Why I’m Cryptophobic • Hacker News Board

Re: Why I’m Cryptophobic

#311

Post by bckr » Thu, Jun 30, 2022, 7:28 PM UTC

throwaway413 wrote: post #231

tuesdayrain wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Even gold, at least I can wear it and display my wealth. You can’t even display your crypto wealth like that I'd feel much safer displaying large sums of wealth online by posting a wallet than by wearing luxury goods in public.

Oh totally agree - someone can just pull a necklace right off you. I was just surfacing the point that at least gold does has some value on its own as a status symbol - there is a market for jewelry outside of gold as a transfer protocol. An bitcoin wallet without ability to transfer it is just some used up memory, it doesn’t have any value on its own. See coins going to 0 when exchanges close their doors. All the ba…

> someone can just pull a necklace right off you

I wonder if there's an argument to be made that nothing is of any real value unless there's also some risk of losing it.

e.g. you drop your apple in a gutter, or someone takes it from you, or it turns out to have a nice fat worm inside it

Re: Why I’m Cryptophobic

#312

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jun 30, 2022, 7:29 PM UTC

pavel_lishin wrote: post #309

antoniuschan99 wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t the value in money both in security (eg. Dollar backed by Superpower) and economic transaction? With Bitcoin’s hash rate at an all time high, it’s more secure than ever - can we say it’s the most secure system in the world? Of course the tradeoff for BTC is like insane consumption of power (currently Argentina size). With BTC, I don’t think the use case will ever be to handle small sums of money. Transaction sp…

What sort of security are you referring to?

[deleted]

Re: Why I’m Cryptophobic

#313

Post by mattwilsonn888 » Thu, Jun 30, 2022, 7:31 PM UTC

anbende wrote: post #272

mathattack wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will play the devils advocate here. What if it’s value is more like a store of value (gold) rather than a currency. We can’t pay all of our bills in gold, but it’s a store of value you can buy in and out of. I don’t have a horse in the race, just trying to understand.

Right, except that gold has inherent value. Historically we thought it was pretty and made jewelry out of it. It’s important for a variety of technology products. It’s a value store because it is consistently valuable first. Bitcoin skips that step.

Gold pays for that step. No one sensible would prefer the gold UX compared to Bitcoin. It beats it in every way other than 'shiny!'

Re: Why I’m Cryptophobic

#314

Post by mattwilsonn888 » Thu, Jun 30, 2022, 7:33 PM UTC

eropple wrote: post #273

mathattack wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will play the devils advocate here. What if it’s value is more like a store of value (gold) rather than a currency. We can’t pay all of our bills in gold, but it’s a store of value you can buy in and out of. I don’t have a horse in the race, just trying to understand.

Gold's shiny and has industrial applications. What's Bitcoin's inherent value floor?

Doing everything the majority of the economy of gold does (industrial uses can be ignored) better, except being shiny. If 'shiny' is your real argument then reconcile Pokemon Cards without ruining your argument.

Re: Why I’m Cryptophobic

#315

Post by tsimionescu » Thu, Jun 30, 2022, 7:33 PM UTC

mjburgess wrote: post #153

bufferoverflow wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment sort of works against BTC, because it was intentionally crippled. But there are many other coins that will do just fine for day to day transactions. But also the premise of your argument (taxes and oil) is weak. The value of these transactions pales in comparison with the rest of the transactions. So government enforcement has little to do with the value of USD. It has value, because people believe it, t…

Why do they trust that? D'you think it might have something to do with the state willing to violently require you accept its currency?

State authority is only truly relevant for collapsing currencies - for a functioning economy and currency, trust and availability are far more important.

Back in medieval and later times, when states were much weaker than they are today, especially economically, and especially small states, people chose which currencies they trusted, and often ignored the coins their local state was minting in favor of other, more trust-worthy coins minted in other places. Those places had no direct power over the people using their currency, and these people were not paying any taxes to them - they were simply choosing a currency they knew was likely to keep its values over the years.

