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One theory I have on the hate towards Ethereum (and cryptocurrencies / blockchain in general) on HN is that it's a radically different way of solving problems,

One theory I have on the hate towards Ethereum (and cryptocurrencies / blockchain in general) on HN is that it's a radically different way of solving problems, something that is alien to software engineers who have put decades of time becoming experts at solving problems a certain way. So rather than invest more than 15 minutes learning about it, they say "Blockchain is just a distributed database and it's useless!" or attack it from a variety of minimum-thought / minimum-effort angles. There is genuine innovation in this space and it is going to impact a lot of areas. Decentralization, immutability, protocols monetized with market forces, fee-less payments that cannot be prevented, to name but a few interesting areas. And of course there are numerous downsides. Difficulty of keeping keys safe, bugs that cost millions of dollars, issues with scaling. But these are problems that people are solving right now. As a technologist, you should be looking at the possibilities! Now is the time to start a new company or project, not 5 or 10 years from now when the tech has matured.

dmitriid 9y ago
As a technologist I look at vaporware and call it vaporware. I look at get-rich-quick schemes and call them get-rich-quick schemes. I look at how blockchain don't solve a single problem that hasn't already been solved more efficiently on much grander scales, and I call them out as such. Your words, and images of grandeur, and promises of great things to come are just that: words, and images, and promises, and I call them as such. Blockchain is not "the next Internet that haters cannot see", as the overused saying goes. So far it's nothing but the next Tomagotchi or Pets.com, and nothing that's happening in blockchain can prove it otherwise. And so, we call it as such.
- jMyles 9y ago
  > I look at how blockchain don't solve a single problem that hasn't already been solved more efficiently on much grander scales, and I call them out as such. This position is the most confusing of all the blockchain FUD out there. It's easy to show that it's false: today, people are able to purchase proscribed plants and medicines in a way that completely subverts the efforts of state to prevent that. Now, I'm not saying that's sufficient to prove the kind of meaning you're looking for, but doesn't it give you the slightest bit of pause? Doesn't it make you say, "Wow - that's something people have been trying to do since the garden of eden and nothing has ever done it so successfully. I wonder what else this thing can do?" I think that for most open-minded observers, something like this thought process is what keeps our attention. I think that undermining drug prohibition is a wonderful thing and an obvious net good for the world. But I also think that it's a sign that there are more mundane / lawful-good elements that will arise in time. Porn has largely driven the internet forward at various critical junctures. But if we had stopped and said, "oh, is this thing just about porn? How useless," then we'd be in a much worse place. Give it some time and an open mind.
  - Sangermaine 9y ago
    >people are able to purchase proscribed plants and medicines in a way that completely subverts the efforts of state to prevent that. No it doesn't. This is the kind of absurd nonsense that earns blockchain proponents this level of scorn. People could buy drugs before. Sure they can use cryptocurrency instead of cash, but the old problems remain: getting the product from the buyer to the seller. The state can, and sometimes does, prevent that because until teleportation is invented getting the drugs you bought online into your hands opens you to risk. Buying drugs is certainly easier, but it doesn't help to talk in these ridiculous terms. I bought pot in college just fine. If I buy drugs and have it shipped to me I'm at the same risk whether I used cash or Bitcoin. >"Wow - that's something people have been trying to do since the garden of eden and nothing has ever done it so successfully. I wonder what else this thing can do?" You've got this backwards. It's been 10 years. People have been asking all that time "so what else can you do", and the answer so far is...nothing, really. This despite the relentless, utopian hype all during that time. If proponents want people to keep an open mind and not be so cynical, maybe they shouldn't have spent years promising that blockchain technology is the digital coming of Jesus that will completely change everything in every way and usher in an endless golden age of peace and prosperity.
    - jMyles 9y ago
      > People could buy drugs before. Sure they can use cryptocurrency instead of cash, but the old problems remain: getting the product from the buyer to the seller. The state can, and sometimes does, prevent that because until teleportation is invented getting the drugs you bought online into your hands opens you to risk. Buying drugs is certainly easier, but it doesn't help to talk in these ridiculous terms. I bought pot in college just fine. If I buy drugs and have it shipped to me I'm at the same risk whether I used cash or Bitcoin. This is an astonishing and vulgar display of privilege. The next time you meet an older MS patient with far less mobility and social connections than you, I dare you to tell them "I bought pot in college just fine." I'm astounded that this is your best response. If this is the position of blockchain bears, the bullish position seems downright rational by contrast. It's not just access to cannabis, either. Many people had no idea where to procure LSD or MDMA before Silk Road. I think you dramatically underestimate the number of lives changed here. > If proponents want people to keep an open mind and not be so cynical, maybe they shouldn't have spent years promising that blockchain technology is the digital coming of Jesus that will completely change everything in every way and usher in an endless golden age of peace and prosperity. It seems like you've judged far too large a segment of innovation based on a sample of far too few voices. Your error here is obvious.
