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It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency

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Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency

#471
post #340
post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "early internet" comparison is usually presented when talking about how clumsy and slow the technology is in its current state. The argument is certainly not presented in the context of how "fun" it is. There's nothing "fun" about finance (and there never will be). In the context of technological state (how brittle and obtuse the tools are), the comparison between the two is right on the money IMHO. I once config…

Nerds, early adopters — whatever you want to call them, the online behaviors they pioneered became mainstream. In contrast not even nerds are actually using Bitcoin or Ethereum for anything that interacts with the real world. All proposed applications are self-referential shell games like NFTs, staking schemes, etc. If this is a superior platform for finance, where’s the real economic activity? Handwaving about “prob…

I'm going to cease to engage for several reasons:

1) You just flatly contradicted yourself without even realizing it. The top level comment said "The reality is that the internet was immediately extremely interesting (either useful or fun) for practically everyone who got access.". When challenged, you moved the bar to "Well, it eventually became useful to everyone!".

2) You're condescending "I can see how people in their twenties would fall for this...", "Handwaving", "Shell games".

3) You've got some internal benchmark about what qualifies as useful that appears to mean "if it's not useful to me, then it doesn't count" (see comment about Venezuela).

4) You seem to think of yourself as some kind of gatekeeper or authority on nerddom.

I'm not going to change your mind about anything. I've been around the internet long enough to spot people pretending to want genuine engagement when they really despise your ideas and just want to publicly slam dunk on you.

Not interested.

Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency

#472
"Bitcoin has emerged as a "shadow" monetary tool, a type of liquidity overflow to prevent even bigger asset bubbles in conventional assets such as commodities, stocks, and housing. It represents some $2 trillion in excess liquidity that would otherwise be invested in housing or stocks - making both of these respective asset bubbles that much more prone to bursting and bringing the entire asset-bubble dependent socio- economic and financial system closer to collapse. ... This benign side effect of bitcoin which paradoxically allows the Fed to perpetuate its ultra-easy monetary policy for much longer, "explains lack of regulation". Although if we hit hyperinflation and bitcoin goes offer-less, regulation will come for one simple reason: it will be tantamount to deleveraging the system by trillions in a heartbeat. Regulation of crypto is a structural risk to investors/ speculators. Regulation of crypto can be seen as 2nd order monetary tightening tool by Gov to tame inflation.

Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency

#473
post #440
post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been using Bitcoin to get paid for a couple of years at this point (programming work for overseas clients), and I haven't gotten scammed yet. I'm not engaged in money laundering, vaporware, fraud, ransomware, or gambling, and only the usual amount of delusion. And I don't even buy illegal drugs! And, yeah, 13 years after the internet's invention was 01982; not only couldn't you get so much as a weather report on…

You give convincing arguments in favor of BTC for folks living abroad in less-than-stable states. But these very arguments for which it is acclaimed have clear flip-sides that should be worrisome for those very same folks you claim it's suited for. Safeguarding hard physical cash is something most everyone, old and young, technically literate or technically illiterate, poor or rich, intrinsically knows how to do. And…

I agree, Bitcoin isn't zero risk. But compared to my experiences with banks and WU the risk is manageably low. I have to give someone my passport and home address in order to receive money via WU, so I'm exposed to the risk that buddies of the WU employees will rob my house later. I've had to pay a collection agency thousands for fees charged on a bank account that was empty and that I thought was closed. I've had my bank ATM card cloned by a skimmer on an ATM while I was traveling overseas, and I've had my bank credit card stolen out of my pocket on the bus. I've had WU give me ridiculously unfavorable exchange rates, and there was nothing I could do about it. In none of these cases are the police of any help; they exist to help the rich, not normal people.

With either banks or Bitcoin, you can hedge your risks by converting to fiat currencies. But with fiat currencies, you can hedge your risk by converting (partly) to Bitcoin.

So maybe you should buy your grandma a Trezor. What country does she live in?

Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency

#474
post #462

I think it's time for us in the tech world to speak out and make it clear the emperor has no clothes here. _Gold_ is sustained by a mix of money laundering, human slavery, fraud, ransom, gambling, and delusion. It has no social benefit except helping end first dates fast. What we especially need to stress to regulators is that there's no relationship between the claims of _gold_ and our now thousands of years of expe…

Gold is valuable because it is difficult to dig out of the ground, and it can be made into electronics. Neither is true of Bitcoin. Thus, you've built a false equivalence and are trying to equivocate.

Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency

#475
post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the fundamental flaws you're talking about? (I assume throughput but I'll wait for your reply). What do you mean by saying people fell for "this"? I assume you mean it's a scam but I will wait for your reply.

> What are the fundamental flaws you're talking about? For a payments system, the fact that all transactions are final is pretty bad. I'd say this, by itself, makes the system unusable in the real world.

It's bad now, but in the future it might be great?

With technology getting faster, I regret not mining a few coins.

I even bought the sound cards?

A life if regrets because I didn't follow my gut feelings, or let people sway my decisions?

(Would I invest in Bitcoin now. Hell no, but years ago yes. It will deflate, along with NTF's, and the stock market soon.)

Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency

#476
This post and the comments has convinced me that all the weirdoes and revolutionaries have left HN. It is now dominated by statist near-boomers concerned about the youngsters trampling the lawn.

Sure Bitcoin is boring but so is gold. If you weren't interested in gold in the first place you likely aren't interested in Bitcoin either.

The proof-of-stake, smart contract platforms are truly exciting. Stable coins and Uniswap are real innovations w/ more to come.

Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency

#477
post #261
post #21

“But it’s like the early Internet!” shouted the Emperor’s coinholders. “The Internet wasn’t yet useful a mere, um, thirteen years after its invention either.” I can see how people in their twenties would fall for this argument because they can’t remember. The reality is that the internet was immediately extremely interesting (either useful or fun) for practically everyone who got access. Email and ftp alone were kill…

The "early internet" comparison is usually presented when talking about how clumsy and slow the technology is in its current state. The argument is certainly not presented in the context of how "fun" it is. There's nothing "fun" about finance (and there never will be). In the context of technological state (how brittle and obtuse the tools are), the comparison between the two is right on the money IMHO. I once config…

No, it's not a good comparison. The internet was always state of the art and better at solving actual problems the worse solutions were tackling.

Fidonet was always, on a technical level, a worse experience than the internet.

BBSs have their charm, but were absolutely obviously worse at what they did that the internet.

Cryptocurrencies are just awful at solving real problems, compared to existing solutions.

Why are you talking about the general public? Are you equating "well the internet was only cool to nerds, solving their needs" with "Bitcoin is only good for its MLM speculation properties, and to buy drugs and murders"?

"Unless you were in academia"... So you admit that it WAS useful? And how it WAS much better than what it replaced? Because that's the opposite of Bitcoin.

Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency

#478
post #264

I could waste a huge amount of time refuting the author's points, but will make it more of a meta comment. Crypto is vast, complex, and inherently not suitable for binary thinking. I've studied the space for months and have come to the conclusion that crypto is two-sided in almost every aspect. Many/most coins are speculative, which you can associate with words like "greed" and "casino". Yet also provide wealth savin…

People have been saying this for over a decade now. Mainstream applications are just around the corner, wait and see! We have waited, and all we've seen is baseless speculation (which you call "wealth savings/growth") and scams. I see no reason to think this is going to change any time soon.

Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency

#479
post #21

“But it’s like the early Internet!” shouted the Emperor’s coinholders. “The Internet wasn’t yet useful a mere, um, thirteen years after its invention either.” I can see how people in their twenties would fall for this argument because they can’t remember. The reality is that the internet was immediately extremely interesting (either useful or fun) for practically everyone who got access. Email and ftp alone were kill…

Smart contract platforms are only four years old. Only in the last 12 months have we seen significant throughput on public chains like Solana and Avalanche.

Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency

#480
post #21

“But it’s like the early Internet!” shouted the Emperor’s coinholders. “The Internet wasn’t yet useful a mere, um, thirteen years after its invention either.” I can see how people in their twenties would fall for this argument because they can’t remember. The reality is that the internet was immediately extremely interesting (either useful or fun) for practically everyone who got access. Email and ftp alone were kill…

It is like the early Internet and you are like one of the old telco guys I worked w/ in 2000 who said people would never make phone calls on the Internet.
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