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HN is full of bitter commenters who have been predicting the death of cryptocurrency for a decade, and it hasn’t come true. A community that learned of Bitcoin

HN is full of bitter commenters who have been predicting the death of cryptocurrency for a decade, and it hasn’t come true. A community that learned of Bitcoin right as it was invented, dismissed it, and missed out on huge fortunes. Well, some people here thought for themselves and analyzed the technology and ideas on its merits. Just not the people who comment on these posts.

rawrmaan 7y ago
You analyzed Bitcoin on its technologies and merits and concluded that it’s a useful currency? Yikes.
- bdcravens 7y ago
  I don’t think that was the crux of the comment. “.... missed out on huge fortunes” tells you where the focus is.
malvosenior 7y ago
I think Bitcoin pushes a lot of people's buttons because it was so new, exotic and difficult to understand that it really challenged a lot of people who consider themselves smart. I know I didn't "get it" right off the bat but I couldn't shake the feeling that the fact that I didn't understand it was a signal that something special was going on. So I kept pushing forwards. I read the whitepaper and thought, this seems cool but I still don't get it, something must be here. So I read more books (Mastering Bitcoin by O'Reilly is amazing). Finally I got it, understood the potential and realized just how amazing these concepts were. Unfortunately at that point the price had already risen to the point where I couldn't just buy hundreds of these things. I bought a few and now that looks like a freaking amazing investment. During this story arc, I also witnessed a growing dissent against Bitcoin. A lot of it came from the media and tech adjacent people but not technologists themselves. Initial complaints were more or less ad hominems (money for filthy nerds), as the currency went up in value, the story morphed conveniently to an ecological one as the rebuttal for that requires deeper knowledge of crypto and an acknowledgement of the energy consumption used to secure regular money. Now you get on HN and it's just hated. Passionate hate. I figure it's a mix of people that could have understood it and didn't until it was too late, people who still don't understand it, and people who don't like it due to the constant barrage of negative media coverage.
wickoff 7y ago
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security/technology/own-your-identity https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security/technology/own-your... Meanwhile Microsoft is building a distributed system on top of Bitcoin to help people get rid of passwords and take ownership of their data and identity. The protocol is blockchain agnostic, the only requirement is a public blockhain, they're using Bitcoin because it's the most secure one. They've calculated that when batching transactions they could give an globally verifiable identity to every person on the planet using only a tiny fraction of Bitcoin's 2MB~ every 10 minutes blockspace. The users of the system would have no clue that they're using Bitcoin, they would download an app that just works. If public Blockchains end up being massively adopted it's going to through Layer 2 protocols like Microsoft DID or the Lightning Network that barely touch the actual blockchain layer because blockchains don't scale.
- lostmsu 7y ago
  Are you sure about Bitcoin? Last time I've been to some Microsoft talk about blockchain, they used ethereum.
  - wickoff 7y ago
    This project is using Bitcoin. https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Azure-Active-Directory-Identity/Toward-scalable-decentralized-identifier-systems/ba-p/560168 https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Azure-Active-Director... MS has an Azure service that allows people to spin up private Ethereum blockchains, but they don't have any projects that utilize public Ethereum network.
rchaud 7y ago
> and missed out on huge fortunes So they missed out on a gold rush, so what? Another will appear in due time, be it Beanie Babies, Tamagotchis or Fidget Spinners. > Well, some people here thought for themselves and analyzed the technology and ideas on its merits. You are talking about buy low, sell high. The bitcoin boom was in 2017, what changed in the underlying technology?
bdcravens 7y ago
> some people here thought for themselves and analyzed the technology and ideas on its merits I was mining back in 2011, so I'm very familiar with the technology and its merits. I've witnessed the price swings, the FOMO, the exchange "hacks". I'm very active in Bitcoin discussions under a pseudonym. My conclusion: the technology and the price are orthogonal.

rawrmaan 7y ago

You analyzed Bitcoin on its technologies and merits and concluded that it’s a useful currency? Yikes.

bdcravens 7y ago
I don’t think that was the crux of the comment. “.... missed out on huge fortunes” tells you where the focus is.

malvosenior 7y ago

I think Bitcoin pushes a lot of people's buttons because it was so new, exotic and difficult to understand that it really challenged a lot of people who consider themselves smart. I know I didn't "get it" right off the bat but I couldn't shake the feeling that the fact that I didn't understand it was a signal that something special was going on. So I kept pushing forwards. I read the whitepaper and thought, this seems cool but I still don't get it, something must be here. So I read more books (Mastering Bitcoin by O'Reilly is amazing). Finally I got it, understood the potential and realized just how amazing these concepts were. Unfortunately at that point the price had already risen to the point where I couldn't just buy hundreds of these things. I bought a few and now that looks like a freaking amazing investment. During this story arc, I also witnessed a growing dissent against Bitcoin. A lot of it came from the media and tech adjacent people but not technologists themselves. Initial complaints were more or less ad hominems (money for filthy nerds), as the currency went up in value, the story morphed conveniently to an ecological one as the rebuttal for that requires deeper knowledge of crypto and an acknowledgement of the energy consumption used to secure regular money. Now you get on HN and it's just hated. Passionate hate. I figure it's a mix of people that could have understood it and didn't until it was too late, people who still don't understand it, and people who don't like it due to the constant barrage of negative media coverage.

wickoff 7y ago

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security/technology/own-your-identity https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security/technology/own-your... Meanwhile Microsoft is building a distributed system on top of Bitcoin to help people get rid of passwords and take ownership of their data and identity. The protocol is blockchain agnostic, the only requirement is a public blockhain, they're using Bitcoin because it's the most secure one. They've calculated that when batching transactions they could give an globally verifiable identity to every person on the planet using only a tiny fraction of Bitcoin's 2MB~ every 10 minutes blockspace. The users of the system would have no clue that they're using Bitcoin, they would download an app that just works. If public Blockchains end up being massively adopted it's going to through Layer 2 protocols like Microsoft DID or the Lightning Network that barely touch the actual blockchain layer because blockchains don't scale.

lostmsu 7y ago
Are you sure about Bitcoin? Last time I've been to some Microsoft talk about blockchain, they used ethereum.
- wickoff 7y ago
  This project is using Bitcoin. https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Azure-Active-Directory-Identity/Toward-scalable-decentralized-identifier-systems/ba-p/560168 https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Azure-Active-Director... MS has an Azure service that allows people to spin up private Ethereum blockchains, but they don't have any projects that utilize public Ethereum network.

rchaud 7y ago

> and missed out on huge fortunes So they missed out on a gold rush, so what? Another will appear in due time, be it Beanie Babies, Tamagotchis or Fidget Spinners. > Well, some people here thought for themselves and analyzed the technology and ideas on its merits. You are talking about buy low, sell high. The bitcoin boom was in 2017, what changed in the underlying technology?

bdcravens 7y ago

> some people here thought for themselves and analyzed the technology and ideas on its merits I was mining back in 2011, so I'm very familiar with the technology and its merits. I've witnessed the price swings, the FOMO, the exchange "hacks". I'm very active in Bitcoin discussions under a pseudonym. My conclusion: the technology and the price are orthogonal.