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BitConnect, a literal Ponzi scheme that was repeatedly flagged to newbies as a Ponzi scheme they should avoid, had a $2.5 billion market cap last month before c

BitConnect, a literal Ponzi scheme that was repeatedly flagged to newbies as a Ponzi scheme they should avoid, had a $2.5 billion market cap last month before collapsing. While IOTA boosters probably have a story they believe that justifies the hype in their mind, just because it’s worth $6 billion in this market doesn’t mean they necessarily have a good one. For what it’s worth, of all the crypto people I follow that I consider smart or savvy, none of them are IOTA bulls. Also, the IOTA founder comes off as extremely immature on twitter each time someone trashes it. Even if all the criticism is FUD, his reaction alone is enough to keep me away.

minxomat 9y ago
Experienced the immaturity first hand, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15860968 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15860968
asymmetric 9y ago
OT: who are the crypto people you follow? And on which channels? Twitter seems sadly popular among this crowd. Sadly because it lends itself to flamewars.
- berberous 9y ago
  Here are two resources that I think are helpful: 1. Token Economy is a weekly crypto newsletter run by two crypto VCs (https://tokeneconomy.co/ https://tokeneconomy.co/). I think it is extremely good at separating the signal from the noise. Highly recommend. 2. Twitter is unfortunately indeed the easiest place to follow what's going on. Naval Ravikant, the founder of AngelList, recently published a list of the people he follows in the space (https://twitter.com/naval/lists/crypto/members https://twitter.com/naval/lists/crypto/members). It has a large overlap with my own list, but neither he nor I endorse everyone's views that are on it. But it probably includes most of the active developers, VCs and thought leaders in the space.
  - mynegation 9y ago
    Oh, you meant cryptocurrencies, not the cryptography people. "Crypto" is an established abbreviation for "cryptography". Probably, to avoid confusion we should spell out both terms.
- simias 9y ago
  Cryptos lend themselves to flamewars, no twitter or anything else needed. You have a bunch of people who are trying to get rich quick while on average not understanding much about the underlying technology. Try to have a technical discussion on any crypto enthusiast forum and see how well it goes. In my experience it turns really ugly really quickly. In general I give up after I get the first "you don't know what you're talking about" without any kind of actual argument behind it. Note that you find several of these in the comments of TFA: >i find it deeply alarming everybody and their graindma has to write bad stuff about iota without beeing informed themselves enough. >I learned a lot today, but not from this article. The comment section has some good information. >you’re way too late for the fud party. >Wow…another clear case of awesome journalism. Another case of the misinformed trying to mislead people with another mudslinging article. >Just a question: does it ever occur to you to pick up the phone and may get in touch with someone who actually knows the topic at hand before writing this kind of garbage…say the IOTA… Truly enlightening. I love this comment too: https://medium.com/@dfalkman/i-think-this-article-sums-the-psychology-of-this-entire-situation-up-pretty-well-and-it-even-28304aac1c0d https://medium.com/@dfalkman/i-think-this-article-sums-the-p... >The bottom line is that IOTA is embarking on something new. Like a lot of things in crypto, it is theoretical and academic and working towards becoming practical. It is very early. Then: >We all rise together, so we should more encouraging of one another’s endeavors in crypto and blockchain. IMO these concerns would have been best voiced in the IOTA slack channel instead of on the interwebs for all to FUD about. In other words: it's experimental academic endeavor but don't criticize it publicly because it hinders my ability to pump it.
  - mikestew 9y ago
    We all rise together, so we should more encouraging of one another’s endeavors in crypto and blockchain There’s your tip-off for a scam: don’t ask questions, and be encouraging to each other, because it’s us against a skeptical world. Cults, penny stocks, Amway, and now crypto currency scams apparently: I’ve observed similar patterns in all. Not that we shouldn’t support each other in our mutual endeavors, but if that’s the only thing with any substance that you hear and money is on the line, run away. Tip-off #2: “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” “Enlighten me.” <crickets> Learned that one from a biodiesel nut, a suburban boy with clean fingernails trying to convince this ex-mechanic who grew up on a farm that growing food crops for fuel is energy net positive, and otherwise a good idea. Not that his heavy financial investment in a local biodiesel company would color his opinion at all.
lettergram 9y ago
We actually won't track IOTA or anything else we feel is too close to a scam on our website: https://projectpiglet.com/ https://projectpiglet.com/ It's amazing how many scams are in the cryptocurrency space. To some extent even I personally even view Ripple and all the other completely pre-mined or tokenized cryptocurrencies (i.e. 100% centralized systems) as a scam. There's no guarantee manipulation of the underlying technology isn't happening. Essentially, removing the advantage of cryptocurrencies.
- snissn 9y ago
  Do you feel there's a way to have a proof of stake coin without meeting your standard for being a scam?
  - 0wing 9y ago
    Proof of Stake algorithms so far amount to various rationalizations on giving the wealthiest users more wealth. To explain further, PoS blockrewards are settled as lotteries to stakeholders with each staked coin being granted a lottery ticket. Due to the all or nothing nature of newly printed coins from blockrewards, the wealthiest users will not just accumulate more newly printed coins on average but the statistical odds of them accumulating more of the future supply increases with time whereas poor users are entirely disqualified from thresholds required for "staking" and earning newly minted coins.
    - snissn 9y ago
      I'm really impressed by RAIBlocks, and trying to decide what to think about it. There are no fees or printing.
      - 0wing 9y ago
        RAIblocks isn't a protocol, it's someone running a centeralized database that publishes the results to everyone else. Dubious.
- api 9y ago
masklinn 9y ago
> For what it’s worth, of all the crypto people I follow that I consider smart or savvy, none of them are IOTA bulls. Would it be possible to stop using crypto as a shorthand for cryptocurrency? It's already a term of art for the much older field of cryptography and things get confusing, especially as all the crypto(graphy) people I follow consider altcoins in general to be hype. Not to mention it makes no sense, kryptós means "hidden" or "secret", which cryptocurrencies are not, the crypto- prefix comes solely from the underlying usage of cryptographic tools.
- jraines 9y ago
  No. Give up. It's over. Use context clues. Not a statement on the merit of cryptocurrency or your reasoning, just a descriptivist observation.
  - canes123456 9y ago
    I don't care one way or the other but I don't see 'crypto' being that widespread yet.
    - semi-extrinsic 9y ago
      A fifty year old not-very-tech-savvy colleague recently suggested (in jest) that we could pitch something as "crypto-nano, for maximum buzzword effect".
      - jacobush 9y ago
        Hey... that could be a thing. A MEMS device, like a miniature (sorry, nano) Enigma machine.
  - sanderjd 9y ago
    Another possibility: folks like your parent may be able to keep fighting this fight long enough for cryptocurrency to fall off the mainstream hype radar and the smaller, more knowledgeable, community driving whatever the future steady-state of all this craziness ends up being may actually coalesce on better language (something involving "blockchain" perhaps?). I tend to think you're right that it's time to just sigh, shake our collective head, roll our collective eyes, and give up fighting this battle, but the future I just described seems at least somewhat plausible to me.

