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HN’s attitude is very surprising to me. I would think that they could get very excited about flash loans, decentralized exchanges (automated market makers), dao

HN’s attitude is very surprising to me. I would think that they could get very excited about flash loans, decentralized exchanges (automated market makers), daos, and other concrete innovations coming out of crypto asset projects. I think it’s mostly jealousy and a feeling that they missed the boat, so they want to see it sink. I think that because I’ve had the feeling many times. They may not realize these are early days. The average person saw the bubbles in tech company stocks and even to this day I find myself having to argue with people who think that tech is in a bubble despite the fact that these companies are now some of the biggest, most profitable, and most powerful in the world. Everyone on HN is asleep and a company offering a product called SushiSwap is a multi billion dollar unicorn. I think 99% of crypto projects are scams, but they are also exploratory. Even if they crash now, these decentralized apps are significantly more solid than pets.com ever was. Does HN really think that just evaporates? I would ask anyone on HN who is doubtful to do this - go read the UniswapV2 contract. If you don’t think that’s a cool innovation, please come back and let me know, I’m interested. The situation on HN really feels to me like one of “live long enough, see yourself become the villain.” They are playing the role of the old men in suits in the 90’s sitting around a table in New York and looking at those internet hippies in California saying “we build real things, not these internet funny money companies”. And what happened? It’s like Zuckerberg said to the suits in the Social Network - “I could buy Mt. Auburn Street, take the Phoenix Club, and turn it into my ping-pong room.”