- colordrops 9y ago
  You are proving the OPs point and attacking a strawman.
- jesusthatsgreat 9y ago
  People said that about motor cars, about touchscreen phones, and personal computers, the internet itself... any new technology will bring with it controversy, naysayers, early adopters, opportunities and pain. Will Blockchain technology as we know it eventually go on and become something we all use / interact with? Nobody knows... but a technologist doesn't write off new technology just because it's not in use by everyone on the planet after less than a decade.
- XR0CSWV3h3kZWg 9y ago
  > I look at how blockchain don't solve a single problem that hasn't already been solved more efficiently on much grander scales, and I call them out as such. What about the problem of running an immutable log using compute power around the world without paying for the costs? That's what santoshi accomplished. He stopped mining many years ago and it's been committing logs every 10 minutes for years.
- spookthesunset 9y ago
  > So far it's nothing but the next Tomagotchi or Pets.com At least with Pets.com you could order a 40 pound bag of dog food and get it delivered to your door. It may have been a bad business model but it still tried to solve a real problem. Blockchain doesn't even solve real problems. It is just a technology in search of a problem. So far, the only "problem" it solves is providing a world-class platform for fraudsters and scammers to conduct business on top of. Ethereum, in particular, is an excellent platform to spin up an ICO, take a bunch of suckers money, exit scam, and then go move to a country with no extradition treaty with the US...
  - cfadvan 9y ago
    Problem: Want to part many fools from many millions of dollars. Solution: Blockchain! I think that’s the frame rails this whole messy thing is built on, loveingly maintained by scammers and some True Believers.
    - spookthesunset 9y ago
      Thanks, you said it way better than I could. Blockchain is a world class way to solve the problem of how to part fools and their money.
reggieband 9y ago
I have two problems with all existing crypto currencies. 1. Are they fundamentally safe or are the scams? 2. Will they get shut down by governments? Both of those questions leave me feeling very open to risk. People willing to assume that risk before either issue has been resolved may reap whatever reward early adoption gives them. But if you build a business on the wrong tech you could get bankrupt or worse. Most of the big dotcom 1.0 companies disappeared (or are dying before our eyes, RIP Yahoo). Maybe it is better to be a crypto 2.0 business.
- albertgoeswoof 9y ago
  Don't mix up crypto currencies with blockchain Think pets.com vs the internet
  - reggieband 9y ago
    I'm thinking more like SOAP vs. REST, except with the penalty possibly being outstanding debts in a currency that has been made illegal.
    - hestefisk 9y ago
      It’s more SOAP vs TCP/IP, the latter being Blockchain.
  - CryptoPunk 9y ago
    Cryptocurrency is the economic layer of a decentralized blockchain.
aaron-lebo 9y ago
I'm open to change as well as skeptical of far-reaching claims. We're going on a decade of claims about what blockchain was going to enable. I'm still waiting, hopeful that something will come of it, but I'm also aware (as all techies should be) that hype and money can get you very far. There is genuine innovation in this space and it is going to impact a lot of areas. For example, these are claims with no evidence. You've taken it on faith, but it's just as possible there's nothing there. I'd say it's coin flip as to which will end up being true, but I don't at all accept that it's a given, nor do I believe anyone being honest would. We simply don't know and anyone telling you otherwise is a true believer. Would you like some of my kool aid? Don't kid yourself about how wrong people can be about, well, anything.
kang 9y ago
This comment is just wishful thinking and stems from a false fact. There are HNers who were using "blockchain" even before Vitalik knew about bitcoin. There is no innovation happening. Distributed is not decentralized. Ethereum's blockchain is a mathematical proof of it being mutable (and thus not a blockchain?). Tell me any "dapp" and I will tell you the point of centralization. (Before you even mention it's probably 'the origin of money' )
AgentME 9y ago
I think a lot of the hate is a reaction to the baseless hype from people just trying to get rich from cryptocurrency. There are tons of altcoins and ICOs being made and advertised constantly that are nothing but hot air. There are people making a lot of money (or thinking they can) from buying into altcoins (hyped up by nonsense marketing pages), which they then try to shill to others. People are often being incentivized by rising prices to act this way! Outsiders start to learn that "blockchain" = "get-rich-quick nonsense", and miss the interesting technical discussions (which often come from the Bitcoin and Ethereum spaces).
- CryptoPunk 9y ago