minxomat 9y ago

Experienced the immaturity first hand, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15860968 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15860968

asymmetric 9y ago

OT: who are the crypto people you follow? And on which channels? Twitter seems sadly popular among this crowd. Sadly because it lends itself to flamewars.

berberous 9y ago
Here are two resources that I think are helpful: 1. Token Economy is a weekly crypto newsletter run by two crypto VCs (https://tokeneconomy.co/ https://tokeneconomy.co/). I think it is extremely good at separating the signal from the noise. Highly recommend. 2. Twitter is unfortunately indeed the easiest place to follow what's going on. Naval Ravikant, the founder of AngelList, recently published a list of the people he follows in the space (https://twitter.com/naval/lists/crypto/members https://twitter.com/naval/lists/crypto/members). It has a large overlap with my own list, but neither he nor I endorse everyone's views that are on it. But it probably includes most of the active developers, VCs and thought leaders in the space.
- mynegation 9y ago
  Oh, you meant cryptocurrencies, not the cryptography people. "Crypto" is an established abbreviation for "cryptography". Probably, to avoid confusion we should spell out both terms.
simias 9y ago
Cryptos lend themselves to flamewars, no twitter or anything else needed. You have a bunch of people who are trying to get rich quick while on average not understanding much about the underlying technology. Try to have a technical discussion on any crypto enthusiast forum and see how well it goes. In my experience it turns really ugly really quickly. In general I give up after I get the first "you don't know what you're talking about" without any kind of actual argument behind it. Note that you find several of these in the comments of TFA: >i find it deeply alarming everybody and their graindma has to write bad stuff about iota without beeing informed themselves enough. >I learned a lot today, but not from this article. The comment section has some good information. >you’re way too late for the fud party. >Wow…another clear case of awesome journalism. Another case of the misinformed trying to mislead people with another mudslinging article. >Just a question: does it ever occur to you to pick up the phone and may get in touch with someone who actually knows the topic at hand before writing this kind of garbage…say the IOTA… Truly enlightening. I love this comment too: https://medium.com/@dfalkman/i-think-this-article-sums-the-psychology-of-this-entire-situation-up-pretty-well-and-it-even-28304aac1c0d https://medium.com/@dfalkman/i-think-this-article-sums-the-p... >The bottom line is that IOTA is embarking on something new. Like a lot of things in crypto, it is theoretical and academic and working towards becoming practical. It is very early. Then: >We all rise together, so we should more encouraging of one another’s endeavors in crypto and blockchain. IMO these concerns would have been best voiced in the IOTA slack channel instead of on the interwebs for all to FUD about. In other words: it's experimental academic endeavor but don't criticize it publicly because it hinders my ability to pump it.
- mikestew 9y ago
  We all rise together, so we should more encouraging of one another’s endeavors in crypto and blockchain There’s your tip-off for a scam: don’t ask questions, and be encouraging to each other, because it’s us against a skeptical world. Cults, penny stocks, Amway, and now crypto currency scams apparently: I’ve observed similar patterns in all. Not that we shouldn’t support each other in our mutual endeavors, but if that’s the only thing with any substance that you hear and money is on the line, run away. Tip-off #2: “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” “Enlighten me.” <crickets> Learned that one from a biodiesel nut, a suburban boy with clean fingernails trying to convince this ex-mechanic who grew up on a farm that growing food crops for fuel is energy net positive, and otherwise a good idea. Not that his heavy financial investment in a local biodiesel company would color his opinion at all.

