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> What you're asking us to trust is that: > 1. We trust the coders to know what is best for us. > 2. You can write perfect code so that our money is safe.

by darawk 5y ago

> What you're asking us to trust is that: > 1. We trust the coders to know what is best for us. > 2. You can write perfect code so that our money is safe. > 3. The price will never plummet. Nobody is asking that. The source code is public, read it and decide for yourself. Good luck doing that at your local bank. There are plenty of stablecoins, you don't have to take on crypto exposure. > 1. Mt. Gox Failure Totally irrelevant. > 2. DAO Failure Sure, a public commons infrastructure will elicit a lot of bad projects. Just like the vast majority of open source projects are bad. This is not an indictment of open source. > 3. First BTC price crash Irrelevant. > 4. USDT regulatory concerns Use one of the many other stablecoins, then. This is the beauty of the system. It's actually open, so there are a diversity of issuers. You could even start one yourself, if you wanted. > 5. Lack of learning from failures There is an enormous amount of learning from failures. If you believe there isn't, you aren't paying attention. > 6. Politics still exist, they just moved to the coding layer Yes, this is true. However, this layer is thin, by design. That means the layers above it, which implement most of the relevant functionality, are a diverse ecosystem of choice. Contrast to the thickness of politics in other domains. > 7. Willful ignorance of the scams and crimes cryptocurrencies has enabled > 7.1 Because somehow cryptocurrency is better for us. New technology brings about scams roughly in proportion to its power. The internet enabled tons of scams. Fiat currency enabled tons of scams. Coinage enabled tons of scams. And so did banks, particularly of the fractional reserve variety. That doesn't mean scams are good or should be tolerated. But it takes time to develop the social and political conventions to deal with them. I believe that process is taking place in crypto, though perhaps not as quickly as we'd like. I think if you look back at the history of other comparable technologies, you will see that crypto is pretty far ahead of the game in this regard, though. > 8. Hype over price security and software security > 8.1 Because somehow cryptocurrency is better for us. Sure. Lots of elements of crypto are overhyped. Overhype comes along with any transformative technology. See hype about carbon nanotubes, nuclear power, 3d printing, etc. Hype is an indictment of people, not technology.

e9 5y ago
> Nobody is asking that. The source code is public, read it and decide for yourself. Good luck doing that at your local bank. There are plenty of stablecoins, you don't have to take on crypto exposure. Most people are not advanced coders and will never be. So most people still have to trust a random coder (be it close friend or someone on the news or online). If something happens to your money because someone took advantage of you in the code then good luck getting anything back. At least with banks there are laws around this stuff and you can actually get your money back. For average person this is still the way to go.
- acdha 5y ago
  There's also a massive unregulated conflict of interest here: reviewing the source code will require experience which someone is unlikely to have without also having a financial interest in expanded use of cryptocurrencies. As we've seen so many times over from all of the cryptocurrency boosters who talked up code or services until a major problem occurred, this can cloud someone's judgement even if they're not intentionally scamming you.
  - tshaddox 5y ago
    Isn’t this argument also true of anyone in a position to wield government power? Politicians aren’t really renowned for their honesty, for example.
    - acdha 5y ago
      That’s not what we’re talking about: if I hire a lawyer to review a contract, they’re not making decisions based on a need to boost USD to protect their ability to find a buyer. Similarly, while they’re both fiat currencies the USD is orders of magnitude stronger (inordinately more use, links to durable value, etc.) which means that my hypothetical lawyer’s ability to shift the value is extremely small. Even actual government officials have relatively little power this way: there are many of them and the need to get re-elected means they’re far less likely to try the kind of pump and dump scams which are routine in the cryptocurrency world, especially given the likelihood of scrutiny and punishment.
      - rglullis 5y ago
        > government officials No need for pump and dump when they are raking in their money by trading on insider knowledge, getting favors from lobbyists and by getting their cushy board seats at banks after they leave office.
    - bb88 5y ago
      The reason we know politicians are corrupt is because they got exposed by the media or prosecutors. Autocratic politicians are perfect because they can't be exposed.
bb88 5y ago
It's not open source versus closed source, and loss of money is never irrelevant. It's the alignment of what I value (security, safety, government guarantees) versus what you value, which is ... well I don't know. I feel it's one of the following though: Decentralized trust is great for the world. And/Or You have a huge stake in crypto, and you need others to believe in it as well, or your crypto assets will fail. I just can't tell whether you're in it for the money or to change society. It's fine if it's both, but your arguments justifying crypto don't share the greed angle. I just feel like people should know who they're arguing with.
- darawk 5y ago
  > It's not open source versus closed source Banks are literally closed source. Crypto is literally closed source. So, yes, it is. > and loss of money is never irrelevant. Loss of money from centralized exchanges is irrelevant to the decentralized consensus technology. These are completely orthogonal concerns. Normal financial institutions get hacked, and they also operate ponzi schemes. The fact that this can happen to comparable centralized crypto services is orthogonal to the technology. > It's the alignment of what I value (security, safety, government guarantees) versus what you value, which is ... well I don't know. I think i've pretty clearly articulated what I think the technology is for. Just go back and read what i've said. > I just feel like people should know who they're arguing with. Of course i'm invested in it, to a degree. Anyone who believes in a technology should be invested in that technology. You shouldn't trust them if they're not, because if they haven't invested, they don't actually believe in it. That being said, crypto very well may not turn out to be useful for the world. It enables new possibilities for social and economic organization. Technologies like that are very rare, and they are usually transformative and tremendously economically valuable. This one could be an exception, but it'd probably be the first.
  - bb88 5y ago
    > Of course i'm invested in it, to a degree. Awesome. I appreciate that. That tacit acknowledgement is lacking in all pro-crypto posts. Most silicon valley companies want to make a shit ton of money with their VC capital. They say things like, "We'll make the world better..." but that's really just what they tell themselves so they can feel better about making a metric shit ton of money. And there's nothing wrong with that since that's what drives the economy. But it's unchecked greed that caused 2008, and that was human behavior. If anything crypto appears to enable more bad human behavior: money laundering for drugs and human trafficking, rug pulls, stable coins that may or may not be literally printing money, payoffs for ransomware and blackmail... At what point do you check your greed and want to solve the unsexy problems that crypto creates in our society?

