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Five Levels of Hype

johannesklingebiel.de

81–90 of 106 posts

Re: Five Levels of Hype

#81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. I use crypto to protect against high inflation in my country and mantain the value of the fruits of my labour. Where does that fit in your categories? Crypto and DeFi have a lot of applications, especially in third world countries with bad financial systems.

Your government has capital controls (mentioned in a different response) to prevent you from purchasing foreign currency. Which makes buying crypto (or stablecoin) illegal online purchase. Illegal doesn't always means wrong or immoral, depends on whether the laws are good or not.

It's illegal to buy dollars.

I am buying an asset that is pegged to the USD dollar. That is not illegal neither is buying USD denominated bonds. In fact the goverment even has sold USD denominated bonds.

Re: Five Levels of Hype

#82
post #34

> Examples here are (again) the cryptocurrency scene which has been pretty good at othering critics as “no-coiners” or lately with the phrase “have fun staying poor”. I’m somebody that spends a good deal of time thinking deeply on cryptocurrencies and the implications to society. I believe they a positive, revolutionary step in the right direction of human liberty. And I’ll gladly acknowledge that it’s still speculat…

Crypto is not practical or fair by design. It needs a steady supply of greater fools to operate, and the only future it's capable of creating is one where everything is monetized, corporatized and the wealthy is in charge, with no recourse for the rest of us. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ_xWvX1n9g

All of civilization needs a never ending supply of greater fools to keep operating and reward the early investors.

We call them children.

If you don't want to participate in this ponzi, then chop wood and carry water until you can't anymore and let your body return to the earth.

Re: Five Levels of Hype

#83

Kind of similar to this Conspiracy Levels chart that was making the rounds a few months ago[1], including the crucial “departure from reality” tipping point, and the “XYZ as your group identity” level. No doubt promoters of major conspiracies have studied marketing, as they are are adept at generating belief and hype out of nothing. 1: https://m.imgur.com/XY5PAvd

George Soros is a conspiracy theory? No, he's a real guy who has spent many millions to influence politics. How does somebody put together something so stupid as that chart? It's really impressive.

Re: Five Levels of Hype

#84
post #8

The worst offenders in recent memory are self driving cars, block chain, VR, and “the metaverse”.

> “the metaverse” I’m probably in some kind of bubble, but is that hyped? I mainly hear about it on HN, maybe a bunch of joking off-hand comments on Reddit. No one else seem to care about it at all. So, my bubble in Germany, or is it actually a thing in the USA?

One of the largest companies in the world has recently renamed itself Meta (verse is strongly implied), so on some level it must have a decent amount of hype.

Re: Five Levels of Hype

#85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are assuming I use BTC or ETH directly as currency but I use stablecoins like DAI which are pegged to the USD dollar. This allows me to hold currencies I wouldn't be able to buy because of capital controls by the government.

“Where does that fit in your categories?” It sounds like it falls mostly under illegal transactions because you are using crypto for something that would otherwise be illegal (avoiding capital controls). Is it technically illegal? I don’t know. Is it ethically wrong? I guess not directly. However, I imagine there are also a lot of nefarious reasons somebody might want to avoid capital controls which crypto could also…

It's illegal to buy dollars but not assets that track the USD dollar. Buying DAI is legal for the same reason buying USD denominated bonds is legal, they are not dollars and you are not taking them from the central bank.

And either way I don't think grouping "criminal transactions" with "stuff that's illegal in X country" is fair. At many points in history governments outlawed things that are very wrong (e.g. nazi germany) Just because someone doesn't want to succumb to corrupt institutions doesn't mean he/she is a bad guy.

Re: Five Levels of Hype

#86
post #70
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a Linux fanboy too, but let's not fool ourselves. If Linux ever went "mainstream", then the amount of malware targeting it would rise precipitously. See: Android

Linux doesn't need malware because what use can scammers get out of someone who can't even afford a MacBook? /s

See rich people who "dress down".

Re: Five Levels of Hype

#87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its not. I am using stablecoins to hold currencies I wouldn't be able to hold because of capital controls.

So what you're saying is that you buy ETH for its utility of processing transactions on tokenized assets? And you get more value out of spending the ETH on gas than it cost you to purchase it? That sure sounds like a useful product to me. I think HN is so anti-crypto because so few people in the industry currently have your use-case. Personally, I think what you're doing is exciting and helps put a value on the utili…

Yes and it's also much easier to trade tokenized assets between people than bonds or other financial instruments.

Also the whole DeFi ecosystem allows you to use your tokenized assets in different ways, giving even more value to it.

I think many people have my use case, it's just that you can't really see it unless you live in a country with a very mismanaged central bank. Which in my opinion is becoming more and more common every day.

Re: Five Levels of Hype

#88

Kind of similar to this Conspiracy Levels chart that was making the rounds a few months ago[1], including the crucial “departure from reality” tipping point, and the “XYZ as your group identity” level. No doubt promoters of major conspiracies have studied marketing, as they are are adept at generating belief and hype out of nothing. 1: https://m.imgur.com/XY5PAvd

George Soros is a conspiracy theory? No, he's a real guy who has spent many millions to influence politics. How does somebody put together something so stupid as that chart? It's really impressive.

The conspiracy angle here is not that he's spent a lot of money to influence politics, which is a fact, but that conspiracy types have rounded that up to "Soros is one of the shadowy puppet masters pulling the strings behind the scenes, like the Illuminati".

Here's one example, but the rabbit hole is deep.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90247335/a-timeline-of-george-so...

Re: Five Levels of Hype

#90
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I gave up on German tech news 5 years ago. They're always behind.

As someone whose German is rusty and is try to not lose it, what kind of German media you think is worth the trouble?, in other words, publications where you will find insights that are not simply a repetition/regurgitation of what it is said in English.

I’d say that depends on what kind of information you want? For tech it’s hard. While I don’t like them, heise [0] has decent news. For general news, Spiegel [1] or FAZ [2] are some big ones, getting scoops once in a while that get rehashed by the international media.

[0]: https://heise.de

[1]: https://spiegel.de/

[2]: https://www.faz.net/

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