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I have responded to a thousand versions of your comment on HN. No matter what I write the haters never change their minds. HN is not an enthusiastic place for b

I have responded to a thousand versions of your comment on HN. No matter what I write the haters never change their minds. HN is not an enthusiastic place for blockchain devs.

jeremycarter 5y ago
I'm not a hater. I am just applying some critical thinking and design thinking to try to figure out where the value is in all of this to the customer. I am happy to say I'm wrong, and happy to backflip.
- seibelj 5y ago
  Here is one of many comments I have written https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25641940 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25641940 But again, to those reading this thread, HN is not a place where you will find a lot of people who patiently defend crypto and blockchain. It garners a lot of downvotes.
  - jeremycarter 5y ago
    I will read it without bias. Thank you.
  - kaladin_1 5y ago
    >> But again, to those reading this thread, HN is not a place where you will find a lot of people who patiently defend crypto and blockchain. It garners a lot of downvotes. Blockchain is a wonderful piece of technology. IMHO I do not think anyone really has personal beef with the technology. I think majority really want to understand, and if they're asking and posing questions it is because do not understand. There might be some that have their skin in it going south but I doubt that's the situation of many. People really want to understand its use case as money.
- puranjay 5y ago
  Please see my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27258671 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27258671 some links to complement the comment: https://curve.fi/ https://curve.fi/ - for exchanging different tokenized stable coins (such as USDC > EURO). Already has over $300M in daily volume exchange. https://yearn.finance/ https://yearn.finance/ - a platform where anyone can code and deploy an investment strategy, provided it is voted on by people who hold the platform's governance tokens. Already has over $3B in assets locked in. Good idea to look at their governance platform as well: https://snapshot.org/#/yearn https://snapshot.org/#/yearn https://aave.com/ https://aave.com/ - a platform to borrow or lend your tokenized assets. Already has over $9B in assets invested
  - mbesto 5y ago
    > https://curve.fi/ https://curve.fi/ - for exchanging different tokenized stable coins (such as USDC > EURO). Already has over $300M in daily volume exchange. I'm confused. How do you get EURO currency in your hand with this? i.e. either physical paper or in my bank account?
    - puranjay 5y ago
      1. Transfer to your bank account via an exchange (KYC applies) 2. Turn it into cold hard cash or a bank transfer via P2P (no KYC ) 3. Withdraw cash directly from a Bitcoin ATM (KYC may apply depending on the exchange issuing the card) 4. Transfer to a crypto debit card and buy from stores directly (KYC may apply depending on the exchange issuing the debit card) 5. Pay directly with your crypto at relevant stores (projects like AMP - https://amptoken.org/ https://amptoken.org/ - US only for now)
      - mbesto 5y ago
        1. But I still need a bank in the currency on the other end. So this might eliminate some forex fees, but that's it? 2. Again, still need a bank account on the end. 3. How pervasive are these? Can I find one on the street while traveling Munich for example? How do I get a card? 4/5. No one wants to use crypto because they get FOMO on price fluctuations. Until then it's basically useless. Until crypto becomes pervasive as a medium of exchange it's as useless as a bar of gold.
bradleyjg 5y ago
Perhaps we don’t change our minds because we haven’t seen a convincing counter-argument to the thesis that blockchains are fundamentally about getting rich quick through buying in early (or pre-mining) and then finding greater fools. The most successful actual applications thus far, as far as I can tell, have been silk road and paying ransoms. I know people that send money home and they don’t use cryptocoins. These remittances communities are savvy and price sensitive, if there was a superior product it would be spreading like wildfire.
- pfisch 5y ago
  Polymarket is a real use case.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - legulere 5y ago
    Why do you need a blockchain for that? Gambling and Insurance existed both long before blockchains.
    - djamrozik 5y ago
      Polymarket is centralized, but one benefit of it is that you can sign up and fund your account anonymously (though you do require an email). Users are not restricted by state or national laws. On a true decentralized gambling app, email would not be needed, just wallet. It would also be difficult to regulate (the team behind it could be anonymous). And I'm not saying this is great or anything, but it shows how you can build something with a blockchain that you could not otherwise.
      - bradleyjg 5y ago
        It’s only as anonymous as the paper trail behind the funding coins, right?
diegocg 5y ago
That's because on HN we know that 99% of the blockchain hype is about people discovering asymmetric cryptography and pretending that the blockchain is the only way to use it. The only real difference that blockchain solutions bring is decentralisation. I have to yet hear one single argument about why decentralisation is good. So far I have only heard the typical libertarianesque arguments about states, banks and inflation. As as I'm concerned, decentralisation is unnecessary and so are blockchain.
- seibelj 5y ago
  Well I’m a libertarian and an Austrian economics / hard money enthusiast so I grant that my love of crypto is influenced by my politics. If you are a statist that loves government authority, its benefits will be be drawbacks as decentralized money is an obvious attack on state power. The power of decentralization is to reduce the power of centralized entities. Even within decentralized networks, centralized nodes (companies) gain power. But in decentralized networks you can choose alternatives. In state-run networks, your only option is the state as guns prevent competitors. I like free markers / free minds / private wealth / private power.
  - idlewords 5y ago
    Organized criminal activity is a powerful centralizing force that is always ignored in these discussions.
puranjay 5y ago
If HN was around in 1997, I bet half the comments would be about "internet is just scams and porn. Where's the use case apart from checking the weather?"
- DemocracyFTW 5y ago
  Nonono, you're confounding the internet as it is now with the internet as it was 24 years ago. It's just the other way round.
- Edman274 5y ago
  Wait, let's keep using this analogy. If the World Wide Web was invented in 1991 and by 2002 no one had created useful websites besides marketing for scams, drug marketplaces and sites to pay ransoms to, and the energy consumption of the World Wide Web was the country of Argentina... Wouldn't the critics have a pretty good point?
  - puranjay 5y ago
    Please see some of these sites I shared earlier: https://curve.fi/ https://curve.fi/ - for exchanging different tokenized stable coins (such as USDC > EURO). Already has over $300M in daily volume exchange. https://yearn.finance/ https://yearn.finance/ - a platform where anyone can code and deploy an investment strategy, provided it is voted on by people who hold the platform's governance tokens. Already has over $3B in assets locked in. Good idea to look at their governance platform as well: https://snapshot.org/#/yearn https://snapshot.org/#/yearn https://aave.com/ https://aave.com/ - a platform to borrow or lend your tokenized assets. Already has over $9B in assets invested Please see this with an open mind. And please see this from the perspective of someone not from privilege, from a third world country, or from someone facing an oppressive regime. Money is freedom. And making that freely accessible to anyone from anywhere is important.
  - idlewords 5y ago
    Yeah, and imagine further that people were bidding up the price of IP addresses in a speculative frenzy instead of actually using them.
globular-toast 5y ago
That's because many of us already have changed our minds. Many of us were big fans of Bitcoin ten years ago and really excited about the prospect of trustless digital cash. We thought it would work. But now that a decade has passed, we've changed our minds.

