5 ms·

I often find the headlines, and even stories about, crypto to be inscrutable to those looking in from the outside. The stories also seem to come from an ecosys

by ctur 5y ago

I often find the headlines, and even stories about, crypto to be inscrutable to those looking in from the outside. The stories also seem to come from an ecosystem of sites I don't recognize so it's hard to even judge if it's reputable site (or at least guess at the biases it might have). None of this is inherently bad, but there seems to be a growing divide between "mainstream" tech and the crypto world that is harder and harder to understand if you aren't already steeping in the ecosystem. Another challenging aspect is how much of crypto (particularly non-mainstream) has somewhat shady origins. Maybe the shadiness is just subverting expected norms, but there seems also to be sufficient evidence the shadiness also often is around illicit activity. I'm curious if others have found ways to build and keep an understanding of the crypto ecosystem without fully going down the rabbit hole?

trutannus 5y ago
> others have found ways to build and keep an understanding of the crypto ecosystem without fully going down the rabbit hole You're right on the mark. Most of the content around crypto is heavily biased and just looks untrustworthy for a number of reasons. From what I can tell, it's because they're actually unreliable sources. Not because they're trying to scam you, but because there's more money in selling you crypto services than there is in crypto itself. So what you end up finding is pretty much all content marketing. Basically, you're looking for how to mine gold, and all you can find are websites from shovel companies telling you about how great gold mining is. The sites that are not content marketing tend to come off as amateurish, often times because on deeper inspection they are actually run by amateurs. A strategy I tend to use for vetting information is to give the site a scan and look for technical inaccuracies (ie: confused/wrong/bizarre/shallow explanations about technical topics). From that, you can get a good picture of how knowledgeable the source actually is.
- tablespoon 5y ago
  A lot of it also has a strong "Power of Positive Thinking"-vibe. Basically people believing that if only they act and talk like something is true hard enough, it will become true (e.g. nonsense talk about NFTs representing ownership of anything besides the NFT itself). So you have the extra task of trying to distinguish between what is actually true and what some community wants to be true, when almost the only people talking about it are in the latter category.
  - trutannus 5y ago
    > A lot of it also has a strong "Power of Positive Thinking"-vibe You know what, I could never put my finger on what exactly it was other than the amature feel of some of the content. But you're correct here, there's a lot of magical thinking that goes along with the crypto world. Lots of random sounding predictions about how crypto will evolve that are clearly not grounded in any deep understanding of technology. I wonder how much of it is magical or wishful thinking in the classical sense, versus people who lack knowledge in general making claims about things that they don't really understand, which come off as bizarre. I've noticed actual technical knowledge is inversely predictive of interest in crypto.
  - luma 5y ago
    It's a stone requirement of the ponzi scheme itself. The price only goes up if new money comes into the market, so for anyone currently "hodling" a coin, they are obliged to convince others that buying in is a good idea or they lose their initial investment.
JofArnold 5y ago
I've recently started listening to a lot of podcast episodes on the subject (primarily Unchained and a16z) which has been great for raising my general awareness of what's going on. I'm very skeptical of 90% of what I hear and I've limited interest getting involved in the industry right now but crypto is hugely impactful no matter how you look at it so it's worth keeping a decent amount of curiosity in my opinion. --- Edit: because I explicitly called out two podcasts, I should make it clear I listen to them knowing full well the hosts and the guests often have an agenda (which much of the time amounts to pumping their own investments). That's true of many types of promotion of course but especially true in this space and especially true of a16z. But the subject matter can still be very interesting.
- malthaus 5y ago
  i'd be very sceptical of what a16z published about crypto topics; they are heavily invested both financially and reputationally. their whole game was/is leveraging their clout to give credibility to the scene, therefore increasing the value of their investments.
  - JofArnold 5y ago
    100%. Definitely under no illusions there. But for me since they are a core part of the hype that makes listening to them and analysing what they say even more important IMO
  - bob33212 5y ago
    Here is what a16z said about bitcoin in 2014. "use case for Bitcoin is micropayments", "Switching to Bitcoin, which charges no or very low fees" , "Another potential use of Bitcoin micropayments is to fight spam" https://a16z.com/2014/01/21/why-bitcoin-matters-nyt/ https://a16z.com/2014/01/21/why-bitcoin-matters-nyt/
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  > I've recently started listening to a lot of podcast episodes on the subject (primarily Unchained and a16z) It’s an okay podcast if (and only if) you recognize that a16z is in the business of “investing” early into new coins, using their brand to hype those coins, then selling them off when they can get the market excited about the coin. The technical content of the podcast might be reasonable, but you can’t separate it from their very large conflict of interests.
anythingdude321 5y ago
listen to uncommon core, every episode starting with the first, and you'll have a nice view from the inside. signal-to-noise ratio in crypto is atrocious, high signal sources are alpha
