Follow the Crypto • Hacker News Board

Re: Follow the Crypto

#81

Post by dvt » Sat, Jul 13, 2024, 5:54 PM UTC

acdha wrote: post #58

mike_d wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that it is a Molly White project means take it with a basketball sized grain of salt. She has deeply held beliefs and keeps cherry picking until the data supports them. I'm not sure the data supports crypto spending more than other industries in lobbying, I think they are just doing it via a single PAC rather than spinning up dozens of targeted PACs for each race.

> She has deeply held beliefs and keeps cherry picking until the data supports them. That’s a big claim, but it’s presented without evidence. Do you have any examples? On that note: > I'm not sure the data supports crypto spending more than other industries in lobbying What data are you using to support this belief? Do you have additional data that she left out? That would be a good way to support the allegation of c…

> That’s a big claim, but it’s presented without evidence. Do you have any examples?

What do you mean? Her entire persona and relevance revolves around being anti-crypto. Of course she's heavily biased; this isn't even a remotely controversial claim.

> That would be a good way to support the allegation of cherry-picking.

The real story here is how much power individuals have over our political landscape. George Soros, for example, has injected more than $125M into the midterm race in 2022[1]. To be clear, this is not a partisan issue; the Kochs raised over $70M last year[2]. If you want to be critical of super PACs, crypto spending is literally a drop in the bucket and completely missing the forest for the trees. There is a story here, but crypto ain't it.

The more boring reality is that (like every nascent industry) crypto is going through some growing pains, so it makes sense a16z/Coinbase/etc. need to heavily lobby DC for favorable SEC rulings & legislation. This is, quite literally, business as usual.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/michelatindera/2022/01/31/georg...

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/29/us/politics/koch-network-...

Re: Follow the Crypto

#82

Post by Zanfa » Sat, Jul 13, 2024, 6:05 PM UTC

yieldcrv wrote: post #80

Zanfa wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost every “Show HN” that’s about a library has someone ask what the library actually does and why is it useful. If the only answer is “crpyto” and essentially all crypto is fraud, I can’t imagine why people aren’t more excited. I think vague promises is exactly how you could sum up most crypto-related libraries as well. There’s supposedly some useful usecase, but right now it only contributes to North Korean nucle…

so, your main supposition about crypto being all fraud is inaccurate, and the standards you present apply to fields you respect as well. for example, north korean expropriation and fraud is happening across the entire tech space, even a bunch of remote roles in the US are and were filled with north koreans, hence supporting the nuclear program [1] this is a common theme I’ve seen that reinforced my perspective: the c…

> so, your main supposition about crypto being all fraud is inaccurate

Sure, but what are some actual generally useful non-fraud uses? I know Marc Andreesen failed to come up with a single credible one after investing billions into the industry.

> for example, north korean expropriation and fraud is happening across the entire tech space, even a bunch of remote roles in the US are and were filled with north koreans, hence supporting the nuclear program

The difference is again the share of North Koreans working remotely in the US tech industry vs the amount of fraud in crypto.

Re: Follow the Crypto

#83

Post by yieldcrv » Sat, Jul 13, 2024, 6:26 PM UTC

Zanfa wrote: post #82

yieldcrv wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so, your main supposition about crypto being all fraud is inaccurate, and the standards you present apply to fields you respect as well. for example, north korean expropriation and fraud is happening across the entire tech space, even a bunch of remote roles in the US are and were filled with north koreans, hence supporting the nuclear program [1] this is a common theme I’ve seen that reinforced my perspective: the c…

> so, your main supposition about crypto being all fraud is inaccurate Sure, but what are some actual generally useful non-fraud uses? I know Marc Andreesen failed to come up with a single credible one after investing billions into the industry. > for example, north korean expropriation and fraud is happening across the entire tech space, even a bunch of remote roles in the US are and were filled with north koreans,…

the use cases for me are where DTCC and the transfer agent industry are disintermediated as an option for people that want an option, and there are a lot of competitors trying different approaches using distributed ledgers. that's useful for me and I use that every day, and I don't expect financial plumbing to be "actual generally useful" to everyone else. most people go their entire lives unaware of DTCC and the transfer agent industry.

the settlement time of 1 block is great for me.

