7 ms·

Cryptocurrency is my nemesis because it’s like a mirror universe where software destroys value instead of creating it, and smart engineers spend their best year

by pavlov 5y ago

Cryptocurrency is my nemesis because it’s like a mirror universe where software destroys value instead of creating it, and smart engineers spend their best years pretending to believe in nonsense so they could retire early and try to forget it ever happened. Somewhere in crypto, Mirror Me is stroking his pointy beard and wondering if the rumors about transporter accidents on HN are true.

nefitty 5y ago
I imagine that how I feel about crypto developers, good lawyers feel about ambulance chasers.
- Melting_Harps 5y ago
  > I imagine that how I feel about crypto developers, good lawyers feel about ambulance chasers. Former Corpo Bitcoin Developer and Consultant: We don't even think about you, or how you slave for a project you probably detest for money that barely covers rent in the Bay Area; all in order to one day have a chance to be able to escape the crime-ridden, woke-dystopia you've helped create and prop up in the last 20 years and maybe focus on what you probably care about much later on in life. You're more of a cautionary tale rather than an actual entity, despite being so pervasive in tech--and often a big selling point. Which is why there has been a brain-drain in the banking and tech sector for nearly 7 years now into this ecosystem. Maybe you should ask yourself why you weren't ever invited to join a project (despite deeming yourself one of the good devs) rather than pontificate about how you look down on others?
RC_ITR 5y ago
I think one of the most interesting concepts about crypto is: "The Internet succeeded because it skewed capitalism - the first or richest project didn't necessarily win, the most user friendly project usually did." Compare that to crypto: The largest project by far is the first, companies like crypto.com can just spend billions of dollars on marketing to become a leading exchange, and users still don't really reap tangible benefits from crypto (other than asset appreciation and edge use-cases). It's like everyone looked to the early internet and ignored everything good about it other than the equity appreciation (probably b/c that is exactly what crypto is right now)
- rtpg 5y ago
  finance bros started getting deep into Silicon Valley (with gig economy stuff in particular) and this is the end result of that. Bunch of people who care way too much about money, with big mics and who have way too much respect in this industry relative to their own morals. Hustle mindset got us here, dunno if it gets us out.
  - smackeyacky 5y ago
    I think it does but it requires a different kind of hustle. If you have no capital you can still collaborate with other like-minded people and companies to extend your reach while you build out your business (this is how I am expanding). It's still hustle finding these people, supporting them, getting them up and running etc. but as the basis for something sustainable it has a lot of merits. At least...it's working so far.
- lubujackson 5y ago
  I think we are still in the 1998-1999 phase of crypto. In Internet terms, that was peak Pets.com and Kosmo. All of the money being made right now is from first-mover advantage and marketing. But value isn't really being created. It is important to recognize that many of the ideas weren't necessarily bad at the time, they were just 100% optimized for moving fast and capturing eyeballs. Now Pets.com came back as Chewy.com and Kosmo came back as Instacart. Most of the winners (assuming there are some) simply don't exist yet. There may be some Amazon/Googles in there - if so, they are getting some press but aren't necessarily winning the hardest right now but are building the hardest for tomorrow.
  - lelanthran 5y ago
    > It is important to recognize that many of the ideas weren't necessarily bad at the time, they were just 100% optimized for moving fast and capturing eyeballs. Now Pets.com came back as Chewy.com and Kosmo came back as Instacart. What did CueCat come back as? ;-)
  - RC_ITR 5y ago
jakeinspace 5y ago
The same could be said for targeted advertising.
- andrewstuart2 5y ago
  I feel like at least both of these have redeemable qualities, though. Blockchain is amazing (I love my signed git commits and the integrity that provides), but proof of work is contributing to the destruction of the planet. A platform to unite people with needs to solutions for those needs is amazing, but less so when it goes to the highest bidder rather than the best or most individual-appropriate solution.
  - Melting_Harps 5y ago
    > Blockchain is amazing (I love my signed git commits and the integrity that provides), but proof of work is contributing to the destruction of the planet. I can't believe this narrative still exists, 'Blockcahin not Bitcoin' was how it was phrased back then, now it applies to all PoW systems now that word has entered the lexicon by otherwise unknowledgeable people on distributed, immutable technology. This isn't meant as a personal attack, but more as a rebuttal to a senseless and baseless argument: this is what irks so many of us that actually understand this technology and it's potential (money is really only its first application that allowed funding to occur in a project otherwise deemed 'valueless' since at it's core it's just a opensource software project): are you aware that Bitcoin (the Network and the most well known PoW system) is accelerating and expanding the use of renewable energy[0] and is greener than any of the woke FAANG/MANGA in terms of energy usage? Or the fact that it's trying to mitigate and recapture energy loss in the oil and gas Industry [1]. To date, other than Google who partly invested in Ivanpah (which failed, but was worth attempting none the less), there hasn't been a single thing from SV that has done as much to incentivize the creation of renewables. Even Tesla's charging stations/network, as awesome as they are, are not prohibiting the use of fossil fuels. Lets compare relevant attributes here. So, please, stop with the hyperbole: this was barely tolerable 4-6 years ago when it was touted as a reason to ignore or marginalize this tech and shoehorn alts that made no sense but were centralized and provided the banks and regulators to control them. But now... it's just sad and shows how pervasive narratives created by powerful entities (this was Blythe Master's work, btw) can last rather than taking the time to look into it yourself what it is that you are repeating. 0: https://squareup.com/us/en/press/bcei-white-paper https://squareup.com/us/en/press/bcei-white-paper 1: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/mining-bitcoin-clean-energy https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/mining-bitcoin-clean-ene...
vmception 5y ago
The entire software developer career isn't exactly being competitive right now. You can either be spending your best years being seen as a barely necessary expense in an incompetent bureaucratic place, or spending your best years wasting your life on lottery tickets at a tech startup, or you can be spending your best years destabilizing democracies while greasing the wheels of an ad targeting monster laughing smugly at everyone else especially the cryptocurrency developers, or spending your best years learning how to interview at said ad targeting monster. While the cryptocurrency developers make more than all. So, the relativity of "oh no I wish our best and brightest did something more productive with their time" becomes extremely apparent very quickly. Is it really that tempting to debate when you know the outcome of the debate? But hey it's good to believe in something.
- woodruffw 5y ago
  I won't attempt to justify adtech or startups (I work for/on neither, and couldn't care less about them), but: comparing them to cryptocurrency feels like setting a low bar. The former have all kinds of socially negative incentives; the latter is designed to maximize negative social and environmental outcomes as part of one of two explicitly reactionary worldviews (conspiratorial fiat/economic doomerism for PoW and neofeudalism for PoS).
  - vmception 5y ago
    These are good points, there is a lot more going on than the consensus models, even if they are inseparable. Most cryptocurrency developers are not working on that, and are not working on mining. Some are, and some of those are working to improve these issues. The only approach to the grandparent poster’s “nemesis” all leads to contributing to the cryptocurrency ecosystem, as you can only improve some parts of the stack, as opposed to hoping the stack disappears. And a high probability of making a lot of money in the process.
    - woodruffw 5y ago
      > Most cryptocurrency developers are not working on that, and are not working on mining. Some are, and some of those are working to improve these issues. It would be interesting to see numbers backing this up, as well as the claim that cryptocurrency developers are making more than SWEs on average. Anecdotally, my friends and acquaintances (numbering a ~dozen or so) at cryptocurrencies are split about evenly between PoW and PoS. Nobody I know is working on alternatives, and this is consistent with the economic incentives: the money is all in PoW, and the engineers go where the money is.

