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Neal Stephenson doesn't seem keen on crypto anymore

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Re: Neal Stephenson doesn't seem keen on crypto anymore

#111

Post by senthil_rajasek »

taeric wrote: post #93
senthil_rajasek wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The value of paper money is in it's utility as a transaction aid. It has currency.

Right, I'm not really trying to get into an economics debate about currency. It is a far more nuanced topic than I care to discuss and is heavily "by definition" depending on when/where you are. (In particular, the easy "stupid" hypotheticals usually just boil down to strength of the one arguing.) My point here was largely that I don't get where Stephenson was trying to argue. Even some of the points made in the slid…

My counter argument was only to your comparison to paper money.

Re: Neal Stephenson doesn't seem keen on crypto anymore

#112

Post by sdfghswe »

Jasper_ wrote: post #36
sdfghswe wrote: post #2

I was using "magic beans" way before it was cool. I could prove it, it's just that I've had several HN accounts banned since then.

Was it because you got wiped out in the dot-com crash? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beenz.com

I wasn't even born when the dot-com crash happened.

Re: Neal Stephenson doesn't seem keen on crypto anymore

#113

Post by JohnFen »

Y_Y wrote: post #100
JohnFen wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does, yes. I think a lot of people haven't read the book or have forgotten that the world of Snow Crash is an extreme dystopia -- certainly not the sort of world most people want to live in. That's why I was so baffled as to why Facebook glommed on to the term "metaverse" with such fervor. The "metaverse" comes from that book, and is a major aspect of the dystopia. The term does not have positive connotations.

You make a good point, although I might prefer to live in Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong than in seventeenth century England.

True. There have been many very real dystopias in history.

I've long thought that if I had to live in the world of Snow Crash, I would totally want to be in Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong over the other corporations. In context of the book, Mr. Lee kinda slapped.

Re: Neal Stephenson doesn't seem keen on crypto anymore

#114

Post by taeric »

senthil_rajasek wrote: post #111
taeric wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, I'm not really trying to get into an economics debate about currency. It is a far more nuanced topic than I care to discuss and is heavily "by definition" depending on when/where you are. (In particular, the easy "stupid" hypotheticals usually just boil down to strength of the one arguing.) My point here was largely that I don't get where Stephenson was trying to argue. Even some of the points made in the slid…

My counter argument was only to your comparison to paper money.

Ah, but that counter assumes that there isn't some transaction aid that crypto currency also brings.

I could easily imagine a world where I get "crypto currency" that I can use across games. If only so that trying a new game doesn't mean starting from zero for those that did build up a lot of stuff in another one.

Re: Neal Stephenson doesn't seem keen on crypto anymore

#115

Post by smoldesu »

leppr wrote: post #97
arcticbull wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been 14 years, billions in investment and roughly speaking zero non-criminal usage and no real-world killer use cases. That's just fact. Time to move on.

If anything, crypto at least seems to indirectly put food on your table, articbull. I would find it hard to believe you don't get any compensation from religiously covering every HN comment sections about crypto with misinformation. Surely your motives can't simply be the fear of being out of a job if bigtech fades into irrelevance. AI would logically be a way bigger threat to your occupation. Here are some stats for…

If talking shit about cryptocurrency is a more reliable job than supporting it, I'd argue its time to move on.

There was never a hope for Bitcoin replacing or even competing with regulated currencies. It had its fun in the sun, but now it (and just about every altcoin) will bleed their values from the layman's wallet while opportunists and whales exploit an already-broken economy. Depending on who you ask (or what chain you trade on) we're already there.

Re: Neal Stephenson doesn't seem keen on crypto anymore

#116

Post by WeylandYutani »

JohnFen wrote: post #99
soiler wrote: post #7

This isn't about cryptocurrency at all. It's about the obviously bad idea of transferable digital in-game goods [sold for cryptocurrency]. You don't need the crypto part to see why it's not a good idea, although the model described here (selling loot to other players?) is not the extremely silly one I've heard more often (buy a CSGO skin and wear it in other games!).

The part I never understood about the concept of transferrable in-game goods is -- why bring crypto into it? I don't see how the blockchain solves any of the difficulties with the idea, either for the players or for any companies who are on-board with it. I also don't see why any of the companies would be on-board with it, given that accomplishing it would take a lot of development effort for little reward, and the g…

This was all cooked up by people who obviously don't play videogames nor understand the videogame market.

The creators of Fortnite don't want you to take your DLC with you to play another game. They want you to keep playing Fortnite and spend money in their store.

Re: Neal Stephenson doesn't seem keen on crypto anymore

#118

Post by hgsgm »

taeric wrote: post #55
ricardobeat wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of that is disputed in the article or the talk, you seem to have missed the point: it's not that the intrinsic value of things "isn't real", but that people were expecting things to have value (in crypto) without a connection to labor, personal experience or needs. Think generative artworks.

Right, my point is that it seems Stephenson seemed to have originally felt that there was intrinsic value to something. And then starts asking why you and friends would care about the trinkets you can sell, when that is irrelevant. Typically, by definition, you sell things that someone will give you more currency for than you currently value it.

He says that buying stuff in games (which he considers achievements as the ovly valid stuff, disparaging cosmetic items) is gauche. People pay for a lot of bad things, and Stephenson opposes that. He thinks crypto is fine for buying things of value.

Re: Neal Stephenson doesn't seem keen on crypto anymore

#119

Post by halfjoking »

thepasswordis wrote: post #10

I'm somewhat outrageously bullish on cryptocurrency, but still lovingly refer to it as 'fake internet money'.

I’m bearish after the SEC aggressively went after LBRY token while not caring what FTX was doing.

Any useful case with ledgers being used in anti-censorship communication can be criminalized by the SEC.

Way around this is not use cryptocurrency. Use decentralized protocols like Nostr instead and the SEC can’t make up some bullshit to stop you.

Re: Neal Stephenson doesn't seem keen on crypto anymore

#120

Post by hgsgm »

taeric wrote: post #59
tlb wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the problem is the scale of the money. No one is worried when people pay $10 for some intangible thing like in-game bling. But NFTs sell for amounts of money people associate with cars or houses, and it gives them icky feelings when other people can throw around money like that.

Well, again, I was not trying to make a defense of crypto. I'm more just not at all clear on what Stephenson was arguing. Trying to come up with intrinsic value reasons on things is doomed to failure. Somewhat obviously so.

That's exactly his point. He believes putting value on status signals is toxic. He doesn't want people buying fake valor. It's the "I fucking love science" of the art world, and he detests it.
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