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These two resonated with me: > A lot of intelligent observers look at cryptocurrency, see that it makes no sense, and reasonably infer that they must be missin
by skrebbel 5y ago
These two resonated with me:
> A lot of intelligent observers look at cryptocurrency, see that it makes no sense, and reasonably infer that they must be missing something profound on the technical level. Tech culture has a nice tradition of not deriding new ideas, but we need to break it here and speak out
> [non-tech people] don't see the huge silent majority of tech people who know it's a scam. That's on us
It is on us. I never realized this before today. I'm pretty sure it's nothing but a pyramid scheme, but I always gave the enthusiasts the benefit of the doubt. After all, Elon is so cute when he's enthusiastic! But yeah he probably knows it's a scam too, what was I thinking.
- meowkit 5y ago> I'm pretty sure it's nothing but a pyramid scheme, but I always gave the enthusiasts the benefit of the doubt. So go find out? I’m quoting you here for the “pretty sure” part. Do a deep dive. I’be done deep dives on Bitcoin, Ethereum, Cardano, Monero, Nano, Iota, Hyperledger, BSC, Uniswap, Tether, Chainlink and cursory glances at dozens of other coins/tokens. I’m a tech guy. I work on an operating system/embedded systems. Nothing about blockchains, DLTs, crypto, at its core is a scam to me. The author saying the “silent majority tech people” know its a scam is such nonsense to my experience. Every tech person I know thinks either A) its neat/super cool, or B) they don’t know anything about it besides memes. Sure there are tons of misinformation, scams, and bullshit going on. That’s everywhere and is not special to crypto.
- chrisco255 5y agoYeah, U.S. household net worth is near all-time lows in Fed balance sheet terms and people think crypto is the scam: https://mobile.twitter.com/RaoulGMI/status/1398733901913264133 https://mobile.twitter.com/RaoulGMI/status/13987339019132641...
- chrisbolt 5y agoWhat does “in Fed balance sheet terms” mean?
- atomicnumber3 5y agoI think they're referring to the ratio of household wealth to total value of the fed balance sheet. Which is a number easy to calculate and his claim is factually true (mostly because the fed balance sheet has never been bigger). But while his claim is true, in a Boolean sense, I don't know what exactly we're supposed to conclude about the world based on it. This isn't a ratio I've ever seen talked about before. I'm guessing they're insinuating that the size of the feds balance sheet is somehow related to inflation, which it is only in a fairly loose sense.
- delaaxe 5y agoSome analysts joke that the first thing you’re shown when you arrive in hell in a chart of the S&P divided by the Fed balance sheet
- TchoBeer 5y agoWhat's the joke I don't get it
- chrisco255 5y agoThat US household net worth is falling despite the fact that real estate prices and stock prices are near all time highs.
- ashtonkem 5y agoSomething being wrong with the economy doesn’t preclude Bitcoin from being a scam. That’s a false dilemma you’re proposing.
- CalChris 5y agoIt's actually a whataboutism but otherwise I agree.
- chrisco255 5y agoThis, this is a scam: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M1SL https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M1SL Notice the 5x supply increase without a corresponding 5x in economic efficiency. Bitcoin is what it is. It's worth what people think it's worth. Just like gold. Gold has minimal practical use in real life but it was used as a type of money off and on for 5000 years.
- lottin 5y agoAll money is worth what people think it's worth. Next question.
- jakelazaroff 5y ago> The author saying the “silent majority tech people” know its a scam is such nonsense to my experience. Every tech person I know thinks either A) its neat/super cool, or B) they don’t know anything about it besides memes. Counterpoint: most "tech people" I know — including people who have worked in crypto — both know about it and also think it's a scam.
- meowkit 5y agoThat’s the real point. For the author, me, or you to claim what most tech people think is ridiculous.
- eli 5y agoI think you’re being too literal. There are lots of tech people who quietly feel this way — just look at the comments here. The point is that they shouldn’t be so quiet about it. If someone only knows crypto from stories in mainstream press or cable news, they’d probably incorrectly assume “tech people” are almost universally for it.
