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From the best tweetstorm ever on topic by Sarah Jeong: https://twitter.com/sarahjeong/status/953464303960469504 https://twitter.com/sarahjeong/status/953464303

by chx 9y ago

From the best tweetstorm ever on topic by Sarah Jeong: https://twitter.com/sarahjeong/status/953464303960469504 https://twitter.com/sarahjeong/status/953464303960469504 > All of this has gone too far!!!!! It was fine when you paranoid dorks were out there scamming each other, please leave the normies alone!!!!!!!!!!!

kelukelugames 9y ago
I discovered her twitter account during the uber trial. She is hilarious and worth following.
- tjwds 9y ago
  Agreed — her reporting for The Verge is consistently amazing: https://www.theverge.com/users/Sarah%20Jeong https://www.theverge.com/users/Sarah%20Jeong
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
booli 9y ago
Wow she is awesome, her handle on GitHub.com is `badfeminist` and her badfeminist.github.io links to http://trumpisliterallyhitler.com http://trumpisliterallyhitler.com
kakarot 9y ago
> Get out of my mentions unless you read the white paper at least five years ago or earlier Love it, thanks for sharing. It does seem like she is making the mistake of conflating Bitcoin with general crypto however, which can be misleading to her audience. Bitcoin indeed suffers from slow transaction speeds and extreme volatility. Other coins, truer to the original vision, fair much better in those respects, and with wide adoption and usage, the volatility would subside.
- coatmatter 9y ago
  Sarah Jeong posted that "crypto is short for cryptography" shouting-from-rooftops sketch a while back but I'm not sure where it's gone. I think when she refers to Bitcoin, she also means every other piece of madness that has come after it including altcoins/cryptocurrencies on the whole; and does not play favourites. Edit: Here's some evidence - https://twitter.com/search?q=%40sarahjeong%20cryptocurrency https://twitter.com/search?q=%40sarahjeong%20cryptocurrency I'm sure similar searches on related terms will reveal a similar sentiment very opposite to yours.
  - kakarot 9y ago
    This isn't an issue of bias from bad sources. I took issue with very specific complaints that were largely only true of Bitcoin, which has been undermined by corporate interests. The ICO / ponzi scheme / overnight stock expert craze is ridiculous and I do not take part. But Bitcoin Cash (closer to the vision of the original bitcoin whitepaper that she herself mentions, which she should know Bitcoin has now deviated significantly from) has been a transparent, expansive, and welcome addition to my other payment channels, much like Bitcoin used to be in the heyday. I enjoy using it when and where I can, I enjoy the decentralization, the lack of reliance on the banking system, etc. I am precisely that narrow part of the population she is highlighting. Most of her points are entirely correct, but besides her conflation of some of Bitcoin's problems with other cryptocurrency, she ultimately discredits me and others who understand exactly what the point of cryptocurrency is, and its benefits to our lifestyles, with the dismissive phrase, "See you at Burning Man." She must associate cryptocurrency with a specific kind of character and then attack that character instead, in order to drive her argument. That's fallacious and misleading.
dpc_pw 9y ago
Except paranoid dorks are not the ones scamming. It's a completely different group of people who created the space, and completely different one that twisted it into a farce, created thousands of scam ICOs and altcoins that make no sense. Well, some overlap actually might be there, but not that much.
- root_axis 9y ago
  It was only a handful of engineers who "created the space" to begin with, so even though there isn't much overlap, it's pretty much always been a community made up of shady folks, it's only that the fraudsters have become less technically sophisticated and more brazen as activity has increased and the blockchain community has grown and continued to radiate cosmic rays of hype.
  - dpc_pw 9y ago
    > always been a community made up of shady folks That's not fair. Shady folks are just getting more publicity. Noone talks about people who created stuff that works and doesn't scam people. And there's a lot of such stuff. This space is growing because of such people, despite the shady folks.
    - root_axis 9y ago
      I didn't say they were evil, but most of the early activity around bitcoin was swirling around in the dark markets which I think is totally fair to describe as shady.
      - darawk 9y ago
        Those were the users, not the creators.
        freeflight 9y ago
        To this day nobody knows who Satoshi Nakamoto actually is, while that's not super shady it also ain't exactly transparent.
Mithorium 9y ago
All her tweets on the subject are great >Internet rando 2: What about people who live under oppressed governments with unsound currency >Me: Only if the problem with their currency is that it's not volatile enough and the transaction speeds are too fast >"People are sick of the Federal Reserve, sick of bailouts, sick of inflation. You know what we need? Internet money with the usability of PGP and the stability of BART service"
- n_ 9y ago
  I loved this tweetstorm, but I must say, it's never taken me weeks to take a BART trip, but it's definitely taken me weeks to clear a BTC transaction. Like hey, BART isn't that bad.
- joyeuse6701 9y ago
  Really? Her posts strike me as sophomoric at best. Just enough knowledge to seem rather than to be.
rockinghigh 9y ago
> "People are sick of the Federal Reserve, sick of bailouts, sick of inflation. You know what we need? Internet money with the usability of PGP and the stability of BART service"
CryptoPunk 9y ago
Why is something that paints anyone who has legitimate concerns about financial censorship and mass surveillance a "paranoid dork", one of the best tweet storms ever? It's exactly this kind of crude tribalism that prevents constructive civil discourse and encourages ideological narrow-mindedness and conformity.
- acdha 9y ago
  If you care about surveillance, bitcoin is the last thing you want to be involved with: you’re creating a permanent non-repudiable record and gift-wrapping it for them!
  - CryptoPunk 9y ago
    My point is that the Tweet implies that being motivated by concerns over the government's control over our financial transactions is objectionable. It makes someone a "paranoid dork". That's a terribly derisive attitude toward something that can be an extremely reasonable concern. And since we're on the subject, Bitcoin allowed individuals to get around the financial blockade against Wikileaks a few years ago. It has also allowed Venezuelans, who have been driven to abject poverty by their government, to get their capital out of the country and the reach of their government. As for privacy, there are other cryptocurrencies, like Monero (ring signatures) and Ethereum (potential to create ring signatures, and since the Byzantium hard fork, zk-SNARK proofs), that open the door to significant privacy.
    - acdha 9y ago
      The problem is that using Bitcoin doesn't change the government's control over your transactions: you're just spending a lot of effort elaborately dancing around the issue. This shows up in both examples you cited: if the Venezuelan government wants to enforce capital controls, the people who used Bitcoin are going to wish they'd smuggled suitcases of cash out of the country instead because they've left a durable paper-trail of their transactions behind. Some other cryptocurrencies try to deliver anonymity but even if the technology eventually delivers they'll have the same problem that almost everyone needs to get real money out of the system and that's where the normal banking laws kick in. Outside of a few cases where someone can do entirely unregulated remote work most people are going to need to convert to or from local currency to pay their bills or receive income.
jadedhacker 9y ago
I'm pleased to see that now that the price has fallen, the tone of BTC discussions in general has taken on a more sober tone amid the endless recriminations.
tripzilch 9y ago
I mean because yeah, fuck the paranoid dorks, right? /s That's a closet NIMBY if I ever heard one. It was FINE when they were only stabbing each other in the bad neighbourhoods, but PLEASE leave the normal neighbourhoods alone!!!! NOW all of this has gone too far ...

