4 ms·

Shocking to see how out of touch hacker news is with crypto. I guess not much has changed since coinbase was launched on HN and faced a bunch of naysayers then

Shocking to see how out of touch hacker news is with crypto. I guess not much has changed since coinbase was launched on HN and faced a bunch of naysayers then also.

thiscatis 5y ago
Exactly. I think the average person would rather have the nay of hacker news but the yay of Wall Street.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- notafraudster 5y ago
  I mean, Long Island Iced Tea -> Long Blockchain Company got the "yay" [sic] of Wall Street but the "nay" of "people who recognized that an Iced Tea company claiming they could magically reinvent their business around blockchain with no specifics as to how"; and subsequently it turns out that, actually, there was no business plan and it was an insider trading pump and dump move. I'm sure before the insider trading charges that the executives of the company were absolutely happy to have market approval and leases on yachts, as anyone would be. I should say, I think Coinbase is relatively well situated to capitalize on crypto, and it's a real business. I also think it's pretty well situated to shrink and deleverage if there's a decline in the crypto market. I don't think they're a scam. I just mean that using market approval as evidence that the market is real, not a scam, not a trend, or does something useful is foolish. The point-in-time correlation of market success and fundamental success is nearly 0, even if the long-term correlation is very high. Recently see also: NFT mania. Surely you'd rather be the artist that gets paid $50 million for selling some bits even as the process is widely derided, since you the artist aren't the bag-holder later on when it turns out the bits aren't worth $50 million.
- orwin 5y ago
  I know a dev (used to work from Leeds UK, i don't know where he is actually) who created a crypto with 2 friends for someone who had the "yay" of Wall street. Long story short, he collected 200k for a 3-month job as actual payment, and another 600k when he sold his shitcoins (that's what he shared in our alumni group at least), i think the shitcoin creator escaped with 3M and a lot of people actually lost money. I thought it was funny and an actual tax on stupidity, but now i understand that it was targeted at poor and/or young people who did not really had to money to loose in these schemes.
gjulianm 5y ago
Shocking how every criticism of crypto is met with "you're out of touch" or "you're close minded" while the actual technical and social issues get overlooked.
- dcolkitt 5y ago
  Shocking to see how most criticism is just hand waving “technical and social issues” without citing any details. And when they do those “issues” are almost all out of date and ignore current technology. Crypto uses too much energy ignores Ethereum converting to PoS in six months. Crypto has no practical use ignores $150 billion in decentralized finance applications today. Crypto is too slow and expensive to transfer ignores super high capacity L2s and rollups that are processing tens of billions in transactions today with essentially zero costs.
  - RivieraKid 5y ago
    One issue with crypto is that it doesn't produce any value (it consumes value) and it has no intrinsic value. So as an investment it doesn't make any sense.
    - nly 5y ago
      Depends what you mean by "crypto". There are now hundreds of currencies on the Ethereum blockchain and many are backed 1:1 against hard assets. Do you know anyway to send something pegged 1:1 against gold across the world pseudo-anonymously and near instantaneously?
  - lottin 5y ago
    > Crypto has no practical use ignores $150 billion in decentralized finance applications today Where do you get this number from? > are processing tens of billions in transactions today with essentially zero costs. Source please?
  - gjulianm 5y ago
    > Crypto uses too much energy ignores Ethereum converting to PoS in six months If it doesn't get delayed yet again. And if it works. Also, right now it's BTC the one with the biggest market cap and name recognition, and I don't think that one is going to change anytime soon. > Crypto has no practical use ignores $150 billion in decentralized finance applications today Can I get a loan without 100%+ collateral yet? > Crypto is too slow and expensive to transfer ignores super high capacity L2s Tens of billions? Zero costs? Where is that? You also forget the following issues: - Irreversible transactions mean that scams, bugs and fraud are much more difficult to fight and revert. If someone steals my card I can cancel it and be safe. What if I lose my crypto wallet? - DeFi does not actually bring anything new to the table other than "decentralized". It will still have to deal with all the problems of financing and loans, from scratch. Default risk, collection of collateral, predatory loans... - The current economic system doesn't work too well with deflationary currency. - Volatility. As long as crypto is more of an investment than a currency, people will prefer to have their actual money in something more stable. And as long as supply is limited, speculation will always be present. - A big one: governments! It's pretty naive to think that governments are just going to give up monetary policy to an algorithm and a bunch of nodes in the blockchain. - The main new thing from the blockchain is decentralization and authenticated record of transactions. Claiming that it's going to solve problem that have nothing to do with those two features is wishful thinking, usually from ignorance of the problem space.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
mikeblackson 5y ago
Almost a decade and the echo chamber here is still missing the boat on the most revolutionary asset of the millennia. Bitcoin is a bullshit tester and it proves most people here know very little about practical applied economics.
xtracto 5y ago
It's pretty obvious to me: it's a sign of the aging of HN average reader. I experienced the same phenomenon in Slashdot back in the day: Comments in the first years were very interesting, constructive and enticing. As the population grew older, it started questioning everything without analysing (less space than a nomad?). Nowadays the level of the conversation there is terrible. It is similar to what happens in the mainstream: I'm 40 years old. I see chatroulette, snapchat, ticktock and dont understand them. I could dismiss them as stupid, unnecessary and fads. But the truth is that they are new takes on old subjects that maybe I dont understand; whereas 20 years ago I was on top of what was new or yet to come.