lettergram 9y ago

We actually won't track IOTA or anything else we feel is too close to a scam on our website: https://projectpiglet.com/ https://projectpiglet.com/ It's amazing how many scams are in the cryptocurrency space. To some extent even I personally even view Ripple and all the other completely pre-mined or tokenized cryptocurrencies (i.e. 100% centralized systems) as a scam. There's no guarantee manipulation of the underlying technology isn't happening. Essentially, removing the advantage of cryptocurrencies.

snissn 9y ago
Do you feel there's a way to have a proof of stake coin without meeting your standard for being a scam?
- 0wing 9y ago
  Proof of Stake algorithms so far amount to various rationalizations on giving the wealthiest users more wealth. To explain further, PoS blockrewards are settled as lotteries to stakeholders with each staked coin being granted a lottery ticket. Due to the all or nothing nature of newly printed coins from blockrewards, the wealthiest users will not just accumulate more newly printed coins on average but the statistical odds of them accumulating more of the future supply increases with time whereas poor users are entirely disqualified from thresholds required for "staking" and earning newly minted coins.
  - snissn 9y ago
    I'm really impressed by RAIBlocks, and trying to decide what to think about it. There are no fees or printing.
    - 0wing 9y ago
      RAIblocks isn't a protocol, it's someone running a centeralized database that publishes the results to everyone else. Dubious.
api 9y ago

masklinn 9y ago

> For what it’s worth, of all the crypto people I follow that I consider smart or savvy, none of them are IOTA bulls. Would it be possible to stop using crypto as a shorthand for cryptocurrency? It's already a term of art for the much older field of cryptography and things get confusing, especially as all the crypto(graphy) people I follow consider altcoins in general to be hype. Not to mention it makes no sense, kryptós means "hidden" or "secret", which cryptocurrencies are not, the crypto- prefix comes solely from the underlying usage of cryptographic tools.

jraines 9y ago
No. Give up. It's over. Use context clues. Not a statement on the merit of cryptocurrency or your reasoning, just a descriptivist observation.
- canes123456 9y ago
  I don't care one way or the other but I don't see 'crypto' being that widespread yet.
  - semi-extrinsic 9y ago
    A fifty year old not-very-tech-savvy colleague recently suggested (in jest) that we could pitch something as "crypto-nano, for maximum buzzword effect".
    - jacobush 9y ago
      Hey... that could be a thing. A MEMS device, like a miniature (sorry, nano) Enigma machine.
- sanderjd 9y ago
  Another possibility: folks like your parent may be able to keep fighting this fight long enough for cryptocurrency to fall off the mainstream hype radar and the smaller, more knowledgeable, community driving whatever the future steady-state of all this craziness ends up being may actually coalesce on better language (something involving "blockchain" perhaps?). I tend to think you're right that it's time to just sigh, shake our collective head, roll our collective eyes, and give up fighting this battle, but the future I just described seems at least somewhat plausible to me.