Cryptocurrency Is an Abject Disaster • Hacker News Board

Re: Cryptocurrency Is an Abject Disaster

#151

Post by shkkmo » Mon, Apr 26, 2021, 5:28 PM UTC

eric_cc wrote: post #131

acdha wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll take that as “no”, then. I mean, you're the salesguy popping into the thread to say we should all buy in to something, you might need a better pitch if you want to get rich that way.

I never said you should buy anything. And certainly never in my life have I tried to sell a crypto. Why would I? I enjoy discussing how crypto is going to change the world because I genuinely believe it will. A move away from everything being centralized is a good thing in my opinion. edit: just to add on - would you call somebody who was excited about the Internet in 1995 a salesman? Just because I have an easy time…

Weren't you just trying to charge people to discuss with them how cryptocurrencies will change the world?

That sounds much less like an ethusiast and much more like a salesman.

Re: Cryptocurrency Is an Abject Disaster

#152

Post by knorker » Mon, Apr 26, 2021, 5:28 PM UTC

cslarson wrote: post #105

knorker wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is really a complaint against Proof of Work based consensus protocols. I wouldn't say so. The multi-level marketing ponzi scheme things would still be present. > "Cryptocurrency" is also kind of a dumb term. Yes, but "crypto" means something else. > Everyone seems to still think this is about creating new currencies. It's not. It's about greed and creating money for yourself. Currencies are just more direct. E…

> The multi-level marketing ponzi scheme things would still be present. Yes, there are scams. But even in 2017 ICO days these were easy to spot - wailing and teeth nashing over ICO scams was dumb then and still is now. > Yes, but "crypto" means something else. I'm sorry but words mean what people who use them want them to mean in order to communicate ideas between them. Meanings evolve and words are co-opted and prob…

> I'm sorry but words mean what people who use them want them to mean

Yup, which is why I use the words how I want them to mean. See?

> I don't believe this needs to be zero sum, though.

Absolutely not. I'm a capitalist.

But bitcoin is clearly negative-sum. And (I don't want to retype too much from other comments) so's other cryptocurrencies.

And negative-sum is clearly bad.

Re: Cryptocurrency Is an Abject Disaster

#153

Post by kybernetikos » Mon, Apr 26, 2021, 5:31 PM UTC

reducesuffering wrote: post #92

pk_kinetic wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems rather poor form to ask someone to disclose their exact crypto holdings for the sake of legitimizing, or delegitimizating their position. Couldn’t it just be a binary yes or no? Disclosure: I own some crypto.

No I don't think it's poor form. If we had a forum full of people talking about how great Facebook is, and when forced to disclose their $FB holdings, realize everyone is holding $100,000+ of $FB, we might realize we have skin in the game to talk it up instead of objectively evaluating it. Big difference in incentives between $10 and $100,000. Stake 0.05 BTC, 1.2 ETH

Image you were in a forum with people who claimed to believe that Facebook was great, but none of them had invested in it. Wouldn't that make you doubt the sincerity of their position?

It'd be a bad idea to only listen to opinions from people who won't put their money where their mouth is. If anything, objectively analysing something is much more important to those who have stake than those who do not.

Re: Cryptocurrency Is an Abject Disaster

#154

Post by acdha » Mon, Apr 26, 2021, 5:31 PM UTC

joepie91_ wrote: post #115

acdha wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But cars had value. They have value. They had value from day 1. This is so true: cars have massive externalities but the 20th century was spend rebuilding the world around them because they were useful. You saw that immediately and the true costs only became more apparent years later. Cryptocurrency is as if Robert Moses had redesigned NYC around pet rock warehousing on the theory that someone would later find a us…

> This is so true: cars have massive externalities but the 20th century was spend rebuilding the world around them because they were useful. Well, no, not really. While cars do have non-zero usefulness, the reason we rebuilt the world around them was because of car manufacturer lobbying, not because of some shared revelation about their value to society.

There's some truth to that but the main point was simply that anyone who bought a car, especially earlier on, saw immediate benefits. Later on they might have reconsidered if they learned how traffic jams work, saw the effects of pollution or injuries, etc. but by then they were most likely financially invested with major commitments to an automobile-based lifestyle.

That's the problem with these kind of things: the early adopters see benefits but probably not the costs, that convinces other people to join them, and it quickly reaches the point where the easiest/most profitable is to continue down that path. If you're the average suburban homeowner, you might hate the effect that sitting in traffic has on your health and time but if you can't afford to live next to the office you're probably going to treat it as inevitable since dramatic changes affect your property values.

Re: Cryptocurrency Is an Abject Disaster

#155

Post by knorker » Mon, Apr 26, 2021, 5:32 PM UTC

pk_kinetic wrote: post #127

knorker wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do know that ethical journalists talking about stocks disclose if they are long or short on that stock, in the article they're writing, right?

We’re not journalists. We’re discussing a subject on a message board. Besides, my original position was that it was bad form to ask for the exact amount of crypto someone holds. I don’t ask for the exact amount of stock someone holds in Tesla when they are talking about how great Tesla is.

But Tesla is not a multi-level marketing scheme.

But yes, maybe it would be better to say "none", "a bit", or "my retirement depends on it". (or whatever scale you want to use)

Just because you're not a journalist doesn't mean you can't be ethical.

Re: Cryptocurrency Is an Abject Disaster

#156

Post by knorker » Mon, Apr 26, 2021, 5:34 PM UTC

kemonocode wrote: post #77

knorker wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my reading it looks like the "developing world" use case is pure propaganda. E.g. someone investigated the "bitcoin in venezuela!" claim. Actually going there and tracking down use. Turns out it was a bitcoin investor who went to venezuela to do a transaction for the sole purpose of screaming "bitcoin in venezuela" to pump up the price.

