I agree that it's aimless to just be toxic or mean to (most) crypto fans, especially those that are genuinely arguing in good faith.
That won't stop me chuckling at those that have been duped by a blatant pump and dump.
On anti-crypto toxicity
221–230 of 734 posts
Re: On anti-crypto toxicity
#222Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly. Hence my questions about regulations that haven't been answered since you seem to answer for that other person: > Is it going away 100% guaranteed due to the rampant scams everywhere? > So since 2017, there has been no regulations, crackdowns and legislation that has been proposed to regulate anything related to crypto and nothing has changed? From the other reply: > Buy Bitcoin. Everything else is a scam. B…
HN is heavily affluent and westerner-skewed, but how about when you have a corrupt government and highly inflationary currency? We often praise projects that morph from their intended purpose in to something else (e.g. a good % of tech out there).
> a corrupt government and highly inflationary currency
As a sibling comment said, they move to a separate able currency like dollars or Euro.
No one in their right mind will move to a fantasy token whose value oscillates up and down every second, sometimes to within several orders of magnitude.
Bitcoin's price fluctuation in the past year is 200%
Etherum's is ~300%
Monero, 330%
It's not as bad as Venezuela's or Zombabwe's hyperinflation, but no ine in their right mind would use a currency this volatile.
Re: On anti-crypto toxicity
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There are no hall monitors here, and there's also no magic wand. Right, and saying "just pass a law" is asking the hall monitors to wave a wand.
No. It's asking society to correct itself via legislation (we've done that before). It's slower and less sexy than new-tech and has a better track record.
I'm not advocating for crypto. I'm advocating against blind trust in the government to "pass a law" and fix it.
Re: On anti-crypto toxicity
#224Earlier quoted context omitted.
More like that's how democracies fail. Our current method of "fixing" failures of the state involves layering more and more legislation and regulation on top of the broken legislation and regulation. We do nothing to address the root causes of those failures because that would mean closing a lot of the loop holes that allow politicians to get rich by leveraging their positions aka corruption. Why else would we need b…
Allowing politicians to get rich by leveraging their positions is still better than the alternative. What's the alternative, by the way? What do you suggest we replace democracy with?
> x is better than the alternative y. I don't know what y is.
They didn't propose replacing democracy.
Re: On anti-crypto toxicity
#225Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe 90% by count, but not 90% by volume of transactions, prominence, etc. Bitcoin seems to be entirely resistant to moving away from PoW and Ethereum have been in the process of moving to PoS for years. Pop quiz: What will happen first, Ethereum PoS or the year of linux on the desktop?
You realize the merge has already successfully completed on a testnet last month. The Geth client code for the merge is complete. I’m willing to bet any amount you want up to $30,000 that Ethereum main net is running PoS by Dec 31 of this year.
At what odds?
Re: On anti-crypto toxicity
#226Unfortunately, given: "How can we create a more equitable financial system, where everyone has access to banking services? How can we reduce the power that a small few currently hold over the web? How can we improve data privacy and ensure that people have control over their personal information? How can we create reasonable privacy in the financial system? How can we make information more available to everyone? How…
Bootstrapping a new cryptocurrency where 90% of the coins go to relatively few early adopters is the worst possible way to fix financial inequality.
The crypto holders would love if the world switched to using the cryptocurrency they’re invested in because it would make them extraordinarily wealthy relative to the average person buying in late.
I don’t understand how anyone can honestly suggest that a gradual changeover to a specific cryptocurrency would be anything other than disastrous for financial inequality.
Re: On anti-crypto toxicity
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because artists haven't generally backed themselves by weaponized ASICs and a very unhealthy social scene of greed and deception (not to mention pollution)
> Because artists haven't generally backed themselves [into a] very unhealthy social scene of greed and deception Except they absolutely have. The contemporary art market is exactly what you describe. There's sharks sitting in tanks of embalming fluid being sold for tens of millions of dollars just to be put in storage, and people laundering their money in art investment schemes. The contemporary art market is absolu…
You're absolutely right, and I personally find 'modern' art unappealing and a scam (banan on wall 30k plz), but this is because it is being used a commodity in a rotten, oligarchic financial system where we bail out corrupt bankers at the cost of the people.
With crypto, the pollution is built into the system. It's not only being used by the corruption, it is itself rotten. And neither does some of it look nice on walls.
Re: On anti-crypto toxicity
#228Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because artists haven't generally backed themselves by weaponized ASICs and a very unhealthy social scene of greed and deception (not to mention pollution)
What are weaponized ASICs?
Regular ASICs with machine guns? ASICs used for mining I suppose.
Re: On anti-crypto toxicity
#229Earlier quoted context omitted.
You have to accept though that just saying "ah, the government will fix it" when historically governments have been a major contributor to wealth inequality, is somewhat glib. There's a reason NGOs and private charity exist. I think this approach is just as wrong as saying "crypto is the answer".
On the other hand, what would the world look like without democratic governments? Look at history, and you will notice that it is rarely better. Those who seek wealth and power aren't created by governments, nor will they magically disappear if governments disappear (or if their power is neutered). At least democracies have some checks and balances, even if they are nowhere near as effective as we need them to be.
> On the other hand, what would the world look like without democratic governments
Nobody here is advocating against democracy. People are just pointing out that blind trust in state institutions is equally as illogical as blind trust in the EVM. States have a track record of serving the powerful first, and sometimes exclusively. Trusting apparatus with a track record like this masks a sort of flawed optimism, just like putting your hopes of change in the blockchain.
Re: On anti-crypto toxicity
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
> None of their claims have materially panned out. Well, I can send arbitrarily large amounts of money across the planet, to any country with internet access, for tiny sums, safely, irreversibly, to anyone. Many people have sent many millions to Ukraine, for example. Transnational, permissionless internet money is quite handy. That wasn't possible before, and that's pretty useful, so I think the basic claim (that cry…
In one corner we have types who want to send > arbitrarily large amounts of money and in the other corner we have the types who know about and enforce AML and KYC legislation. How is this possibly going to end well for the first group?
It turns out there are actually things that lawmakers don't really have the power to effectively ban, drugs and prostitution and gambling and cash transactions principally among them.
A lot of people don't seem to integrate this fact. The practical power of a lawmaking body is not unlimited. There are certain things they simply cannot stop, no matter how many laws are passed.
It won't "end" for either group, really. The latter will pass some laws, and the former will mostly ignore them, same as happened with hookers and blow.
The people who inhabit both groups (the subset of lawmakers that like being able to pay for their hookers and blow with unreported bitcoin) will laugh at the absurdity of the whole thing.