by chx 9y ago

kelukelugames 9y ago

I discovered her twitter account during the uber trial. She is hilarious and worth following.

tjwds 9y ago
Agreed — her reporting for The Verge is consistently amazing: https://www.theverge.com/users/Sarah%20Jeong https://www.theverge.com/users/Sarah%20Jeong
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

booli 9y ago

Wow she is awesome, her handle on GitHub.com is `badfeminist` and her badfeminist.github.io links to http://trumpisliterallyhitler.com http://trumpisliterallyhitler.com

kakarot 9y ago

> Get out of my mentions unless you read the white paper at least five years ago or earlier Love it, thanks for sharing. It does seem like she is making the mistake of conflating Bitcoin with general crypto however, which can be misleading to her audience. Bitcoin indeed suffers from slow transaction speeds and extreme volatility. Other coins, truer to the original vision, fair much better in those respects, and with wide adoption and usage, the volatility would subside.

coatmatter 9y ago
Sarah Jeong posted that "crypto is short for cryptography" shouting-from-rooftops sketch a while back but I'm not sure where it's gone. I think when she refers to Bitcoin, she also means every other piece of madness that has come after it including altcoins/cryptocurrencies on the whole; and does not play favourites. Edit: Here's some evidence - https://twitter.com/search?q=%40sarahjeong%20cryptocurrency https://twitter.com/search?q=%40sarahjeong%20cryptocurrency I'm sure similar searches on related terms will reveal a similar sentiment very opposite to yours.
- kakarot 9y ago
  This isn't an issue of bias from bad sources. I took issue with very specific complaints that were largely only true of Bitcoin, which has been undermined by corporate interests. The ICO / ponzi scheme / overnight stock expert craze is ridiculous and I do not take part. But Bitcoin Cash (closer to the vision of the original bitcoin whitepaper that she herself mentions, which she should know Bitcoin has now deviated significantly from) has been a transparent, expansive, and welcome addition to my other payment channels, much like Bitcoin used to be in the heyday. I enjoy using it when and where I can, I enjoy the decentralization, the lack of reliance on the banking system, etc. I am precisely that narrow part of the population she is highlighting. Most of her points are entirely correct, but besides her conflation of some of Bitcoin's problems with other cryptocurrency, she ultimately discredits me and others who understand exactly what the point of cryptocurrency is, and its benefits to our lifestyles, with the dismissive phrase, "See you at Burning Man." She must associate cryptocurrency with a specific kind of character and then attack that character instead, in order to drive her argument. That's fallacious and misleading.