by pavlov 5y ago

nefitty 5y ago

I imagine that how I feel about crypto developers, good lawyers feel about ambulance chasers.

Melting_Harps 5y ago
> I imagine that how I feel about crypto developers, good lawyers feel about ambulance chasers. Former Corpo Bitcoin Developer and Consultant: We don't even think about you, or how you slave for a project you probably detest for money that barely covers rent in the Bay Area; all in order to one day have a chance to be able to escape the crime-ridden, woke-dystopia you've helped create and prop up in the last 20 years and maybe focus on what you probably care about much later on in life. You're more of a cautionary tale rather than an actual entity, despite being so pervasive in tech--and often a big selling point. Which is why there has been a brain-drain in the banking and tech sector for nearly 7 years now into this ecosystem. Maybe you should ask yourself why you weren't ever invited to join a project (despite deeming yourself one of the good devs) rather than pontificate about how you look down on others?

RC_ITR 5y ago

I think one of the most interesting concepts about crypto is: "The Internet succeeded because it skewed capitalism - the first or richest project didn't necessarily win, the most user friendly project usually did." Compare that to crypto: The largest project by far is the first, companies like crypto.com can just spend billions of dollars on marketing to become a leading exchange, and users still don't really reap tangible benefits from crypto (other than asset appreciation and edge use-cases). It's like everyone looked to the early internet and ignored everything good about it other than the equity appreciation (probably b/c that is exactly what crypto is right now)

rtpg 5y ago
finance bros started getting deep into Silicon Valley (with gig economy stuff in particular) and this is the end result of that. Bunch of people who care way too much about money, with big mics and who have way too much respect in this industry relative to their own morals. Hustle mindset got us here, dunno if it gets us out.
- smackeyacky 5y ago
  I think it does but it requires a different kind of hustle. If you have no capital you can still collaborate with other like-minded people and companies to extend your reach while you build out your business (this is how I am expanding). It's still hustle finding these people, supporting them, getting them up and running etc. but as the basis for something sustainable it has a lot of merits. At least...it's working so far.
lubujackson 5y ago
I think we are still in the 1998-1999 phase of crypto. In Internet terms, that was peak Pets.com and Kosmo. All of the money being made right now is from first-mover advantage and marketing. But value isn't really being created. It is important to recognize that many of the ideas weren't necessarily bad at the time, they were just 100% optimized for moving fast and capturing eyeballs. Now Pets.com came back as Chewy.com and Kosmo came back as Instacart. Most of the winners (assuming there are some) simply don't exist yet. There may be some Amazon/Googles in there - if so, they are getting some press but aren't necessarily winning the hardest right now but are building the hardest for tomorrow.
- lelanthran 5y ago
  > It is important to recognize that many of the ideas weren't necessarily bad at the time, they were just 100% optimized for moving fast and capturing eyeballs. Now Pets.com came back as Chewy.com and Kosmo came back as Instacart. What did CueCat come back as? ;-)
- RC_ITR 5y ago