- baby 5y agoWell, I work in the field and I think there’s both. Scams and real technology advances that would blow anybody’s mind if they would spend a bit of time to look into it. I promise there is more than Bitcoin and dogecoin.
- forwardslash 5y agoHow have you done a deep dive on Tether and not seen it as deeply troubling?
- meowkit 5y agoDid I say I did not find it deeply troubling?
- forwardslash 5y agoYou said > Nothing about blockchains, DLTs, crypto, at its core is a scam to me Which I took as an implication that you didn’t see Tether as a deeply troubling or a scam
- meowkit 5y agoTether is an application, not a core technology. Stablecoins would fit that quote. Tethers management is the problem - obfuscation and using other crypto as collateral instead of just USD.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- amingilani 5y agoPlease don't cherry pick the worst example and apply it for the whole population. Tether is one stablecoin, and arguably the worst example since it is literally the one coin every coiner will agree with you is a bad stablecoin. Do a deep dive on MakerDAO's DAI instead.
- eli 5y agoWhen tether implodes a lot is going down with it.
- skrebbel 5y agoWhy can't the tech be neat/super cool and primarily be used to run a scam? I mean bittorrent is neat tech as well but it's still primarily used for piracy. Doing a deep dive into how bittorrent works doesn't suddenly change the fact that 99.9% of torrents out there are violating somebody's intellectual property. All I'm saying is, there's lots of super neat tech out there that's primarily used for not-so-super-neat stuff. (sidenote, I actually think piracy is pretty neat, but it was too good an analogy to pass up)
- meowkit 5y agoI disagree with the characterization that the primary use is a scam. That’s like saying the primary use of email is to receive ads and phishing mail.
- crummy 5y agoAre there numbers on what the primary uses of cryptocurrency are? I would guess remittances, purchasing illegal things, purchasing legal things, and ransomware - but I'm not sure in what order.
- idlewords 5y agoI think it also depends on what you count as "use". The #1 function of Bitcoin is as a speculative asset.
- morelisp 5y agoI am not sure remittance counts as a "use", especially if it is only useful for remitting money because it is also actually "used" for settling ransomware payouts or buying cocaine.
- jamal-kumar 5y agoI have a lot of digital artist friends who used to rely on live performances and installations for their money, now they're seriously killing it selling NFTs Some of them opt out of more environmentally unfriendly stuff like Ethereum for sure Personally I've developed systems for paying for everyday things like your bus fare or phone bill using crypto in a country where there's a hell of a lot less confidence in fiat (Brazil) -- hell check out the history of the Brazilian Real if you want an idea of what real candycorn money looks like Personally I just feel a hell of a lot of privileged bullshit out of people arguing that crypto is some good for nothing shit. Yeah sure great try living in a country where your government is fucked. We truly don't live in some francis fukuyama neoliberal fantasy world where we can trust stuff like traditional financial markets which have gone and failed us in the non english speaking world time and time again. I welcome any and all alternatives
- wmf 5y agoI'm a tech guy. I've spent years experimenting with crypto and it isn't fit for any legitimate purpose.
- tuesdayrain 5y agoYou're not very good at experimenting then. I first bought BTC in 2013 because of a legitimate purpose: to pay for online goods (legal software) to a seller who wanted to completely eliminate any risk of chargebacks.
- eli 5y agoAnd 8 years later the fees no longer make it viable for even that niche use case.
- tuesdayrain 5y agoSurely you recognize that this is a bad faith argument? The average transaction fee today is around $8 USD. That's a small price to pay for knowing that a transaction is set in stone.
- Clewza313 5y agoIt's a pretty high price to pay for donuts though. Especially since it's kind of hard to reverse a donut transaction after you've eaten them.
- baby 5y agoWhat fee? Are you talking about a specific currency or all currencies? In Celo currently fees are 0.1 cent per transaction, for example.
- input_sh 5y agoI've never heard of a single physical item being sold for any other cryptocurrency, only Bitcoin. How would a merchant of physical goods even know about something like Celo, whatever that is?
