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The community around Bitcoin is one of the most toxic. It's the main reason I haven't bought, and won't buy, any BTC (regardless of the fact I think the tech is
by gnrlst 6y ago
The community around Bitcoin is one of the most toxic. It's the main reason I haven't bought, and won't buy, any BTC (regardless of the fact I think the tech is completely subpar). Having said that, there's plenty of really great communities around crypto that shouldn't be pooled together along with Bitcoin. Nano, for example, is probably the most hated altcoin by Bitcoin maximalists (probably because they feel threatened?) and coincidently is one of the most tight-knit and constructive communities I found (don't take my word for it, check out the nanocurrency subreddit). There's tons of developers sharing their projects, users tipping all over the place like the good 'ol BTC days, people brainstorming ways of dropping Nano in places where the local currency is in hyperinflation via WeNano. It's just a really cool bunch of peeps.
I frankly don't care if the price of Nano plummets to 1 cent. And I actually hope it doesn't skyrocket and get the attention BTC got, because, to quote the article, "I came for the money", but I stayed for the community. The tech being superior to Bitcoin is just a bonus.
- rawtxapp 6y ago> The community around Bitcoin is one of the most toxic. If you go on places like Twitter and reddit somewhat, I agree with you. But if you look on Github, you'll see some of the smartest engineers of our generation working real hard and I wouldn't discount their work based on some loud mouths on social networks.
- wmf 6y agoThose engineers are so smart they refuse to scale Bitcoin.
- rawtxapp 6y agoNo, they built some of the most well thought scaling solutions in forms of layer 2 (payment channels, lightning network, zk-rollups) and many other solutions like sharding, etc. You're the one who refuses to see those solutions.
- fullshark 6y agoSometimes I wonder if getting people to click on more ads was actually a more socially beneficial project for that talent.
- rawtxapp 6y agoIf you look at it from the perspective that ad-clicking has funded the biggest information retrieval system and the biggest human connection platform, yes it was overall socially beneficial.
- zepto 6y agoA counterfactual is that those two things would have happened anyway, and the ad-funded model has deeply corrupted both of them.
- Priem19 6y ago“you'll see some of the smartest engineers of our generation working real hard” I've been reading those cheap empty words way too much lately. Unless they are the likes of John von Neumann I'll just assume they're people of average intelligence working on things that look incredibly intimidating to outsiders. Also, an excerpt from Marcus Aurelius - Meditations: “How corrupt and two-faced is one who claims, 'I intend to be fair and honest in my dealings with you.' What are you up to, my friend? There is really no need for this preamble. The matter will soon become plain. It should be written on your face,* it should ring out immediately in your voice, and shine out at once in your eyes, as the loved one at once knows everything about his lovers from the manner of their glance. In short, a good and honest person should resemble one who smells like a goat in this respect, that anyone who comes near him is immediately aware of it whether he wishes it or not. But the mere pretence of simplicity is like an open blade. There is nothing more odious than the friendship of the wolf for the lamb; avoid this above all. A good, straightforward, and kindly person reveals these qualities in his eyes, and they will not escape you.”
- rawtxapp 6y agoI'm saying it as someone who actually dived pretty deep into both Bitcoin and Ethereum protocols and who has actually seen the research and the code...
- matheusmoreira 6y agoWhy even be part of these communities? It's possible to buy cryptocurrency and avoid all the hype and negativity.
- zepto 6y agoThe point of a currency is to enable a society. A frequent claim about cryptocurrencies is that they can enable a better society than fiat. The proof is in the pudding.
- matheusmoreira 6y agoI don't see how not participating in cryptocurrency communities prevents you from transacting with anyone else.
- zepto 6y agoI’m not sure why you’d make this comment since nobody is talking about preventing anyone from transacting.
- methehack 6y agoAre you saying in your _better_ _society_ a-holes don't get money?! I'm in!
- MuffinFlavored 6y ago> regardless of the fact I think the tech is completely subpar > Bitcoin uses the Hashcash proof of work system. Do you feel that way about all proof of work systems? Do you prefer proof of stake instead? Can you elaborate on what you find subpar about the tech surrounding Bitcoin?
- fossuser 6y agoI briefly looked at nano based on the OP’s comment expecting to see proof of stake, but it looks like something more interesting? https://docs.nano.org/what-is-nano/overview/#what-is-nano https://docs.nano.org/what-is-nano/overview/#what-is-nano I don’t understand how it works yet, but I generally hold what I think is your skepticism for proof-of-stake. To me, proof-of-stake takes all the technical guarantees of the blockchain and throws them out for a hand-wavy weak guarantee of correctness based on incentive structure. I don’t see how it’s that different from historical digital (or even fiat) currencies based on trust. Proof-of-work is the interesting bit it crypto currencies.
- psychiatrist24 6y agoI think the Bitcoin people on Twitter are quite fun, actually. When Bitcoin crashes, they flood Twitter with HODL memes, which helps through the dark times.
- eli 6y agoThis sounds like a cult
- psychiatrist24 6y agoComparing Twitter Bitcoin Hodlers to a cult is like comparing Covid lockdowns to the Holocaust.
