3 ms·

I respect your stubbornness to pick something and run with it in the face of people saying it won't work, to get great leverage you need to be outside the mains

I respect your stubbornness to pick something and run with it in the face of people saying it won't work, to get great leverage you need to be outside the mainstream view in some way. But, I am not outside the mainstream; I named several things about the internet in 1995 that would draw people in, and asked what would be the comparable ideas for BitCoin. You very bluntly replied that you can't chat to people with bitcoin because it's not a chat protocol. Either deliberately, or accidentally, missing the point. You named savings, and sending people money. Two things I can already do, and am not excited about. And that's ... it. You tell me "it's not about riches" then say I should invest for a speculative 50x-100x return. I don't think it's dangerous, I think it's dumb. I think gambling on it paid off, and gamblers think that's proof they were smart. I think your "selling shovels to gold miners'" approach is sensible and a good way to make a more stable but smaller return from it. > "Let's rephrase that for 1995: If you're a company and you open an online store, it makes life harder for you [...]" But no, in 1995 you don't open an online store because there isn't a big popular trusted way to pay for things over the internet. You pay someone to develop a website, put your domain on your business cards, have a promotional brochure-style website that acts like your entry in the Yellow Pages. Cheap marketing. Gives people your details, address, phone number, ways to contact you offline. It gets you email, a way for new customers to contact you - and maybe for you to contact your suppliers. It's comparatively low cost, low risk, the tech details are probably entirely handled by a web developer company so you barely have to care at all, but if you do care you can gradually add completely new things to your company like an email newsletter, an inventory of parts too detailed to bother publishing on paper, referral links to companies you have deals with, making more potential customers able to find you. You apparently can't do anything /new/ if you accept payments by BitCoin or lean on a blockchain. In twelve years, nobody has come up with a killer app, or even a mildly compelling app. Most likely you let your payment provider deal with it, but in so doing it doesn't add any new abilities. Look at what happened to Git since it appeared in 2005, iPhone in 2007, Apple app store in ~2009, and compare their use to Bitcoin use (not hype, use) in the same time frame. > "the payment you get might be stolen in ways you don't understand with no oversight or regulation and law enforcement with little experience of what to do next." But no, because it's US dollars, traded by credit card companies. It's a big, established, regulated industry and credit companies insure you against loss of your funds, because they have an image as a trustworthy financial company to uphold, and all the credit cards are (supposed to be) issued to real people with provable IDs, typically in the same company. Again the risk is low, and often taken by a payment provider. Here, in 1995 or 1999, opening an online store opens up a large new market. For today, BitCoin? If you have it handled by a payment provider you don't even have to hear or know about it. It opens nothing new, there is approximately nobody who has BitCoin who doesn't also have your local currency and who you want to deal with[1]. If you don't, and you have to deal with it, it opens you to a market of people who are interested in being anonymous, deregulated, anarchic, no companies with insurance or images to uphold, uncertain legal/tax/regulatory status for you to declare your above-board use of it, and developing ecosystem with tons of competing coins and behaviours you have to pay attention to. > "It's such an obvious failure of LW they did a few postmortems, to try to understand how they could get it so wrong:" Even that thread says Gwern was right for the wrong reasons, that BitCoin hasn't become the world currency and is "unclear" why its valuation is so high. > "* It's fun to create things that benefit a lot of people - like free software early on. Have you forgotten the hacker spirit?" No, I'm quite happy with a bit of bit-twiddling. I never got the "hacker" spirit of "eat ramen, build a startup, sell it for billions". > "Instead, I relied on the wisdom of the HN crowd, which denounced bitcoin as a dangerous scam, and trusted them." I don't argue that it's dangerous, only that it's minimally boringly utility useful at best, at worst a tulip bubble. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania > "actually, a lot worse, due to Dunning-Krugger effect*" For someone gloating about being superior and retired, you still end up in the same HN thread as me, with a massive chip on your shoulder and an inferiority complex. [1] e.g. say you think Venezuela's currency is in a bad way and you want to sell to people in BitCoin. Are they going to be eager to buy trinkets from the USA, and you want to trust their postal service and import staff and import duties, while their economy is in tatters? It might be that "countries with collapsing economies and dysfunctional governments" are a new market you can enter, but not most people's first choice.

