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But cars had value. They have value. They had value from day 1. Cryptocurrencies just don't. It's all smoke and mirrors, where everything would be better witho

But cars had value. They have value. They had value from day 1. Cryptocurrencies just don't. It's all smoke and mirrors, where everything would be better without the blockchain. Without irreversibility. Without everything about it. There are whole books about how terrible and useless it is. And please do what the article said: How much of your own money is dependent on you selling the lie of cryptocurrency or smart contract to the next level in this multi level marketing? I sold my BTC when it was at $15k, because I felt disgusted in participating in this super-immoral going-nowhere-moral tech, so my balance is 0. I made a profit, sure, but regret touching it at all. > Same will hold true for cryptocurrency. By this logic you could start kicking puppies, because "eventually something good will come out of kicking puppies", and just as baseless reasoning.

cies 6y ago
> But cars had value. They have value. They had value from day 1. You dont get to decide what has value. The market does. Crypto apparently has value. > By this logic you could start kicking puppies, because "eventually something good will come out of kicking puppies", and just as baseless reasoning. Worst argument I've read all month. If you dont see potential in crypto: feel free to do without. Others do. Thankfully we have some freedom.
dTal 6y ago
I have to say I am very impressed by your moral compass's sense of market timing!
- knorker 6y ago
  I sold at the peak of a bubble, so I can be happy about that. Sure, it's higher now, but I also don't invest in payday loan companies for the same reason. I hear it's very profitable too, but it's just too evil.
acdha 6y ago
> But cars had value. They have value. They had value from day 1. This is so true: cars have massive externalities but the 20th century was spend rebuilding the world around them because they were useful. You saw that immediately and the true costs only became more apparent years later. Cryptocurrency is as if Robert Moses had redesigned NYC around pet rock warehousing on the theory that someone would later find a use for them, and the warehouses needed to burn coal continuously.
- knorker 6y ago
  Even if the costs had been obvious from day one, unlike cryptocurrencies they also had value. Many things do. Cryptocurrencies don't.
  - acdha 6y ago
    No argument here: in the second decade, the only cash-positive usage is convincing other people to buy them. That’s a long time to have nothing to show despite such massive cash flow into the system. TBL transformed the world in a few years for a tiny fraction of the cost despite much higher barriers to adoption.
    - noxer 6y ago
      There is no cash flow "into the system". Its a forever repeated nonsense idea. If you exchange fiat or maybe gold for fiat there is no cash flow into anything its just an exchange. Crypto to crypto or to fiat is exactly the same. No cash goes anywhere other than to the seller. (obviously ignoring fees and such but they also dont go into anything its just paying someone for providing a service) If you look at crypto as the huge trading space and you dont see it produce anything is simply because its not supposed to. You look at the space that just exchanges stuff. If you look at a grocery store and you dont see anything produced you are right. The store is just where people exchange stuff. Its not where value is created or where you would find innovation in producing something.
      - acdha 6y ago
        What do you think happened to all of the money from VCs, big consulting companies, etc. which was spent on blockchain services? How many people have received a full-time paycheck for years for the express purpose of building something worth using? Your grocery store analogy illustrates why there are so many skeptics: I don't have to ask people whether they use a grocery store because they have food on their shelves and there's a steady stream of people entering and leaving the store. Blockchain systems, on the other hand, are never mentioned other than by people who have a vested interest in selling the system rather than doing anything with it. People say they're going shopping to buy something for dinner, but it's extremely hard to find someone saying they're buying cryptocurrency because there's something it helps them do faster/better/cheaper rather than just hoping they'll be able to sell the same token to someone else for more than they paid for it.
cle 6y ago
You don't think there's value in open-source, decentralized financial infrastructure? (Disclosure: I hold no cryptocurrencies, nor have any financial stake in the industry)
- knorker 6y ago
