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Over the years I've witnessed a lot of heated debates on HN... Is the JS ecosystem actually too complex? Is PHP really a fractal of bad design? Is learning vim

Over the years I've witnessed a lot of heated debates on HN... Is the JS ecosystem actually too complex? Is PHP really a fractal of bad design? Is learning vim worth the effort or is it all hype? Is golang fundamentally broken because it lacks(lacked) generics? Does anyone ever actually need k8s? Is nosql always the wrong choice? Is the linux desktop experience truly productive or should you just use a mac? Types or no types? 100% test coverage or overkill? X or Wayland? Gnome2 or Unity? Android or iPhone etc... Yet, only in the cryptocurrency debate do defenders have to offer up a disclaimer about all the scams, hype, vaporware, fraud, waste, hacks, speculation, crime and other insanity before proceeding to make an appeal to the nebulous hope of future possibilities, as if cryptocurrency isn't older than instagram....

cryptica 5y ago
I suspect that big corporations and big investment firms are pumping a lot of money into the cryptocurrency space to prevent innovation and to encourage scams in order to discredit the space. They want to buy it up, hype it up, then dump their bags on mom-and-pop investors while attempting a controlled demolition of the space. This might sound far-fetched to outsiders, but not so far-fetched to those who have worked inside the industry and seen the waste. I've seen obvious shitcoins repeatedly succeed while legitimate tokens never get any attention. In this industry, you can feel the unlimited currency coming straight off the money printers. It's just like Wall Street Bets in reverse except it's worth over a $ trillion and they're going after regular people instead of big hedge funds.
- elevader 5y ago
  Honest question from a total outsider: What is the difference between a "shitcoin" and a "legitimate token"? And who gets to decide that?
  - ijonas 5y ago
    Bitcoiners.
  - cryptica 5y ago
    I've met founders who launched shitcoins which raised a lot of money who acknowledged with no sense of irony that their own token was a shitcoin. But in general, a shitcoin is a poorly designed project (or just a clone of an existing project) where the founder sells a lot of their tokens and quits immediately after the initial ITO/ICO sale.
  - norswap 5y ago
    You decide for yourself, but generally shitcoins are regarded as forks without any technical innovation who are not credibly trying to solve any problem or try out a new idea - just make money. They're often meme-themed (though not always, and there are many legitimate projects that are meme-themed).
Vetch 5y ago
> scams, vaporware, fraud, waste, crime In my country, this also describes the day to day situation. You can't trust doctors because they make up diagnoses, people pay taxes but it never shows up in infrastructure, schools or anywhere; daily alerts by banks warning against some new clever form of fraud, until recently there was a fair chance new banks would vanish with customer money (I still only trust a few reputable banks), actual family destroying pyramid schemes, ransoms attached to child kidnappings not data, politicians stealing from their constituents, police not trusted because of lack of transparency and corruption, bribes as a defacto tax. The combination of high levels of poverty and lack of regulation is what leads to the proliferation of scams and dishonest behaviors. Poverty lowers the threshold of criminality, lack of regulation and lack of an enforced justice system enables its flourishing. Poverty also catalyzes more susceptible victims of such crimes. ------- > only in the cryptocurrency debate do defenders have to offer up a disclaimer Financial activity in crypto lacks regulation, which attracts predators, who create scams that attract the poor who are not necessarily gullible, just gambles from desperation. > Android or iPhone In Android vs iPhone or Windows vs Mac, people do argue about vulnerability to malware and the merits and demerits of locked down platforms. I'd also argue your examples are not appropriate, they're more clashes of belief systems and less people freely interacting in market like scenarios. Consider that kickstarter is rife with vaporware, hype and scams. Scams, fraud and hacks in Roblox and Entropia. Crime, speculation and hacks in Habbo Hotel. Western financial systems discriminate against certain professions and citizens of entire countries due to some cost benefit calculations related to fraud. If you have a system where money can exchange hands, you'll find psychopaths preying on the poor and careless. Oh and this isn't just poor countries and virtual markets, psychopaths preying on the poor and desperate also occurs for developed countries too (you just give them fancy names like debt bubbles and mortgage crises).
mattwilsonn888 5y ago
That's because crypto currencies and distributed consensus are inherently economic protocols. They must have monetary value or their consensus mechanisms do not work, which is why proof of work makes you shell out 'value' in the form of energy upfront. It's a bit goofy to make the comparison you made - I mean you didn't even finish your thought, you just painted a vague yet intense picture you expect people finish for you with the worst possible outlook. You aren't getting rid of crypto, so you'd do more to actually find out what's wrong with it and offer solutions rather than winging about it and praying for authoritarianism.