1996 6y ago
> You tell me "it's not about riches" then say I should invest for a speculative 50x-100x return. I don't think it's dangerous, I think it's dumb. I think gambling on it paid off, and gamblers think that's proof they were smart Gambling can be smart, when the expected value is greater than the cost of the ticket - or when ticket price itself is insignificant, like the 10 coins as suggested in 2010. That's what I meant with my suggestion to waste $500 - you won't miss them much, and even if it won't make you rich, it will have clear upsides for you, like a new car. And I'm sure it's a safe bet for someone reading HN. But apparently, you are extremely risk averse. I think that's another defining features of a lot of the geeks here. This is the only way I can frame that, as I just don't understand a refusal to take such a simple action. If it's not too much to ask, can you better explain me your reasons? Is $500 a large amount of money for your budget? Or is it more about the risks of regrets of taking an action that's greater that then risk of of regret of not-taking an action? > I never got the "hacker" spirit of "eat ramen, build a startup, sell it for billions". Exactly what I thought! The hacker spirit is a taste for risk and fun, as understanding things allows you gain more control of your destiny ; it's a bit like "work hard play hard", along with a hefty disdain of the mainstream. > In twelve years, nobody has come up with a killer app, or even a mildly compelling app I see fully self managed payment and saving as game changing, you don't. We have very different takes, maybe due to our different preferences: personally, I don't want to ever depend on a payment provider that I don't fully control. "be your own bank" is the killer app for me. > For someone gloating about being superior and retired, you still end up in the same HN thread as me, with a massive chip on your shoulder and an inferiority complex. Superior? Gloating? No, I only find it sad. Because as you correctly noticed, I feel I can't relate to the other hackers anymore. I still help a few projects, and share interesting nuggets, but I feel like I'm in another world now, due to a profound difference in values and understanding. (I seriously wonder about the $500 - which is why I asked you) After the 50x happens in about 30x years, you may not remember this conversation but I will remember how yet again I was unable to make someone take a clear beneficial action. It's like a reverse Chicken Little syndrome forcing me to watch as other hackers pass opportunities.
- jodrellblank 6y ago
  > "If it's not too much to ask, can you better explain me your reasons? Is $500 a large amount of money for your budget?" BitCoin has no associations in my mind except distasteful scams, hustle and the seedier side of life. The feeling is that you're trying to convince me to buy into Amway or an MLM scheme or a holiday time share. It wouldn't just be "wasting $500" it would be "being scammed". Wasting $500 would be mildly annoying, being scammed while watching it happen and thinking "this is a scam" and still going along with it would be infuriating. I could spare it. If I lost it, the loss would not inconvenience me. But you are acting as if BitCoin is doing something new here - I can already hold some high-risk/high-return investments, and they are some that I think have a chance of increasing in value for reasons that I understand at least at a high level. For one example, Segway had a very understandable business model: invent and patent a new vehicle, make and sell it. The risk was that nobody would buy, and they didn't. By comparison, I don't understand at any level why BitCoin's price is what it is, and have no confidence it won't collapse suddenly and completely instead of going up. I don't know what it would take to make the price go 50x higher to get any feeling if that's likely or unlikely. I don't know why it would happen to Bitcoin specifically instead of Litecoin, Namecoin, Peercoin, Dogecoin, xRipple, Nxt, Monero, Stellar, Ethereum, etc. Buying a cheap speculative thing and losing it is one thing, throwing away money on an idea I think is supid and overpriced and then losing it, is another. > "After the 50x happens in about 30x years" Did you notice that several stocks went up >50x this year alone? Stocks related to speculative COVID-19 vaccines, for example Novacyt went up from £0.14p in January to peak at £11.94 in October - https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/NCYT.L?p=NCYT.L&.tsrc=fin-srch https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/NCYT.L?p=NCYT.L&.tsrc=fin-sr... - that's 85x in 12 months, still ~60x after the pullback from the peak. As a speculative high-risk gamble, 50x in 30 years is not all that compelling. Are you beating yourself up for not investing in NCYT? Somewhere, on some market around the world, some stock is jumping large multiples every year, or quarter, or month - and missing out doesn't affect you at