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Man the anti-crypto hate on HN is stronger than usual today! > NFTs don’t prove ownership — ordinary legal contracts are just as good, and in fact better since

Man the anti-crypto hate on HN is stronger than usual today! > NFTs don’t prove ownership — ordinary legal contracts are just as good, and in fact better since they are heavily regulated and can be taken to courts for a central resolution when problems arise Blockchains allow strangers to transact high-value amounts across borders, quickly, securely. The fact I can move $1 billion USDC, $1 billion in BTC, or a $1 billion-valued NFT in seconds is why it leapfrogs the slow, manual, corruptible legal system. Can blockchains be a replacement for everything the courts provide? No. Can they allow moving digital goods quickly and safely across the world? Yes, because that is what they are designed to do. > Blockchains (which NFTs rely on) are in the best case no more secure than ‘normal’ relational database storage systems, and in most cases are less secure This is so fantastically incorrect the author has no business speaking authoritatively on this subject. Bitcoin is incorruptible. If you disagree, go and try! A relational database only needs a central party to fail. Does everything need a blockchain? No. Tweets go in the relational database, financial assets go on the blockchain. > Cryptocurrencies have no innate value and are only useful as a pyramid scheme, something big crypto influencers are knowingly using to profit from those who don’t realise it This book will refute the point https://www.amazon.com/Bitcoin-Standard-Decentralized-Alternative-Central/dp/1119473861 https://www.amazon.com/Bitcoin-Standard-Decentralized-Altern... TLDR Bitcoin is the hardest money ever created, politicians / society cannot manipulate it, therefore store wealth in bitcoin. > Both cryptocurrencies and NFTs cause high environmental damage, and there are no viable systems to deal with this problem due to security considerations Layer 2 solutions like Arbitrum and Optimism are live now that scale Ethereum without centralization. Proof of Stake chains like Cosmos, Avalanche, Polkadot, etc. are live now. ETH2 moving to PoS will happen soon.

NicoJuicy 5y ago
Sorry, i don't think any of us can relate on the difficulty of moving a billion $ daily. Lol I would think that moving it with checks & rules, would be a feature on such amount of money.
toolz 5y ago
> Proof of Stake chains like Cosmos, Avalanche, Polkadot, etc. are live now. ETH2 moving to PoS will happen soon. Just curious, is there a reason you've ommitted the two largest (by market cap) PoS coins (SOL, ADA) from this list?
- seibelj 5y ago
  I was just naming some that popped in my head. There are many more as well, like those.
Jensson 5y ago
> Man the anti-crypto hate on HN is stronger than usual today! Doubt grows since crypto gets used less and less as a currency and more and more as an asset bubble. A few years ago you could go and buy a hotdog for crypto in many places, now you can't, most shops accepting crypto stopped doing it. The value is still soaring, but the legitimate everyday usages are shrinking, it is really hard to conclude that today this is anything other than a scam.
- xmprt 5y ago
  It feels like the value of a cryptocurrency is indirectly proportional to its utility. If people are actually spending a cryptocurrency instead of holding it as a speculative investment, then the price of a coin won't go up (at least not anywhere near the rate it is now). If people want it to be used as a currency, then the price of a coin needs to stabilize but I doubt most pro-cryptocurrency people want that.
  - SrslyJosh 5y ago
    Nailed it. A useful currency with a stable value is not a good vehicle for currency speculation.
deleted 5y ago
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filmgirlcw 5y ago
Please tell me what blockchain will be able to complete the block to write the transaction in seconds? Bitcoin confirmation times are at 18:29. Yes, that's obviously going to be faster than sending a wire through a bank, but stop with the hyperbole!
- seibelj 5y ago
  Ethereum is 15 seconds, Solana is sub 1 second. Lightning network for bitcoin is speed of the internet with irreversibility. Like most HN crypto haters, you know barely anything on this subject so you repeat a bunch of misinformation. Very common and disappointing.
  - NicoJuicy 5y ago
    15 seconds is way too much. Most of them are way too expensive compared to traditional methods and even lightning doesn't solve it for new paths. Additionally, they are experimenting with your money on lightning since there is still the Canadian traveler problem. And lightning goes directly against the "spirit" of Blockchain. Centralized and offchain transactions that could be stored with sqllite... It's just a workaround causing new problems for a problem that already have been fixed.

NicoJuicy 5y ago

Sorry, i don't think any of us can relate on the difficulty of moving a billion $ daily. Lol I would think that moving it with checks & rules, would be a feature on such amount of money.

toolz 5y ago

> Proof of Stake chains like Cosmos, Avalanche, Polkadot, etc. are live now. ETH2 moving to PoS will happen soon. Just curious, is there a reason you've ommitted the two largest (by market cap) PoS coins (SOL, ADA) from this list?

seibelj 5y ago
I was just naming some that popped in my head. There are many more as well, like those.

Jensson 5y ago

> Man the anti-crypto hate on HN is stronger than usual today! Doubt grows since crypto gets used less and less as a currency and more and more as an asset bubble. A few years ago you could go and buy a hotdog for crypto in many places, now you can't, most shops accepting crypto stopped doing it. The value is still soaring, but the legitimate everyday usages are shrinking, it is really hard to conclude that today this is anything other than a scam.

xmprt 5y ago
It feels like the value of a cryptocurrency is indirectly proportional to its utility. If people are actually spending a cryptocurrency instead of holding it as a speculative investment, then the price of a coin won't go up (at least not anywhere near the rate it is now). If people want it to be used as a currency, then the price of a coin needs to stabilize but I doubt most pro-cryptocurrency people want that.
- SrslyJosh 5y ago
  Nailed it. A useful currency with a stable value is not a good vehicle for currency speculation.

deleted 5y ago

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filmgirlcw 5y ago

Please tell me what blockchain will be able to complete the block to write the transaction in seconds? Bitcoin confirmation times are at 18:29. Yes, that's obviously going to be faster than sending a wire through a bank, but stop with the hyperbole!

seibelj 5y ago
Ethereum is 15 seconds, Solana is sub 1 second. Lightning network for bitcoin is speed of the internet with irreversibility. Like most HN crypto haters, you know barely anything on this subject so you repeat a bunch of misinformation. Very common and disappointing.
- NicoJuicy 5y ago
  15 seconds is way too much. Most of them are way too expensive compared to traditional methods and even lightning doesn't solve it for new paths. Additionally, they are experimenting with your money on lightning since there is still the Canadian traveler problem. And lightning goes directly against the "spirit" of Blockchain. Centralized and offchain transactions that could be stored with sqllite... It's just a workaround causing new problems for a problem that already have been fixed.