This does happen occasionally in the modern day, with USD-based economies outside the USA, typically in countries with runaway hyper-inflation in their local currency.

Re: Why I’m Cryptophobic

#316

Post by mattwilsonn888 » Thu, Jun 30, 2022, 7:34 PM UTC

throwaway413 wrote: post #162

chaosbolt wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well an apple has value because it's food, but if today people are willing to pay 1 banana for it and tomorrow they're willing to pay 2 bananas for it, the apple still has the same value it did yesterday because the calories in it haven't changed, but you can actually obtain twice the calories you could've obtained yesterday by taking the banana (2 bananas today), so its value today has doubled. Bitcoin is a 0 calori…

This is well said, I’m gonna borrow that - “crypto is like a 0 calorie apple.” This matters. Even gold, at least I can wear it and display my wealth. You can’t even display your crypto wealth like that. It is entirely lacking in any “real” value. Idea: luxury tshirt made out of a $5 white tee with a wallet QR code slapped on the front showing off the balance of the shirt. Or a ring. Crypto fine jewelry.

This is not deep. This is you getting confused about how money works. Nothing you are realizing applies specially to specific money like gold or Bitcoin - it applies to all money and frankly it makes little sense.

Re: Why I’m Cryptophobic

#317

Post by tsimionescu » Thu, Jun 30, 2022, 7:39 PM UTC

yellowapple wrote: post #167

automatic6131 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Theoretically, maybe you could do it over letters. Just like you could run a computing algorith with horsemen and flags in place of a CPU (like in the scifi novel, Three Body Problem). Practically, you are talking nonsense and it's patently impossible. You cannot run any crypto currency with a system of letters even if you're transporting them with the full infrastrcture of the modern world with it's airmail and dies…

> Practically, you are talking nonsense and it's patently impossible. The existence of IP over Avian Carrier demonstrates otherwise. It's slow and it's lossy, but it's good enough for a blockchain.

I thought IPoAC only works on the 91st day of each year (or 92nd for leap years)...

Re: Why I’m Cryptophobic

#318

Post by mattwilsonn888 » Thu, Jun 30, 2022, 7:40 PM UTC

jrm4 wrote: post #268

A great deal of the discussion here is surprisingly not smart because it's presuming that the current technical landscape is the forever technical landscape (i.e. mostly a presumption that looks like "Crypto, the entity, is just like BTC is today".). I find it very strange because I feel like we've been able to do project out to "better working technology" quite well in the past. Supply and demand, y'all. Will at lea…

There's a reason the mostly unsavvy crypto skeptic hates the idea of crypto improving: they cannot financially capitalize on it.

Every new crypto project claims to be the second coming. There are no stable heuristics which don't get exploited by the next wave of marketing. The only way to make good bets in crypto is to deeply understand what teams are working on and make intelligent judgements.

What broad crypto skeptics don't understand is that every alt-coiner shares their critical point of view, but has the know-how to attempt (or pretend to attempt) a solution to those problems.

Re: Why I’m Cryptophobic

#319

Post by jrm4 » Thu, Jun 30, 2022, 7:41 PM UTC

luma wrote: post #277

jrm4 wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weird argument, you're presuming that it has no value today because it doesn't work YET. But, that's like the whole point of e.g. IPO's. People sometimes put money in something in the belief that it, or something related to it, will work later.

So when, exactly, is "later"? Bitcoin is nearing it's 14th birthday which seems like plenty of time to make it "work".

The argument I've been making is that Bitcoin is the equivalent of the Model T; the prototype thing that essentially "proves" the technology can, and even will work, but it won't be the actual thing. It will likely be a different cryptocurrency.

Re: Why I’m Cryptophobic

#320

Post by puranjay » Thu, Jun 30, 2022, 7:41 PM UTC

> state’s fiat powers come from its credibility, transparency and the power of taxation

Nope. State's fiat powers come from its monopoly on violence.

Completely opaque and corrupt states have fiat currencies too. Many thriving ones. The only reason people use these fiat currencies is because not doing so invites violence from the state - imprisonment and fines at best, actual physical violence at worst.