- Andrew_nenakhov 6y agoNonsense! When bitcoin crashes you must sell, not hodl, because it is clearly DOOMED! Buy only when it is nearing ATH.
- psychiatrist24 6y agoHow can it near ATH while it is crashing? Just HODL!
- Andrew_nenakhov 6y agoI mean, buy high, sell low. That's the way!
- psychiatrist24 6y agoHODL
- ur-whale 6y ago3, 2, 1 ... here comes the nano shill. Dude, do you post anything else on HN?
- celticninja 6y agoAnd what's to say nano won't go the same way as bitcoin. By which I mean it will also attract its share of vocal proponents who want to get rich and will act the way you describe the current bitcoin community. It is also an unfair assessment of the bitcoin community as it is pretty much based on the most vocal proponents and not for example based on the development community.
- zepto 6y agoThe argument is that the currency produces this behavior. The development is not a victim here.
- seibelj 6y agoNano literally just got taken down by a ddos because it’s network cannot handle spam https://www.coindesk.com/nanos-network-flooded-spam-nodes-out-of-sync https://www.coindesk.com/nanos-network-flooded-spam-nodes-ou... Bitcoin never goes down
- u678u 6y agoHave fun staying poor! I hate that expression so much.
- Klinky 6y agoThat sounds like every early stage crypto community. Once there is real USD at stake, the fangs come out.
- solosoyokaze 6y agoNo coiners are pretty damn toxic. I have friends that will clutch pearls over Bitcoin's energy usage (strange how they've consistently hated BTC since well before that became a talking point), yet will happily take 5 international vacations a year and have the carbon footprint of a medium sized town. Faux righteous indignation is one of the most toxic takes around.
- zepto 6y agoNo-coiners are a function of Bitcoin just as much as HODLers are.
- donovanian 6y agoI agree completely, and to push this a little further - name a community that isn't toxic. The worst part about virtue signalling nowadays is that it throws out the accumulated history and cultural knowledge of humanity - as expressed in art, literature, etc. Which in a million repeated ways demonstrate that evil in humanity is ubiquitous and ever-present. There's so many people soap-boxing acting like they don't suffer the same circumstance of every other human around them. And it's almost guaranteed that the ones preaching about how they know to do things better are almost always the worst offenders themselves projecting their own mental obsessions onto the world.
- Priem19 6y agoSkateboarders, rock climbers, mathematics, tractor enthusiasts, Britney Spears fanclubs (hence Britney Spears' Guide to Semiconductor Physics http://britneyspears.ac/lasers.htm http://britneyspears.ac/lasers.htm), book clubs, permaculture, meteorologists, bobbin lacers, et cetera. The world is not as toxic when profit isn't involved.
- donovanian 6y ago> The world is not as toxic when profit isn't involved. Got it - this evinces a certain idealism that ignores some pretty glaring stuff that defined the Soviet Union, Cuba, Venezuela, etc. All the places that either outright outlawed profit, or otherwise viewed it as evil. Also regarding your list - what a weird view - that there's angelic spheres where we somehow transcend human behavior. You only have to look at the scandals of the knitting community to see that no one is immune to toxicity.
- tjpnz 6y ago>The community around Bitcoin is one of the most toxic. The issue I have (and for me it applies to crypto in general) is how difficult it's to take even the most banal statements made about it at face value. That's not to say I'm a complete sucker and don't do my research. More that I find it considerably harder to find authorities I can trust (for want of a better word) on the subject than I might with some other piece of tech.
- thysultan 6y ago>The community around Bitcoin is one of the most toxic. It's the main reason I haven't bought, and won't buy, any BTC (regardless of the fact I think the tech is completely subpar). In that case "Have fun staying poor"
- FpUser 6y agoAnd what if he is not poor? I have rich friend who no longer needs to work and he did not buy a single bitcoin. Not for ideological reasons though as he does not even know what reddit is (what a blessed person). He just said I have enough and secure to live the rest of days and do not like to get involved in extra money making activities.
- etrautmann 6y agoWhy does anyone need to be part of a community around a currency? I don’t feel a sense of community based on being a dollar user.
- Priem19 6y agoI chuckled. I know the last sentence was meant as joke but here's an answer anyway: because the dollar is not a pyramid scheme. Whereas any new currency that doesn't have a fair distribution mechanism will be. The earliest adopters in such flawed currencies will always have an increasingly disproportionate amount of the total wealth as it gets adopted. Hence the incentive for communities to spread awareness of their pyramid scheme, whether they realise it or not.
- dang 6y agoYou've been overposting about this. It has become repetitive, and you're starting to reliably generate "here comes the nano shill" comments in every thread. While accusations of shilling are against the site guidelines, posting predictably like this is also against the intended use of the site. Also, these Bitcoin flamewars are supremely boring. They're exciting in an activating/agitating sort of way, but they aren't intellectually interesting. You're not the only user responsible for that, of course, but you're contributing way too much to it. If you want to use HN as intended, please post instead on other things of intellectual interest. If you don't want to use HN as intended, please don't post to it. Either way, please stop posting on this topic. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html