8 ms·

Awesome Critique of Crypto/Web3

57 points by labrador 5y ago

spenrose 5y ago
Title should be plural: this is a roundup of links to critiques
- doomrobo 5y ago
  It's named this because GitHub repos called "awesome-X" are precisely that. I forgot where the pattern originated
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - datashaman 5y ago
    It started here, I believe. https://github.com/sindresorhus/awesome https://github.com/sindresorhus/awesome
tromp 5y ago
Even as a cryptocurrency developer myself, I concur with most of the criticism. I detest all the cash grabbing, speculation, hype, and scams. Where I diverge from most criticism is in PoW. In its early years, when Bitcoin was used as currency rather than for speculation, mining only consumed moderate amounts of energy, in line with the lower prices of a few dozen dollar per bitcoin at most. My hope is for Tether to crash, leading to a downward price spiral for Bitcoin, an end to rampant speculation, and a huge scaling down of mining. There should be no expectation of financial gain in cryptocurrency. It should just serve its original purpose of making convenient limited value purchases online. I don't support PoS as it leads to huge wealth concentration with the founders owning 100% of all initial coins.
- vl 5y ago
  With settlement time of 60 minutes Bitcoin was never designed as true currency, but more as a holdable asset. While some of the critiques are valid, as system matures, there will be less and less of it. Crypto is here to stay.
  - user-the-name 5y ago
    The first line of the Bitcoin white paper: > A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution. Now, if you want to say that it was badly designed for its purpose, that is a different matter.
    - aaaaaaaaata 5y ago
      It will allow it — just not fast, and if you want that, it still allows it, via Layer 2 solutions, many of which guarantee the same security as their Layer 1.
      - user-the-name 5y ago
        There is no known functional and scalable layer 2 solution. Lightning, as designed, can not scale.
    - vl 5y ago
      "would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution" And it successfully achieved this specific goal, however it never claimed it is a good solution for micro/small payments, which is a requirement for "normal currency". Payments of small amounts require small fees and quick settlement time, neither of which Bitcoin has by design.
      - deanCommie 5y ago
        Well this is where, as any good developer, you have to look at the requirement and ask "why?" > ... without going through a financial institution. Why? Why don't we want to go through a financial institution? Well, honestly, the only REAL reasons are fees on large transactions, and the desire/preference to be able to conduct activities that are illegal by regulated financial institutions. And that, if we all remember, was the only usecase for bitcoin before speculation - buying drugs and even more illegal things on TOR marketplaces. Well, that and money laundering.
- yulaow 5y ago
  PoW already brought us to huge wealth concentration so it is not the solution either. This is one of the hard-not-so-talked problems of cryptos at the moment, and I can't see how to solve it.
  - tromp 5y ago
    PoW tries to minimizes wealth concentration by imposing a competitive cost on obtaining coins. Of course it cannot reduce the wealth concentration already present in fiat. It can at best not make it much worse (as PoS does). PoW still suffers from wealth concentration due to varying block subsidies over time, which is why I'm a strong supporter of uncapped emissions like 1 coin per second forever, which gives no advantage to early miners.
    - lottin 5y ago
      How does PoW minimise wealth concentration? Minimising wealth concentration would imply distributing the coins evenly among the network participants. That's not what PoW does.
    - garren 5y ago
      Doesn’t “minimiz[ing] wealth concentration by imposing a competitive cost on obtaining coins”, basically translate to “only the wealthy can afford the compute resources needed to mine”? So, not really minimizing wealth concentration as practically gauranteeing that only those with a tremendous amount of resources to waste on PoW will see any return? In fact, the first link in the post [0] touches on this point very well in the first 30 min or so. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ_xWvX1n9g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ_xWvX1n9g
  - tenuousemphasis 5y ago
    The problem is capitalism, but at least with Bitcoin there is no central authority to unilaterally alter monetary policy to benefit one specific group (those closest to supply of new money i.e. Gresham's Law).
    - 5y ago
- user-the-name 5y ago
  There is no safe way to wind down mining. As mining becomes unprofitable, mining equipment will be shut down. But it will still exist, and it will be in the hands of people desperate for cash. This means that the price of 51% attack will drop massively, and that completely undermines the safety that PoW provides. A large drop in price followed by a large drop in mining completely destroys the security of bitcoin.
  - tromp 5y ago
    The price of a 51% relative to the total marketcap won't change drastically (only moderately due to wider availability of hardware), and that's what security is based on, not the absolute cost of a 51% attack.
    - lottin 5y ago
      No... security depends on the cost mounting an attack, and that's the absolute cost.
