HN generally views blockchain tech negatively I've found, but I'll leave this here for the inevitable: crypto if a casino and has no real use.
https://kaveh.page/blog/what-is-blockchain-actually-used-for
I wasted years of my life in crypto
461–470 of 1001 posts
Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto
#462https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2024/01/31/end.html#section... Vitalik touched upon this briefly in an other-wise long and wide-reaching essay. I think its a good treatment of the topic that the author is talking about. He categorizes the ecosystem broadly into 4 cohorts- [token holders] (which includes investors, speculators, etc.), [pragmatic users] (actual end-users who spend crypto to buy stuff), [intellectuals]…
In a casino you have - The gamblers spending a lot on the casino - The people coming in for the fun and spending little money - The owners/C-levels - The operational team Someone from the operational team just learned that business relies only on the first group to be successful.
I worked in blockchain ("builder") for 5 years. I started 'eh, there are speculators, whatever, I build good tech' but finished 'holy crap speculators completely dominate and distort everything, nobody cares about good tech'
Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto
#463I've never understood the initial arguments about Bitcoin, no matter how many times they've been explained to me. The block chain is, and always was, an extremely inconvenient database. How anyone, especially many intelligent people, thought it was realistic to graft a currency on top of such a unwieldy piece of technology is beyond me. Maybe it goes to show how few people understand economics and anthropology and ho…
It's an ingenious solution to achieve a "trustless" currency that prevents double-spending without a central authority. Unfortunately, this solves the wrong problem. Spending money usually involves getting a good or service in return, which inherently requires "trust" (as does any human interaction). Your fancy blockchain is not going to help you if you order something with Bitcoin and no package arrives.
I believe the “trustless” part is not having to trust a central authority that makes the transaction possible, not about not having to trust the person you are transacting with.
With crypto you don’t need to trust the authority that holds your digital money, the authority that executes the transaction, or the authority that manages the issuance of currency and other factors that may affect its value (interest rates, fixed exchange rates…).
That being said, I agree that in practice this is a rather niche problem to solve, and among the people with this problem, there are far more bad faith ones that good faith ones.
And it is never completely trustless anyway, for most crypto you need to trust a single dodgy implementation, the issuance policy of the founders hoarding the vast majority of the tokens, and whatever backdoors they have put in place for disaster recovery or other purposes. And then there are all the surrounding systems that make crypto actually practical to use, like exchanges, that are absolutely not trustless.
It’s absurd how the top exchanges keep their customers crypto in big joint accounts that the exchange controls and transactions mostly just happen in their closed database outside the blockchain, canceling out most advantages of crypto anyway.
Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto
#464The original promise of crypto was lost a LONG time ago. Instead of being a true rival to FIAT, it became a thing with a toxic-as-hell commumity, fraud, and basically its nothing more than a high risk stock. The risk is NOT only "will this go up or down" but you have a high risk of being robbed, as have happened to millions of people. Maybe there will be a better alternative in the future, but right now bitcoin is no…
It was inevitable and trivial to predict, which people did, and the cryptbros laughed at them coz that's how old people think.
We put so much law and limitations about anything money purely because at times when we did not, stuff went wrong.
The whole idea of currency without any laws and limitations around it means any and every problem that those law were supposed (some do it better, some worse, some make actual problem worse, not trying to pretend they are perfect here) to help with will happen, easily, with the "new money".
The fact that on top of all the old problems the crypto invented a whole set of new problems is just a little turd cherry on top of a manure cake.
Okay, that was harsh, manure have some actual positive use
Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto
#465Earlier quoted context omitted.
That’s just a bad contract. Now consider one that mints you an NFT
I can't actually tell if you're touting monkey jpegs or making a really funny joke.
They agree with your statement in another reply under this submission. So a joke on crypto hype culture, where you either put aside problems and move to next craze or next craze is shoved to everything.
Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto
#466Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is a difference between "Freedom to do something " and "Freedom to not have something happen to you ". If we keep curtailing the former to serve the latter, we will end up perfectly safe from interruptions, doing nothing at all(aside from what the government dictates as 'serving the common good')
There's no difference. You can't formulate that distinction coherently. What's the difference between having the freedom to walk the street and having the freedom to not be hindered from walking the street?
street is public. Nothing is "done to you"
Freedom to walk anywhere means someone can walk onto your property ("done to you") You can curtail that freedom, because you are essentially giving up ("inability to do something with stuff someone else owns") some freedom to get some other freedom ("ability to own stuff that will not be used by strangers").
It's a tradeoff. A good one. Tradeoff of say "nobody's anything is private now because that allows govt a slightly easier time to catch criminals" is not a good tradeoff.
Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto
#467Earlier quoted context omitted.
You say this right when your central banks went on a massive money printing spree, shot up inflation beyond their own baseline for years, and have created a frankenstenian K-shaped economy where everyone who is not in the top 10-20% is getting actively poorer It doesn't take a lot to figure out that hard currencies with some supply cap tend to hold value better. BTC might not be it - it might be gold or silver - but…
Deflationary "currencies" like crypto are significantly worse (why spend when you can HODL). Regular crypto "currencies" will have the exact same effects.
> why spend when you can HODL
You touch upon an important point: the entire foundation of our current economic system is built on high velocity of money. You are incentivized to spend rather than hold because without it, there's no mindless conspicuous consumption. A deflationary currency will grind this system to a halt
But the question you need to ask is: has all this mindless consumption really done us any real good? For the handful of genuinely useful things to come out of excessive consumption, there are a gazillion pieces of wasteful crap that clogs homes first, then landfills
A deflationary currency is bad for the current economic system. But that doesn't mean it's bad by itself.
Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto
#468Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto
#469Earlier quoted context omitted.
Freedom is never absolute. What gives one person freedom may limit another person's freedoms. Therefore you will have to weigh the pros and the cons of a technology that promises freedom.
There is a difference between "Freedom to do something " and "Freedom to not have something happen to you ". If we keep curtailing the former to serve the latter, we will end up perfectly safe from interruptions, doing nothing at all(aside from what the government dictates as 'serving the common good')
My freedom to put cameras in your home is your non-freedom to have privacy.
Sounds like not such a great idea now?
Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto
#470Earlier quoted context omitted.
but there's no compounding interest. no dividend based on future cashflows. holding stocks of a diverse index seems better on the long run, no?
Indeed. The crypto crowd seems to assume that the options for your savings are cash or bank deposits, or crypto. That's nonsense. A balanced portfolio of stocks (with some bonds maybe to reduce vol and improve your Sharpe Ratio) handily beats inflation. Heck, even bonds alone have mostly had positive real yields. This also supports and funds the productive economy, unlike crypto.
Until you hold a passport of one of the US enemy states, which are plenty of and have permanent risk of getting your account frozen and money stolen.
Crypto doesn't have this issue.