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HN’s never ending hatred of crypto is so funny to me. On the one hand it’s “Disrupt incumbents! Software eats the world! Through the Internet all things can be

HN’s never ending hatred of crypto is so funny to me. On the one hand it’s “Disrupt incumbents! Software eats the world! Through the Internet all things can be made better!” But when it comes to crypto “No! We love our stodgy ancient corrupt banking system and the money laundering crooks that run them and extract ridiculous fees for terrible service!” Permanent “psyduck confused” look on my face.

birdyrooster 6y ago
I think it’s because if bitcoin continues this trend, we might not like who we have just enriched. Do you really want the new largest currency market to be dominated by a handful of families from one or two nations?
nico_h 6y ago
it’s because it only compounds the existing problems of the current banking system: more anonymity, not actually that decentralized, not less corrupt, still concentrated power. the only improvement is possibly fees.
simias 6y ago
10+ years on, billions of dollars poured into various coins and ICOs and still nothing to show for it. It's like an even nerdier Star Citizen.
- vmception 6y ago
  Its the strange higher standard put on crypto that’s oddest to me. Those ICO issuers have a great business model, haven’t cracked recurring revenue yet, but alot of revenue! There is also a large services sector, no different than the adtech sector or any other sector with questionable utility. I worked on many mobile apps that weren’t worth it for the company, and was praised for it. But crypto is the one that has to convince you of...... what? “There are alot of customers, go where the customers are - Except if it’s crypto, then I’ll just spend all my energy talking about unrelated crypto issues in a incoherent tirade.“
  - wmf 6y ago
    Crypto people have been talking about "revolution" and "the future of money" for almost ten years and by that standard they aren't delivering.
    - vmception 6y ago
      The "future of money revolution" is one user story. It offers a place to express angst in monetary policy, no different than startup founders talking about disrupting whatever, it's the same wave. It offers some utility in that regard and is still growing at a noteworthy pace. (capital is bypassing bitcoin and going straight into stablecoins which settle on bitcoin and ether. bitcoin and ether are becoming primarily used as fuel. check the marketcap growth of stablecoins over the last 6 months, it is new capital.) I completely understand how to hold seizure-free assets, some of that involves the discretion of a judge with cash and physical property held in trust's name, some of that involves the permissionless nature of crypto, stored properly. Its just a tool and it's actually pretty okay at what it does. In other areas, 10 years ago I couldn't convert an international wire transfer into a domestic wire transfer, now I can and it avoids greater compliance scrutiny and speed, while retaining unlimited amounts, and inherits same day settlement. (corporate transaction another country paid in crypto, converted to fiat in local bank, transferred to local brokerage account, 6-7 figures or higher.) Without crypto, I as of recently have transferwise and now Revolut to do the same thing, which both have an extremely long list of unsupported businesses and transfer limits that are pretty decent but not as good. There is a slower regulatory process of making any of this practical, which is still happening, such as the processes that allowed Kraken to get that bank charter. Wyoming's laws were passed in 2018, went into force 2019, and Kraken was in regulatory approval since then. On the federal level, of OCC just gave its gracings to national banks to custody digital assets, this year! This will be challenged, primarily by Wyoming lobbyists, who wants Congress to make that order or not. Only Bitcoin has risk management financial products, not even Ethereum yet, in 2020. There is also a large market of customers in the crypto arena, and high margin business models that don't require that many customers in order to book 7 figures of revenue.
      - anon9001 6y ago
- companyhen 6y ago
  The narrative has moved on to Decentralized Finance. Over $9 billion is now locked in DeFi apps - https://defipulse.com https://defipulse.com - Instead of being like the ICO bubble, in DeFi you lock your money up (not exchange it for a worthless token built on vaporware).
- Kiro 6y ago
  You really haven't been paying attention if you think Star Citizen is nothing. It's an amazing game I've spent thousands of hours on.
marcinzm 6y ago
>“Disrupt incumbents! Software eats the world! Through the Internet all things can be made better!” I don't see much of that to be honest. Lots of fears about the impact of things like AI, broken VC system having a net negative impact, advantages of limiting freedom of speech on online platforms, abuses by large software companies, etc, etc. If anything there's a pervasive view against rampant unrestricted capitalism and crypto generally ties itself to rampant unrestricted capitalism.