- SamBam 5y ago> Nothing about blockchains, DLTs, crypto, at its core is a scam to me. I think everyone is talking past each other, because no one's exactly defining what the "scam" is, so you're talking about different things. I don't think anyone's suggesting that, say, deep in the BitCoin code there is some algorithm giving Satoshi Nakamoto a dollar for evert transaction. On the other hand, I believe that the vast majority of buyers are buying simply because they hope that someone else will buy at a higher price tomorrow, or next year. This causes everyone to cheer-lead about how everyone else needs to buy or HODL, because they simply want to drive the price up. For me, personally, I'd say this is what I'd call a "scam," in the sense that a MLM company is a "scam": that the motivation of the majority of people extolling the virtues of buying crypto tends to be simply personal enrichment.
- mattgreenrocks 5y agoYeah. And I think some people see that and think, “okay I can get in on that too!” while others think, “this whole thing smells and can’t be sustainable.” I fall into the latter camp. I don’t begrudge the former. I just don’t think it’ll last and have little taste for speculating.
- adambatkin 5y agoBlockchain as a technology is definitely innovative. The problem is that, in practice, the way that it solves certain problems come with tradeoffs. This isn't a technical problem per-se, just that it doesn't (IMHO) solve any real problems better (given the tradeoffs) than other, more "traditional" solutions. That's not to say that you can't make money with blockchain tech (just like you can make money playing blackjack).
- baby 5y agoHow doesn’t it? Do you know how slow traditional solutions are? Or prone to error?
- p1necone 5y agoIt's not that the tech itself is a scam per se (although there are plenty of cryptocurrencies that were started with the express purpose of being a ponzi scheme or a pre-mined vehicle for a pump and dump). It's just that widely available, totally unregulated financial instruments will always be primarily used to run ponzi schemes, pump and dumps and meaningless speculation (meaningless in that speculators are largely just speculating based on what other speculators might do).
- barrkel 5y agoThe bit that is a scam is a social phenomenon, not a technical phenomenon. It's tulips, Beanie Babies, housing market bubbles; not technical. Assets rising in price are chased by people who want to surf the rise. What is interesting about distributed ledger consensus via proof of work only remains interesting when there's a disconnect between the economy and good government. If your government is corrupt, or your economy is corrupt, you want the two to be disconnected. The problem is that the latter - corrupt economies - dominate over the former. If you have a functioning government, you can use the legal system to enforce contracts, and then ledgers don't need to use proof of work. If you don't have a functioning government, or you can't let the legal system look at your contracts, then blockchain starts to look interesting.
- AlexandrB 5y agoHave you read this? https://crypto-anonymous-2021.medium.com/the-bit-short-inside-cryptos-doomsday-machine-f8dcf78a64d3 https://crypto-anonymous-2021.medium.com/the-bit-short-insid... Tether smells extremely fishy and seems to be used for a huge amount of trade volume on BTC and other cryptocurrencies.
- Clewza313 5y agoAh yes, Iota, which uses ternary internally because it's the "superior technological solution" and "the future of computing". https://iota.stackexchange.com/questions/8/why-does-iota-use-a-ternary-number-system https://iota.stackexchange.com/questions/8/why-does-iota-use...
- simg 5y ago> Nothing about blockchains, DLTs, crypto, at its core is a scam to me No, the scam part is the idea that crypto is going replace fiat and as such will be worth many times more in the future than it is now. I'd also be very, very surprised if there wasn't price manipulation going on with crypto trading.
- UncleMeat 5y ago> B) they don’t know anything about it besides memes. Hi there. I've published a few papers in top conferences on BTC and ETH. I don't own a cent of crypto and believe that a lot of it is a very bad idea. I find it endlessly frustrating when people insist that the only way to disagree with enthusiasts is to be ignorant.
- chrisco255 5y agoIt's not. It's an economy. If you haven't engaged with the technology or even have a surface level understanding of traditional financial tooling like derivatives, options, futures, precious metals trading, etc. then you shouldn't parrot what someone on Twitter says. Take the time to understand the existing system and how smart contracts work and some of the blue chip protocols like https://aave.com/ https://aave.com/ or https://chain.link/ https://chain.link/ and then make an informed opinion.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- msoad 5y agosome of us were here and read it a while ago[1]. it is clever indeed but we have seen it can't be a currency as it originally claimed [1][https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1251519 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1251519]
- hahahasure 5y agoBitcoin is not a scam. Government currency is a scam. Every other coin is basically a scam. Privacy coins may have a purpose
- xXx_uwu_xXx 5y agoCapitalism is the scam. Cryptocurrency is just an extension of it.