      - tromp 5y ago
        No... a chain that costs $1M to attack with a mktcap of $100K is more secure than a chain that costs $10M to attack with a mktcap of $100B, as the latter has huge financial incentives for doublespending (after depositing say $100M at an exchange), while the former has none. It's like how much you spend on a bike lock. A $100 lock on a $20 bike is probably quote secure, while a $200 lock on a $5000 bike is probably quite insecure.
        lottin 5y ago
        No... an attacker that is able to successfully execute a 51% attack can crash the token price and make enormous profits in the derivatives market, so the market cap is irrelevant. Moreover, and attacker may have motivations other than financial gains, which again makes market cap irrelevant. If your security model only protects against financially motivated attackers it means it's basically rubbish.
k__ 5y ago
Isn't Stephen Diehl a grifter who sells private blockchain tech and hates on everyone who could threaten his business? I wouldn't call such a source an awesome critique.
- jeroenvlek 5y ago
  Interesting, I thought some of his articles were well put together. Do you have a source for that gossip? Would love get both sides of the story.
  - k__ 5y ago
    https://medium.com/humanizing-the-singularity/adjoint-distributed-ledger-technology-and-smart-contracts-for-real-world-finance-72a5cd83e063 https://medium.com/humanizing-the-singularity/adjoint-distri...
    - b0sk 5y ago
      article from 2018?
      - hunterb123 5y ago
        what's your statute of limitations for sources?
- user-the-name 5y ago
  No.
- jkarni 5y ago
  I've seen this claim snowball over time as blockchain people desperately try to ad hominemate him. I do think he did once (quite a few years ago) consult for a blockchain company. That's about the only factual basis I've discerned for it. (Disclaimer/source: I met Stephen once or twice a while back, via the Haskell community.)
- b0sk 5y ago
nateabele 5y ago
For as worthless as Stephen Diehl says crypto is, he's spent an impressive amount of time obsessing over it. (Seems like there's a proof-of-work joke in there somewhere.)
- user-the-name 5y ago
  Any decent human will speak up when they see a scam being perpetrated.
niahmiah 5y ago
- ohCh6zos 5y ago
  So no interesting tech, no benefit, the only high point is you extracted a lot of rent.
- brazzy 5y ago
  ...says the parasite to its host.
- user-the-name 5y ago
  Every single one of those dollars came out of the pockets of somebody who lost money because they invested. You got lucky. The majority of people did not.
  - throwaway392321 5y ago
    Markets are not zero sum in aggregate. Every trade is zero sum-- a buyer has to be matched with a seller at a price. However, the price of an asset can move without any trades. Your perspective would seem to imply that overall economic growth of all markets could not happen without an equivalent amount of loss somewhere else. Clearly this is not the case.
    - user-the-name 5y ago
      Cryptocurrency trading is not the same as a regular market. None of the things that make a regular stock market not a zero-sum game do not apply to cryptocurrency markets. And cryptocurrencies are actually negative sum, due to miners and fees.
      - throwaway392321 5y ago
        > Cryptocurrency trading is not the same as a regular market. Could you substantiate what you see here with a concrete difference? Particularly in terms of my argument that an asset price can move without actual trades being made. If positive news comes out about bitcoin, the price can immediately move without any trading, or at least without every bitcoin needing to realize a gain through trading. This would be an example of growth in value that is not zero sum. Stocks can do the same thing as well. This is actually very visible when a stock opens with a gap from prior closing price. > And cryptocurrencies are actually negative sum, due to miners and fees. I'm not sure how you reached that conclusion. Fees and miner inflation are a drag on the asset class, I agree. But stocks also have fees to trade and issue, and are subject to dilution through new issuing. The issue is whether the drag is larger or smaller than growth of the asset.
syncerr 5y ago
Web3 has many reasons it could fail. I choose to be optimistic. > The truth is no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works. https://www.newsweek.com/clifford-stoll-why-web-wont-be-nirvana-185306 https://www.newsweek.com/clifford-stoll-why-web-wont-be-nirv...
- user-the-name 5y ago
  The optimistic view is that it will all crash and burn tomorrow. The pessimistic view is that it will survive, and cause even more harm than it has already.
  - hunterb123 5y ago
    - freen 5y ago
      I like tulips. I buy tulip bulbs. That they are worth 10x the annual wages of a skilled worker is preposterous. At least they don’t churn through terawatts and terawatts. Blockchains will exist. They’ll do stuff. Like tulips. Anyone who bet on tulips continuing to be worth 10x the annual wages of a skilled worker was, in fact, the greater fool and discovered the hard way that there was no greater fool than them. They are beautiful, though, tulips.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
- hunterb123 5y ago
  A user replied to you, then I asked him to expand on his doomsday prediction. He went made an analogy involving tulips and and flagged my rebuttal and now the conversation is gone. The gist was, tulips are flowers, not distributed apps and ledgers. He has no specific criticism, just a doomsday prediction, fear mongering, and false equivalencies.
robbiex88 5y ago
I'm pretty poorly educated on the nuances of crypto/web3 but it seems every time it comes up in conversation only the benefits are discussed. Thanks for posting this and helping me educate myself a bit more on this
shimonabi 5y ago
I follow r/Buttcoin on Reddit to stay sane.