bawolff 6y ago
> No! We love our stodgy ancient corrupt banking system and the money laundering crooks that run them... Ah yes- Cryptocurrencies are definitely going to put money laundering crooks out of business.
- gruez 6y ago
  Why not? If anyone can launder money with a click of a button, why would you pay corrupt bankers to do it? It's the same idea behind legalizing drugs to put cartels out of business.
  - arcticbull 6y ago
    Because the lack of centralized authority de facto means that you accept money laundering as a non-issue. Your thesis that by "not paying corrupt bankers" the issue goes away is nuts. Entire technology stacks - Zcash, Monero, tumblers - exist to satisfy this desire. This idea that not paying middle men makes money laundering go away is bananas. Legalizing drugs doesn't make drugs go away. Legalizing drugs makes the middle men go away. If you're trying to stop drugs, this is a dreadful way of doing it. The argument implicit in legalization is there's no reason to stop people using drugs, and that the real harm comes from the middle men. This is not the case against money laundering. There's good reason to stop money money laundering. If you're intent on concealing the original source of your funds it's because you're attempting to conceal criminal activity and/or tax evasion. This criminal activity is what AML laws are attempting to stop. C'mon now, a full 1/3 of Tether's bankroll was seized by regulators due to their having been a massive party to laundering. You can't really be making this argument with a straight face... can you?
arcticbull 6y ago
Woah. Ok, there's a lot to unpack here. 1) > “Disrupt incumbents! Software eats the world! Through the Internet all things can be made better!” Yes, through the internet lots of things can be made better. That hardly means that every attempt is right, good, or laudable. That hardly means that every attempt should be free of judgement, free of having to stand on its own merits, free from being challenged. You get that yeah? 2) > But when it comes to crypto “No! We love our stodgy ancient corrupt banking system and the money laundering crooks that run them and extract ridiculous fees for terrible service!” "Stodgy, ancient, corrupt" is a strong judgement you have not provided any support for whatsoever. Portions of the system folks assume fit that description they frequently simply do not understand and love to use as their perennial whipping boy. For instance, inflation. There's nothing corrupt about inflation. Inflation is designed to incentivize investment. Money as designed is meant to be a temporary, lossy store of value. Inflation is designed to push you towards investment. That can frequently even just be a savings account -- which collateralizes loans. Inflation is the benchmark "rate to beat" in order to make your capital allocations, and pick winners. 3) > "... extract ridiculous fees for terrible service!” Do... do they? My bank charges me nothing. Ally charges nobody anything for, well, anything. So does this entire generation of online banking. Schwab. Just check out nerdwallet for a list. I've had nothing but good experience with them. 4) Permanent “psyduck confused” look on my face. Let me try and explain with a few salient points. - Bitcoin has a worse wealth distribution than any banana republic. This means that a small few folks possess literally all the wealth there is to be had and the rest of the plebs are playing with pennies. This is not the "new money" people deserve. - No centralization means all sorts of garbage things are permitted: money laundering, crime facilitating, scams, schemes, separating folks from their wealth. - It uses more power than an average country to record 7 transactions per second. BTC uses 70TWh per year of power and generates 12kT of e-waste. For nothing. Each transaction requires as much power as an average US household uses in 21 days, and generates 105g of e-waste. TWO transactions is the same as chucking an iPhone out the window. This is intended behavior. - 15,000 coins are lost per day. Massive deflation results, or as the community puts it "SFYL". This is intended behavior. - It's a user-hostile technology that punishes users in the amount of their net worth if they make tiny understandable mistakes. This is intended behavior. - More than 50% of the hash power is centralized in 5 mining pools in the PRC. Using BTC would be the equivalent of giving China control of the currency. This is a natural consequence of proof-of-waste schemes. - At an average $0.14 per kWh, a single BTC transaction actually costs $84, which is currently being socialized across the block reward. As the reward drops fewer people will mine it, this in turn reduces the security of the system. The system will not survive. There's really truly nothing to like. It's old, crap tech that supports money laundering and speculation. Nothing more.
Yizahi 6y ago
"We want to decentralize money!" "Here is what you have asked - completely decentralized money printed out of thin air by 3 guys in the non-extradition offshore island. Enjoy your freedom!" Something like that.