I have responded to a thousand versions of your comment on HN. No matter what I write the haters never change their minds. HN is not an enthusiastic place for blockchain devs.

jeremycarter 5y ago

I'm not a hater. I am just applying some critical thinking and design thinking to try to figure out where the value is in all of this to the customer. I am happy to say I'm wrong, and happy to backflip.

seibelj 5y ago
Here is one of many comments I have written https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25641940 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25641940 But again, to those reading this thread, HN is not a place where you will find a lot of people who patiently defend crypto and blockchain. It garners a lot of downvotes.
- jeremycarter 5y ago
  I will read it without bias. Thank you.
- kaladin_1 5y ago
  >> But again, to those reading this thread, HN is not a place where you will find a lot of people who patiently defend crypto and blockchain. It garners a lot of downvotes. Blockchain is a wonderful piece of technology. IMHO I do not think anyone really has personal beef with the technology. I think majority really want to understand, and if they're asking and posing questions it is because do not understand. There might be some that have their skin in it going south but I doubt that's the situation of many. People really want to understand its use case as money.
puranjay 5y ago
Please see my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27258671 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27258671 some links to complement the comment: https://curve.fi/ https://curve.fi/ - for exchanging different tokenized stable coins (such as USDC > EURO). Already has over $300M in daily volume exchange. https://yearn.finance/ https://yearn.finance/ - a platform where anyone can code and deploy an investment strategy, provided it is voted on by people who hold the platform's governance tokens. Already has over $3B in assets locked in. Good idea to look at their governance platform as well: https://snapshot.org/#/yearn https://snapshot.org/#/yearn https://aave.com/ https://aave.com/ - a platform to borrow or lend your tokenized assets. Already has over $9B in assets invested
- mbesto 5y ago
  > https://curve.fi/ https://curve.fi/ - for exchanging different tokenized stable coins (such as USDC > EURO). Already has over $300M in daily volume exchange. I'm confused. How do you get EURO currency in your hand with this? i.e. either physical paper or in my bank account?
  - puranjay 5y ago
    1. Transfer to your bank account via an exchange (KYC applies) 2. Turn it into cold hard cash or a bank transfer via P2P (no KYC ) 3. Withdraw cash directly from a Bitcoin ATM (KYC may apply depending on the exchange issuing the card) 4. Transfer to a crypto debit card and buy from stores directly (KYC may apply depending on the exchange issuing the debit card) 5. Pay directly with your crypto at relevant stores (projects like AMP - https://amptoken.org/ https://amptoken.org/ - US only for now)
    - mbesto 5y ago
      1. But I still need a bank in the currency on the other end. So this might eliminate some forex fees, but that's it? 2. Again, still need a bank account on the end. 3. How pervasive are these? Can I find one on the street while traveling Munich for example? How do I get a card? 4/5. No one wants to use crypto because they get FOMO on price fluctuations. Until then it's basically useless. Until crypto becomes pervasive as a medium of exchange it's as useless as a bar of gold.