all. Instead of chasing those, you're chasing something with much less substance, and longer term outlook, why? Is it because you have no information better than anyone else to pick a 'winning stock'? Why do you think you have with BitCoin? Especially if you can't even convince your own kind - techno-geeks? Worse than all this, if I make a bet with an established regulated gambling company, or visit a casino, or buy penny stocks from a regulated share trading company, or buy some Tesla CFDs, I have some idea what I'm getting and some trust that they will be basically honest - they might fiddle the prices a little, but if I sell up and request money, I'll get some money, and if they go under, the UK government's financial regulation may cover some of my losses (not gambling or investment losses, but company mismanagement or fraud). With BitCoin, the most famous exchange was Magic The Gathering Online Exchange (MtGOX) which got hacked, had its bitcoins stolen, then CEO(!) Mark Karpeles joined in the fun and stole a million dollars of bitcoin for himself, then another three million, then maybe they got hacked again, then they went bankrupt. Other exchanges have had lots of people able to buy bitcoin, then when they try to sell the exchange gives them the runaround and won't pay any money: Googling "bitcoin won't let me withdraw", I see "Kraken won't let me withdraw...", "Bittrex won't let me withdraw...", "Binance won't let me withdraw...", "withdrawals disabled on Bitpanda", "my coin is frozen at Paxful they won't let me withdraw it", "WTF IS GOING ON WITH GEMINI NOT LETTING ME WITHDRAW", "Polonius still won't let me withdraw my funds". Presumably some exchanges are secure and trustworthy, but importantly I won't find out until either they lose my coins, lose my coins and don't notice and don't tell me, or I try to sell out for a large chunk of money and can't, and it's too late and I have little legal recourse since they're quite unregulated or not in the same country, etc. > "even if it won't make you rich, it will have clear upsides for you, like a new car" I am in the lucky living bracket where I have enough money for daily life, and some rainy day savings. Ungrateful though it may sound, $25k wouldn't make any difference to my daily life, it would go in a saving account and change nothing short term; I sure wouldn't spend it on a new car just because I had it. The financial amounts that would make a big difference are: a free house (pay off mortgage / buy a property outright), or instant retirement and freedom from work forever. Stable low-risk long-term investments with regular contributions have a reasonable chance of getting me to retirement money by retirement age, which is useful, though unexciting. Risky short term investments that stand a small chance of high return - I already have as many of those as I can stand, and am aware of a few more that could soak up the $500 if that's what I wanted to do with it, that I have more confidence in, and less disgust for, than BTC. > "personally, I don't want to ever depend on a payment provider that I don't fully control. "be your own bank" is the killer app for me. Why? What does that gain you? And what about the obvious objection that you don't fully control BitCoin? Do you mean you don't trust savings in US Dollars? There's other currencies and other asset classes - precious metals, real estate, that can't be inflated away as easily by central policies. At least growing your own food keeps you alive whether or not anyone else values it, money only has value as an exchange with other people who value it similarly, and more people value dollars than bitcoins. "Be your own bank" is uninteresting to me like "be your own home owner's association" where you get to vote with yourself on your own bye-laws about how to keep the value of your property by forbidding yourself from painting it orange, which you didn't want to do anyway. Without all the people in the same area agreeing to the same rules for collective value increase, "do it yourself" can't really do anything. > "Exactly what I thought! The hacker spirit is a taste for risk and fun, as understanding things allows you gain more control of your destiny ; it's a bit like "work hard play hard", along with a hefty disdain of the mainstream." The hacker spirit I respect is Fabrice Bellard writing a JavaScript virtual machine emulator comprehensive and fast enough to boot a Linux VM in a browser[1] or Matthias Wandel's Pantorouter[2], John Carmack's Armadillo Aerospace, or Tom Stanton's flywheel trebuchet[3], Paul Lutus' works, or even things like early SpaceX. It's an engineering inventiveness, building something new or modifying something for an unexpected use, a techno-engineering-playfulness for its own sake, nothing to do with money. The "hacker spirit" of today seems more like growth hacking your Wordpress blog with SEO while you arrange some poor people on an outsourcing site to drop-ship nutritional supplements in your name so you