jakeinspace 5y ago

The same could be said for targeted advertising.

andrewstuart2 5y ago
I feel like at least both of these have redeemable qualities, though. Blockchain is amazing (I love my signed git commits and the integrity that provides), but proof of work is contributing to the destruction of the planet. A platform to unite people with needs to solutions for those needs is amazing, but less so when it goes to the highest bidder rather than the best or most individual-appropriate solution.
- Melting_Harps 5y ago
  > Blockchain is amazing (I love my signed git commits and the integrity that provides), but proof of work is contributing to the destruction of the planet. I can't believe this narrative still exists, 'Blockcahin not Bitcoin' was how it was phrased back then, now it applies to all PoW systems now that word has entered the lexicon by otherwise unknowledgeable people on distributed, immutable technology. This isn't meant as a personal attack, but more as a rebuttal to a senseless and baseless argument: this is what irks so many of us that actually understand this technology and it's potential (money is really only its first application that allowed funding to occur in a project otherwise deemed 'valueless' since at it's core it's just a opensource software project): are you aware that Bitcoin (the Network and the most well known PoW system) is accelerating and expanding the use of renewable energy[0] and is greener than any of the woke FAANG/MANGA in terms of energy usage? Or the fact that it's trying to mitigate and recapture energy loss in the oil and gas Industry [1]. To date, other than Google who partly invested in Ivanpah (which failed, but was worth attempting none the less), there hasn't been a single thing from SV that has done as much to incentivize the creation of renewables. Even Tesla's charging stations/network, as awesome as they are, are not prohibiting the use of fossil fuels. Lets compare relevant attributes here. So, please, stop with the hyperbole: this was barely tolerable 4-6 years ago when it was touted as a reason to ignore or marginalize this tech and shoehorn alts that made no sense but were centralized and provided the banks and regulators to control them. But now... it's just sad and shows how pervasive narratives created by powerful entities (this was Blythe Master's work, btw) can last rather than taking the time to look into it yourself what it is that you are repeating. 0: https://squareup.com/us/en/press/bcei-white-paper https://squareup.com/us/en/press/bcei-white-paper 1: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/mining-bitcoin-clean-energy https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/mining-bitcoin-clean-ene...

vmception 5y ago

The entire software developer career isn't exactly being competitive right now. You can either be spending your best years being seen as a barely necessary expense in an incompetent bureaucratic place, or spending your best years wasting your life on lottery tickets at a tech startup, or you can be spending your best years destabilizing democracies while greasing the wheels of an ad targeting monster laughing smugly at everyone else especially the cryptocurrency developers, or spending your best years learning how to interview at said ad targeting monster. While the cryptocurrency developers make more than all. So, the relativity of "oh no I wish our best and brightest did something more productive with their time" becomes extremely apparent very quickly. Is it really that tempting to debate when you know the outcome of the debate? But hey it's good to believe in something.

woodruffw 5y ago
I won't attempt to justify adtech or startups (I work for/on neither, and couldn't care less about them), but: comparing them to cryptocurrency feels like setting a low bar. The former have all kinds of socially negative incentives; the latter is designed to maximize negative social and environmental outcomes as part of one of two explicitly reactionary worldviews (conspiratorial fiat/economic doomerism for PoW and neofeudalism for PoS).
- vmception 5y ago
  These are good points, there is a lot more going on than the consensus models, even if they are inseparable. Most cryptocurrency developers are not working on that, and are not working on mining. Some are, and some of those are working to improve these issues. The only approach to the grandparent poster’s “nemesis” all leads to contributing to the cryptocurrency ecosystem, as you can only improve some parts of the stack, as opposed to hoping the stack disappears. And a high probability of making a lot of money in the process.
  - woodruffw 5y ago
    > Most cryptocurrency developers are not working on that, and are not working on mining. Some are, and some of those are working to improve these issues. It would be interesting to see numbers backing this up, as well as the claim that cryptocurrency developers are making more than SWEs on average. Anecdotally, my friends and acquaintances (numbering a ~dozen or so) at cryptocurrencies are split about evenly between PoW and PoS. Nobody I know is working on alternatives, and this is consistent with the economic incentives: the money is all in PoW, and the engineers go where the money is.