birdyrooster 6y ago

I think it’s because if bitcoin continues this trend, we might not like who we have just enriched. Do you really want the new largest currency market to be dominated by a handful of families from one or two nations?

nico_h 6y ago

it’s because it only compounds the existing problems of the current banking system: more anonymity, not actually that decentralized, not less corrupt, still concentrated power. the only improvement is possibly fees.

simias 6y ago

10+ years on, billions of dollars poured into various coins and ICOs and still nothing to show for it. It's like an even nerdier Star Citizen.

vmception 6y ago
Its the strange higher standard put on crypto that’s oddest to me. Those ICO issuers have a great business model, haven’t cracked recurring revenue yet, but alot of revenue! There is also a large services sector, no different than the adtech sector or any other sector with questionable utility. I worked on many mobile apps that weren’t worth it for the company, and was praised for it. But crypto is the one that has to convince you of...... what? “There are alot of customers, go where the customers are - Except if it’s crypto, then I’ll just spend all my energy talking about unrelated crypto issues in a incoherent tirade.“
- wmf 6y ago
  Crypto people have been talking about "revolution" and "the future of money" for almost ten years and by that standard they aren't delivering.
  - vmception 6y ago
    The "future of money revolution" is one user story. It offers a place to express angst in monetary policy, no different than startup founders talking about disrupting whatever, it's the same wave. It offers some utility in that regard and is still growing at a noteworthy pace. (capital is bypassing bitcoin and going straight into stablecoins which settle on bitcoin and ether. bitcoin and ether are becoming primarily used as fuel. check the marketcap growth of stablecoins over the last 6 months, it is new capital.) I completely understand how to hold seizure-free assets, some of that involves the discretion of a judge with cash and physical property held in trust's name, some of that involves the permissionless nature of crypto, stored properly. Its just a tool and it's actually pretty okay at what it does. In other areas, 10 years ago I couldn't convert an international wire transfer into a domestic wire transfer, now I can and it avoids greater compliance scrutiny and speed, while retaining unlimited amounts, and inherits same day settlement. (corporate transaction another country paid in crypto, converted to fiat in local bank, transferred to local brokerage account, 6-7 figures or higher.) Without crypto, I as of recently have transferwise and now Revolut to do the same thing, which both have an extremely long list of unsupported businesses and transfer limits that are pretty decent but not as good. There is a slower regulatory process of making any of this practical, which is still happening, such as the processes that allowed Kraken to get that bank charter. Wyoming's laws were passed in 2018, went into force 2019, and Kraken was in regulatory approval since then. On the federal level, of OCC just gave its gracings to national banks to custody digital assets, this year! This will be challenged, primarily by Wyoming lobbyists, who wants Congress to make that order or not. Only Bitcoin has risk management financial products, not even Ethereum yet, in 2020. There is also a large market of customers in the crypto arena, and high margin business models that don't require that many customers in order to book 7 figures of revenue.
    - anon9001 6y ago
companyhen 6y ago
The narrative has moved on to Decentralized Finance. Over $9 billion is now locked in DeFi apps - https://defipulse.com https://defipulse.com - Instead of being like the ICO bubble, in DeFi you lock your money up (not exchange it for a worthless token built on vaporware).
Kiro 6y ago
You really haven't been paying attention if you think Star Citizen is nothing. It's an amazing game I've spent thousands of hours on.

marcinzm 6y ago

>“Disrupt incumbents! Software eats the world! Through the Internet all things can be made better!” I don't see much of that to be honest. Lots of fears about the impact of things like AI, broken VC system having a net negative impact, advantages of limiting freedom of speech on online platforms, abuses by large software companies, etc, etc. If anything there's a pervasive view against rampant unrestricted capitalism and crypto generally ties itself to rampant unrestricted capitalism.