- delabay 5y ago
  single best tip for navigating the space. the best thing you can do in crypto is cut out noisy sources, this eliminates reddit, youtube, hacker news and most news sites. crypto twitter has some high signal, but curate regularly. follow smart individuals religiously, podcasts are probably the best. thanks for uncommon core, i hadn't heard of it. bankless is another high signal podcast (although eth-maxi).
lottin 5y ago
A good starting point is Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain: Bitcoin, Blockchain, Ethereum & Smart Contracts by David Gerard.
asimpletune 5y ago
As far as I’m able to discern, the value prop to investors pouring money into “smart contracts” is just that they’re unregulated.
- wavefunction 5y ago
  smart contracts are just bits of functional code I don't know that I'd invest in a deployed smart contract but I suppose it depends on the traffic and the situation of the developer it wouldn't be hard for the original developer to deploy a competing contract
- w4llstr33t 5y ago
  If they are able to replace real world contracts one day, that could be a benefit, i.e. escrow and title transfer for real estate. They would need to be pretty complex to do so, since currently title companies track local laws and make sure everything is in order, but, stuff like this could automate some things which are done manually now. There also would probably need to be a way to have human intervention, i.e. being able to upgrade or sidestep the contracts, if something doesn't go as expected, but I still think automating this can modernize certain fields. In my opinion, the process of buying / selling real estate, at least in the US, seems antiquated. There has to be some way to automate this instead of manually having some escrow company hold funds and then manually releasing them once the sale is complete, and issuing the title (gets more complicated if it's a mortgage vs a cash deal, since a bank loan would also be involved, but either way, it is possible). The smart contracts could be coded in a way where the funds are automatically released, and a title issued, once certain criteria are met. One risk is that the smart contracts could be hacked, but over time the code could be become more solid. It seems that as a whole the world will move more to automation, over time, and smart contracts might play a part in that. That said smart contracts that can't really be stopped could also become Skynet or something (i.e. Terminator), but I don't think fear of that should prevent us from exploring the possibilities. My point is that smart contracts could automate certain things that are done manually now. They might still require some human involvement, but the amount of human involvement required could be dramatically reduced. I don't think the main benefit of smart contracts is just that they are unregulated. I also don't think that the way smart contracts are used today are the only ways they can be used. It is a new field and many things that folks haven't even thought of yet are possible with this type of technology.
dogman144 5y ago
If you’re technical, read Mastering Bitcoin and Mastering Ethereum, both for free on GitHub https://github.com/bitcoinbook/bitcoinbook https://github.com/bitcoinbook/bitcoinbook, and https://learnmeabitcoin.com/technical/ https://learnmeabitcoin.com/technical/ Reason being is that how most of crypto works is a derivative of bitcoin or ethereum. And, it’s fairly normal in a technical sense, just applied in a unique way that needs to be understood via good ref doc. Once you wrap your head around those two anchor protocols and get a sense of how it relates to its comp sci primitives (file systems, p2p, cryptographic certs), it can be really demystified - ie “blockchain” is stored as blocks on a file system, in the comp sci sense.
- w4llstr33t 5y ago
  Here's the link for Mastering Ethereum: https://github.com/ethereumbook/ethereumbook https://github.com/ethereumbook/ethereumbook
dalbasal 5y ago
>> (on) stories about crypto being inscrutable to those looking in from the outside So... half the reasons are those you mention... subculture. Alien ecosystem, hard to distinguish between geniuses, quacks and con artists, blade runner theme music. The other half is because crypto is an unregulated, start up financial sector. Stories and headlines about the financial sector tend to also look inscrutable those on the outside. Chase a rabbit down a financial story for real, and it always leads to a "they can't do that! outrageous!" The fun thing about the gamestop thing, a few months back, was that every person had reached a different outrage. Margin lending by default. That the brokers' business model is selling users' trading data to competitors who frontrun it. That the hedge funds targeted for the short squeeze is the attackers' brokers' investor/partner/customer. That there is a layer of private clearing houses between brokers and markets that regulate the market. That this private regulator can impose unlimited capital requirements on brokers. That it did so, cutting most retail investors out of the market while institutions sorted out their positions. Etc. Stablecoins are basically an unregulated USD account. Sounds innocuous enough, until you consider that USD is just numbers in regulated USD accounts. Someone is making US dollars, and it's not the issuer of that currency. That's what a totally unregulated bank is. So... it's only natural to think "scandal" when you hear that some billionaire and a financial demigod minted $60 billion US Dollar denominated money.
- ryanobjc 5y ago
  Gift cards are unregulated banks then? The difference is banks have fractional reserve banking and stable coins do not.
xx511134bz 5y ago
If you understand DeFi loans, you are 99% there, since that comprises much of the enthusiasm. Lots of good writeups about the collapse of Iron have been mentioned here.

