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Earlier quoted context omitted.
The author is incredibly critical of these technologies, and very much does not like them. The article mentions this.
I read wun0ne point as how blockchain implementations has a disastrous environmental impact. The article doesn’t mention that at all, and openly advocate for blockchain.
The largest and easiest argument against crypto is the environmental impact. It’s completely ignored in that piece.
Complaining that crypto uses a lot of power is like complaining India is trying to burn fossil fuels which will harm the planet. India wants to boost its economy the same way the west has done. Crypto activists want a democratised / uncontrollable financial system and so far mining and burning energy is the only way we know how to achieve it.
TIL: Being critical of a technology whose fundamental implementation promotes extreme negative externalities is "toxic"
>How can we create a more equitable financial system, where everyone has access to banking services? I don't think Crypto is a "more equitable financial system" but it is a more equal one.
I've never heard of a bitcoin or Ethereum deterministic wallet being canceled because someone found out its owner is from Iran or Venezuela. That's a huge improvement over the crap that is the current financial system.
Why must we use the loaded term 'toxicity'? It starts your argument with: "Those who disagree with me are poison".
I'd like to say more, but HN has a clear "Anti-Didn't-RTFA Toxicity" policy.
Meanwhile, this long protracted failure has been accompanied by a massive increase in stupid, toxic, illegal, scammy behaviour in the crypto community. Even if you're curious about hearing how the latest project is justifying itself, you can't have a conversation about it because the entire conversation is dominated by memes and spam about other scam projects. At some point the reasonable thing to do is to say "No, actually this whole thing is just bad, and shouldn't be treated seriously". There's only so many times that you can humor the same lie. Web3, NFTs, DAOs, Altcoins, Smart Contracts, Stable coins. It's just the same grift repeated every 6 months. For every claim of how this tech could help someone there are thousands of people who have been harmed by scams using this tech.
Waaay back, I thought Bitcoin was a cool technology, and convinced some friends of mine with businesses to accept it. We had a lot of fun with it - it was really cool to pay for your beer by scanning a QR code and seeing the transaction come through this public, distributed, tamper proof ledger, like magic, with no need for money, banks or any of the other financial infrastructure we're used to. Sadly, the "crypto sp…
> The potential for cool applications of blockchains is still there, but so far it seems to me cryptocurrency has mostly just been abused as a vehicle for crazy, baseless manias, and little to no meaningful application. Check out DeFI on Ethereum and your hope will resurrect. aave.com, pooltogether.com, goodghosting.com, polymarket.com, ens.domains, gitcoin. https://ethereum.org/en/dapps/
https://gitcoin.co/grants/1112/goodghosting-a-defi-savings-g... : so this is a weird sort of mutual society / tontine kind of thing? Which has been gamified to encourage you to make regular deposits? However, it's missing three things:
- what are the actual interest rates?
- some sort of explanation of to what extent the principal is at risk to e.g. defi hacks or rugpulls or the collapse of the counterparty
- registration with the UK FCA if you're marketing to UK customers https://register.fca.org.uk/s/
It's hard to have a charitable take on a huge majority of the cryptocurrency space when the web is drowning in all of the greedy bad actors that use the ideologies listed in this article as cover to push the grifts that inevitability harm my less technical friends and family.
Where do we go from here?
Waaay back, I thought Bitcoin was a cool technology, and convinced some friends of mine with businesses to accept it. We had a lot of fun with it - it was really cool to pay for your beer by scanning a QR code and seeing the transaction come through this public, distributed, tamper proof ledger, like magic, with no need for money, banks or any of the other financial infrastructure we're used to. Sadly, the "crypto sp…
The whole movement came out of monetary crank-ism, those people were always there.
Let me know when there’s a mainstream non-scam MiltonCoin or KeynesCoin that isn’t deflationary and automatically models semi-optimal central bank policy.
Waaay back, I thought Bitcoin was a cool technology, and convinced some friends of mine with businesses to accept it. We had a lot of fun with it - it was really cool to pay for your beer by scanning a QR code and seeing the transaction come through this public, distributed, tamper proof ledger, like magic, with no need for money, banks or any of the other financial infrastructure we're used to. Sadly, the "crypto sp…
I actually built an app before that which would easily transfer money between countries, by finding matching local trades. Unfortunately to turn it into a service, it requires the currency to both be popular and stable.