You might want to check LocalBitcoin's usage in Venezuela [1] to get a clearer picture. It's not pure propaganda. [1] https://coin.dance/volume/localbitcoins/VES

It may be true. But the last stories saying the same thing were pure lies. My bayesean values are calibrated accordingly and I won't just take it at face value.

Re: Cryptocurrency Is an Abject Disaster

#157

Post by doggosphere » Mon, Apr 26, 2021, 5:35 PM UTC

shkkmo wrote: post #144

doggosphere wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because you think your currency is secure forever. Ask Argentinians, Turks, Venezuelans, Zimbabweans, etc. what they think about their central banks.

I don't think my, or any, national currency is secure forever, but neither is any cryptocurrency. Currently national currencies are, on average, far more stable and secure places to hold assets than any cryptocurrency. If your national isn't as stable as you like, you can more easily use a different national currency. If your country has capital controls that prohibit this, then you are using cryptocurrency to break…

Currently national currencies are, on average, far more stable and secure places to hold assets than any cryptocurrency.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2SL

Did you expect 20% of all US dollars would have been created in 2020? 4x in the last 20 years. That doesn't sound stable to me. When your currency can be debased by 20% in a year, with no democratic process or recourse; 6 board members appointed by Presidents, serving 14 year terms, decide what the price of money is, and how much of it exists. Alternatively Bitcoin's supply schedule is transparent, auditable, open source, mathematically provable.

If your national isn't as stable as you like, you can more easily use a different national currency. If your country has capital controls that prohibit this, then you are using cryptocurrency to break the law.

And what happens when the ultimate reserve currency (USD) is broken? People flee to gold. Well, Bitcoin is digital gold; its more secure, cheaper to carry, has better supply stability. Your solution to escaping a sinking ship is essentially jumping into a more slowly sinking ship.

My contention is that so far the only use cases cryptocurrency has been successful in are illegal. If the legal restrictions in those areas were removed, cryptocurrency would no longer be useful there.

The use case for cryptocurrency is escaping government monopoly of money, returning a savings rate to individuals and institutions.

Re: Cryptocurrency Is an Abject Disaster

#158

Post by tim333 » Mon, Apr 26, 2021, 5:37 PM UTC

ddevault wrote: post #122

cslarson wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The multi-level marketing ponzi scheme things would still be present. Yes, there are scams. But even in 2017 ICO days these were easy to spot - wailing and teeth nashing over ICO scams was dumb then and still is now. > Yes, but "crypto" means something else. I'm sorry but words mean what people who use them want them to mean in order to communicate ideas between them. Meanings evolve and words are co-opted and prob…

>Yes, there are scams. But even in 2017 ICO days these were easy to spot - wailing and teeth nashing over ICO scams was dumb then and still is now. https://signal.org/blog/help-us-test-payments-in-signal/

I think in 2017 you could mostly spot an ICO scam by looking if it included the term 'ICO.'

Re: Cryptocurrency Is an Abject Disaster

#159

Post by s3krit » Mon, Apr 26, 2021, 5:50 PM UTC

2pEXgD0fZ5cF wrote: post #121

eric_cc wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Cryptocurrencies just don't [have value]. It's all smoke and mirrors > super-immoral going-nowhere-moral tech lol what? Is US dollar moral? Is it not also "smoke-and-mirrors" by your definition since it's just paper that we all believe has value?

> Is US dollar moral? Is it not also "smoke-and-mirrors" US Dollar and other "real" currencies are and can be used for payments and transactions (money in exchange for goods, services etc.). Cryptocurrencies are only converted to/from other currencies to make profits based on speculation.

Disclaimer: I don't know world global finance, I don't know much about economics, I hold several cryptocurrencies. I am fantastically unqualified to actually make this post.

I was curious about this comment, because I know FOREX is a massive market. According to [1] the daily volume of FOREX in USD is $6.1 trillion. According to [2], the average 'consumer unit' (ugh... I guess that means 'person'?) in the US spends about $63k per year. Let me know if my maths or methodology here is wrong because, and I cannot stress this enough, I am a moron acting in good faith but a moron nonetheless... (63 000 / 365) * 330 000 000 (the US population) = 56958904109.6, or $57bn. That's a lot but it's only (conveniently) about 1% of the volume of the FOREX market. Which means what, the vast majority of USD changing hands is in the form of 'converted to/from other currencies to make profits based on speculation'?

Again, please let me know if my methodology is broken, my sources are shit, whatever.

[1] https://www.compareforexbrokers.com/forex-trading/statistics... [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/247407/average-annual-co...

Re: Cryptocurrency Is an Abject Disaster

#160

Post by reducesuffering » Mon, Apr 26, 2021, 5:53 PM UTC

22c wrote: post #103

reducesuffering wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Help we need to do something about Malaria, it's killing all of my family members." "This is not an objective take, his family is being affected. Malaria is not a problem."

Are you playing logical fallacy bingo? You managed to turn OPs argument into a strawman, while also making an appeal to emotion and poisoning the well.

It's a rhetorical tool that quickly highlights the absurdity of pointing out actual harm experienced makes the subject un-objective.

Would you prefer an example of 50 companies being hacked, them advocating for better cybersecurity measures everywhere, and someone pointing out they're now un-objective and should be dismissed? That this doesn't indicate anything about how cybersecurity measures are needed?

I also find it hilarious that you're accusing me of playing "bingo" while half your argument is:

"logical fallacy", "strawman", "appeal to emotion", and "poisoning the well" in quick succession.

Although I'm hoping it's just good sarcasm if it's impossible to distinguish.