beepbooptheory 5y ago
I am not asleep, but I'm definitely tired.
vnchr 5y ago
There’s astroturfing on HN, like every other open social media platform. The tilted dissonance around crypto, whether it’s the counterintuitive market behavior or climate change advocacy, is one of lacking curiosity, a hallmark of innovative cultures.
- TomSwirly 5y ago
  Funny how crypto people thinking insulting everyone else will change our minds! "It has to be your lack of curiosity" (because there's no otherwise explaining your bad judgement).
  - ohbleek 5y ago
    How exactly is it bad judgement? I’d argue that working at google or investing and making money at google signifies equally bad judgement then, seeing as how it is a company that is eroding freedoms, regularly caught breaking laws, and rife with unethical business practices all in the name of innovation and technology. And yet nobody is decrying the evils of selling their stock in google to make some $.
ycombobreaker 5y ago
> automated market makers Are you claiming that this is an innovation associated with crypto? Can you elaborate or clarify, as the case may be?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- sjtindell 5y ago
  The decentralized exchanges are essentially just automated market makers, but in a different sense than existing automated market makers like Citadel. The contract deals more with balancing pools than a traditional market maker who just forwards orders to an exchange or matches it themselves.
  - ycombobreaker 5y ago
    Apologies for the delayed response. What you're describing is not novel to crypto. Citadel is a wholesaler, but plenty of other participants quote firm bid/offer prices on real exchanges (where the wholesaler sends their exhaust). In the US equity space there is RegNMS that seeks to model the marketplace as a single entity, so it's a bad example; but there are plenty of other examples of non-fungible products that trade more similarly to the crypto markets. For example, there are gold markets across the world with slightly different quality standards, units of measurement, delivery standards (or cash settlement rules), expiration dates, etc.
verdverm 5y ago
I was excited 4 years ago when I first discovered these crypto concepts. As time has gone on and I've learned more about them, they are less interesting and come with a ton of baggage. There are interesting things like formal verification, but I expect that these types of things will be taken without the blockchain. You shouldn't dismiss HN attitudes as jealousy or asleep, that is derogatory.
- sjtindell 5y ago
  Yeah the language is a bit strong. I’m serious about the jealousy though - perhaps it’s just me. But when I see someone making a boatload on Tesla and I’m sitting there thinking it’s ridiculous, where does that really come from? All I know is I probably wouldn’t care either way if I’d owned some…and since my experiences with day trading and algorithmic trading, I’m convinced 90% of finance is emotional. It clouds the mind and corrupts usually rational people.
  - danielmarkbruce 5y ago
    You are sitting there thinking it's ridiculous on Tesla. Are you thinking it's ridiculous on Google? Or Apple? Don't give yourself a hard time :) I think the Tesla stock price is ridiculous. It's not a jealousy thing. I don't think Google or Apple share prices are ridiculous, and more people made more money out of those two. If someone makes money in a ridiculous way, it's ok to think it's ridiculous.
    - sjtindell 5y ago
      True. The point I was making was one about emotion in finance - when I’m making money it’s easier to ignore rational doubts, and when I’m missing out it’s easier to focus on the negatives because a little voice in the back of my head wants it to fail.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - 5y ago
Imnimo 5y ago
>go read the UniswapV2 contract. If you don’t think that’s a cool innovation, please come back and let me know, I’m interested. I feel like the coolness of Uniswap requires putting the cart before the horse. If I'm not convinced of the real utility of these tokens, why would I be impressed with the ability to move them around in various clever ways? I need to see a valuable external use case before I can see the value in what Uniswap enables.
- sjtindell 5y ago
  I guess to me it’s more about progression. From Bitcoin, to Ethereum, to Uniswap, there is a strong development of the early ideas and technology. This doesn’t seem like it will just stop to me. It indicates a very bright future in my opinion. Also, although I get disillusioned, I personally have come to appreciate more that the value being produced is financial. There is clearly massive pent up demand for financial games. On Wall Street there is a huge market for firms that proudly do not pay attention at all to the underlying assets they trade in a “fundamentals” sense, and just play games with mathematical and technological advantage. From what I can tell massive segments of finance are just money games. This is a form of that, which is a real and tremendous market. A natural progression that people who say “high frequency trading provides no value” or “banks shouldn’t be allowed to deal in derivatives” will hate. You should hear the kind of stuff people are coming up with…what if I could sell a token, and the interest generated from staking it gets repackaged into an options contract on another chain that then gets its value automatically updated every time someone sells and… It seems nonsensical, until you go learn what all these quants are getting paid millions per year to do for hedge funds and you think to yourself “oh, it’s a similar thing. There is demand for this.”
  - Imnimo 5y ago
    I mean, if someone showed by some great new innovation to let HFT shops move faster, I'd also be a bit nonplussed. If the answer is just "well, this is no more useless other frivolous* money games", then I'm not really convinced. *frivolous in the sense of real utility. Obviously they make boatloads of money.
koonsolo 5y ago
It's like talking to an old person about computer games. They literally see 0 value and don't get why we are all excited about it. Most feel it's a net negative on society. And yes, that's also a market that dwarfs all of its neighbors.
- TomSwirly 5y ago
  "You're old and foolish" is also not an argument in favor of cryptocurrencies.
  - koonsolo 5y ago
    You don't get it do you? There is no point in giving arguments to people who don't understand. All this HN discussions have proven that already, no? Do you really think at this point you or me are going to change someones opinion with arguments?
    - worik 5y ago
      That is not a logical argument. No crypto booster has an answer to: It is not useful Or It is a huge waste of energy Or All the technology involved has better counterparts I do not think I will change your mind, but others are reading this
      - koonsolo 5y ago
        All your questions have been answered plenty of times. The fact that the same stuff keeps being repeated says enough about the discussion.
      - anonymoushn 5y ago
        Cross-posted: Transferring SPL USDC is easier, faster, less wasteful, and less expensive than transferring dollars in a bank account.
breuleux 5y ago
