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Crypto in 2026: Oh, This Is the Bad Place

stephendiehl.com

551–560 of 561 posts

Re: Crypto in 2026: Oh, This Is the Bad Place

#551
post #23

Actually, this industry routinely runs what you'd call "hero marketing," and what makes it especially dangerous for young people is that they're being sold success stories by actors playing people who don't exist, fictional characters who supposedly got rich through crypto. 1.A tiny handful of success stories are pushed to the front. 2.The vast majority who lost money are made invisible. 3.It manufactures the expecta…

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Re: Crypto in 2026: Oh, This Is the Bad Place

#552
post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only bad thing with USD based stable coin is you have to trust that the USA will keep paying its debts longer than you hold the stable coin.

The US has no reason not to pay its debts. Its debts AFAIK are USD denominated. How often has a country defaulted on debt in its own currency? I can think of one example and I thought it was a stupid thing to do at the time (it was forced by creditors, presumably as a punishment) and it was not a complete default, but a haircut.

Sorry, I was thinking hyperinflation as a de facto default. As in Germany, Brazil (Cruzeiro), Argentina, etc. If the US hits hyperinflation say, debt is 300% GDP in a decade at some point people will stop loaning it money and the dollar loses its value. Stable coins become worthless as well.

Re: Crypto in 2026: Oh, This Is the Bad Place

#553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is simply not true. In South Africa, one of the largest African economies, you cannot hold foreign currency unless you are traveling and then you have to sell it back within 30 days of returning to the country. You can open a foreign currency account with a minimum of eg R1500 which is half the monthly minimum wage. Then there are the exchange fees to talk about. You are oversimplifying.

So having foreign currency in stable coins is allowed in South Africa?

Stable coins are not foreign currency, they are commodities

Re: Crypto in 2026: Oh, This Is the Bad Place

#554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The global poor already had ways to store value in dollars. They could simply exchange whatever meager savings they had into... real dollars! And they have been doing that for decades. I don't know whether anyone in the west really believes in this bullshit of cryptocurrencies that give the global poor options.

This is simply not true. In South Africa, one of the largest African economies, you cannot hold foreign currency unless you are traveling and then you have to sell it back within 30 days of returning to the country. You can open a foreign currency account with a minimum of eg R1500 which is half the monthly minimum wage. Then there are the exchange fees to talk about. You are oversimplifying.

... and I suppose the solution for these particular conditions is.... drumrolls... stablecoins? They are allowed? Available everywhere? Accepted everywhere? Totaly safe from disappearing overnight?

Re: Crypto in 2026: Oh, This Is the Bad Place

#555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They explicitly built cryptocurrency as a way to hoard more wealth. It was the "engineers" not just the money people.

I worked at blockchain companies for 4 years and this is not true. The ratio of degenerate engineers is maybe 30% but business people is 80%. People I have worked with were much better compared to other companies I worked in like aviation or consulting

> The ratio of degenerate engineers is maybe 30% but business people is 80%

I worked for crypto companies for a while. The CEO of the latter company was a self-described fascist, and on one web-meeting our distributed engineering team was showing off their guns to one another. I was the only engineer who wasn't right-wing (and one of the only ones not based in the U.S.). Not sure which of our crypto companies was the anomaly, but I definitely got the sense from having gone to a convention or two that it was part and parcel with the whole industry.

Re: Crypto in 2026: Oh, This Is the Bad Place

#556

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they also make their place they live and the rest of the planet a tiny bit worse due to the energy consumption Energy consumption isn't the problem. It's how the energy is generated that is relevant to planetary health, and even then, whose to say the tradeoff isn't worth it. Crypto mining is estimated to take up 3% at most which means 97% is spent on other things. What makes this other 97% more worthy of this ener…

There is no stranded energy. Stranded energy is basically energy which should be used but its commercially a lot more efficient to do energy abitrage with a global finance market with a local energy market. Thats the biggest shit of bitcoin ever. And no 3% for provoding gambling and only a small amount of money value is a bad joke. 3% is not nothing. We increased the climate change rate per decade from 0.2 to 0.4 due…

> Stranded energy is basically energy which should be used but its commercially a lot more efficient to do energy abitrage with a global finance market with a local energy market.

Incorrect. Stranded energy is energy that can’t be used and is wasted instead.

> And no 3% for provoding gambling and only a small amount of money value is a bad joke.

Thinking it only provides gambling is an opinion. One I disagree with.

> Bitcoin is responsible for a gas powerp lant in NYC being turned on again. It only mines bitcoins now. It creates just heat and co2.

Just like many things in life, Bitcoin the protocol is not responsible but the participants in the system. Regardless I don’t see a power plant being turned on as inherently a bad thing.

You don’t see it as worth it but the people who pay for it do. Who are you to decide what an entity chooses to legally utilize their power for?

Re: Crypto in 2026: Oh, This Is the Bad Place

#557
post #378
post #50

I've been deep into crypto for years and I was a big stablecoin supporter. I was fascinated by the tech and I still am. But everything outside the tech itself is just trash, scams, and gambling. I've come to believe that "pure" decentralization is neither practical nor particularly convenient. The only real use case that makes sense to me is giving people in developing countries access to a stable currency they can a…

The fascinating thing for me to watch in real time is Crypto Bros discovering in real time exactly why the financial system works the way it does. It didn't happen by accident. It's 5000+ years of incremental changes. Reversible transactions? Feature, not a bug. Expandable money supply? Feature, not a bug. Fractional reserve lending that essentially creates money? Feature, not a bug. I remember saying this about Goog…

> this about Google Wave:

Na, thats not true - a lof of things that were advertised for Google Wave are now standard functions in MS365 & Google Docs, even if the product failed, it brought some innovation - hard to tell this yet about Crypto :)

Re: Crypto in 2026: Oh, This Is the Bad Place

#560

> A shadow dollar system, newly blessed by federal statute, is quietly migrating the savings of the global poor onto the balance sheets of a handful of opaque private companies. I'm out of the loop on this one. Is he talking about some crypto thing?

Stablecoins. The statute is the GENIUS Act, and the 'opaque companies' are Tether and Circle holding the reserves that back the dollars people in high-inflation countries actually use. The tokens themselves are boring, what's unaudited is whether the t-bills behind them are really there in the amounts claimed.
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