bradleyjg 5y ago

Perhaps we don’t change our minds because we haven’t seen a convincing counter-argument to the thesis that blockchains are fundamentally about getting rich quick through buying in early (or pre-mining) and then finding greater fools. The most successful actual applications thus far, as far as I can tell, have been silk road and paying ransoms. I know people that send money home and they don’t use cryptocoins. These remittances communities are savvy and price sensitive, if there was a superior product it would be spreading like wildfire.

pfisch 5y ago
Polymarket is a real use case.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- legulere 5y ago
  Why do you need a blockchain for that? Gambling and Insurance existed both long before blockchains.
  - djamrozik 5y ago
    Polymarket is centralized, but one benefit of it is that you can sign up and fund your account anonymously (though you do require an email). Users are not restricted by state or national laws. On a true decentralized gambling app, email would not be needed, just wallet. It would also be difficult to regulate (the team behind it could be anonymous). And I'm not saying this is great or anything, but it shows how you can build something with a blockchain that you could not otherwise.
    - bradleyjg 5y ago
      It’s only as anonymous as the paper trail behind the funding coins, right?

diegocg 5y ago

That's because on HN we know that 99% of the blockchain hype is about people discovering asymmetric cryptography and pretending that the blockchain is the only way to use it. The only real difference that blockchain solutions bring is decentralisation. I have to yet hear one single argument about why decentralisation is good. So far I have only heard the typical libertarianesque arguments about states, banks and inflation. As as I'm concerned, decentralisation is unnecessary and so are blockchain.

seibelj 5y ago
Well I’m a libertarian and an Austrian economics / hard money enthusiast so I grant that my love of crypto is influenced by my politics. If you are a statist that loves government authority, its benefits will be be drawbacks as decentralized money is an obvious attack on state power. The power of decentralization is to reduce the power of centralized entities. Even within decentralized networks, centralized nodes (companies) gain power. But in decentralized networks you can choose alternatives. In state-run networks, your only option is the state as guns prevent competitors. I like free markers / free minds / private wealth / private power.
- idlewords 5y ago
  Organized criminal activity is a powerful centralizing force that is always ignored in these discussions.

puranjay 5y ago

If HN was around in 1997, I bet half the comments would be about "internet is just scams and porn. Where's the use case apart from checking the weather?"

DemocracyFTW 5y ago
Nonono, you're confounding the internet as it is now with the internet as it was 24 years ago. It's just the other way round.
Edman274 5y ago
Wait, let's keep using this analogy. If the World Wide Web was invented in 1991 and by 2002 no one had created useful websites besides marketing for scams, drug marketplaces and sites to pay ransoms to, and the energy consumption of the World Wide Web was the country of Argentina... Wouldn't the critics have a pretty good point?
- puranjay 5y ago
  Please see some of these sites I shared earlier: https://curve.fi/ https://curve.fi/ - for exchanging different tokenized stable coins (such as USDC > EURO). Already has over $300M in daily volume exchange. https://yearn.finance/ https://yearn.finance/ - a platform where anyone can code and deploy an investment strategy, provided it is voted on by people who hold the platform's governance tokens. Already has over $3B in assets locked in. Good idea to look at their governance platform as well: https://snapshot.org/#/yearn https://snapshot.org/#/yearn https://aave.com/ https://aave.com/ - a platform to borrow or lend your tokenized assets. Already has over $9B in assets invested Please see this with an open mind. And please see this from the perspective of someone not from privilege, from a third world country, or from someone facing an oppressive regime. Money is freedom. And making that freely accessible to anyone from anywhere is important.
- idlewords 5y ago
  Yeah, and imagine further that people were bidding up the price of IP addresses in a speculative frenzy instead of actually using them.

globular-toast 5y ago

That's because many of us already have changed our minds. Many of us were big fans of Bitcoin ten years ago and really excited about the prospect of trustless digital cash. We thought it would work. But now that a decade has passed, we've changed our minds.