by ctur 5y ago

trutannus 5y ago

> others have found ways to build and keep an understanding of the crypto ecosystem without fully going down the rabbit hole You're right on the mark. Most of the content around crypto is heavily biased and just looks untrustworthy for a number of reasons. From what I can tell, it's because they're actually unreliable sources. Not because they're trying to scam you, but because there's more money in selling you crypto services than there is in crypto itself. So what you end up finding is pretty much all content marketing. Basically, you're looking for how to mine gold, and all you can find are websites from shovel companies telling you about how great gold mining is. The sites that are not content marketing tend to come off as amateurish, often times because on deeper inspection they are actually run by amateurs. A strategy I tend to use for vetting information is to give the site a scan and look for technical inaccuracies (ie: confused/wrong/bizarre/shallow explanations about technical topics). From that, you can get a good picture of how knowledgeable the source actually is.

tablespoon 5y ago
A lot of it also has a strong "Power of Positive Thinking"-vibe. Basically people believing that if only they act and talk like something is true hard enough, it will become true (e.g. nonsense talk about NFTs representing ownership of anything besides the NFT itself). So you have the extra task of trying to distinguish between what is actually true and what some community wants to be true, when almost the only people talking about it are in the latter category.
- trutannus 5y ago
  > A lot of it also has a strong "Power of Positive Thinking"-vibe You know what, I could never put my finger on what exactly it was other than the amature feel of some of the content. But you're correct here, there's a lot of magical thinking that goes along with the crypto world. Lots of random sounding predictions about how crypto will evolve that are clearly not grounded in any deep understanding of technology. I wonder how much of it is magical or wishful thinking in the classical sense, versus people who lack knowledge in general making claims about things that they don't really understand, which come off as bizarre. I've noticed actual technical knowledge is inversely predictive of interest in crypto.
- luma 5y ago
  It's a stone requirement of the ponzi scheme itself. The price only goes up if new money comes into the market, so for anyone currently "hodling" a coin, they are obliged to convince others that buying in is a good idea or they lose their initial investment.

JofArnold 5y ago

I've recently started listening to a lot of podcast episodes on the subject (primarily Unchained and a16z) which has been great for raising my general awareness of what's going on. I'm very skeptical of 90% of what I hear and I've limited interest getting involved in the industry right now but crypto is hugely impactful no matter how you look at it so it's worth keeping a decent amount of curiosity in my opinion. --- Edit: because I explicitly called out two podcasts, I should make it clear I listen to them knowing full well the hosts and the guests often have an agenda (which much of the time amounts to pumping their own investments). That's true of many types of promotion of course but especially true in this space and especially true of a16z. But the subject matter can still be very interesting.

malthaus 5y ago
i'd be very sceptical of what a16z published about crypto topics; they are heavily invested both financially and reputationally. their whole game was/is leveraging their clout to give credibility to the scene, therefore increasing the value of their investments.
- JofArnold 5y ago
  100%. Definitely under no illusions there. But for me since they are a core part of the hype that makes listening to them and analysing what they say even more important IMO
- bob33212 5y ago
  Here is what a16z said about bitcoin in 2014. "use case for Bitcoin is micropayments", "Switching to Bitcoin, which charges no or very low fees" , "Another potential use of Bitcoin micropayments is to fight spam" https://a16z.com/2014/01/21/why-bitcoin-matters-nyt/ https://a16z.com/2014/01/21/why-bitcoin-matters-nyt/
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
> I've recently started listening to a lot of podcast episodes on the subject (primarily Unchained and a16z) It’s an okay podcast if (and only if) you recognize that a16z is in the business of “investing” early into new coins, using their brand to hype those coins, then selling them off when they can get the market excited about the coin. The technical content of the podcast might be reasonable, but you can’t separate it from their very large conflict of interests.

anythingdude321 5y ago

listen to uncommon core, every episode starting with the first, and you'll have a nice view from the inside. signal-to-noise ratio in crypto is atrocious, high signal sources are alpha

delabay 5y ago
single best tip for navigating the space. the best thing you can do in crypto is cut out noisy sources, this eliminates reddit, youtube, hacker news and most news sites. crypto twitter has some high signal, but curate regularly. follow smart individuals religiously, podcasts are probably the best. thanks for uncommon core, i hadn't heard of it. bankless is another high signal podcast (although eth-maxi).