- LanceH 5y agoGo try something else.
- joepie91_ 5y agoYou're actually almost right. While Bitcoin was launched with lofty goals, it was pretty quickly overtaken by capitalist vultures who saw a low-regulation industry to extract money from people. Importantly though, it's not an either/or. Capitalism is problematic and cryptocurrency is problematic. Both can be true at the same time.
- lottin 5y agoBitcoin inventors were anarcho-capitalists, an ideology that promotes an extreme version of capitalism where there are no governments and corporations have unlimited power.
- mandelken 5y agoCould you provide some background (or links) to your claim (I thought the inventor(s) of Bitcoin were anonymous)? Thank you.
- lottin 5y agohttps://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/the-politics-of-bitcoin https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/the-politics-...
- eli 5y agoBut Bitcoin investors are mostly indifferent to the goals or mechanisms behind Bitcoin and merely hope to sell a coin to someone else for more than they paid for it.
- mettamage 5y agoIt’s not on tech people to evaluate business impact or societal impact or economic impact. Sure, tech people could do that but most of our time is spent on designing or implementing software. Let other people (non-tech or hybrid) comment on the idea. They have time to think about this. Tech people can only help by explaining in understandable ways how blockchain/cryptocurrencies work. 3Blue1Brown has a good video on it. Let’s keep the culture of not deriding ideas. We can’t predict human behavior or the future of it. Maybe something beautiful comes out of it, or maybe it accelerates global warming. I trust other disciplines to comment on that.
- zzzeek 5y agoare you seriously advocating for a complete lack of ethical awareness on the part of engineers? Pretty sure Volkswagen engineers went to prison for interfering with emissions software so precedent is kind of not with you here.
- mondoveneziano 5y agoUnderstanding proof-of-work down to the very details, I can make some evaluations based on simple technical properties. For example, Bitcoin can never become "more efficient": If efficiency of computing hashes goes up, difficulty goes up to counteract this, and the energy usage remains the same. This is different from almost everything else, where advances in technology that increase efficiency are usually a direct benefit. All this energy goes into what is essentially a lottery for miners. Except for 6 hashes per hour, all of the literally 100.000.000.000.000.000.000 hashes per second get thrown away entirely, not even advancing the same miner, the same ASIC, towards one of the qualifying 6 hashes per hour.
- baby 5y agoYou’d be surprised to learn that there are other cryptocurrencies that aren’t based on proof of work.
- mettamage 5y agoBased on the replies, I stand corrected, my bad. I am happy I voiced my opinion, because the replies convinced me that I was off base with my thinking.
- sneak 5y agoThis all falls apart if bitcoin isn't a scam. The burden of proof lies with those accusing it. Additionally, there is no "silent majority" in tech that think it is a scam; the author has invented this.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- e9 5y agoIt’s both. It’s not a scam in a sense that it is a store of value(digital property) to a small degree. But a scam in a sense that it can’t power every day transactions or day to day needs etc
- synesso 5y agoThe early narrative around paying for coffee didn't pan out. But right now it is it's an extremely valuable global settlement system.
- ertian 5y agoThere are a dozen different approaches to solving the bandwidth problems. IMHO, it's safe to say one or more will succeed.
- e9 5y agoPretty much all of them require to do transactions outside of Bitcoin network and making parts of the system more centralized and more vulnerable.
- tuesdayrain 5y ago>But a scam in a sense that it can’t power every day transactions or day to day needs etc It's not supposed to. No need for a permanent ledger to store cheap day-to-day transactions.
- fleddr 5y agoThis huge silent majority that know it is a scam doesn't exist. Crypto is so large, complex and fast-moving that it takes thousands of hours to grasp. If I'd make a list of 100 questions regarding crypto, an exam so to speak, I am reasonably sure that this silent majority can't even answer 5% of the questions. Because they don't know crypto. At all.