chaining transactions within 1 block creates trading opportunities that are otherwise reserved for banks participating in the Overnight Reverse Repurchase Agreement facility

I don't really think you not being the target audience is an "actual useful" goal post to determine whether something is worth discussing on a tech forum, since the question is about non-fraud, but your bar is something that has to then be debated per use case based on whether you unilaterally derive utility from that.

the observation is that there is a group of people that have caked yourself in layers of news only about fraud, and my observation is that that's not the only news there is. that's the aberration in this tech community that's otherwise more discerning, I mean - crypto people are absolutely here - the contributors to all those parts of the stack are here and have been for over a decade. Brian Armstrong initially posted about Coinbase here. Its just the consensus is odd and has only chiseled away, while people have continued to build and grow the industry just in other forums.

> The difference is again the share of North Koreans working remotely in the US tech industry vs the amount of fraud in crypto.

be the change you want to see

Re: Follow the Crypto

#84

Post by noch » Sat, Jul 13, 2024, 6:48 PM UTC

dvt wrote: post #81

acdha wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> She has deeply held beliefs and keeps cherry picking until the data supports them. That’s a big claim, but it’s presented without evidence. Do you have any examples? On that note: > I'm not sure the data supports crypto spending more than other industries in lobbying What data are you using to support this belief? Do you have additional data that she left out? That would be a good way to support the allegation of c…

> That’s a big claim, but it’s presented without evidence. Do you have any examples? What do you mean? Her entire persona and relevance revolves around being anti-crypto. Of course she's heavily biased; this isn't even a remotely controversial claim. > That would be a good way to support the allegation of cherry-picking. The real story here is how much power individuals have over our political landscape. George Soros…

> Her entire persona and relevance revolves around being anti-crypto. Of course she's heavily biased; this isn't even a remotely controversial claim.

As a generation, we really need to learn how to say: "I don't like this person and I believe they are biased and I hate their politics/tone/demeanour/ethos but that doesn't mean they are wrong about the facts."

The ability to make use of information and ideas from people we disagree with, and even agree with the correct findings or conclusions of people we dislike, is a skill we urgently need to learn.

Re: Follow the Crypto

#85

Post by yellowapple » Sat, Jul 13, 2024, 6:51 PM UTC

pavel_lishin wrote: post #66

curtisblaine wrote: post #64

Everytime I see this kind of discussion I remember that there are companies not breaking the law whose only way of surviving is bitcoin, because the big two payment circuits (visa and mastercard) have decided in concert, to not process their payments. Gab and Parler come to mind.

Those are certainly two ... examples.

I can think of plenty of others, like that time PayPal took $1.3m of Flipper Zero's money and ran because reasons: https://www.dailydot.com/debug/flipper-zero-paypal/

And that's just a particularly high-profile example; smaller organizations and individuals routinely face this sort of thing from centralized payment processors. Said risk is nonexistent with any competently-developed cryptocurrency (and even most incompetently-developed ones).

Re: Follow the Crypto

#86

Post by acdha » Sat, Jul 13, 2024, 6:56 PM UTC

dvt wrote: post #81

acdha wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> She has deeply held beliefs and keeps cherry picking until the data supports them. That’s a big claim, but it’s presented without evidence. Do you have any examples? On that note: > I'm not sure the data supports crypto spending more than other industries in lobbying What data are you using to support this belief? Do you have additional data that she left out? That would be a good way to support the allegation of c…

> That’s a big claim, but it’s presented without evidence. Do you have any examples? What do you mean? Her entire persona and relevance revolves around being anti-crypto. Of course she's heavily biased; this isn't even a remotely controversial claim. > That would be a good way to support the allegation of cherry-picking. The real story here is how much power individuals have over our political landscape. George Soros…

Okay, you don’t like her. Cool, nobody’s required to but that’s a feeling, not data, and the accusation I responded to was a specific claim of dishonesty of the sort which, if true, could easily be supported by logic and evidence, not just emotion.

Re: Follow the Crypto

#87

Post by dvt » Sat, Jul 13, 2024, 7:58 PM UTC

acdha wrote: post #86

dvt wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That’s a big claim, but it’s presented without evidence. Do you have any examples? What do you mean? Her entire persona and relevance revolves around being anti-crypto. Of course she's heavily biased; this isn't even a remotely controversial claim. > That would be a good way to support the allegation of cherry-picking. The real story here is how much power individuals have over our political landscape. George Soros…

Okay, you don’t like her. Cool, nobody’s required to but that’s a feeling, not data, and the accusation I responded to was a specific claim of dishonesty of the sort which, if true, could easily be supported by logic and evidence, not just emotion.