  Hmm… taking your question at face value. Can you be more specific? Is there value in nonreversibility? No, that "feature" has negative value, and it's the reason people trust credit cards. Value in anonymity? Not at this scale, no. On net that feature just is not workable in a society built on anything other than libertarian-anarchy. And most people actually want a structured society, not fiefdoms. Take KYC and AML laws, for example. What percentage of people do you think would say we should abolish them, if you explain what they are, and what they are for. Open Source? The functioning of our traditional economy is pretty open in its working. It's complex, yes. But you are welcome to understand it, and participate in the process. The "code" that the economy works on is legal code. I think where I disagree with you is that computer code is inherently more suitable. I say that as a professional programmer, who's been programming for decades. Here's the thing: "The programs" was never the problem. I can illustrate this best with smart contracts. They're a solution to a non-problem, while making the actual problem much worse. Contract disputes mainly come from disagreements about what the contract means, and errors in codifying intention as text. Ability to enforce was never the biggest problem. Never. And by forcing the enforcement by using a smart contract it's actually making the problem worse, where "that's not what I meant". Yes, the default action in a real contract, without contextual evidence, is to take the wording of a contract literally (and oxford commas matter). But if there is other evidence, then yes a court will take that into account. Do you not want that? Do you honestly want a maliciously injected underhanded bug in a contract to be enforced, with no recourse? I think the problem with your question is that people who ask it don't actually know what they're asking. In the libertarian-anarchist utopia based on this infrastructure the enforcement methods are beyond the reach of the police. So what do you do when someone robs you? When someone uses a bug in a smart contract to take your house?
  - danaris 6y ago
    > Value in anonymity? Just as a reminder (from someone who admittedly knows little about cryptocurrencies aside from this): BTC and other cryptocurrencies are not anonymous. They are, at the most, pseudonymous, and because of their very nature, the trail linking whatever online identity you used to make the transaction lives forever on the blockchain.
argvargc 6y ago
The US government has been using cryptocurrencies to deliver aid direct to Venezuelans, for whom previously traditionally bank-wired funds were been pilfered by local (government-controlled) banks. The aspect of direct "peer to peer" electronic cash, coupled with plausible deniability of ownership and no need for trusted parties, are tremendously positive characteristics in poor, corrupt and developing nations where everyday crypto adoption is running high. There is nothing else available to solve many of these problems, hence Bitcoin and others filling the void. There are many other potential positives too, but to say there are none - even right now - is ill-informed. https://decrypt.co/49088/us-government-use-usdc-stablecoin-bypass-venezuela-maduro https://decrypt.co/49088/us-government-use-usdc-stablecoin-b...
- narwally 6y ago
  I'm not doubting you, but do you have a better source than a cryptocurrency news site? Also, the US government sending cryptocurrency to South America honestly doesn't sound like a definite positive. Even recently, the US doesn't have a great track record with their interventions in that region of the world.
  - argvargc 6y ago
    Don't worry, you can trust decrypt (at least inasmuch as you can trust Yahoo): https://finance.yahoo.com/news/us-government-enlists-usdc-global-193616264.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/us-government-enlists-usdc-gl... Regardless of a given view on the politics of this particular intervention, accepting the intervention occurs at all, also accepts crypto's utility for this purpose of circumventing systemic centralised corruption, which was the point of the example.
eric_cc 6y ago
> Cryptocurrencies just don't [have value]. It's all smoke and mirrors > super-immoral going-nowhere-moral tech lol what? Is US dollar moral? Is it not also "smoke-and-mirrors" by your definition since it's just paper that we all believe has value?
- knorker 6y ago
  > lol what? Is US dollar moral? What exactly is your argument? > Is it not also "smoke-and-mirrors" by your definition since it's just paper that we all believe has value? USD is backed by the mostly aligned incentives of the whole world in general, and the biggest company in the world in particular, and by the largest military might and nuclear arsenal, ultimately. USD is paper and bits we believe has value. BTC is bits that most people believe doesn't have value. And that everyone knows will never displace USD because (see above) won't allow it.
  - eric_cc 6y ago
    > USD is paper and bits we believe has value. Speak for yourself. > BTC is bits that most people believe doesn't have value. This is changing rapidly, is it not?
    - knorker 6y ago
      >> USD is paper and bits we believe has value. > Speak for yourself. Raaa-haaaight. Next time you don't believe USD has value you'll skip picking up that $100 bill on the street. When you get robbed you'll laugh and give the robber your worthless USD and say "good luck using this for anything!". >> BTC is bits that most people believe doesn't have value. > This is changing rapidly, is it not? I wouldn't say so, no.
      - mvolfik 6y ago
        I'm not a crypto supporter, but I'd say that he is right there. If _you_ found private key to a wallet with 1 BTC somewhere, would you leave it be? Even if you can't buy a coffee with it, the exchangability for USD is real.

