5 ms·

When I hear "ICO/coins/mines/tokens/blockchain" my brain switches to "scam mode" and I switch to something else.

tasuki 7y ago
I have the same visceral reaction. Is it possible the "scam mode" label is incorrect in this case? I guess you could say they scammed the VCs to donate their money to various nonprofits... https://www.fsf.org/news/free-software-foundation-receives-1-million-from-handshake https://www.fsf.org/news/free-software-foundation-receives-1... https://www.gnome.org/news/2018/08/gnome-foundation-receives-400000-from-handshake-org/ https://www.gnome.org/news/2018/08/gnome-foundation-receives... https://www.debian.org/News/2019/20190329 https://www.debian.org/News/2019/20190329 Modern day Robin Hood?
101404 7y ago
It was the same in 2000 with anything internet, and then again some years later with Web 2.0. Simply switching to "scam mode" may sound good in a forum post, but you miss the interesting stuff too.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  It's not that unjustifiable if almost every cryptocurrency-related project out there turns out to be a scam. I'm not saying nothing will ever come out of this technology - just that, at this point in time, it's wise to approach every such project as fraudlent until proven otherwise.
  - rasengan 7y ago
    > It's not that unjustifiable if almost every cryptocurrency-related project out there turns out to be a scam. Please make a list of the scams that exist within the top 200 coins. If this can’t be done or it’s a nominal percentage of them, then this statement you made is false. There are definitely a few people loudly calling projects scams on HN. That doesn’t suddenly make every project a scam - it just shows ignorance. It’s similar to racism - judge a book by its cover so to speak.
    - WorldMaker 7y ago
      If one believes that the Proof of Work algorithm/behavior itself is a scam at a technological level, then the onus is on you to prove which of the Top 200 coins has a valid business model with a valid sustainable growth model. Building lots of git commits until you get a commit hash that starts with the right number of zeroes is a fascinating scam that is wasting so much computing power, energy, etc that it almost should be a crime, whether or not you believe that these git commits with lots of zeroes in the hash numbers are used for anything more than nearly criminal Ponzi Schemes beside that.
lowwave 7y ago
While I can't vouch for the financial incentive regarding the VC funding. From a pure technical perspective, wouldn't it be better to have a blockchain style of recording keeping instead of having the record to be in one central location?
- tirpen 7y ago
  No. I haven't looked into this particular implementation, but most blockchains have the fundamental problem of being immutable. Storing domain names in an immutable registry seems like a legal disaster waiting to happen. What if someone registers a domain whose name contains sensitive personally identifiable information? Like www.elon-musks-SSN-is-0123456789.com? Everyone who distributes the DNS records might be in violation of the GDPR and similar laws. And similarly if the name of a domain is found to be libel.
  - thinkmassive 7y ago
    Instead of speculating, you could try to find the real answer... https://handshake.org/faq/ https://handshake.org/faq/ tl;dr: Censorship resistance is a feature, not a bug. Names are registered for a year at a time. Existing TLDs and the top 100,000 Alexa websites are reserved for existing DNS registrants.
    - brazzy 7y ago
      It very much is a bug to design your system incapable of complying with existing laws. Calling it "censorship resistance" doesn't make that noble, just dishonest. It's also funny how the FAQ explicitly claims better protection of registrants' personal information as a feature, yet according to you a complete inability to protect anyone's personal information that some puts out there is also a feature...
      - dependenttypes 7y ago
        If something is leaked once it is leaked forever. Anyway, would you say the same about projects like tor or freenet? They have censorship resistance too.

I have the same visceral reaction. Is it possible the "scam mode" label is incorrect in this case? I guess you could say they scammed the VCs to donate their money to various nonprofits... https://www.fsf.org/news/free-software-foundation-receives-1-million-from-handshake https://www.fsf.org/news/free-software-foundation-receives-1... https://www.gnome.org/news/2018/08/gnome-foundation-receives-400000-from-handshake-org/ https://www.gnome.org/news/2018/08/gnome-foundation-receives... https://www.debian.org/News/2019/20190329 https://www.debian.org/News/2019/20190329 Modern day Robin Hood?

101404 7y ago

It was the same in 2000 with anything internet, and then again some years later with Web 2.0. Simply switching to "scam mode" may sound good in a forum post, but you miss the interesting stuff too.

TeMPOraL 7y ago
It's not that unjustifiable if almost every cryptocurrency-related project out there turns out to be a scam. I'm not saying nothing will ever come out of this technology - just that, at this point in time, it's wise to approach every such project as fraudlent until proven otherwise.
- rasengan 7y ago
  > It's not that unjustifiable if almost every cryptocurrency-related project out there turns out to be a scam. Please make a list of the scams that exist within the top 200 coins. If this can’t be done or it’s a nominal percentage of them, then this statement you made is false. There are definitely a few people loudly calling projects scams on HN. That doesn’t suddenly make every project a scam - it just shows ignorance. It’s similar to racism - judge a book by its cover so to speak.
  - WorldMaker 7y ago
    If one believes that the Proof of Work algorithm/behavior itself is a scam at a technological level, then the onus is on you to prove which of the Top 200 coins has a valid business model with a valid sustainable growth model. Building lots of git commits until you get a commit hash that starts with the right number of zeroes is a fascinating scam that is wasting so much computing power, energy, etc that it almost should be a crime, whether or not you believe that these git commits with lots of zeroes in the hash numbers are used for anything more than nearly criminal Ponzi Schemes beside that.

lowwave 7y ago

While I can't vouch for the financial incentive regarding the VC funding. From a pure technical perspective, wouldn't it be better to have a blockchain style of recording keeping instead of having the record to be in one central location?

tirpen 7y ago
No. I haven't looked into this particular implementation, but most blockchains have the fundamental problem of being immutable. Storing domain names in an immutable registry seems like a legal disaster waiting to happen. What if someone registers a domain whose name contains sensitive personally identifiable information? Like www.elon-musks-SSN-is-0123456789.com? Everyone who distributes the DNS records might be in violation of the GDPR and similar laws. And similarly if the name of a domain is found to be libel.
- thinkmassive 7y ago
  Instead of speculating, you could try to find the real answer... https://handshake.org/faq/ https://handshake.org/faq/ tl;dr: Censorship resistance is a feature, not a bug. Names are registered for a year at a time. Existing TLDs and the top 100,000 Alexa websites are reserved for existing DNS registrants.
  - brazzy 7y ago
    It very much is a bug to design your system incapable of complying with existing laws. Calling it "censorship resistance" doesn't make that noble, just dishonest. It's also funny how the FAQ explicitly claims better protection of registrants' personal information as a feature, yet according to you a complete inability to protect anyone's personal information that some puts out there is also a feature...
    - dependenttypes 7y ago
      If something is leaked once it is leaked forever. Anyway, would you say the same about projects like tor or freenet? They have censorship resistance too.