  >>I think a lot of the hate is a reaction to the baseless hype from people just trying to get rich from cryptocurrency. This is it exactly. People are naturally suspicious of anything that is widely promoted for the profit of the promoters.
- lojack 9y ago
  I don’t think you’re wrong or anything, but I do find it frustrating that HackerNews seems to be full of people dismissive of the technology and from what I’ve gathered relatively devoid of the baseless shilling. Other communities, not so much.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- onestone 9y ago
  Well, baseless naysayers are just as bad as baseless hypers.
- darawk 9y ago
  Yes, this is definitely a big part of it. HN used to be super into cryptos, when it was more about the technology (pre-2017, or even pre-2013). That being said, the pendulum has pretty clearly swung too far the other way here. The pretty obvious reality is that smart contracts and cryptocurrencies are truly interesting and novel technology. Does that mean they're good investments? No. Are they going to take over the world? Maybe, maybe not. But they're definitely 'cool', in the technological/hacker sense. They're cool in the way the internet was cool - they enable a fundamentally novel form of human interaction. It remains to be seen if that form of interaction will be economically meaningful. But the novelty and possibility of it is definitely interesting, and anyone who says otherwise either doesn't get it, or has been jaded by the scams. An understandable response to all the greed and general chicanery of course, but the reality is still that this stuff is actually pretty cool tech, even if you never use it to buy a latte.
notriddle 9y ago
> Now is the time to start a new company or project, not 5 or 10 years from now when the tech has matured. Actually, I'd rather start the new company 5 or 10 years from now when the tech has matured. It's the same reason the company I'm currently on relies primarily on boring PHP stuff and the more boring parts of Docker, not the newer tech that I'd rather be using. The time that could be spent chasing stuff that might be fads or might be an advantage is better spent directly working with customers to better understand their problems and exploring directly-business-relevant parts of the solution space. That and the blockchain really is "just" a distributed database. It's potentially very useful, because of the way it tackles the trust problems, but if you're not sure whether you need it or not, then you probably don'.
cocktailpeanuts 9y ago
My "hate" has nothing to do with what you described but more on how the project is run. It's no longer what it claims to be, and increasingly moving away from decentralization while at the same time the high priests creating propaganda that it's OK to be a "little bit centralized" for the "greater vision". Looks like most uneducated people genuinely believe this because they have no idea how Ethereum works underneath, and even many entrepreneurs who DO understand how Ethereum works are so invested in the ecosystem as to be blinded by their own interest, so "choose" to believe in it, but if they all stepped back for a minute and look at what has happened they will all realize this is not the platform they were excited about in the first place. I generally hope the idea itself will work out, but doubt the current team and the entourage (also known as "ecosystem") around them will get there.
Sangermaine 9y ago
Well, it's already 10 years down the line with blockchain technology. Still waiting. And, despite your silly claims of jealousy, the real reason blockchain technology now receives such scorn is precisely because for years after its inception it received absurd hype. What you're seeing now is the backlash against the utopian, almost religious praise of the technology when it first came out. It's precisely because it's been 10 years and the reality hasn't nearly matched the early hype that people have cooled on the technology, and now want solid results instead of more empty talk. It's long past the point where telling everyone big things are coming is enough, it's time to show those big things.
- bennyg 9y ago
  There were plenty of naysayers back then too. Engineers love to play devil's advocate. Now that the posts/articles about cryptocurrency are becoming more frequent, those dissenting opinions are also becoming more frequent.
- zeroxfe 9y ago
  > Well, it's already 10 years down the line with blockchain technology. Still waiting. To be fair -- it's 10 years since Bitcoin. People didn't start innovating (widely) on blockchains until Ethereum came along and paved the way for generalized blockchains. > It's precisely because it's been 10 years and the reality hasn't nearly matched the early hype that people have cooled on the technology, and now want solid results instead of more empty talk. It's long past the point where telling everyone big things are coming is enough, it's time to show those big things. Excessive hype is normal and expected for any disruptive technology. AI took decades to become fruitful, the Internet took a few decades to become mainstream. We're seeing hype with cloud computing, VR, IoT, synthetic foods, and all of these have very vocal nay-sayers. IMO, blockchains are revolutionary but also very primitive -- there's a ton of innovation in this space, and its spawned a variety of new areas for very interesting research (in trustless consensus, decentralized economies, stable currencies, algorithmic governance, and cryptographic applications.) Of course, all of this is my opinion, and only time will tell. (/me spent a decade working on distributed consensus infrasatructure at Google.)
beefield 9y ago
