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Cryptocurrency discussions on HN often feel like 90's me discussing how fax machines would be obsolete, not because the Internet offered a better solution at th
by tudorw 5y ago
Cryptocurrency discussions on HN often feel like 90's me discussing how fax machines would be obsolete, not because the Internet offered a better solution at the time, digital signatures were not binding afaik so this was a real barrier, it was because I could see what was down the line, the progression, while sporadic was to a degree predictable, the first time I used video or played games on a phone, I knew other people would want this, same with the first online payment systems, to entertain the idea that the cryptocurrency world in it's entirety is a worthless sham is to miss a lot of very interesting people doing a lot of very interesting work, I hope I'm around to see something worthy come out of the space, it would not surprise me if it takes another 10 years or 6 months.
Look at the history of railways and canals, no one was really disputing that they were game changers, yet the level of fraud, hype and failures is not dissimilar to what we see in this new world, it doesn't automatically mean the idea itself is a dud.
- zeusk 5y agoI'm with you that digital currency is the way forward, but it's hard for me to swallow that it'll be "crypto currency". Also, the space is as you said, rife with fraud - not very different from early internet I suppose (what do I know, I was born in 95).
- DSingularity 5y agoExactly. I am starting to believe that the solution to this cryptocurrency problem is a USD stable-coin backed by government and not coinbase/algorithms. Put the whole “we need internet money” arguments coming from the cryptocurrency community.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- bena 5y agoYou know what's a USD stable-coin backed by government? The USD. My money is already mostly digital, represented by moving around numbers in databases. I handle cash very rarely. I don't need my money to be cryptographically secure, I need access to my money to be cryptographically secure. I think that's something crypto-enthusiasts skip over, they're focusing on a tangential issue.
- GoblinSlayer 5y agoA good IT service from government is like communism, it was never tried, but everyone dreams about it, hoping that it will happen by itself.
- qecez 5y agoExcuse me, but what the hell are you talking about?
- freen 5y agoSo, this is the argument I hear all of the time: that there is interesting work being done. In my noodling around in the space, I haven’t found a project that makes me think “ahh, this is a really compelling use case for the blockchain”. What are the projects you’ve seen that are doing compelling, novel, valuable work? I’m genuinely curious.
- pavlov 5y agoI’ve been asking this question for years too. Every time the answer is a batch of projects that make grandiose claims of solving very generic problems (e.g. “this is a global knowledge graph that ensures authors are always properly compensated”)… But the actual deployed use cases, if any, turn out to be just some kind of crypto derivatives in drag. In other words, there’s no real world economy bringing money into the system — it’s all just layers upon layers of trading shells where real money ultimately comes from speculators. There is a word for this kind of scheme.
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- tudorw 5y agoFor me, a globally distributed database running on open source software is interesting and novel in itself, just because no one can find anything useful to do with it yet doesn't invalidate the novelty, wasn't electrical effects similar, it was discovered prior to people having a use for it.
- tudorw 5y agoI'm not willing to comment publicly that this or that project is legit, rife with fraud is quite the understatement and I don't have the resources to vet anything, nonetheless, if you use google and follow people rather than projects, there are some really exciting developments on the edges.
- ghufran_syed 5y ago
- jstx1 5y agoThe problem with your argumentation is that it's completely disconnected from the merits of the thing we're discussing so you can use it to support any idea, no matter how good or bad. > X is just like this thing from history that people were skeptical of but succeeded. Substitute X with a horrible idea and you sound like you're defending it successfully while in reality you aren't saying anything about it.
- mimixco 5y agoI think what was meant is that digital payments like you find in games were a really innovative idea back in the day, when the poster mentions discovering them. That is the genesis of all crypto projects. (Remember Flooz, anyone?). Clearly lots of people wanted in on it and it became the hot mess that is NFTs, crypto Ponzis, etc. I think the takeaway/contribution was that those aspects of digital currency (in game) have done very, very well and made lots of money. So, there might be other uses of digital currency that are also viable.
- jtbayly 5y agoAnd the first time you used crypto-currency, you thought, “Ah, I see other people are going to want to do this?” I certainly didn’t.
- tudorw 5y agoYes, I imagined a populace having independent control over some form of portable digital secure financial instrument as being an exciting thing. Here's a piece from 2002, https://www.wired.com/2002/01/egold/ https://www.wired.com/2002/01/egold/
- karmakaze 5y agoI couldn't, and still can't imagine using a network that processes 7 global transactions per second. If we used some secondary chain, the crypto would be solving a problem for banks and not for people.
- tudorw 5y agoAnd how fast do you think the first steam engine went? I think we are all familiar with emerging technology that improves over time.
- karmakaze 5y agoWikipedia says: > Initial release 0.1.0 / 9 January 2009 (12 years ago) There's already a change in the phrasing from 'currency' to 'store of value' as people are figuring out it doesn't work.