- idlewords 5y agoIt's a hash tree with a vape cloud around it, not quantum chromodynamics. I think most people on this technical forum understand it just fine.
- pa7x1 5y agoThe hard part is not the data structure behind it (Merkle tree) but the economics. An entirely new branch of economics has spun of it and it's far from trivial.
- eli 5y agoI think the hard part is convincing people that it’s a new branch of economics and therefore the old rules need not apply.
- jfrunyon 5y ago"People had to invent entirely new ways to explain it because our existing models didn't work" isn't a very good argument for it being real.
- tiborsaas 5y agoWhy not? We made something and it takes time to understand its implications.
- bduerst 5y agoI mean, it's not even 'entirely new ways' to describe it. Bitcoin has been reinventing the finance industry one mistake at a time. Tragedy of the commons is fully evident in the bitcoin block size debacle.
- aeternum 5y ago"A lot of observers", "Many people say", "Everyone says". Let's stop using weasel words, if you consider yourself a techie, come up with some real evidence-based arguments.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- bduerst 5y agoWhat do you mean? Isn't the burden of proof on cryptonerds to back up their claims?
- ric2b 5y agoSaying something is a scam is a claim in itself.
- pnt12 5y agoFirst it was a payment method, now the fees are too high. Then it was a store of value, but it is too volatile for people who want a safe storage. It's also not private, as appare tly payments can be traced back to their user. So, what's left? I know you can still make money with it if you joined earlier and you're lucky. Same with a MLM, but at least those don't waste so much energy nor ruin the GPU markets.
- aeternum 5y agoHow about: - Instant loans without paperwork or credit agencies, algorithmically collateralized - Micropayments to websites you visit rather than ads - Electronic payments that can remain private if participants are smart. Much better privacy protections than electronic payment options like Visa/Paypal. - Truly democratic governance protocols in which important decisions can be voted on in real-time by participants with skin in the game. - The ability for a code itself, not associated with a human, to earn and hold money. - Algorithmically enforced contracts that are more resilient to bribes and other forms of subversion compared to traditional court systems.
- StephenAmar 5y agoNot sure our opinion is that important. Beyond answering questions from friends and family & reading r/Buttcoin for entertainment, I just don't want to spend time debating the issue with the occasional enthusiast.
- lamontcg 5y ago> But yeah he probably knows it's a scam too, what was I thinking. Doubt it. He's another Libertarian and certainly hates the existing system.
- cratermoon 5y agoHe's a Libertarian yes, but he's an old-fashioned capitalist billionaire first.
- manfredz 5y agoIt's the transaction fees that get distributed to all the other coin holders that makes it a pyramid or MLM scheme. In the case of Bitcoin, originally, every Bitcoin holder would also be able to mine with their own computer and receive transaction fees. This has since changed, so now it's only the miners with specific equipment that benefit from the transaction fees.
- kobalsky 5y ago> It's the transaction fees that get distributed to all the other coin holders that makes it a pyramid or MLM scheme. This is embarrasing. I will give you more info in case you are geniunely wrong and not playing dumb. This is the last mined BTC block: https://www.blockchain.com/btc/block/00000000000000000001d8522d24591c4c4c1d1daa7b93432fc831651ac1b688 https://www.blockchain.com/btc/block/00000000000000000001d85... The fees collected for transactions is 0.15 BTC and the mining reward is 6.25 BTC. Mining rewards will continue declining and some day the only value of mining will be those fees, but until now they have been largely irrelevant to the point that some miners just mined empty block because it was simpler from a technical standpoint, and it was becoming a problem because it just generated congestion in the network: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/business/why-do-some-bitcoin-mining-pools-mine-empty-blocks-1468337739 https://bitcoinmagazine.com/business/why-do-some-bitcoin-min... So you may think it's a scam for other reasons, but your point about mining fees being the driving of the pyramid, ponzi or whatever, is completely wrong.
- faitswulff 5y ago> After all, Elon is so cute when he's enthusiastic! But yeah he probably knows it's a scam too, what was I thinking. Judging by how quickly Tesla stopped accepting Bitcoin, I would say he definitely knows.