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On anti-crypto toxicity

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Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#401

Post by miohtama »

CharlesW wrote: post #380
miohtama wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cryptocurrencies might not answer to all of these questions. However there is one question where it gives an answer. It is how to create more efficient financial system. And part of this answer might lead to rebalancing some of distribution of the wealth, mostly by reducing operating costs and profit margins of the current Wall St and other local oligopolic financial institutions. Blockchains do create fundamental va…

On the topic of the parent commenter's valiant content marketing effort: https://www.classaction.org/news/scam-tokens-class-action-al...

Thank you for heads up. I hope I was transparent enough with my content marketing efforts not to be rude and spammy. Maybe you can clarify if it is against HackerNews rules to link my own posts?

I agree, Uniswap has its issues with scams. Even with added compliance and listing policy, it is highly likely to be most cost efficient. For example what we can do is that we focus only known good trading pairs like Bitcoin and Ethereum that are not scams. These are not scams and they still trade more efficiently on Uniswap.

There are efficiencies you do not see in traditional financial systems like - Open source - Open data - Open ledger

I think the most relevant talking point is about the open source. We know Linux beat UNIXes on the server market. We know Android beat Microsoft Windows Phone.

More about this in-depth in the blog post, of course.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#402

Post by [deleted] »

shkkmo wrote: post #296
trutannus wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that's not what I'm saying at all. What I'm saying is: 1. Bad laws got us into this place 2. There's a lot of inertia in government 3. There's a lot of stake holders in government who don't have citizen's interests at heart 4. It's illogical to think you can, in light of this, just pass a law and fix it. Yeah, we designed the law, and we know how it works. Sadly, we know also that the way it works is generally…

And crypto isn't dominated by the wealthy and being used to serve their ends? Open your eyes my friend. There is far more corruption and disfunction in the average cryptocurrency org than the average government.

[deleted]

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#403

Post by sneak »

Traster wrote: post #292
sneak wrote: post #198

Earlier 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…

Okay, provide some evidence for that claim. Because again, that's the claim of "Well crypto is doing amazing things" but it needs actual evidence. I know it theoretically could happen if you ignore all the glaring problems in practice. But does it actually happen? What has cyrpto provided that you can't provide via Paypal or bank transfer? Hell - here's a paypal address for a bunch of guys who want to buy Ukraine a f…

> What has cyrpto provided that you can't provide via Paypal or bank transfer?

My cards don't work on PayPal and I don't keep money in banks (because they've robbed me without cause before). I can, however, donate with cryptocurrency without friction.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#404

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

TomSwirly wrote: post #362
trutannus wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that's not what I'm saying at all. What I'm saying is: 1. Bad laws got us into this place 2. There's a lot of inertia in government 3. There's a lot of stake holders in government who don't have citizen's interests at heart 4. It's illogical to think you can, in light of this, just pass a law and fix it. Yeah, we designed the law, and we know how it works. Sadly, we know also that the way it works is generally…

"The economic system isn't working well, so let's smash it, eliminate the ability of the government to tax people, and give almost all the world's money to a tiny number of anonymous people, 90%+ of whom are affluent white Libertarian males." Honestly, this whole thing just makes me tremendously sad now.

Well let's face it, there's a widespread and popular political philosophy floating around (especially in the USA) which essentially boils down "the rich are not rich enough and the poor are too rich", so this proposal would fit right in with that !

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#405

Post by trutannus »

falcolas wrote: post #328
trutannus wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

At least they have the shark, and can just lock it away if they wish. Something no NFT buyer can claim.

I'd agree that a rotten shark in a tank has more substance to it than an NFT. Shame it's in embalming fluid. You could eat it if you fall on hard times otherwise.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#406

Post by _moof »

I don't think everyone who engages in crypto is evil. Some are, to be sure (as some are in any human endeavor), but for the most part I think they're just credulous. I think that's a belief shared by a lot of anti-crypto people, which makes me wonder if the toxicity stems more from exasperation with evangelism of a thing people find ridiculous. Like, yes, we know about crypto and we think it's silly; please go away—that sort of thing.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#407

Post by TomSwirly »

Quindecillion wrote: post #122

It's unfortunate that Bitcoin has become so mired in partisan politics. For me its purpose is simple. If my money is a representation of my time and effort, why should I accept the central banks' inflation "target" of even 2%, due to money printing? I don't see why anyone should be okay with that, particularly given that central banks rarely meet that target for long and more often than not overshoot by a significant…

The answer is this - a slightly inflationary currency offers the greatest good for the greatest number. It encourages people to _invest_ their money so it doesn't lose value.

Deflationary currencies encourage people to _hoard_ money as a viable strategy, and the more people hoard, the more valuable it becomes.

In a society where the most profitable and safe strategy is simply to hold your money and do nothing with it, no business ventures will start.

----

So many questions people ask about crypto could be answered in a first year economics course - or simply by sitting down for a while and working out strategies with poker chips.

If people weren't so pugnacious about their complete lack of knowledge of economics, it would be rewarding to explain to people why things are how they are.

I hasten to add that as a socialist, I have a lot of issues with modern economics, but pretending that it's nonsense or that its mathematical models aren't useful is just silly.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#408

Post by HWR_14 »

reedjosh wrote: post #392
HWR_14 wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because NFTs are competing with BTC to lure in the newest money.

It's not about getting rich on Bitcoin, it's about taking back our choice of what money to use. Bitcoiners hate NFTs mostly because they give the whole space a bad rap.

I fail to see the difference between what I said and "Bitcoiners hate NFTs mostly because they give the whole space a bad rap."

Anyway, you have your choice of what money to use. I prefer USD and Euro myself. And I really still don't understand any use case for someone in a first world country to use crypto.

I grant that 3rd world countries without banking systems may, may need it, but I don't know why we just wouldn't start banks there.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#409

Post by reedjosh »

zamalek wrote: post #356
nikanj wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the claims has panned out: Plenty of people have gotten rich. To be fair, they've gotten rich from selling their early-adopter cryptos to the next fool. But many people have won the lottery.

> they've gotten rich from selling their early-adopter cryptos to the next fool. And that's where it all falls apart. Crypto-fanatics assume that "good for me" translates to "good for us." As we know, the crypto-rich only exist because others (usually many others) became crypto-broke and/or fiat-broke. At least, in general, people have no realistic expectation of winning the lottery. You also don't usually have peopl…

Bitcoin fanatic here. No, it's literally about taking money printing away from corrupt governments worldwide.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#410

Post by [deleted] »

aww_dang wrote: post #214
the_only_law wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and so much focus on buzzwords The “blockchain” thing killed it for me personally. Only so long I could just sit and see people naively wave around blockchain as a solution to every goddamn technical and social problem they can think of.

Tech does this generally. "Cloud" is another all encompassing buzzword. There are plenty of cloud solutions which are arguably ridiculous. Some here buy that kool-aid. Where's the self-righteous outrage? People buy all kinds of financial products which may not work out for them. There's an entire industry of OTC pink sheet stocks. Again, where's the outrage? There's plenty of bad actors anywhere, but it becomes toxic…

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