Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Crypto has become the ultimate swamp asset

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 162 posts

Re: Crypto has become the ultimate swamp asset

#41

Post by hengheng »

What I'm always missing with these takes is the "what if" component. Nobody really dares to paint the whole picture in articles like this. Authors seem to go as far as to find the moral infraction, and then stop. But that doesn't do what is happening justice.

No, crypto does not need regulation. Law-based order needs crypto regulation. That's a big difference already. But we can go further than that. What if we don't get crypto regulation, what happens to law-based order exactly?

Trump is not the kind of guy to build businesses and create wealth. He more like kinda goes through them. He's not the guy to invest, he's the guy to cash out. Right now, he's cashing out of the US economy. Lots of real value is there for him to extract that is completely unprotected.

Trump is right. All those assets exist, and he can take them, destroy them, and liquidate them. He has that power. He is permitted. It is a programme, and his execution is successful. There's no point saying "but he can't do that, it would be unethical". Sure it's unethical, dumb, and nonsensical, but at face value, he can do all of that. No point in saying "but he can't do that, America would never be the same". That argument is reactionary, of course everything was going to change anyways.

So, let's face it. A president that is not going to miss his chance to join the true billionaires club (10+ b), a ruling class of industry leaders like it existed 120 years ago. Whether he stays president doesn't even matter. Government programmes are going down the drain, America's influence in the world deteriorates, trade volume breaking down, a less smart military will have to deal with more conflicts.

The only question in that turmoil is going to be what constitues a winner. Right now, everybody is buying crypto like lottery tickets, and it becomes self-fulfilling. Mid-term it might be Florida real estate. Long term? Who knows.

I'd actually like for somebody to really paint this picture and fill in the details. Stopping at the first inflection point that is somewhat scary is unproductive, we've been reading those takes for a year now.

Re: Crypto has become the ultimate swamp asset

#43

Post by ohyes »

rimbo789 wrote: post #4

Crypto was a huge mistake. It should have been rigorously regulated right out of the gate to the point of being unusable for anyone. I have yet to see a use case that doesn’t amount to buying drugs or defrauding rubes.

Dont forget the “murder for hire” user story

Re: Crypto has become the ultimate swamp asset

#44

Post by dr_dshiv »

resource_waste wrote: post #17
rimbo789 wrote: post #4

Crypto was a huge mistake. It should have been rigorously regulated right out of the gate to the point of being unusable for anyone. I have yet to see a use case that doesn’t amount to buying drugs or defrauding rubes.

If you can be objective enough to consider that not everyone likes keeping fiat currency, it was an interesting alternative. Bitcoin generally appreciated, where fiat had inflation. While the transaction costs/speed have eliminated this, there was a few years of my life that I both sent money to friends and used a Bitcoin debit card.

It’s funny, because the inflation of crypto comes not from the increase in the supply of individual coins (that’s controlled mathematically) but by increasing the number of cryptocurrencies themselves.

Re: Crypto has become the ultimate swamp asset

#45

Post by phyalow »

rimbo789 wrote: post #4

Crypto was a huge mistake. It should have been rigorously regulated right out of the gate to the point of being unusable for anyone. I have yet to see a use case that doesn’t amount to buying drugs or defrauding rubes.

Speculation is a legitimate use case.

There is substantially more to it than that but I will let you chew that over just to point out how blatantly incorrect your prior is.

Re: Crypto has become the ultimate swamp asset

#46

Post by noisy_boy »

I would be interested to know from a developer working in Crypto about how is the day-to-day work experience compared to working in a similar role in, say, a hedge fund. The latter is fast paced and I have heard that the former is too but would be interesting to hear from people actually in the seats.

Re: Crypto has become the ultimate swamp asset

#48

Post by croes »

swalsh wrote: post #11

Crypto should be taking off in use in the AI age. Right now I have credits I paid open AI for so I can use their API. I have anthropic credits, I have some credits in a video generator app. A2A is becoming a thing, and now it's a realistic thing to potentially expose an agent on a public endpoint to do useful work. Agents working with agents is a very clear future direction. But everything is a closed ecosystem. But…

Yeah lets combine two technologies that need lots of energy. Climate change is still a problem

Re: Crypto has become the ultimate swamp asset

#49

Post by swalsh »

rollcat wrote: post #34
swalsh wrote: post #11

Crypto should be taking off in use in the AI age. Right now I have credits I paid open AI for so I can use their API. I have anthropic credits, I have some credits in a video generator app. A2A is becoming a thing, and now it's a realistic thing to potentially expose an agent on a public endpoint to do useful work. Agents working with agents is a very clear future direction. But everything is a closed ecosystem. But…

So you're saying cryptocurrency remains a solution in search of a problem?

clearly, that is not what I said. What I said is there is a very big problem (closed ecosystem of incompatible credit systems) that can be solved using this technology that does payments really well.

Re: Crypto has become the ultimate swamp asset

#50

Post by yorwba »

swalsh wrote: post #23
rcxdude wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but a) this doesn't require blockchain, and b) there's no incentive for the various players to make credits portable.

I'm tired of the "this doesn't require blockchain" argument. The alternative is a centralized entity that controls payments. Is that REALLY your preferred solution?

It's the AI companies' preferred solution. You're free to host your own agent that takes crypto, but the other agents you expect your agent to interact with will want you to buy non-transferable credits up front. Why would they join in on a decentralized system that doesn't benefit them?
Post reply on HN