My "hate" for cryptos is not because it is a different way to solve a problem. It is because cryptos are trying to disrupt financial industry by adding technology to medieval monetary policies that we have long history showing that they are bad policies. Putting lipstock to a pig won't make the pig fly...
- rickycook 9y ago
  so if you can’t fix the problem then you shouldn’t even try to make it better? should we roll back internet banking, eftpos, etc?
  - kirillseva 9y ago
    I think the parent meant deflationary economics vs inflationary of today
    - tuesdayrain 9y ago
      That would be an irrational reason to hate cryptocurrencies, because they can be either inflationary or deflationary.
      - beefield 9y ago
        It's not about inflationary vs deflationary, but adjustable monetary supply based on need vs. predefined monetary supply.
  - beefield 9y ago
    If you can't fix the problem you should not try to make it worse. Internet banking etc. are making things better. I do not know how bitcoin is supposed to make anything better for a non-criminal person.
- stjohnswarts 9y ago
  So what is your solution? Marxism? Communism? Anarchy?
ClassAndBurn 9y ago
I would say these are the solutions people are producing right now and the problems they are solving are still unknown.
hudon 9y ago
I've been actively researching use cases and properties of cryptocurrencies (more than 15 minutes) and have come to the opposite conclusion: none of the hype is based in fact. For instance, let's go through your claims one by one. > Decentralization, There is surmounting evidence that this is not true and that Bitcoin and Ethereum are actually quite centralized and would benefit from being more centralized [0][1][2][3][4]. [0] https://arxiv.org/abs/1801.03998 https://arxiv.org/abs/1801.03998 [1] https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2015/07/28/analyzing-the-2013-bitcoin-fork-centralized-decision-making-saved-the-day/ https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2015/07/28/analyzing-the-2013-... [2] https://arewedecentralizedyet.com https://arewedecentralizedyet.com [3] https://fc18.ifca.ai/bitcoin/papers/bitcoin18-final13.pdf https://fc18.ifca.ai/bitcoin/papers/bitcoin18-final13.pdf [4] https://www.tse-fr.eu/sites/default/files/TSE/documents/doc/wp/2017/wp_tse_817.pdf https://www.tse-fr.eu/sites/default/files/TSE/documents/doc/... > immutability, I'm not sure if you've heard of theDAO fork [5], but basically transactions on Ethereum are not final. They can be reversed if a select group of powerful individuals decide to do so. Maybe it's "immutable" in the sense that the history can't be changed, but it's not "immutable" in the sense that the history can't be reverted arbitrarily by someone other than yourself. [5] https://www.coindesk.com/ethereum-executes-blockchain-hard-fork-return-dao-investor-funds/ https://www.coindesk.com/ethereum-executes-blockchain-hard-f... > protocols monetized with market forces, What do you mean by this? Older protocols like TCP weren't made operational for free, they were funded by many institutions, both public and private. Are you sure this is something new? > fee-less payments that cannot be prevented Cryptocurrencies aren't fee-less. There are transaction fees, exchange fees and volatility/liquidity risk. If you're in the US and want to send money (real money) to your friend in Japan, you must buy crypto (exchange fee), send it (transaction fee), and sell it (exchange fee and volatility or liquidity risk). Finally, as you've seen with theDAO fork, crypto payments can be reversed, which prevents the transaction from being final. I'd love to see any research on how crypto payments can't be censored, though, if you have any.
Nursie 9y ago
A lot of the hate from me and others is precisely the opposite - it doesn't solve problems. It doesn't bring novel solutions to the table. In fact anything at all blockchain related seems to be putting the cart before the horse. Every time, people start from blockchain and look for somewhere to crobar it in. In the end it's just another data structure. It may have its niche, but as yet it seems to be hype over substance.
- teknopurge 9y ago
  I see a lot of this as-well, and it goes with the atmosphere of our industry. Remember "cloud" was a solution looking for a problem also: server colocation had been around for 30 years prior... We are in the adoption chasm of blockchain architecture right now; if we make it to the other side we'll have a new wave of innovation in the distributed software space.
  - tonyarkles 9y ago
    > Remember "cloud" was a solution looking for a problem also: server colocation had been around for 30 years prior True, although "you get root on it", "it takes 2 minutes to set up", and "it costs $10/mo" were properties that never really lived together before "the cloud". The value prop for cloud VMs was immediately obvious for a lot of people. And, at least in the crowd I roll with, managed systems like Google App Engine had very obvious utility out of the gate too (I can just push Python code to it and it'll manage all the servers for me? Woah!)
vectorpush 9y ago
This is a typical condescending blockchain enthusiast line. Stop implying that the critics don't understand how things work, it's insulting, intellectually lazy and false. When the blockchain is actually useful enthusiasts won't have to beg everyone to give it a chance.
s73v3r_ 9y ago
I personally have animosity toward a lot of them because they've spiked the price of graphics cards to crazy levels.
thisisit 9y ago
Can we please stop labelling doubt and maybe cynicism as hate? It is nonsensical and doesn't add to the discussion. It rather makes people even more defensive and argue their position even harder.