> I think it’s mostly jealousy and a feeling that they missed the boat, so they want to see it sink. If crypto and defi live up to their promise, no one is going to "miss the boat". People at large will start getting paid in cryptocurrencies and they will start using them in transactions. If there are only a limited number of boats for this thing, that means it's a bubble and it's going to pop. Personally, I struggle to see any real uses for cryptocurrency that are not at odds with it being deflationary. So, paradoxically, for as long as it keeps going up, I don't trust it will hold its value. Once the curve flattens and adoption picks up, then sure, I'll consider it, but at that point it doesn't matter if you get in early or not.
- sjtindell 5y ago
  I commented this further down and am interested in your thoughts. One thing I’ve come to appreciate more when we talk about the “real value” being produced is that these are essentially just money games. Lots of established Wall Street firms play money games for a (very, very good) living. I’ve come to accept more that what people on Wall Street do is real. Games are real. I don’t personally buy into the “new world currency”, “real world use case, I’m gonna own my house on a blockchain” lines of thinking. The use case is still being fleshed out but in my opinion it’s much more likely to produce lots of Citadels than lots of Amazons or Googles if that makes sense. Whereas I think that HN believes it will just go away because it’s all a scam. For better or worse, there is huge pent up demand for money games. The average person doesn’t know it yet, but they want to own a swap on an option to buy a percent of the interest of a bond deal that they can then stake for percent ownership in an nft. It sounds insane to you and me right now. But I think they’re going to evolve to the use case of crypto, not the other way around.
  - breuleux 5y ago
    I guess I can understand the idea of blockchains as a better way to play financial games. That's a valid use for which there is demand. Another use I can understand is hedging against political instability. Neither personally appeal to me, but I get it. Still, it seems to me that an awful lot of people are playing this game with scant knowledge of the rules or of what's involved, which is a bit like investing in Tesla without understanding what a car is. I also feel that a lot of the "value" that has been built up is predicated on the idea that Bitcoin (and/or other coins) will indeed become the new world currency. I have seen a few people saying this very thing (or close to it) in this post's comments. That's not to say they are wrong. However, if the outcome of defi is limited to playing financial games, there is a point where people will lose confidence in this "new world currency" forecast and the price of BTC will see a severe correction. And that's one thing that I find bothersome in this whole craze: the fact that many ideas in the crypto space have legitimate value does not imply that it is profitable to invest in any existing technology. The future CAN be defi at the same time that Bitcoin might crash to zero, if it happens to be the wrong horse. Worse yet, existing entrenched interests in cryto have a vested interest in making sure that the only technologies that succeed are those they have a stake in, so if Bitcoin succeeds, that may very well be at the expense of vastly superior technology. I think there is a very real risk that the success of Bitcoin will either prevent or significantly delay the emergence of good, efficient blockchain technology.
acjohnson55 5y ago
While extremely interesting and even innovative, of those innovations are only useful in the hermetic world of their own blockchain, due to the oracle problem. The idea of real-world DeFi is purely hypothetical, at this point.
- sjtindell 5y ago
  Yeah to be honest with you, I don’t believe much at all in this talk about “real world” integrations. If you’re interested please check out a couple other comments I made on this thread that touch on that. My opinions are developing as I go.
  - acjohnson55 5y ago
    Read through your other comments, and I don't think that there being a market for money games is sufficient to keep the crypto train going, if it can't find its way into the underpinnings of the real economy. People play money games with things that are indispensable, like the stock market. Failing that, I'm skeptical that people will find crypto interesting after it finds its top. It may just find itself as a perpetually fringe and somewhat seedy sector, like MLM -- a place where fortunes are made off the backs of folks who are betting their meager savings on a chance at better prospects.
    - sjtindell 5y ago
      I get that and think it’s possible for sure.
TigeriusKirk 5y ago
It would be an extraordinary event in human history if jealousy didn't play at least some role here. But I think more than that it's become an identity thing. A social signal. So it's not really worth arguing about. Share you own thoughts and move on, don't get invested in debating it here. Elsewhere, perhaps, but not here. I do want to add that while I don't completely agree with all your comments in this thread, I do appreciate seeing someone express an opinion on the topic that isn't a copy/paste of countless others before it.
SuoDuanDao 5y ago
I suspect that much of HN, either directly or via their backers/employers, also comes out of the angel-investment scene and has emotional ties to the more conventional funding mechanisms that were themselves disruptive to traditional finance. "You can't make someone understand something when their income depends on not understanding it" and all that.
- worik 5y ago
  I do not have a dog in this fight. I do have an extensive economics education, and deep and wide IT experience. I do not understand how crypto is any use for anything that is not illegal and/or immoral. My conclusion is that it is largely for illegal transactions and scams.
  - SuoDuanDao 5y ago
    What is your response to the idea that it can automate the role of a trusted third party in commerce, thereby removing much of the opportunity for abuse of this role?
    - worik 5y ago
      Trust really matters in commerce. Doing away with trust is bad. If we do not trust each other there is no technology on Dog's Green Earth that can save us. Can you be trusted? Ask yourself.
      - SuoDuanDao 5y ago
        >Can you be trusted? Ask yourself. Talk about a con man's answer. I get multiple calls a week by people claiming to be my credit card provider, the tax arm of my country's civil service, or the president of the company I work for. Of course some people can't be trusted. Relying on universal trust is a recipe for universal corruption, and your answer to someone pointing that out is to try and turn the problem with trust on them specifically? At least come up with some better lies, this is just insulting everyone's intelligence.
mclightning 5y ago
I have exactly the same observation and personal experience, and commented the same thing a while back on another crypto-hatred thread here on HN. Below commenters are just switching the tables around, not seeing absolute radical cynicism towards crypto/blockchain on HN.