can spend your free time writing a TEDx talk about how you attended a weekend hackathon and got a sneakerbot running on a Raspberry Pi so it can scalp limited edition sneakers and sell them on eBay at a huge markup. It's a greasy, used-car salesman, self-aggrandizing world, it's focused on self-gain, riches, exploiting systems in ways like lootboxes and dark patterns to increase customer retention with borderline-addiction mechanisms. Hacking is at best orthogonal to making money, and at worst corrupted by the influence of money. And to me it's not about disrupting the incumbents; SpaceX wanted to go to Mars, they didn't set out to "do whatever spacey thing made the most money" or "put ULA out of business", if those happen it's a side effect of inventing ways to build cheap reusable rockets on their way past that to a loftier goal. A world with BitCoin and a world without BitCoin ... really what difference will it make? > "After the 50x happens in about 30x years, you may not remember this conversation but I will remember how yet again I was unable to make someone take a clear beneficial action." and what? Are you sad for me that I didn't buy Apple or Amazon stock in 1999? Are you upset that I didn't invest in Segway (assuiming that was an option)? That I didn't buy BeOS? I don't remember the VA Linux IPO, but would you have encouraged me to invest in that? Facebook's IPO? Isn't there supposed to be more to life and more to people than how much money they have or how much they want to participate in various markets? I think Dr Burns TEAMS Cognitive Behavioural Therapy is probably a world changing thing, I've spent many hours listening to his podcasts and think it has the potential to upturn mental health treatment; but there's nothing to invest in and it's a 1:1 therapist/client thing, it won't be web scale or built with AI, and it will likely be sidelined and ignored by mainstream therapists who want repeat custom, can't deal with facing their failings, or get kickbacks from drug companies. I think giving up sugar would be clearly beneficial, I can't make myself do it. Life goes on. [1] https://bellard.org/jslinux/ https://bellard.org/jslinux/ [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wZ1v4PIsYI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wZ1v4PIsYI [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVT5i4nhIGs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVT5i4nhIGs

1996 6y ago

> You tell me "it's not about riches" then say I should invest for a speculative 50x-100x return. I don't think it's dangerous, I think it's dumb. I think gambling on it paid off, and gamblers think that's proof they were smart Gambling can be smart, when the expected value is greater than the cost of the ticket - or when ticket price itself is insignificant, like the 10 coins as suggested in 2010. That's what I meant with my suggestion to waste $500 - you won't miss them much, and even if it won't make you rich, it will have clear upsides for you, like a new car. And I'm sure it's a safe bet for someone reading HN. But apparently, you are extremely risk averse. I think that's another defining features of a lot of the geeks here. This is the only way I can frame that, as I just don't understand a refusal to take such a simple action. If it's not too much to ask, can you better explain me your reasons? Is $500 a large amount of money for your budget? Or is it more about the risks of regrets of taking an action that's greater that then risk of of regret of not-taking an action? > I never got the "hacker" spirit of "eat ramen, build a startup, sell it for billions". Exactly what I thought! The hacker spirit is a taste for risk and fun, as understanding things allows you gain more control of your destiny ; it's a bit like "work hard play hard", along with a hefty disdain of the mainstream. > In twelve years, nobody has come up with a killer app, or even a mildly compelling app I see fully self managed payment and saving as game changing, you don't. We have very different takes, maybe due to our different preferences: personally, I don't want to ever depend on a payment provider that I don't fully control. "be your own bank" is the killer app for me. > For someone gloating about being superior and retired, you still end up in the same HN thread as me, with a massive chip on your shoulder and an inferiority complex. Superior? Gloating? No, I only find it sad. Because as you correctly noticed, I feel I can't relate to the other hackers anymore. I still help a few projects, and share interesting nuggets, but I feel like I'm in another world now, due to a profound difference in values and understanding. (I seriously wonder about the $500 - which is why I asked you) After the 50x happens in about 30x years, you may not remember this conversation but I will remember how yet again I was unable to make someone take a clear beneficial action. It's like a reverse Chicken Little syndrome forcing me to watch as other hackers pass opportunities.