dmitriid 9y ago

As a technologist I look at vaporware and call it vaporware. I look at get-rich-quick schemes and call them get-rich-quick schemes. I look at how blockchain don't solve a single problem that hasn't already been solved more efficiently on much grander scales, and I call them out as such. Your words, and images of grandeur, and promises of great things to come are just that: words, and images, and promises, and I call them as such. Blockchain is not "the next Internet that haters cannot see", as the overused saying goes. So far it's nothing but the next Tomagotchi or Pets.com, and nothing that's happening in blockchain can prove it otherwise. And so, we call it as such.

jMyles 9y ago
> I look at how blockchain don't solve a single problem that hasn't already been solved more efficiently on much grander scales, and I call them out as such. This position is the most confusing of all the blockchain FUD out there. It's easy to show that it's false: today, people are able to purchase proscribed plants and medicines in a way that completely subverts the efforts of state to prevent that. Now, I'm not saying that's sufficient to prove the kind of meaning you're looking for, but doesn't it give you the slightest bit of pause? Doesn't it make you say, "Wow - that's something people have been trying to do since the garden of eden and nothing has ever done it so successfully. I wonder what else this thing can do?" I think that for most open-minded observers, something like this thought process is what keeps our attention. I think that undermining drug prohibition is a wonderful thing and an obvious net good for the world. But I also think that it's a sign that there are more mundane / lawful-good elements that will arise in time. Porn has largely driven the internet forward at various critical junctures. But if we had stopped and said, "oh, is this thing just about porn? How useless," then we'd be in a much worse place. Give it some time and an open mind.
- Sangermaine 9y ago
  >people are able to purchase proscribed plants and medicines in a way that completely subverts the efforts of state to prevent that. No it doesn't. This is the kind of absurd nonsense that earns blockchain proponents this level of scorn. People could buy drugs before. Sure they can use cryptocurrency instead of cash, but the old problems remain: getting the product from the buyer to the seller. The state can, and sometimes does, prevent that because until teleportation is invented getting the drugs you bought online into your hands opens you to risk. Buying drugs is certainly easier, but it doesn't help to talk in these ridiculous terms. I bought pot in college just fine. If I buy drugs and have it shipped to me I'm at the same risk whether I used cash or Bitcoin. >"Wow - that's something people have been trying to do since the garden of eden and nothing has ever done it so successfully. I wonder what else this thing can do?" You've got this backwards. It's been 10 years. People have been asking all that time "so what else can you do", and the answer so far is...nothing, really. This despite the relentless, utopian hype all during that time. If proponents want people to keep an open mind and not be so cynical, maybe they shouldn't have spent years promising that blockchain technology is the digital coming of Jesus that will completely change everything in every way and usher in an endless golden age of peace and prosperity.
  - jMyles 9y ago
    > People could buy drugs before. Sure they can use cryptocurrency instead of cash, but the old problems remain: getting the product from the buyer to the seller. The state can, and sometimes does, prevent that because until teleportation is invented getting the drugs you bought online into your hands opens you to risk. Buying drugs is certainly easier, but it doesn't help to talk in these ridiculous terms. I bought pot in college just fine. If I buy drugs and have it shipped to me I'm at the same risk whether I used cash or Bitcoin. This is an astonishing and vulgar display of privilege. The next time you meet an older MS patient with far less mobility and social connections than you, I dare you to tell them "I bought pot in college just fine." I'm astounded that this is your best response. If this is the position of blockchain bears, the bullish position seems downright rational by contrast. It's not just access to cannabis, either. Many people had no idea where to procure LSD or MDMA before Silk Road. I think you dramatically underestimate the number of lives changed here. > If proponents want people to keep an open mind and not be so cynical, maybe they shouldn't have spent years promising that blockchain technology is the digital coming of Jesus that will completely change everything in every way and usher in an endless golden age of peace and prosperity. It seems like you've judged far too large a segment of innovation based on a sample of far too few voices. Your error here is obvious.
colordrops 9y ago
You are proving the OPs point and attacking a strawman.
jesusthatsgreat 9y ago
People said that about motor cars, about touchscreen phones, and personal computers, the internet itself... any new technology will bring with it controversy, naysayers, early adopters, opportunities and pain. Will Blockchain technology as we know it eventually go on and become something we all use / interact with? Nobody knows... but a technologist doesn't write off new technology just because it's not in use by everyone on the planet after less than a decade.
XR0CSWV3h3kZWg 9y ago
> I look at how blockchain don't solve a single problem that hasn't already been solved more efficiently on much grander scales, and I call them out as such. What about the problem of running an immutable log using compute power around the world without paying for the costs? That's what santoshi accomplished. He stopped mining many years ago and it's been committing logs every 10 minutes for years.
spookthesunset 9y ago
> So far it's nothing but the next Tomagotchi or Pets.com At least with Pets.com you could order a 40 pound bag of dog food and get it delivered to your door. It may have been a bad business model but it still tried to solve a real problem. Blockchain doesn't even solve real problems. It is just a technology in search of a problem. So far, the only "problem" it solves is providing a world-class platform for fraudsters and scammers to conduct business on top of. Ethereum, in particular, is an excellent platform to spin up an ICO, take a bunch of suckers money, exit scam, and then go move to a country with no extradition treaty with the US...
- cfadvan 9y ago
  Problem: Want to part many fools from many millions of dollars. Solution: Blockchain! I think that’s the frame rails this whole messy thing is built on, loveingly maintained by scammers and some True Believers.
  - spookthesunset 9y ago
    Thanks, you said it way better than I could. Blockchain is a world class way to solve the problem of how to part fools and their money.

