a constant backlash from the public - most people don't care, the ones that like it buy and the ones that don't write grumpy blog posts about it. The people who do care have split into the aye and nay camps and are arguing the situation out. The usual anti-capitalist types will hate it, but they hate everything financial. Although any specifi…

Eventually the "industry" will burn through the available pool of gullible "investors" who can be suckered into giving up their money. New suckers are born every minute, of course, but they won't be enough to keep the crypto industry above the background noise of regular frauds and scams.

This is assuming that nothing productive comes out of crypto. If it starts turning a profit then new entrants aren't required.

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

#294

Post by charcircuit »

tgv wrote: post #204
charcircuit wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>yet they haven't managed to achieve that positive impact. You don't reach billions of users without positively impacting people who use your service. If there was no positive impact people would simply abandon Google's and Facebook's services.

“If there was no positive impact people would simply abandon meth.”

Yes, if there was no positive impact then basically no one new would start using meth and the meth user population would eventually die out.

If you had an addictive drug and all it did was make all your teeth fall out with no extra side effects almost no one would take it.

While yes, Meth is dangerous and addictive I don't think what Google and Facebook are doing is bad. How is Google giving people access to the world's data or Facebook connecting the world a bad thing? They are trying to do good things and are constantly trying to reduce the harm their services bring to people. They have entire organizations within these companies for doing so.

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

#295

Post by pyinstallwoes »

mudrockbestgirl wrote: post #189
mmcnl wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand it's an alternative, but if you can't explain why it's a better alternative, than it's just making simple things complex. You argue that people who ask for practical use cases don't understand because "they can't wrap their heads around it". I'd argue exactly the opposite: you're in too deep to understand that the burden of proof is on you (or anyone else in crypto), not on everyone else, and you can't w…

> How is crypto better lubricant than the current financial system? That's easier to answer, but it's not what's usually asked. The OP asked "what's the use case of crypto" which is kind of like asking "what is the use case of financial instruments" and that's pretty difficult to explain to someone who has zero background in finance. So why is a financial ecosystem based on crypto better? It's permissionless and make…

All of those things are contingent on perfect scenarios. As in, bug free contracts; which not to even mention the human willful engineering part of manipulating trust. Many people confuse permission and trust.

The things you outline are optimistic visions for what cryptocurrencies can offer as an alternative to the "root" financial system; however it is certainly not better in every case, and only maybe better in some very specific cases. Perhaps this will change overtime, but one thing I know for sure.... every piece of software ever written and every piece of hardware ever built has bugs and has been hacked. The human is even weaker to exploitation, so... without middle-men to act as a safety net, lawlessness and ill incentive can run rampant. Unfortunately the human condition optimizes for this opportunity if it shows itself.

You do admit there are cons, and I appreciate that. I think anyone who has some technical know-how should do what they can to at least point out any dogma. Dogma has clearly ruined a lot of the cool things about the technology.

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

#296

Post by charcircuit »

411111111111111 wrote: post #185
edanm wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In your opinion. Other people disagree. Whose opinion should they listen to? (And more in the spirit of the specific question parent raised - someone working at Facebook on funding charities. Are they "bad" for doing that job?)

That's not really an opinion though. Facebook continues to ignore morality in it's chase to maximize profits.

Can you provide some evidence behind this claim that they ignore morality?

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

#297

Post by charcircuit »

bratwurst3000 wrote: post #238
charcircuit wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I would also not want to hire/work with anyone who's worked for facebook or google in the past 5 years These companies have a plethora of things to work on and you have the ability to positively impact most of the planet (billions of people). You are oversimplifing things if you think they are all evil people who would be bad to work with.

If the people who work there have the power to make it good … why didnt they do it the last 20 Years. Insted the collectivly build one of the worst side of internet

Can you describe what makes you think it's one of the worst sides of the internet? I get immense utility from Google's services using mostly free services. All of these free awesome stuff makes it one of the best sides of the internet for me.

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

#298

Post by latchkey »

mmcnl wrote: post #289
latchkey wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If banking was a solved problem, then how come so many people don’t have an account?

Because the problem isn't banking. There are lots of people who don't have access to clean water either. Doesn't mean we need new solutions to provide clean water, but rather we need to figure out why existing solutions don't always work.

> Doesn't mean we need new solutions to provide clean water, but rather we need to figure out why existing solutions don't always work.

Solution doesn't work, we need a new solution. It doesn't need to be 'new', it needs to be 'different'! Play on words, at the end of the day, people still don't have bank accounts or clean water. Something isn't working. I'd rather be part of the solution and not part of the problem, even if the solution isn't perfect.

It is also an apple/orange comparison. Water != Bank Account.

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

#300

Post by wasmitnetzen »

latchkey wrote: post #241
wasmitnetzen wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like it's a bit naive to expect that the crypto world can evade the authorities forever. You need a registered office and executives and lawyers to run any big company, and thus the authorities and laws have a way in. The laws governing the existing banking system are not an intrinsic property, the crypto world will have the same laws eventually, just on a slightly different technical platform.

Not evade. Just give me control of my own funds such that nobody can just empty my account without at least giving me notice first. As you can imagine, that is a quite disturbing and disruptive event.

I do understand you feelings, but I don't see how that's a technical problem. That's an entirely legal problem. The law could easily mandate that feature to any cryptocurrency which doesn't want to go to the underground, or remove that feature from regular banking.
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