dpc_pw 9y ago

Except paranoid dorks are not the ones scamming. It's a completely different group of people who created the space, and completely different one that twisted it into a farce, created thousands of scam ICOs and altcoins that make no sense. Well, some overlap actually might be there, but not that much.

root_axis 9y ago
It was only a handful of engineers who "created the space" to begin with, so even though there isn't much overlap, it's pretty much always been a community made up of shady folks, it's only that the fraudsters have become less technically sophisticated and more brazen as activity has increased and the blockchain community has grown and continued to radiate cosmic rays of hype.
- dpc_pw 9y ago
  > always been a community made up of shady folks That's not fair. Shady folks are just getting more publicity. Noone talks about people who created stuff that works and doesn't scam people. And there's a lot of such stuff. This space is growing because of such people, despite the shady folks.
  - root_axis 9y ago
    I didn't say they were evil, but most of the early activity around bitcoin was swirling around in the dark markets which I think is totally fair to describe as shady.
    - darawk 9y ago
      Those were the users, not the creators.
      - freeflight 9y ago
        To this day nobody knows who Satoshi Nakamoto actually is, while that's not super shady it also ain't exactly transparent.

Mithorium 9y ago

All her tweets on the subject are great >Internet rando 2: What about people who live under oppressed governments with unsound currency >Me: Only if the problem with their currency is that it's not volatile enough and the transaction speeds are too fast >"People are sick of the Federal Reserve, sick of bailouts, sick of inflation. You know what we need? Internet money with the usability of PGP and the stability of BART service"

n_ 9y ago
I loved this tweetstorm, but I must say, it's never taken me weeks to take a BART trip, but it's definitely taken me weeks to clear a BTC transaction. Like hey, BART isn't that bad.
joyeuse6701 9y ago
Really? Her posts strike me as sophomoric at best. Just enough knowledge to seem rather than to be.

rockinghigh 9y ago

> "People are sick of the Federal Reserve, sick of bailouts, sick of inflation. You know what we need? Internet money with the usability of PGP and the stability of BART service"

CryptoPunk 9y ago

Why is something that paints anyone who has legitimate concerns about financial censorship and mass surveillance a "paranoid dork", one of the best tweet storms ever? It's exactly this kind of crude tribalism that prevents constructive civil discourse and encourages ideological narrow-mindedness and conformity.

acdha 9y ago
If you care about surveillance, bitcoin is the last thing you want to be involved with: you’re creating a permanent non-repudiable record and gift-wrapping it for them!
- CryptoPunk 9y ago
  My point is that the Tweet implies that being motivated by concerns over the government's control over our financial transactions is objectionable. It makes someone a "paranoid dork". That's a terribly derisive attitude toward something that can be an extremely reasonable concern. And since we're on the subject, Bitcoin allowed individuals to get around the financial blockade against Wikileaks a few years ago. It has also allowed Venezuelans, who have been driven to abject poverty by their government, to get their capital out of the country and the reach of their government. As for privacy, there are other cryptocurrencies, like Monero (ring signatures) and Ethereum (potential to create ring signatures, and since the Byzantium hard fork, zk-SNARK proofs), that open the door to significant privacy.
  - acdha 9y ago
    The problem is that using Bitcoin doesn't change the government's control over your transactions: you're just spending a lot of effort elaborately dancing around the issue. This shows up in both examples you cited: if the Venezuelan government wants to enforce capital controls, the people who used Bitcoin are going to wish they'd smuggled suitcases of cash out of the country instead because they've left a durable paper-trail of their transactions behind. Some other cryptocurrencies try to deliver anonymity but even if the technology eventually delivers they'll have the same problem that almost everyone needs to get real money out of the system and that's where the normal banking laws kick in. Outside of a few cases where someone can do entirely unregulated remote work most people are going to need to convert to or from local currency to pay their bills or receive income.

jadedhacker 9y ago

I'm pleased to see that now that the price has fallen, the tone of BTC discussions in general has taken on a more sober tone amid the endless recriminations.

tripzilch 9y ago

I mean because yeah, fuck the paranoid dorks, right? /s That's a closet NIMBY if I ever heard one. It was FINE when they were only stabbing each other in the bad neighbourhoods, but PLEASE leave the normal neighbourhoods alone!!!! NOW all of this has gone too far ...