cies 6y ago

> But cars had value. They have value. They had value from day 1. You dont get to decide what has value. The market does. Crypto apparently has value. > By this logic you could start kicking puppies, because "eventually something good will come out of kicking puppies", and just as baseless reasoning. Worst argument I've read all month. If you dont see potential in crypto: feel free to do without. Others do. Thankfully we have some freedom.

dTal 6y ago

I have to say I am very impressed by your moral compass's sense of market timing!

knorker 6y ago
I sold at the peak of a bubble, so I can be happy about that. Sure, it's higher now, but I also don't invest in payday loan companies for the same reason. I hear it's very profitable too, but it's just too evil.

acdha 6y ago

> But cars had value. They have value. They had value from day 1. This is so true: cars have massive externalities but the 20th century was spend rebuilding the world around them because they were useful. You saw that immediately and the true costs only became more apparent years later. Cryptocurrency is as if Robert Moses had redesigned NYC around pet rock warehousing on the theory that someone would later find a use for them, and the warehouses needed to burn coal continuously.

knorker 6y ago
Even if the costs had been obvious from day one, unlike cryptocurrencies they also had value. Many things do. Cryptocurrencies don't.
- acdha 6y ago
  No argument here: in the second decade, the only cash-positive usage is convincing other people to buy them. That’s a long time to have nothing to show despite such massive cash flow into the system. TBL transformed the world in a few years for a tiny fraction of the cost despite much higher barriers to adoption.
  - noxer 6y ago
    There is no cash flow "into the system". Its a forever repeated nonsense idea. If you exchange fiat or maybe gold for fiat there is no cash flow into anything its just an exchange. Crypto to crypto or to fiat is exactly the same. No cash goes anywhere other than to the seller. (obviously ignoring fees and such but they also dont go into anything its just paying someone for providing a service) If you look at crypto as the huge trading space and you dont see it produce anything is simply because its not supposed to. You look at the space that just exchanges stuff. If you look at a grocery store and you dont see anything produced you are right. The store is just where people exchange stuff. Its not where value is created or where you would find innovation in producing something.
    - acdha 6y ago
      What do you think happened to all of the money from VCs, big consulting companies, etc. which was spent on blockchain services? How many people have received a full-time paycheck for years for the express purpose of building something worth using? Your grocery store analogy illustrates why there are so many skeptics: I don't have to ask people whether they use a grocery store because they have food on their shelves and there's a steady stream of people entering and leaving the store. Blockchain systems, on the other hand, are never mentioned other than by people who have a vested interest in selling the system rather than doing anything with it. People say they're going shopping to buy something for dinner, but it's extremely hard to find someone saying they're buying cryptocurrency because there's something it helps them do faster/better/cheaper rather than just hoping they'll be able to sell the same token to someone else for more than they paid for it.

cle 6y ago

You don't think there's value in open-source, decentralized financial infrastructure? (Disclosure: I hold no cryptocurrencies, nor have any financial stake in the industry)