bawolff 6y ago

> No! We love our stodgy ancient corrupt banking system and the money laundering crooks that run them... Ah yes- Cryptocurrencies are definitely going to put money laundering crooks out of business.

gruez 6y ago
Why not? If anyone can launder money with a click of a button, why would you pay corrupt bankers to do it? It's the same idea behind legalizing drugs to put cartels out of business.
- arcticbull 6y ago
  Because the lack of centralized authority de facto means that you accept money laundering as a non-issue. Your thesis that by "not paying corrupt bankers" the issue goes away is nuts. Entire technology stacks - Zcash, Monero, tumblers - exist to satisfy this desire. This idea that not paying middle men makes money laundering go away is bananas. Legalizing drugs doesn't make drugs go away. Legalizing drugs makes the middle men go away. If you're trying to stop drugs, this is a dreadful way of doing it. The argument implicit in legalization is there's no reason to stop people using drugs, and that the real harm comes from the middle men. This is not the case against money laundering. There's good reason to stop money money laundering. If you're intent on concealing the original source of your funds it's because you're attempting to conceal criminal activity and/or tax evasion. This criminal activity is what AML laws are attempting to stop. C'mon now, a full 1/3 of Tether's bankroll was seized by regulators due to their having been a massive party to laundering. You can't really be making this argument with a straight face... can you?

arcticbull 6y ago

Woah. Ok, there's a lot to unpack here. 1) > “Disrupt incumbents! Software eats the world! Through the Internet all things can be made better!” Yes, through the internet lots of things can be made better. That hardly means that every attempt is right, good, or laudable. That hardly means that every attempt should be free of judgement, free of having to stand on its own merits, free from being challenged. You get that yeah? 2) > But when it comes to crypto “No! We love our stodgy ancient corrupt banking system and the money laundering crooks that run them and extract ridiculous fees for terrible service!” "Stodgy, ancient, corrupt" is a strong judgement you have not provided any support for whatsoever. Portions of the system folks assume fit that description they frequently simply do not understand and love to use as their perennial whipping boy. For instance, inflation. There's nothing corrupt about inflation. Inflation is designed to incentivize investment. Money as designed is meant to be a temporary, lossy store of value. Inflation is designed to push you towards investment. That can frequently even just be a savings account -- which collateralizes loans. Inflation is the benchmark "rate to beat" in order to make your capital allocations, and pick winners. 3) > "... extract ridiculous fees for terrible service!” Do... do they? My bank charges me nothing. Ally charges nobody anything for, well, anything. So does this entire generation of online banking. Schwab. Just check out nerdwallet for a list. I've had nothing but good experience with them. 4) Permanent “psyduck confused” look on my face. Let me try and explain with a few salient points. - Bitcoin has a worse wealth distribution than any banana republic. This means that a small few folks possess literally all the wealth there is to be had and the rest of the plebs are playing with pennies. This is not the "new money" people deserve. - No centralization means all sorts of garbage things are permitted: money laundering, crime facilitating, scams, schemes, separating folks from their wealth. - It uses more power than an average country to record 7 transactions per second. BTC uses 70TWh per year of power and generates 12kT of e-waste. For nothing. Each transaction requires as much power as an average US household uses in 21 days, and generates 105g of e-waste. TWO transactions is the same as chucking an iPhone out the window. This is intended behavior. - 15,000 coins are lost per day. Massive deflation results, or as the community puts it "SFYL". This is intended behavior. - It's a user-hostile technology that punishes users in the amount of their net worth if they make tiny understandable mistakes. This is intended behavior. - More than 50% of the hash power is centralized in 5 mining pools in the PRC. Using BTC would be the equivalent of giving China control of the currency. This is a natural consequence of proof-of-waste schemes. - At an average $0.14 per kWh, a single BTC transaction actually costs $84, which is currently being socialized across the block reward. As the reward drops fewer people will mine it, this in turn reduces the security of the system. The system will not survive. There's really truly nothing to like. It's old, crap tech that supports money laundering and speculation. Nothing more.

Yizahi 6y ago

"We want to decentralize money!" "Here is what you have asked - completely decentralized money printed out of thin air by 3 guys in the non-extradition offshore island. Enjoy your freedom!" Something like that.