Shocking to see how out of touch hacker news is with crypto. I guess not much has changed since coinbase was launched on HN and faced a bunch of naysayers then also.

thiscatis 5y ago

Exactly. I think the average person would rather have the nay of hacker news but the yay of Wall Street.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
notafraudster 5y ago
I mean, Long Island Iced Tea -> Long Blockchain Company got the "yay" [sic] of Wall Street but the "nay" of "people who recognized that an Iced Tea company claiming they could magically reinvent their business around blockchain with no specifics as to how"; and subsequently it turns out that, actually, there was no business plan and it was an insider trading pump and dump move. I'm sure before the insider trading charges that the executives of the company were absolutely happy to have market approval and leases on yachts, as anyone would be. I should say, I think Coinbase is relatively well situated to capitalize on crypto, and it's a real business. I also think it's pretty well situated to shrink and deleverage if there's a decline in the crypto market. I don't think they're a scam. I just mean that using market approval as evidence that the market is real, not a scam, not a trend, or does something useful is foolish. The point-in-time correlation of market success and fundamental success is nearly 0, even if the long-term correlation is very high. Recently see also: NFT mania. Surely you'd rather be the artist that gets paid $50 million for selling some bits even as the process is widely derided, since you the artist aren't the bag-holder later on when it turns out the bits aren't worth $50 million.
orwin 5y ago
I know a dev (used to work from Leeds UK, i don't know where he is actually) who created a crypto with 2 friends for someone who had the "yay" of Wall street. Long story short, he collected 200k for a 3-month job as actual payment, and another 600k when he sold his shitcoins (that's what he shared in our alumni group at least), i think the shitcoin creator escaped with 3M and a lot of people actually lost money. I thought it was funny and an actual tax on stupidity, but now i understand that it was targeted at poor and/or young people who did not really had to money to loose in these schemes.

gjulianm 5y ago

Shocking how every criticism of crypto is met with "you're out of touch" or "you're close minded" while the actual technical and social issues get overlooked.

dcolkitt 5y ago
Shocking to see how most criticism is just hand waving “technical and social issues” without citing any details. And when they do those “issues” are almost all out of date and ignore current technology. Crypto uses too much energy ignores Ethereum converting to PoS in six months. Crypto has no practical use ignores $150 billion in decentralized finance applications today. Crypto is too slow and expensive to transfer ignores super high capacity L2s and rollups that are processing tens of billions in transactions today with essentially zero costs.
- RivieraKid 5y ago
  One issue with crypto is that it doesn't produce any value (it consumes value) and it has no intrinsic value. So as an investment it doesn't make any sense.
  - nly 5y ago
    Depends what you mean by "crypto". There are now hundreds of currencies on the Ethereum blockchain and many are backed 1:1 against hard assets. Do you know anyway to send something pegged 1:1 against gold across the world pseudo-anonymously and near instantaneously?
- lottin 5y ago
  > Crypto has no practical use ignores $150 billion in decentralized finance applications today Where do you get this number from? > are processing tens of billions in transactions today with essentially zero costs. Source please?
- gjulianm 5y ago
  > Crypto uses too much energy ignores Ethereum converting to PoS in six months If it doesn't get delayed yet again. And if it works. Also, right now it's BTC the one with the biggest market cap and name recognition, and I don't think that one is going to change anytime soon. > Crypto has no practical use ignores $150 billion in decentralized finance applications today Can I get a loan without 100%+ collateral yet? > Crypto is too slow and expensive to transfer ignores super high capacity L2s Tens of billions? Zero costs? Where is that? You also forget the following issues: - Irreversible transactions mean that scams, bugs and fraud are much more difficult to fight and revert. If someone steals my card I can cancel it and be safe. What if I lose my crypto wallet? - DeFi does not actually bring anything new to the table other than "decentralized". It will still have to deal with all the problems of financing and loans, from scratch. Default risk, collection of collateral, predatory loans... - The current economic system doesn't work too well with deflationary currency. - Volatility. As long as crypto is more of an investment than a currency, people will prefer to have their actual money in something more stable. And as long as supply is limited, speculation will always be present. - A big one: governments! It's pretty naive to think that governments are just going to give up monetary policy to an algorithm and a bunch of nodes in the blockchain. - The main new thing from the blockchain is decentralization and authenticated record of transactions. Claiming that it's going to solve problem that have nothing to do with those two features is wishful thinking, usually from ignorance of the problem space.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

mikeblackson 5y ago

Almost a decade and the echo chamber here is still missing the boat on the most revolutionary asset of the millennia. Bitcoin is a bullshit tester and it proves most people here know very little about practical applied economics.

xtracto 5y ago

It's pretty obvious to me: it's a sign of the aging of HN average reader. I experienced the same phenomenon in Slashdot back in the day: Comments in the first years were very interesting, constructive and enticing. As the population grew older, it started questioning everything without analysing (less space than a nomad?). Nowadays the level of the conversation there is terrible. It is similar to what happens in the mainstream: I'm 40 years old. I see chatroulette, snapchat, ticktock and dont understand them. I could dismiss them as stupid, unnecessary and fads. But the truth is that they are new takes on old subjects that maybe I dont understand; whereas 20 years ago I was on top of what was new or yet to come.