cryptica 5y ago

I suspect that big corporations and big investment firms are pumping a lot of money into the cryptocurrency space to prevent innovation and to encourage scams in order to discredit the space. They want to buy it up, hype it up, then dump their bags on mom-and-pop investors while attempting a controlled demolition of the space. This might sound far-fetched to outsiders, but not so far-fetched to those who have worked inside the industry and seen the waste. I've seen obvious shitcoins repeatedly succeed while legitimate tokens never get any attention. In this industry, you can feel the unlimited currency coming straight off the money printers. It's just like Wall Street Bets in reverse except it's worth over a $ trillion and they're going after regular people instead of big hedge funds.

elevader 5y ago
Honest question from a total outsider: What is the difference between a "shitcoin" and a "legitimate token"? And who gets to decide that?
- ijonas 5y ago
  Bitcoiners.
- cryptica 5y ago
  I've met founders who launched shitcoins which raised a lot of money who acknowledged with no sense of irony that their own token was a shitcoin. But in general, a shitcoin is a poorly designed project (or just a clone of an existing project) where the founder sells a lot of their tokens and quits immediately after the initial ITO/ICO sale.
- norswap 5y ago
  You decide for yourself, but generally shitcoins are regarded as forks without any technical innovation who are not credibly trying to solve any problem or try out a new idea - just make money. They're often meme-themed (though not always, and there are many legitimate projects that are meme-themed).

Vetch 5y ago

> scams, vaporware, fraud, waste, crime In my country, this also describes the day to day situation. You can't trust doctors because they make up diagnoses, people pay taxes but it never shows up in infrastructure, schools or anywhere; daily alerts by banks warning against some new clever form of fraud, until recently there was a fair chance new banks would vanish with customer money (I still only trust a few reputable banks), actual family destroying pyramid schemes, ransoms attached to child kidnappings not data, politicians stealing from their constituents, police not trusted because of lack of transparency and corruption, bribes as a defacto tax. The combination of high levels of poverty and lack of regulation is what leads to the proliferation of scams and dishonest behaviors. Poverty lowers the threshold of criminality, lack of regulation and lack of an enforced justice system enables its flourishing. Poverty also catalyzes more susceptible victims of such crimes. ------- > only in the cryptocurrency debate do defenders have to offer up a disclaimer Financial activity in crypto lacks regulation, which attracts predators, who create scams that attract the poor who are not necessarily gullible, just gambles from desperation. > Android or iPhone In Android vs iPhone or Windows vs Mac, people do argue about vulnerability to malware and the merits and demerits of locked down platforms. I'd also argue your examples are not appropriate, they're more clashes of belief systems and less people freely interacting in market like scenarios. Consider that kickstarter is rife with vaporware, hype and scams. Scams, fraud and hacks in Roblox and Entropia. Crime, speculation and hacks in Habbo Hotel. Western financial systems discriminate against certain professions and citizens of entire countries due to some cost benefit calculations related to fraud. If you have a system where money can exchange hands, you'll find psychopaths preying on the poor and careless. Oh and this isn't just poor countries and virtual markets, psychopaths preying on the poor and desperate also occurs for developed countries too (you just give them fancy names like debt bubbles and mortgage crises).

mattwilsonn888 5y ago

That's because crypto currencies and distributed consensus are inherently economic protocols. They must have monetary value or their consensus mechanisms do not work, which is why proof of work makes you shell out 'value' in the form of energy upfront. It's a bit goofy to make the comparison you made - I mean you didn't even finish your thought, you just painted a vague yet intense picture you expect people finish for you with the worst possible outlook. You aren't getting rid of crypto, so you'd do more to actually find out what's wrong with it and offer solutions rather than winging about it and praying for authoritarianism.