knorker 6y ago
Hmm… taking your question at face value. Can you be more specific? Is there value in nonreversibility? No, that "feature" has negative value, and it's the reason people trust credit cards. Value in anonymity? Not at this scale, no. On net that feature just is not workable in a society built on anything other than libertarian-anarchy. And most people actually want a structured society, not fiefdoms. Take KYC and AML laws, for example. What percentage of people do you think would say we should abolish them, if you explain what they are, and what they are for. Open Source? The functioning of our traditional economy is pretty open in its working. It's complex, yes. But you are welcome to understand it, and participate in the process. The "code" that the economy works on is legal code. I think where I disagree with you is that computer code is inherently more suitable. I say that as a professional programmer, who's been programming for decades. Here's the thing: "The programs" was never the problem. I can illustrate this best with smart contracts. They're a solution to a non-problem, while making the actual problem much worse. Contract disputes mainly come from disagreements about what the contract means, and errors in codifying intention as text. Ability to enforce was never the biggest problem. Never. And by forcing the enforcement by using a smart contract it's actually making the problem worse, where "that's not what I meant". Yes, the default action in a real contract, without contextual evidence, is to take the wording of a contract literally (and oxford commas matter). But if there is other evidence, then yes a court will take that into account. Do you not want that? Do you honestly want a maliciously injected underhanded bug in a contract to be enforced, with no recourse? I think the problem with your question is that people who ask it don't actually know what they're asking. In the libertarian-anarchist utopia based on this infrastructure the enforcement methods are beyond the reach of the police. So what do you do when someone robs you? When someone uses a bug in a smart contract to take your house?
- danaris 6y ago
  > Value in anonymity? Just as a reminder (from someone who admittedly knows little about cryptocurrencies aside from this): BTC and other cryptocurrencies are not anonymous. They are, at the most, pseudonymous, and because of their very nature, the trail linking whatever online identity you used to make the transaction lives forever on the blockchain.

argvargc 6y ago

The US government has been using cryptocurrencies to deliver aid direct to Venezuelans, for whom previously traditionally bank-wired funds were been pilfered by local (government-controlled) banks. The aspect of direct "peer to peer" electronic cash, coupled with plausible deniability of ownership and no need for trusted parties, are tremendously positive characteristics in poor, corrupt and developing nations where everyday crypto adoption is running high. There is nothing else available to solve many of these problems, hence Bitcoin and others filling the void. There are many other potential positives too, but to say there are none - even right now - is ill-informed. https://decrypt.co/49088/us-government-use-usdc-stablecoin-bypass-venezuela-maduro https://decrypt.co/49088/us-government-use-usdc-stablecoin-b...

narwally 6y ago
I'm not doubting you, but do you have a better source than a cryptocurrency news site? Also, the US government sending cryptocurrency to South America honestly doesn't sound like a definite positive. Even recently, the US doesn't have a great track record with their interventions in that region of the world.
- argvargc 6y ago
  Don't worry, you can trust decrypt (at least inasmuch as you can trust Yahoo): https://finance.yahoo.com/news/us-government-enlists-usdc-global-193616264.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/us-government-enlists-usdc-gl... Regardless of a given view on the politics of this particular intervention, accepting the intervention occurs at all, also accepts crypto's utility for this purpose of circumventing systemic centralised corruption, which was the point of the example.

eric_cc 6y ago

> Cryptocurrencies just don't [have value]. It's all smoke and mirrors > super-immoral going-nowhere-moral tech lol what? Is US dollar moral? Is it not also "smoke-and-mirrors" by your definition since it's just paper that we all believe has value?

knorker 6y ago
> lol what? Is US dollar moral? What exactly is your argument? > Is it not also "smoke-and-mirrors" by your definition since it's just paper that we all believe has value? USD is backed by the mostly aligned incentives of the whole world in general, and the biggest company in the world in particular, and by the largest military might and nuclear arsenal, ultimately. USD is paper and bits we believe has value. BTC is bits that most people believe doesn't have value. And that everyone knows will never displace USD because (see above) won't allow it.
- eric_cc 6y ago
  > USD is paper and bits we believe has value. Speak for yourself. > BTC is bits that most people believe doesn't have value. This is changing rapidly, is it not?
  - knorker 6y ago
    >> USD is paper and bits we believe has value. > Speak for yourself. Raaa-haaaight. Next time you don't believe USD has value you'll skip picking up that $100 bill on the street. When you get robbed you'll laugh and give the robber your worthless USD and say "good luck using this for anything!". >> BTC is bits that most people believe doesn't have value. > This is changing rapidly, is it not? I wouldn't say so, no.
    - mvolfik 6y ago
      I'm not a crypto supporter, but I'd say that he is right there. If _you_ found private key to a wallet with 1 BTC somewhere, would you leave it be? Even if you can't buy a coffee with it, the exchangability for USD is real.