beepbooptheory 5y ago

I am not asleep, but I'm definitely tired.

vnchr 5y ago

There’s astroturfing on HN, like every other open social media platform. The tilted dissonance around crypto, whether it’s the counterintuitive market behavior or climate change advocacy, is one of lacking curiosity, a hallmark of innovative cultures.

TomSwirly 5y ago
Funny how crypto people thinking insulting everyone else will change our minds! "It has to be your lack of curiosity" (because there's no otherwise explaining your bad judgement).
- ohbleek 5y ago
  How exactly is it bad judgement? I’d argue that working at google or investing and making money at google signifies equally bad judgement then, seeing as how it is a company that is eroding freedoms, regularly caught breaking laws, and rife with unethical business practices all in the name of innovation and technology. And yet nobody is decrying the evils of selling their stock in google to make some $.

ycombobreaker 5y ago

> automated market makers Are you claiming that this is an innovation associated with crypto? Can you elaborate or clarify, as the case may be?

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
sjtindell 5y ago
The decentralized exchanges are essentially just automated market makers, but in a different sense than existing automated market makers like Citadel. The contract deals more with balancing pools than a traditional market maker who just forwards orders to an exchange or matches it themselves.
- ycombobreaker 5y ago
  Apologies for the delayed response. What you're describing is not novel to crypto. Citadel is a wholesaler, but plenty of other participants quote firm bid/offer prices on real exchanges (where the wholesaler sends their exhaust). In the US equity space there is RegNMS that seeks to model the marketplace as a single entity, so it's a bad example; but there are plenty of other examples of non-fungible products that trade more similarly to the crypto markets. For example, there are gold markets across the world with slightly different quality standards, units of measurement, delivery standards (or cash settlement rules), expiration dates, etc.

verdverm 5y ago

I was excited 4 years ago when I first discovered these crypto concepts. As time has gone on and I've learned more about them, they are less interesting and come with a ton of baggage. There are interesting things like formal verification, but I expect that these types of things will be taken without the blockchain. You shouldn't dismiss HN attitudes as jealousy or asleep, that is derogatory.

sjtindell 5y ago
Yeah the language is a bit strong. I’m serious about the jealousy though - perhaps it’s just me. But when I see someone making a boatload on Tesla and I’m sitting there thinking it’s ridiculous, where does that really come from? All I know is I probably wouldn’t care either way if I’d owned some…and since my experiences with day trading and algorithmic trading, I’m convinced 90% of finance is emotional. It clouds the mind and corrupts usually rational people.
- danielmarkbruce 5y ago
  You are sitting there thinking it's ridiculous on Tesla. Are you thinking it's ridiculous on Google? Or Apple? Don't give yourself a hard time :) I think the Tesla stock price is ridiculous. It's not a jealousy thing. I don't think Google or Apple share prices are ridiculous, and more people made more money out of those two. If someone makes money in a ridiculous way, it's ok to think it's ridiculous.
  - sjtindell 5y ago
    True. The point I was making was one about emotion in finance - when I’m making money it’s easier to ignore rational doubts, and when I’m missing out it’s easier to focus on the negatives because a little voice in the back of my head wants it to fail.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - 5y ago

Imnimo 5y ago

>go read the UniswapV2 contract. If you don’t think that’s a cool innovation, please come back and let me know, I’m interested. I feel like the coolness of Uniswap requires putting the cart before the horse. If I'm not convinced of the real utility of these tokens, why would I be impressed with the ability to move them around in various clever ways? I need to see a valuable external use case before I can see the value in what Uniswap enables.

