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Bitcoin Is a Hideous Monstrosity Made Out of Computers and Greed

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Re: Bitcoin Is a Hideous Monstrosity Made Out of Computers and Greed

#2
Interesting that articles like this are coming from everywhere at the moment, now that BTC$ is tanking. But when Bitcoin price was still going up, they were not all that popular, also not on HN.

It seems the moral argument for Bitcoin is positively correlated with its price.

Re: Bitcoin Is a Hideous Monstrosity Made Out of Computers and Greed

#3
> I can also assure you perpetual futures would not be allowed to trade on any exchange inside the legitimate financial system.

I don't disagree that the point of perpetual futures on crypto exchanges is primarily to facilitate speculation and gambling, but they're just delta 1 derivatives (track the underlying 1:1) in the form of a CFD, different in mechanism but no different in use case to regular futures, which themselves are traded widely on traditional exchanges. And these perps are quite useful to temporarily hedge holdings, even more convenient than regular futures since you don't have to bother with rollover. The instrument itself is really cool. The criticism should be directed to the high amounts of leverage which is only ever useful in a gambling context, and the marketing + gamification aspects which are clearly targeted at encouraging gambling behavior. If Binance got rid of their perpetual futures, users could still gamble all the same using Binance's regular futures contracts.

Re: Bitcoin Is a Hideous Monstrosity Made Out of Computers and Greed

#5
post #2

Interesting that articles like this are coming from everywhere at the moment, now that BTC$ is tanking. But when Bitcoin price was still going up, they were not all that popular, also not on HN. It seems the moral argument for Bitcoin is positively correlated with its price.

More like now is the best time to convince others that shitcoins are a thing.

Re: Bitcoin Is a Hideous Monstrosity Made Out of Computers and Greed

#6
post #2

Interesting that articles like this are coming from everywhere at the moment, now that BTC$ is tanking. But when Bitcoin price was still going up, they were not all that popular, also not on HN. It seems the moral argument for Bitcoin is positively correlated with its price.

They were pretty popular on HN, always been. I know because I participated in a lot of discussions the past years here about all the stupidity going around the cryptocurrency space.

Don't let your biases write your comments.

Re: Bitcoin Is a Hideous Monstrosity Made Out of Computers and Greed

#7
post #2

Interesting that articles like this are coming from everywhere at the moment, now that BTC$ is tanking. But when Bitcoin price was still going up, they were not all that popular, also not on HN. It seems the moral argument for Bitcoin is positively correlated with its price.

> It seems the moral argument for Bitcoin is positively correlated with its price.

this is specious reasoning. The moral arguments for/against bitcoin have always been there. Judging the validity of arguments based on how often they appear in media is how you get burned/misled.

Re: Bitcoin Is a Hideous Monstrosity Made Out of Computers and Greed

#8
post #6
post #2

Interesting that articles like this are coming from everywhere at the moment, now that BTC$ is tanking. But when Bitcoin price was still going up, they were not all that popular, also not on HN. It seems the moral argument for Bitcoin is positively correlated with its price.

They were pretty popular on HN, always been. I know because I participated in a lot of discussions the past years here about all the stupidity going around the cryptocurrency space. Don't let your biases write your comments.

Cryptocurrency criticism was prevalent for years on HN, yes.

But the popularity of the criticism is increasing with its recent price drop.

Re: Bitcoin Is a Hideous Monstrosity Made Out of Computers and Greed

#9
I am someone from a developing country who regularly used crypto either to get paid, or to pay for things online.

Does crypto have issues? yes. Is it good enough that in occasion it was my preferred payment method? yes.

Crypto community and companies are maybe bad, but if you zoom out into IT overall there is a fair share of greed and misuse. The internet is full of scams, gurus selling courses with false claims, spam emails that drain your grandpa's account, affiliate programs with 70% margin to sell fake products from questionable weight loss ebooks with health-harming diets to fragrances claiming to be perfumes that attract females supported by endless fake video testimonies, online communities encouraging hate, demoralization, and lack of belief in society.

Seem to me that those articles are nothing but status quo bias, does crypto has bad aspects? yes, is it worse than say internet? I don't know.

Re: Bitcoin Is a Hideous Monstrosity Made Out of Computers and Greed

#10
post #9

I am someone from a developing country who regularly used crypto either to get paid, or to pay for things online. Does crypto have issues? yes. Is it good enough that in occasion it was my preferred payment method? yes. Crypto community and companies are maybe bad, but if you zoom out into IT overall there is a fair share of greed and misuse. The internet is full of scams, gurus selling courses with false claims, spa…

Did "gurus selling courses" have 3T market cap?

Did "affiliate programs with 70% margin" emit more CO2 than New Zealand?

Once the scam can cripple whole countries, it becomes dangerous. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albanian_Civil_War

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