jodrellblank 6y ago
> "If it's not too much to ask, can you better explain me your reasons? Is $500 a large amount of money for your budget?" BitCoin has no associations in my mind except distasteful scams, hustle and the seedier side of life. The feeling is that you're trying to convince me to buy into Amway or an MLM scheme or a holiday time share. It wouldn't just be "wasting $500" it would be "being scammed". Wasting $500 would be mildly annoying, being scammed while watching it happen and thinking "this is a scam" and still going along with it would be infuriating. I could spare it. If I lost it, the loss would not inconvenience me. But you are acting as if BitCoin is doing something new here - I can already hold some high-risk/high-return investments, and they are some that I think have a chance of increasing in value for reasons that I understand at least at a high level. For one example, Segway had a very understandable business model: invent and patent a new vehicle, make and sell it. The risk was that nobody would buy, and they didn't. By comparison, I don't understand at any level why BitCoin's price is what it is, and have no confidence it won't collapse suddenly and completely instead of going up. I don't know what it would take to make the price go 50x higher to get any feeling if that's likely or unlikely. I don't know why it would happen to Bitcoin specifically instead of Litecoin, Namecoin, Peercoin, Dogecoin, xRipple, Nxt, Monero, Stellar, Ethereum, etc. Buying a cheap speculative thing and losing it is one thing, throwing away money on an idea I think is supid and overpriced and then losing it, is another. > "After the 50x happens in about 30x years" Did you notice that several stocks went up >50x this year alone? Stocks related to speculative COVID-19 vaccines, for example Novacyt went up from £0.14p in January to peak at £11.94 in October - https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/NCYT.L?p=NCYT.L&.tsrc=fin-srch https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/NCYT.L?p=NCYT.L&.tsrc=fin-sr... - that's 85x in 12 months, still ~60x after the pullback from the peak. As a speculative high-risk gamble, 50x in 30 years is not all that compelling. Are you beating yourself up for not investing in NCYT? Somewhere, on some market around the world, some stock is jumping large multiples every year, or quarter, or month - and missing out doesn't affect you at all. Instead of chasing those, you're chasing something with much less substance, and longer term outlook, why? Is it because you have no information better than anyone else to pick a 'winning stock'? Why do you think you have with BitCoin? Especially if you can't even convince your own kind - techno-geeks? Worse than all this, if I make a bet with an established regulated gambling company, or visit a casino, or buy penny stocks from a regulated share trading company, or buy some Tesla CFDs, I have some idea what I'm getting and some trust that they will be basically honest - they might fiddle the prices a little, but if I sell up and request money, I'll get some money, and if they go under, the UK government's financial regulation may cover some of my losses (not gambling or investment losses, but company mismanagement or fraud). With BitCoin, the most famous exchange was Magic The Gathering Online Exchange (MtGOX) which got hacked, had its bitcoins stolen, then CEO(!) Mark Karpeles joined in the fun and stole a million dollars of bitcoin for himself, then another three million, then maybe they got hacked again, then they went bankrupt. Other exchanges have had lots of people able to buy bitcoin, then when they try to sell the exchange gives them the runaround and won't pay any money: Googling "bitcoin won't let me withdraw", I see "Kraken won't let me withdraw...", "Bittrex won't let me withdraw...", "Binance won't let me withdraw...", "withdrawals disabled on Bitpanda", "my coin is frozen at Paxful they won't let me withdraw it", "WTF IS GOING ON WITH GEMINI NOT LETTING ME WITHDRAW", "Polonius still won't let me withdraw my funds". Presumably some exchanges are secure and trustworthy, but importantly I won't find out until either they lose my coins, lose my coins and don't notice and don't tell me, or I try to sell out for a large chunk of money and can't, and it's too late and I have little legal recourse since they're quite unregulated or not in the same country, etc. > "even if it won't make you rich, it will have clear upsides for you, like a new car" I am in the lucky living bracket where I have enough money for daily life, and some rainy day savings. Ungrateful though it may sound, $25k wouldn't make any difference to my daily life, it would go in a saving account and change nothing short term; I sure wouldn't spend it on a new car just because I had it. The financial amounts that would make a big difference are: a free house (pay off mortgage / buy a property