reggieband 9y ago

I have two problems with all existing crypto currencies. 1. Are they fundamentally safe or are the scams? 2. Will they get shut down by governments? Both of those questions leave me feeling very open to risk. People willing to assume that risk before either issue has been resolved may reap whatever reward early adoption gives them. But if you build a business on the wrong tech you could get bankrupt or worse. Most of the big dotcom 1.0 companies disappeared (or are dying before our eyes, RIP Yahoo). Maybe it is better to be a crypto 2.0 business.

albertgoeswoof 9y ago
Don't mix up crypto currencies with blockchain Think pets.com vs the internet
- reggieband 9y ago
  I'm thinking more like SOAP vs. REST, except with the penalty possibly being outstanding debts in a currency that has been made illegal.
  - hestefisk 9y ago
    It’s more SOAP vs TCP/IP, the latter being Blockchain.
- CryptoPunk 9y ago
  Cryptocurrency is the economic layer of a decentralized blockchain.

aaron-lebo 9y ago

I'm open to change as well as skeptical of far-reaching claims. We're going on a decade of claims about what blockchain was going to enable. I'm still waiting, hopeful that something will come of it, but I'm also aware (as all techies should be) that hype and money can get you very far. There is genuine innovation in this space and it is going to impact a lot of areas. For example, these are claims with no evidence. You've taken it on faith, but it's just as possible there's nothing there. I'd say it's coin flip as to which will end up being true, but I don't at all accept that it's a given, nor do I believe anyone being honest would. We simply don't know and anyone telling you otherwise is a true believer. Would you like some of my kool aid? Don't kid yourself about how wrong people can be about, well, anything.

kang 9y ago

This comment is just wishful thinking and stems from a false fact. There are HNers who were using "blockchain" even before Vitalik knew about bitcoin. There is no innovation happening. Distributed is not decentralized. Ethereum's blockchain is a mathematical proof of it being mutable (and thus not a blockchain?). Tell me any "dapp" and I will tell you the point of centralization. (Before you even mention it's probably 'the origin of money' )

AgentME 9y ago

I think a lot of the hate is a reaction to the baseless hype from people just trying to get rich from cryptocurrency. There are tons of altcoins and ICOs being made and advertised constantly that are nothing but hot air. There are people making a lot of money (or thinking they can) from buying into altcoins (hyped up by nonsense marketing pages), which they then try to shill to others. People are often being incentivized by rising prices to act this way! Outsiders start to learn that "blockchain" = "get-rich-quick nonsense", and miss the interesting technical discussions (which often come from the Bitcoin and Ethereum spaces).

