101–110 of 118 posts
A voluntary monetary system that you can use to avoid crushing money printing and inflation? What monsters
Copy-and-paste meme shitcoins are not a "monetary system". Thanks!
Agreed. But we are talking about crypto here which seem to have a lot more than shitcoins. (Hint: search for "bitcoin" or "stablecoins")
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The rest of the people in your country don't want it because if your money is stolen, there is no way to get it back. If it's detrimental to society, I will make laws against it. That's how government works.
It’s the same with cash isn’t it? Non-reversible payments are the rule not the exception. Even bank transfers are non-reversible in general.
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> HN also has stories of random software libraries and deep discussions of those. Whenever a mismanaged business in other sectors is discussed its only about that business, not the entire sector that business operates in. The major difference seems to be that there doesn’t seem to be anything in the entire crypto industry that isn’t fraud or crime. And a lot of vague promises that typically turn out to be just more f…
> there doesn’t seem to be anything in the entire crypto industry that isn’t fraud or crime I am downvoting you for your purely BS hyperbole. FYI, here are a few examples of what's not fraud in crypto industry. 1. Bitcoin. There are 11 BTC ETFs approved by SEC. 2. Ethereum. Many ETH ETFs are on the way to be approved 3. Stablecoins. Circle foundation issues billions of USDC and is closely affiliated with wall street…
3. Tether totally has $110+B in holdings, though they’ve never produced a financial audit and they try to pass off attestations and non-financial audits as such to believers. Both times they’ve been forced to open their books, they turned out to be unbacked. Also, Circle and Tether are centralized entities who have full control of their currency and can and will censor transactions and block accounts, just like a regular bank.
4. Sure, cool, but is it actually used for anything anywhere or is that more of a “vague distraction”
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Yes, this and her previous projects have started to look more of a crusade to me, than a critique of "cryptocurrency", whatever that is, bundling them all together rather than analysing the merits and faults of each. Mind you, given the deep bias HN has against cryptocurrencies of any shape or form, I feel here she has her ideal audience here and we're the ones swimming against the current.
Where is the "crusade"? This just shows political donations. Is the FEC engaging in a "crusade" by publishing details on PACs? There are constantly HN commenters on a crusade to extol and defend the alleged virtues of various "crypto" projects. We could accuse these folks of having a "bias against government-backed currency". Perhaps HN has a bias _for_ true stories of fraud, corruption and crime rather than a bias _…
On the other hand, building and paying for (in resources and time) two websites against crypto, buulding your entire social media persona around it and being recognizable by name for that effort, you will have to agree is a couple orders of magnitude more effort and "involvement" in a cause, compared to a disinterested anonymous coward like me.
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the libraries don’t have anything to do with fraud, crime, vague promises the governance proposals don’t have anything to do with fraud, crime, vague promises the software standards don’t have anything to do with fraud, crime, vague promises same for nodes, consensus mechanisms, package management, type safety, languages, operator instructions, smart contract auditing space, financial auditing and transparency space,…
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…
> If the only answer is “crpyto” and essentially all crypto is fraud
Emphasis mine.
There can be no intelligent conversation with someone whose confirmation bias is so deep they live in a black-and-white world.
You have no interest in a conversation, only shouting slogans and exaggerated claims.
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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,…
Molly White’s latest project, tracking political contributions of the cryptocurrency industry. White’s data shows these PACs dwarf even much larger industries in this political cycle.
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.
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> 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…
I fully agree with you that the broader problem is Citizens United and the ability for corporations and the super wealthy to pour this much money into politics. In fact, I mention this here: https://www.followthecrypto.org/about/faq#what-about.
I think projects like mine would be extremely valuable for all industries, and I'm enormously grateful to groups like OpenSecrets that do excellent work making a far broader swath of the data more legible. But I am one person without the research team, time, or funding that would be necessary to analyze the data this deeply across industries, and so I focus on crypto (the subject of much of my research and writing).
The code is all open source, and I would be delighted if other projects like this one sprung up. It seems it would be a bit more productive to actually shine a light all the kinds of spending that happen throughout industries and across individuals, rather than using that other spending as a sort of whataboutist argument to dismiss projects like this one that (necessarily) focus on a subset of spending.
> 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.
As this project highlights,[1] crypto is far from a "drop in the bucket" when it comes to super PAC fundraising this cycle. The industry has dramatically ramped up its spending compared to previous election years, which is a large part of why I felt it was important to keep an eye on the spending.
[1] https://www.followthecrypto.org/committees/ranking/super
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Free speech as in speech protected by the 1st amendment? That's very specifically meant to curtail the government's powers, not the powers of merchants who decline to do business with others. You could make a pretty strong argument that overly stringent regulations that result in sex workers, etc., being unable to process payments are a violation of that, but I'm not aware of why Visa/Mastercard don't support Gab & P…
Who said anything about amendments?
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(Molly here.) I added the “All PACs” page largely thanks to that Bluesky conversation with verdverm (thank you!) The “all PACs” page is the full picture. It’s showing the same data that verdverm linked over at the FEC, which places Fairshake at #9 out of any kind of committee. Arguably ActBlue and WinRed shouldn’t really be listed there, since they are fundraising platforms that serve as an intermediary.
It was an informative discussion and a nice instance of constructive discourse of a political topic on social media. I learned some things too!
Kudos to both of you for having that.