by darawk 5y ago

e9 5y ago

> Nobody is asking that. The source code is public, read it and decide for yourself. Good luck doing that at your local bank. There are plenty of stablecoins, you don't have to take on crypto exposure. Most people are not advanced coders and will never be. So most people still have to trust a random coder (be it close friend or someone on the news or online). If something happens to your money because someone took advantage of you in the code then good luck getting anything back. At least with banks there are laws around this stuff and you can actually get your money back. For average person this is still the way to go.

acdha 5y ago
There's also a massive unregulated conflict of interest here: reviewing the source code will require experience which someone is unlikely to have without also having a financial interest in expanded use of cryptocurrencies. As we've seen so many times over from all of the cryptocurrency boosters who talked up code or services until a major problem occurred, this can cloud someone's judgement even if they're not intentionally scamming you.
- tshaddox 5y ago
  Isn’t this argument also true of anyone in a position to wield government power? Politicians aren’t really renowned for their honesty, for example.
  - acdha 5y ago
    That’s not what we’re talking about: if I hire a lawyer to review a contract, they’re not making decisions based on a need to boost USD to protect their ability to find a buyer. Similarly, while they’re both fiat currencies the USD is orders of magnitude stronger (inordinately more use, links to durable value, etc.) which means that my hypothetical lawyer’s ability to shift the value is extremely small. Even actual government officials have relatively little power this way: there are many of them and the need to get re-elected means they’re far less likely to try the kind of pump and dump scams which are routine in the cryptocurrency world, especially given the likelihood of scrutiny and punishment.
    - rglullis 5y ago
      > government officials No need for pump and dump when they are raking in their money by trading on insider knowledge, getting favors from lobbyists and by getting their cushy board seats at banks after they leave office.
  - bb88 5y ago
    The reason we know politicians are corrupt is because they got exposed by the media or prosecutors. Autocratic politicians are perfect because they can't be exposed.

bb88 5y ago

It's not open source versus closed source, and loss of money is never irrelevant. It's the alignment of what I value (security, safety, government guarantees) versus what you value, which is ... well I don't know. I feel it's one of the following though: Decentralized trust is great for the world. And/Or You have a huge stake in crypto, and you need others to believe in it as well, or your crypto assets will fail. I just can't tell whether you're in it for the money or to change society. It's fine if it's both, but your arguments justifying crypto don't share the greed angle. I just feel like people should know who they're arguing with.

darawk 5y ago
> It's not open source versus closed source Banks are literally closed source. Crypto is literally closed source. So, yes, it is. > and loss of money is never irrelevant. Loss of money from centralized exchanges is irrelevant to the decentralized consensus technology. These are completely orthogonal concerns. Normal financial institutions get hacked, and they also operate ponzi schemes. The fact that this can happen to comparable centralized crypto services is orthogonal to the technology. > It's the alignment of what I value (security, safety, government guarantees) versus what you value, which is ... well I don't know. I think i've pretty clearly articulated what I think the technology is for. Just go back and read what i've said. > I just feel like people should know who they're arguing with. Of course i'm invested in it, to a degree. Anyone who believes in a technology should be invested in that technology. You shouldn't trust them if they're not, because if they haven't invested, they don't actually believe in it. That being said, crypto very well may not turn out to be useful for the world. It enables new possibilities for social and economic organization. Technologies like that are very rare, and they are usually transformative and tremendously economically valuable. This one could be an exception, but it'd probably be the first.
- bb88 5y ago
  > Of course i'm invested in it, to a degree. Awesome. I appreciate that. That tacit acknowledgement is lacking in all pro-crypto posts. Most silicon valley companies want to make a shit ton of money with their VC capital. They say things like, "We'll make the world better..." but that's really just what they tell themselves so they can feel better about making a metric shit ton of money. And there's nothing wrong with that since that's what drives the economy. But it's unchecked greed that caused 2008, and that was human behavior. If anything crypto appears to enable more bad human behavior: money laundering for drugs and human trafficking, rug pulls, stable coins that may or may not be literally printing money, payoffs for ransomware and blackmail... At what point do you check your greed and want to solve the unsexy problems that crypto creates in our society?