CryptoPunk 9y ago
>>I think a lot of the hate is a reaction to the baseless hype from people just trying to get rich from cryptocurrency. This is it exactly. People are naturally suspicious of anything that is widely promoted for the profit of the promoters.
lojack 9y ago
I don’t think you’re wrong or anything, but I do find it frustrating that HackerNews seems to be full of people dismissive of the technology and from what I’ve gathered relatively devoid of the baseless shilling. Other communities, not so much.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
onestone 9y ago
Well, baseless naysayers are just as bad as baseless hypers.
darawk 9y ago
Yes, this is definitely a big part of it. HN used to be super into cryptos, when it was more about the technology (pre-2017, or even pre-2013). That being said, the pendulum has pretty clearly swung too far the other way here. The pretty obvious reality is that smart contracts and cryptocurrencies are truly interesting and novel technology. Does that mean they're good investments? No. Are they going to take over the world? Maybe, maybe not. But they're definitely 'cool', in the technological/hacker sense. They're cool in the way the internet was cool - they enable a fundamentally novel form of human interaction. It remains to be seen if that form of interaction will be economically meaningful. But the novelty and possibility of it is definitely interesting, and anyone who says otherwise either doesn't get it, or has been jaded by the scams. An understandable response to all the greed and general chicanery of course, but the reality is still that this stuff is actually pretty cool tech, even if you never use it to buy a latte.

notriddle 9y ago

> Now is the time to start a new company or project, not 5 or 10 years from now when the tech has matured. Actually, I'd rather start the new company 5 or 10 years from now when the tech has matured. It's the same reason the company I'm currently on relies primarily on boring PHP stuff and the more boring parts of Docker, not the newer tech that I'd rather be using. The time that could be spent chasing stuff that might be fads or might be an advantage is better spent directly working with customers to better understand their problems and exploring directly-business-relevant parts of the solution space. That and the blockchain really is "just" a distributed database. It's potentially very useful, because of the way it tackles the trust problems, but if you're not sure whether you need it or not, then you probably don'.

cocktailpeanuts 9y ago

My "hate" has nothing to do with what you described but more on how the project is run. It's no longer what it claims to be, and increasingly moving away from decentralization while at the same time the high priests creating propaganda that it's OK to be a "little bit centralized" for the "greater vision". Looks like most uneducated people genuinely believe this because they have no idea how Ethereum works underneath, and even many entrepreneurs who DO understand how Ethereum works are so invested in the ecosystem as to be blinded by their own interest, so "choose" to believe in it, but if they all stepped back for a minute and look at what has happened they will all realize this is not the platform they were excited about in the first place. I generally hope the idea itself will work out, but doubt the current team and the entourage (also known as "ecosystem") around them will get there.

Sangermaine 9y ago

Well, it's already 10 years down the line with blockchain technology. Still waiting. And, despite your silly claims of jealousy, the real reason blockchain technology now receives such scorn is precisely because for years after its inception it received absurd hype. What you're seeing now is the backlash against the utopian, almost religious praise of the technology when it first came out. It's precisely because it's been 10 years and the reality hasn't nearly matched the early hype that people have cooled on the technology, and now want solid results instead of more empty talk. It's long past the point where telling everyone big things are coming is enough, it's time to show those big things.

bennyg 9y ago
There were plenty of naysayers back then too. Engineers love to play devil's advocate. Now that the posts/articles about cryptocurrency are becoming more frequent, those dissenting opinions are also becoming more frequent.
zeroxfe 9y ago
> Well, it's already 10 years down the line with blockchain technology. Still waiting. To be fair -- it's 10 years since Bitcoin. People didn't start innovating (widely) on blockchains until Ethereum came along and paved the way for generalized blockchains. > It's precisely because it's been 10 years and the reality hasn't nearly matched the early hype that people have cooled on the technology, and now want solid results instead of more empty talk. It's long past the point where telling everyone big things are coming is enough, it's time to show those big things. Excessive hype is normal and expected for any disruptive technology. AI took decades to become fruitful, the Internet took a few decades to become mainstream. We're seeing hype with cloud computing, VR, IoT, synthetic foods, and all of these have very vocal nay-sayers. IMO, blockchains are revolutionary but also very primitive -- there's a ton of innovation in this space, and its spawned a variety of new areas for very interesting research (in trustless consensus, decentralized economies, stable currencies, algorithmic governance, and cryptographic applications.) Of course, all of this is my opinion, and only time will tell. (/me spent a decade working on distributed consensus infrasatructure at Google.)

beefield 9y ago

My "hate" for cryptos is not because it is a different way to solve a problem. It is because cryptos are trying to disrupt financial industry by adding technology to medieval monetary policies that we have long history showing that they are bad policies. Putting lipstock to a pig won't make the pig fly...

rickycook 9y ago
so if you can’t fix the problem then you shouldn’t even try to make it better? should we roll back internet banking, eftpos, etc?
- kirillseva 9y ago
  I think the parent meant deflationary economics vs inflationary of today
  - tuesdayrain 9y ago
    That would be an irrational reason to hate cryptocurrencies, because they can be either inflationary or deflationary.
    - beefield 9y ago
      It's not about inflationary vs deflationary, but adjustable monetary supply based on need vs. predefined monetary supply.
- beefield 9y ago
  If you can't fix the problem you should not try to make it worse. Internet banking etc. are making things better. I do not know how bitcoin is supposed to make anything better for a non-criminal person.
stjohnswarts 9y ago
So what is your solution? Marxism? Communism? Anarchy?