outright), or instant retirement and freedom from work forever. Stable low-risk long-term investments with regular contributions have a reasonable chance of getting me to retirement money by retirement age, which is useful, though unexciting. Risky short term investments that stand a small chance of high return - I already have as many of those as I can stand, and am aware of a few more that could soak up the $500 if that's what I wanted to do with it, that I have more confidence in, and less disgust for, than BTC. > "personally, I don't want to ever depend on a payment provider that I don't fully control. "be your own bank" is the killer app for me. Why? What does that gain you? And what about the obvious objection that you don't fully control BitCoin? Do you mean you don't trust savings in US Dollars? There's other currencies and other asset classes - precious metals, real estate, that can't be inflated away as easily by central policies. At least growing your own food keeps you alive whether or not anyone else values it, money only has value as an exchange with other people who value it similarly, and more people value dollars than bitcoins. "Be your own bank" is uninteresting to me like "be your own home owner's association" where you get to vote with yourself on your own bye-laws about how to keep the value of your property by forbidding yourself from painting it orange, which you didn't want to do anyway. Without all the people in the same area agreeing to the same rules for collective value increase, "do it yourself" can't really do anything. > "Exactly what I thought! The hacker spirit is a taste for risk and fun, as understanding things allows you gain more control of your destiny ; it's a bit like "work hard play hard", along with a hefty disdain of the mainstream." The hacker spirit I respect is Fabrice Bellard writing a JavaScript virtual machine emulator comprehensive and fast enough to boot a Linux VM in a browser[1] or Matthias Wandel's Pantorouter[2], John Carmack's Armadillo Aerospace, or Tom Stanton's flywheel trebuchet[3], Paul Lutus' works, or even things like early SpaceX. It's an engineering inventiveness, building something new or modifying something for an unexpected use, a techno-engineering-playfulness for its own sake, nothing to do with money. The "hacker spirit" of today seems more like growth hacking your Wordpress blog with SEO while you arrange some poor people on an outsourcing site to drop-ship nutritional supplements in your name so you can spend your free time writing a TEDx talk about how you attended a weekend hackathon and got a sneakerbot running on a Raspberry Pi so it can scalp limited edition sneakers and sell them on eBay at a huge markup. It's a greasy, used-car salesman, self-aggrandizing world, it's focused on self-gain, riches, exploiting systems in ways like lootboxes and dark patterns to increase customer retention with borderline-addiction mechanisms. Hacking is at best orthogonal to making money, and at worst corrupted by the influence of money. And to me it's not about disrupting the incumbents; SpaceX wanted to go to Mars, they didn't set out to "do whatever spacey thing made the most money" or "put ULA out of business", if those happen it's a side effect of inventing ways to build cheap reusable rockets on their way past that to a loftier goal. A world with BitCoin and a world without BitCoin ... really what difference will it make? > "After the 50x happens in about 30x years, you may not remember this conversation but I will remember how yet again I was unable to make someone take a clear beneficial action." and what? Are you sad for me that I didn't buy Apple or Amazon stock in 1999? Are you upset that I didn't invest in Segway (assuiming that was an option)? That I didn't buy BeOS? I don't remember the VA Linux IPO, but would you have encouraged me to invest in that? Facebook's IPO? Isn't there supposed to be more to life and more to people than how much money they have or how much they want to participate in various markets? I think Dr Burns TEAMS Cognitive Behavioural Therapy is probably a world changing thing, I've spent many hours listening to his podcasts and think it has the potential to upturn mental health treatment; but there's nothing to invest in and it's a 1:1 therapist/client thing, it won't be web scale or built with AI, and it will likely be sidelined and ignored by mainstream therapists who want repeat custom, can't deal with facing their failings, or get kickbacks from drug companies. I think giving up sugar would be clearly beneficial, I can't make myself do it. Life goes on. [1] https://bellard.org/jslinux/ https://bellard.org/jslinux/ [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wZ1v4PIsYI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wZ1v4PIsYI [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVT5i4nhIGs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVT5i4nhIGs