sjtindell 5y ago
I guess to me it’s more about progression. From Bitcoin, to Ethereum, to Uniswap, there is a strong development of the early ideas and technology. This doesn’t seem like it will just stop to me. It indicates a very bright future in my opinion. Also, although I get disillusioned, I personally have come to appreciate more that the value being produced is financial. There is clearly massive pent up demand for financial games. On Wall Street there is a huge market for firms that proudly do not pay attention at all to the underlying assets they trade in a “fundamentals” sense, and just play games with mathematical and technological advantage. From what I can tell massive segments of finance are just money games. This is a form of that, which is a real and tremendous market. A natural progression that people who say “high frequency trading provides no value” or “banks shouldn’t be allowed to deal in derivatives” will hate. You should hear the kind of stuff people are coming up with…what if I could sell a token, and the interest generated from staking it gets repackaged into an options contract on another chain that then gets its value automatically updated every time someone sells and… It seems nonsensical, until you go learn what all these quants are getting paid millions per year to do for hedge funds and you think to yourself “oh, it’s a similar thing. There is demand for this.”
- Imnimo 5y ago
  I mean, if someone showed by some great new innovation to let HFT shops move faster, I'd also be a bit nonplussed. If the answer is just "well, this is no more useless other frivolous* money games", then I'm not really convinced. *frivolous in the sense of real utility. Obviously they make boatloads of money.

koonsolo 5y ago

It's like talking to an old person about computer games. They literally see 0 value and don't get why we are all excited about it. Most feel it's a net negative on society. And yes, that's also a market that dwarfs all of its neighbors.

TomSwirly 5y ago
"You're old and foolish" is also not an argument in favor of cryptocurrencies.
- koonsolo 5y ago
  You don't get it do you? There is no point in giving arguments to people who don't understand. All this HN discussions have proven that already, no? Do you really think at this point you or me are going to change someones opinion with arguments?
  - worik 5y ago
    That is not a logical argument. No crypto booster has an answer to: It is not useful Or It is a huge waste of energy Or All the technology involved has better counterparts I do not think I will change your mind, but others are reading this
    - koonsolo 5y ago
      All your questions have been answered plenty of times. The fact that the same stuff keeps being repeated says enough about the discussion.
    - anonymoushn 5y ago
      Cross-posted: Transferring SPL USDC is easier, faster, less wasteful, and less expensive than transferring dollars in a bank account.

breuleux 5y ago

> I think it’s mostly jealousy and a feeling that they missed the boat, so they want to see it sink. If crypto and defi live up to their promise, no one is going to "miss the boat". People at large will start getting paid in cryptocurrencies and they will start using them in transactions. If there are only a limited number of boats for this thing, that means it's a bubble and it's going to pop. Personally, I struggle to see any real uses for cryptocurrency that are not at odds with it being deflationary. So, paradoxically, for as long as it keeps going up, I don't trust it will hold its value. Once the curve flattens and adoption picks up, then sure, I'll consider it, but at that point it doesn't matter if you get in early or not.