ClassAndBurn 9y ago

I would say these are the solutions people are producing right now and the problems they are solving are still unknown.

hudon 9y ago

I've been actively researching use cases and properties of cryptocurrencies (more than 15 minutes) and have come to the opposite conclusion: none of the hype is based in fact. For instance, let's go through your claims one by one. > Decentralization, There is surmounting evidence that this is not true and that Bitcoin and Ethereum are actually quite centralized and would benefit from being more centralized [0][1][2][3][4]. [0] https://arxiv.org/abs/1801.03998 https://arxiv.org/abs/1801.03998 [1] https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2015/07/28/analyzing-the-2013-bitcoin-fork-centralized-decision-making-saved-the-day/ https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2015/07/28/analyzing-the-2013-... [2] https://arewedecentralizedyet.com https://arewedecentralizedyet.com [3] https://fc18.ifca.ai/bitcoin/papers/bitcoin18-final13.pdf https://fc18.ifca.ai/bitcoin/papers/bitcoin18-final13.pdf [4] https://www.tse-fr.eu/sites/default/files/TSE/documents/doc/wp/2017/wp_tse_817.pdf https://www.tse-fr.eu/sites/default/files/TSE/documents/doc/... > immutability, I'm not sure if you've heard of theDAO fork [5], but basically transactions on Ethereum are not final. They can be reversed if a select group of powerful individuals decide to do so. Maybe it's "immutable" in the sense that the history can't be changed, but it's not "immutable" in the sense that the history can't be reverted arbitrarily by someone other than yourself. [5] https://www.coindesk.com/ethereum-executes-blockchain-hard-fork-return-dao-investor-funds/ https://www.coindesk.com/ethereum-executes-blockchain-hard-f... > protocols monetized with market forces, What do you mean by this? Older protocols like TCP weren't made operational for free, they were funded by many institutions, both public and private. Are you sure this is something new? > fee-less payments that cannot be prevented Cryptocurrencies aren't fee-less. There are transaction fees, exchange fees and volatility/liquidity risk. If you're in the US and want to send money (real money) to your friend in Japan, you must buy crypto (exchange fee), send it (transaction fee), and sell it (exchange fee and volatility or liquidity risk). Finally, as you've seen with theDAO fork, crypto payments can be reversed, which prevents the transaction from being final. I'd love to see any research on how crypto payments can't be censored, though, if you have any.

Nursie 9y ago

A lot of the hate from me and others is precisely the opposite - it doesn't solve problems. It doesn't bring novel solutions to the table. In fact anything at all blockchain related seems to be putting the cart before the horse. Every time, people start from blockchain and look for somewhere to crobar it in. In the end it's just another data structure. It may have its niche, but as yet it seems to be hype over substance.

teknopurge 9y ago
I see a lot of this as-well, and it goes with the atmosphere of our industry. Remember "cloud" was a solution looking for a problem also: server colocation had been around for 30 years prior... We are in the adoption chasm of blockchain architecture right now; if we make it to the other side we'll have a new wave of innovation in the distributed software space.
- tonyarkles 9y ago
  > Remember "cloud" was a solution looking for a problem also: server colocation had been around for 30 years prior True, although "you get root on it", "it takes 2 minutes to set up", and "it costs $10/mo" were properties that never really lived together before "the cloud". The value prop for cloud VMs was immediately obvious for a lot of people. And, at least in the crowd I roll with, managed systems like Google App Engine had very obvious utility out of the gate too (I can just push Python code to it and it'll manage all the servers for me? Woah!)

vectorpush 9y ago

This is a typical condescending blockchain enthusiast line. Stop implying that the critics don't understand how things work, it's insulting, intellectually lazy and false. When the blockchain is actually useful enthusiasts won't have to beg everyone to give it a chance.

s73v3r_ 9y ago

I personally have animosity toward a lot of them because they've spiked the price of graphics cards to crazy levels.

thisisit 9y ago

Can we please stop labelling doubt and maybe cynicism as hate? It is nonsensical and doesn't add to the discussion. It rather makes people even more defensive and argue their position even harder.