I wasted years of my life in crypto • Hacker News Board

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#101

Post by duxup » Sun, Dec 07, 2025, 5:23 PM UTC

spicyusername wrote: post #9

I've never understood the initial arguments about Bitcoin, no matter how many times they've been explained to me. The block chain is, and always was, an extremely inconvenient database. How anyone, especially many intelligent people, thought it was realistic to graft a currency on top of such a unwieldy piece of technology is beyond me. Maybe it goes to show how few people understand economics and anthropology and ho…

I think the sort of libertarian mythos of crypto is very appealing to a lot of people. Escape the big bad man and so on.

The crypto ecosystem though is totally disconnected tho...

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#102

Post by globular-toast » Sun, Dec 07, 2025, 5:36 PM UTC

geremiiah wrote: post #57

globular-toast wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To understand Bitcoin you need to forget the technology and first understand the problem. You need to understand what caused the 2008 financial crisis and how it resulted in us collectively funnelling more value into the hands of useless bankers. You need to understand that there are people who are literally spending their days playing games with each other, trading bits of paper and making silly deals and bets. If y…

OK, suppose the whole world used a trustless digital cash. Now you cannot do monetary policy. Now booms are booms and busts are busts and we are back to the early 1900s. Great. Actually what would likely happen is that people would be incentivized to opt-in a digital currency with a monetary policy knob, and this would again become the de facto currency that everyone uses. The problem with 2008 was corruption not mon…

No solution is perfect. Come up with a better one. More regulation, however, is not what we need. We need to decide what we want the financial sector to actually do, and that probably doesn't involve a bunch of children playing games.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#103

Post by georgeburdell » Sun, Dec 07, 2025, 5:37 PM UTC

GuestFAUniverse wrote: post #62

I always wondered what "clever" people expected from crypto, apart from getting rich quick schemes. Boring. We had such know-it-alls still with their pimples from Frauenhofer and Max Planck giving presentations. Even back then, 99% percent of the audience were skeptical, but sadly too many decision makers are just emperors with no clothing. There were so many immature, useless loud speakers given a junior professorsh…

As an outsider I have been most interested in the ability for blockchains such as Ethereum to serve as an automated escrow

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#104

Post by orwin » Sun, Dec 07, 2025, 5:59 PM UTC

> I believe it will lead to the long-term collapse of social mobility

I mean, isn't it the goal of US libertarians?

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#105

Post by bl4kers » Sun, Dec 07, 2025, 6:18 PM UTC

nacozarina wrote: post #11

don’t view it as a waste you understand how to construct complex & stimulating games that people will play compulsively for money. that’s good. next, craft games for which you can guarantee a house edge. should be small yet assured. you’re already an experienced casino game developer

You seem to have missed the point. Casinos are bad and suck valuable time out of everyone involved

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#106

Post by bl4kers » Sun, Dec 07, 2025, 6:20 PM UTC

paulnpace wrote: post #27

Why not link to the archive.is page in the HN feed? I failed to discover how to open the original article link.

In online spaces it's generally considered best to link to the original source and put archive links in the comments

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#107

Post by d--b » Sun, Dec 07, 2025, 6:33 PM UTC

jmye wrote: post #93

d--b wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean? Technically it works, no? it is an incovenient database, for sure, but the fact that people can trust it enough that they put billions of dollars in it is remarkable. I wouldn’t put my house in an S3 bucket…

You wouldn’t put your house “in a blockchain”, either. What is it you think you’re saying, here?

I meant an amount of money that’s equivalent to the value of my house…

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#108

Post by snapplebobapple » Sun, Dec 07, 2025, 6:36 PM UTC

fsh wrote: post #59

spicyusername wrote: post #9

I've never understood the initial arguments about Bitcoin, no matter how many times they've been explained to me. The block chain is, and always was, an extremely inconvenient database. How anyone, especially many intelligent people, thought it was realistic to graft a currency on top of such a unwieldy piece of technology is beyond me. Maybe it goes to show how few people understand economics and anthropology and ho…

It's an ingenious solution to achieve a "trustless" currency that prevents double-spending without a central authority. Unfortunately, this solves the wrong problem. Spending money usually involves getting a good or service in return, which inherently requires "trust" (as does any human interaction). Your fancy blockchain is not going to help you if you order something with Bitcoin and no package arrives.

Neither will cash. Thats what a third party escrow is for. You get that as part of what you pay for a credit card. Not trying to come down on either side of this i personally hold near zero crypto, your statement was just wrong.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#109

Post by fsh » Sun, Dec 07, 2025, 6:49 PM UTC

snapplebobapple wrote: post #108

fsh wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an ingenious solution to achieve a "trustless" currency that prevents double-spending without a central authority. Unfortunately, this solves the wrong problem. Spending money usually involves getting a good or service in return, which inherently requires "trust" (as does any human interaction). Your fancy blockchain is not going to help you if you order something with Bitcoin and no package arrives.

Neither will cash. Thats what a third party escrow is for. You get that as part of what you pay for a credit card. Not trying to come down on either side of this i personally hold near zero crypto, your statement was just wrong.

Indeed, most societies ended up inventing a mandatory trusted third party escrow called a "legal system" as part of a "state". They usually issue hard-to-copy tokens, solving the double spending problem.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#110

Post by ryandvm » Sun, Dec 07, 2025, 7:07 PM UTC

spicyusername wrote: post #9

I've never understood the initial arguments about Bitcoin, no matter how many times they've been explained to me. The block chain is, and always was, an extremely inconvenient database. How anyone, especially many intelligent people, thought it was realistic to graft a currency on top of such a unwieldy piece of technology is beyond me. Maybe it goes to show how few people understand economics and anthropology and ho…

Crypto makes perfect sense if you just understand it's for doing illegal stuff.

No moral judgement, but the only viable use case for the blockchain is doing things with money that the authorities don't want you to do.

Other than that, no, there is no use for a distributed database because doing financial transactions with people you can't even trust to abide by the law is generally a bad idea.