lottin 5y ago

A good starting point is Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain: Bitcoin, Blockchain, Ethereum & Smart Contracts by David Gerard.

asimpletune 5y ago

As far as I’m able to discern, the value prop to investors pouring money into “smart contracts” is just that they’re unregulated.

wavefunction 5y ago
smart contracts are just bits of functional code I don't know that I'd invest in a deployed smart contract but I suppose it depends on the traffic and the situation of the developer it wouldn't be hard for the original developer to deploy a competing contract
w4llstr33t 5y ago
If they are able to replace real world contracts one day, that could be a benefit, i.e. escrow and title transfer for real estate. They would need to be pretty complex to do so, since currently title companies track local laws and make sure everything is in order, but, stuff like this could automate some things which are done manually now. There also would probably need to be a way to have human intervention, i.e. being able to upgrade or sidestep the contracts, if something doesn't go as expected, but I still think automating this can modernize certain fields. In my opinion, the process of buying / selling real estate, at least in the US, seems antiquated. There has to be some way to automate this instead of manually having some escrow company hold funds and then manually releasing them once the sale is complete, and issuing the title (gets more complicated if it's a mortgage vs a cash deal, since a bank loan would also be involved, but either way, it is possible). The smart contracts could be coded in a way where the funds are automatically released, and a title issued, once certain criteria are met. One risk is that the smart contracts could be hacked, but over time the code could be become more solid. It seems that as a whole the world will move more to automation, over time, and smart contracts might play a part in that. That said smart contracts that can't really be stopped could also become Skynet or something (i.e. Terminator), but I don't think fear of that should prevent us from exploring the possibilities. My point is that smart contracts could automate certain things that are done manually now. They might still require some human involvement, but the amount of human involvement required could be dramatically reduced. I don't think the main benefit of smart contracts is just that they are unregulated. I also don't think that the way smart contracts are used today are the only ways they can be used. It is a new field and many things that folks haven't even thought of yet are possible with this type of technology.

dogman144 5y ago

If you’re technical, read Mastering Bitcoin and Mastering Ethereum, both for free on GitHub https://github.com/bitcoinbook/bitcoinbook https://github.com/bitcoinbook/bitcoinbook, and https://learnmeabitcoin.com/technical/ https://learnmeabitcoin.com/technical/ Reason being is that how most of crypto works is a derivative of bitcoin or ethereum. And, it’s fairly normal in a technical sense, just applied in a unique way that needs to be understood via good ref doc. Once you wrap your head around those two anchor protocols and get a sense of how it relates to its comp sci primitives (file systems, p2p, cryptographic certs), it can be really demystified - ie “blockchain” is stored as blocks on a file system, in the comp sci sense.

w4llstr33t 5y ago
Here's the link for Mastering Ethereum: https://github.com/ethereumbook/ethereumbook https://github.com/ethereumbook/ethereumbook

dalbasal 5y ago

>> (on) stories about crypto being inscrutable to those looking in from the outside So... half the reasons are those you mention... subculture. Alien ecosystem, hard to distinguish between geniuses, quacks and con artists, blade runner theme music. The other half is because crypto is an unregulated, start up financial sector. Stories and headlines about the financial sector tend to also look inscrutable those on the outside. Chase a rabbit down a financial story for real, and it always leads to a "they can't do that! outrageous!" The fun thing about the gamestop thing, a few months back, was that every person had reached a different outrage. Margin lending by default. That the brokers' business model is selling users' trading data to competitors who frontrun it. That the hedge funds targeted for the short squeeze is the attackers' brokers' investor/partner/customer. That there is a layer of private clearing houses between brokers and markets that regulate the market. That this private regulator can impose unlimited capital requirements on brokers. That it did so, cutting most retail investors out of the market while institutions sorted out their positions. Etc. Stablecoins are basically an unregulated USD account. Sounds innocuous enough, until you consider that USD is just numbers in regulated USD accounts. Someone is making US dollars, and it's not the issuer of that currency. That's what a totally unregulated bank is. So... it's only natural to think "scandal" when you hear that some billionaire and a financial demigod minted $60 billion US Dollar denominated money.

ryanobjc 5y ago
Gift cards are unregulated banks then? The difference is banks have fractional reserve banking and stable coins do not.

xx511134bz 5y ago

If you understand DeFi loans, you are 99% there, since that comprises much of the enthusiasm. Lots of good writeups about the collapse of Iron have been mentioned here.