sjtindell 5y ago
I commented this further down and am interested in your thoughts. One thing I’ve come to appreciate more when we talk about the “real value” being produced is that these are essentially just money games. Lots of established Wall Street firms play money games for a (very, very good) living. I’ve come to accept more that what people on Wall Street do is real. Games are real. I don’t personally buy into the “new world currency”, “real world use case, I’m gonna own my house on a blockchain” lines of thinking. The use case is still being fleshed out but in my opinion it’s much more likely to produce lots of Citadels than lots of Amazons or Googles if that makes sense. Whereas I think that HN believes it will just go away because it’s all a scam. For better or worse, there is huge pent up demand for money games. The average person doesn’t know it yet, but they want to own a swap on an option to buy a percent of the interest of a bond deal that they can then stake for percent ownership in an nft. It sounds insane to you and me right now. But I think they’re going to evolve to the use case of crypto, not the other way around.
- breuleux 5y ago
  I guess I can understand the idea of blockchains as a better way to play financial games. That's a valid use for which there is demand. Another use I can understand is hedging against political instability. Neither personally appeal to me, but I get it. Still, it seems to me that an awful lot of people are playing this game with scant knowledge of the rules or of what's involved, which is a bit like investing in Tesla without understanding what a car is. I also feel that a lot of the "value" that has been built up is predicated on the idea that Bitcoin (and/or other coins) will indeed become the new world currency. I have seen a few people saying this very thing (or close to it) in this post's comments. That's not to say they are wrong. However, if the outcome of defi is limited to playing financial games, there is a point where people will lose confidence in this "new world currency" forecast and the price of BTC will see a severe correction. And that's one thing that I find bothersome in this whole craze: the fact that many ideas in the crypto space have legitimate value does not imply that it is profitable to invest in any existing technology. The future CAN be defi at the same time that Bitcoin might crash to zero, if it happens to be the wrong horse. Worse yet, existing entrenched interests in cryto have a vested interest in making sure that the only technologies that succeed are those they have a stake in, so if Bitcoin succeeds, that may very well be at the expense of vastly superior technology. I think there is a very real risk that the success of Bitcoin will either prevent or significantly delay the emergence of good, efficient blockchain technology.

acjohnson55 5y ago

While extremely interesting and even innovative, of those innovations are only useful in the hermetic world of their own blockchain, due to the oracle problem. The idea of real-world DeFi is purely hypothetical, at this point.

sjtindell 5y ago
Yeah to be honest with you, I don’t believe much at all in this talk about “real world” integrations. If you’re interested please check out a couple other comments I made on this thread that touch on that. My opinions are developing as I go.
- acjohnson55 5y ago
  Read through your other comments, and I don't think that there being a market for money games is sufficient to keep the crypto train going, if it can't find its way into the underpinnings of the real economy. People play money games with things that are indispensable, like the stock market. Failing that, I'm skeptical that people will find crypto interesting after it finds its top. It may just find itself as a perpetually fringe and somewhat seedy sector, like MLM -- a place where fortunes are made off the backs of folks who are betting their meager savings on a chance at better prospects.
  - sjtindell 5y ago
    I get that and think it’s possible for sure.

TigeriusKirk 5y ago

It would be an extraordinary event in human history if jealousy didn't play at least some role here. But I think more than that it's become an identity thing. A social signal. So it's not really worth arguing about. Share you own thoughts and move on, don't get invested in debating it here. Elsewhere, perhaps, but not here. I do want to add that while I don't completely agree with all your comments in this thread, I do appreciate seeing someone express an opinion on the topic that isn't a copy/paste of countless others before it.

SuoDuanDao 5y ago

I suspect that much of HN, either directly or via their backers/employers, also comes out of the angel-investment scene and has emotional ties to the more conventional funding mechanisms that were themselves disruptive to traditional finance. "You can't make someone understand something when their income depends on not understanding it" and all that.

worik 5y ago
I do not have a dog in this fight. I do have an extensive economics education, and deep and wide IT experience. I do not understand how crypto is any use for anything that is not illegal and/or immoral. My conclusion is that it is largely for illegal transactions and scams.
- SuoDuanDao 5y ago
  What is your response to the idea that it can automate the role of a trusted third party in commerce, thereby removing much of the opportunity for abuse of this role?
  - worik 5y ago
    Trust really matters in commerce. Doing away with trust is bad. If we do not trust each other there is no technology on Dog's Green Earth that can save us. Can you be trusted? Ask yourself.
    - SuoDuanDao 5y ago
      >Can you be trusted? Ask yourself. Talk about a con man's answer. I get multiple calls a week by people claiming to be my credit card provider, the tax arm of my country's civil service, or the president of the company I work for. Of course some people can't be trusted. Relying on universal trust is a recipe for universal corruption, and your answer to someone pointing that out is to try and turn the problem with trust on them specifically? At least come up with some better lies, this is just insulting everyone's intelligence.

mclightning 5y ago

I have exactly the same observation and personal experience, and commented the same thing a while back on another crypto-hatred thread here on HN. Below commenters are just switching the tables around, not seeing absolute radical cynicism towards crypto/blockchain on HN.