> Okay, you don’t like her.

Wait what? I think she's doing a great job exposing crypto grifts/scams/hacks/etc. and I check her web3 feed at least once a week, but she does have a persona to uphold. Why would I pretend she's some platonic ideal of objectivity? For reasons mentioned, I do think this SuperPAC stuff is a bit reaching, but that's neither here nor there.

Re: Follow the Crypto

#88

Post by dvt » Sat, Jul 13, 2024, 8:08 PM UTC

noch wrote: post #84

dvt wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That’s a big claim, but it’s presented without evidence. Do you have any examples? What do you mean? Her entire persona and relevance revolves around being anti-crypto. Of course she's heavily biased; this isn't even a remotely controversial claim. > That would be a good way to support the allegation of cherry-picking. The real story here is how much power individuals have over our political landscape. George Soros…

> Her entire persona and relevance revolves around being anti-crypto. Of course she's heavily biased; this isn't even a remotely controversial claim. As a generation, we really need to learn how to say: "I don't like this person and I believe they are biased and I hate their politics/tone/demeanour/ethos but that doesn't mean they are wrong about the facts." The ability to make use of information and ideas from peopl…

> wrong about the facts

Okay, what are the facts here? That crypto firms and VCs are lobbying politicians for favorable legislation? Um, okay. Everyone from farmers to auto-makers to tech companies do that. It's an absolute nothingburger.

Are the facts that there's over $200M injected in our political system by crypto firms? Um, okay. This doesn't even move the needle when compared to the billions injected by a class of ~30 ultra-rich individuals (both conservative and liberal) over the last 10 years.

At worst, this is misdirection, at best, it's gross ignorance of the ripple effects of the Citizens United SCOTUS ruling.

Re: Follow the Crypto

#89

Post by rexpop » Sat, Jul 13, 2024, 8:26 PM UTC

curtisblaine wrote: post #78

rexpop wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> in one direction or the other These data exhibit a clear rightward bias.

Which is plausible and expected, since crypto is all about a smaller state which doesn't control money. On the contrary, most of the other players in the big tech sector exhibit a clear leftward bias. Why is crypto special? Because it's right wing? Or because it's crypto?

right-wing doesn't mean "smaller state," but rather a state more conservative of extant victors. That may mean "smaller" if, for example, the EPA threatens capital accumulation, or larger if, for example, policing maintains an exploitable labor pool.

> most of the other players in the big tech sector

Yeah, such as union-busting Amazon or Google. /s

Re: Follow the Crypto

#90

Post by noch » Sat, Jul 13, 2024, 8:31 PM UTC

dvt wrote: post #88

noch wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Her entire persona and relevance revolves around being anti-crypto. Of course she's heavily biased; this isn't even a remotely controversial claim. As a generation, we really need to learn how to say: "I don't like this person and I believe they are biased and I hate their politics/tone/demeanour/ethos but that doesn't mean they are wrong about the facts." The ability to make use of information and ideas from peopl…

> wrong about the facts Okay, what are the facts here? That crypto firms and VCs are lobbying politicians for favorable legislation? Um, okay. Everyone from farmers to auto-makers to tech companies do that. It's an absolute nothingburger. Are the facts that there's over $200M injected in our political system by crypto firms? Um, okay. This doesn't even move the needle when compared to the billions injected by a class…

> At worst, this is misdirection […]

This is a political statement you're making. I get it: You want to assert that her work is about something else, and maybe Molly White wants it to be about something else as well. But that has nothing to do with the dataset.

When I look at that website I'm just looking at charts with numbers and breakdowns of those numbers. Sharing data is never "misdirection". It's just data.

The way to criticize her work is not to begin by attacking the person or their motives or the political or ethical implications of their work, but by describing and analysing her data.

Individuals can figure out for themselves if the data or its presentation is useful for them.

In general, you do your arguments a terrible disservice when you attack a person rather than engaging with their work. That approach makes one quickly lose the credibility they wish to assert that the person they're criticising doesn't have.