hunterb123 5y ago
Yeah, no thank you, I don't come to Hacker News for crypto talk, the bias is comical and the talking points are recycled as a new article every week (scams!, speculation!, hype!, wasted electricity!, tether!) All of those have rebuttals, but I don't want to get into the politics of it, there's plenty of that already. Can we please talk about the fucking tech here? I'm talking about what's made with it, not some sort of philosophical debate about how authoritarian we should be to protect people we deem gullible, or who can spend electricity on what, or who is allowed to speculate. For those who actually are interested in the tech and not some faux moral crusade, here's better "awesome" lists, that are actually awesome, not toxic. https://github.com/OffcierCia/DeFi-Developer-Road-Map https://github.com/OffcierCia/DeFi-Developer-Road-Map https://github.com/bkrem/awesome-solidity https://github.com/bkrem/awesome-solidity https://github.com/btomashvili/awesome-ethereum https://github.com/btomashvili/awesome-ethereum https://github.com/bkrem/awesome-solidity https://github.com/bkrem/awesome-solidity https://github.com/vinsgo/awesome-ethereum https://github.com/vinsgo/awesome-ethereum https://github.com/toadkicker/awesome-ethereum https://github.com/toadkicker/awesome-ethereum https://github.com/void4/awesome-ethereum https://github.com/void4/awesome-ethereum https://github.com/JoinColony/awesome-web3 https://github.com/JoinColony/awesome-web3
- _zllx 5y ago
  I wish I could be this positive and resourceful on this topic. It just gives me the urge to write a passive-aggressive tirade against the unfounded (almost manufactured) hate against this powerful technology. Nobody is putting it back in the box, no matter how many years they spend whining on their ironically named "dunning-kruger" blogs. Dammit, there I go again. I could go on for 12 more paragraphs but I'll cut it short here.
  - user-the-name 5y ago
    None of it is unfounded or manufactured. If you think it is, you are blinding yourself to some pretty obvious truth that you do not want to believe in.
- sagarm 5y ago
  I am genuinely curious on useful applications for a decentralized ledger, so I skimmed this linkdump. > https://github.com/OffcierCia/DeFi-Developer-Road-Map https://github.com/OffcierCia/DeFi-Developer-Road-Map Background and development information, no applications. This link, by itself, has a massive number of links. > https://github.com/bkrem/awesome-solidity https://github.com/bkrem/awesome-solidity This links is later duplicated, but is also mostly background and developer information. There is one section titled "deployed on Ethereum mainnet" which seems to be mostly dev tools again - rarity, an MMO (example UI: https://raritymmo.com/ https://raritymmo.com/). That's kind of cool, if unlikely to be monetizable. - ronin, a sidechain implementation to support another game called "Axie Infinity". > https://github.com/bekatom/awesome-ethereum https://github.com/bekatom/awesome-ethereum Another giant linkfarm. Has a "DAPPS" section. Again mostly dev tools or tools for interacting with Ethereum itself, but a few things that look like applications: - a decentralized crowdfunding platform: err, doesn't the money eventually go to a particular endpoint? What's the point of decentralizing this. - zeronet decentralized websites: bitcoin doesn't provide compute infrastructure or a high-bandwidth distribution mechanism (bittorrent is used for this), so...what does this actually _do_? auth can be handled by TLS. - augur: platform for prediction markets. interesting idea, but ... ultimately the actual result has to be certified? I'm out of time but in general I haven't seen a simple example of what problems a decentralized ledger solves, ignoring all the technical issues like energy use and 51% attacks.
danuker 5y ago
From here: https://www.stephendiehl.com/blog/crypto-absurd.html https://www.stephendiehl.com/blog/crypto-absurd.html > There are no fundamentals to any crypto token and it’s discounted future cashflows are all strictly zero and thus its present value must be strictly zero. This is demonstrably false. Cash has no future cash flow, yet its value is clearly not zero. The way I see it, the value of an asset depends on how desirable it is to market participants (demand), as well as on its supply. If Bitcoin has a believable enough story ("there will only ever be 21M units"), and it draws people in, while national currencies inflate ceaselessly as economic growth stalls, the relative value of Bitcoin grows. Other assets are far from better. Current public companies' Shiller PE ratios are in the "ridiculous" area - it takes 35 years to recoup costs of an investment. https://www.multpl.com/shiller-pe https://www.multpl.com/shiller-pe Current inflation is much higher than government bond yields. This is one definition of financial repression - the government sponsors itself with its own currency, in spite of the real negative return.
- ShamelessC 5y ago
  Well of course it will when enough people (globally) decide to have a literal revolution (including the crime and punishment that entails) after realizing that neo-libertarian ideals are _obviously_ the only plausible way to maintain a society. /s I see an argument like this in every crypto thread. Come on. You should know that this is a political argument and that, in the US at least, we're pretty damn divided. Talk about stuff that you can plausibly predict at least. You can't predict worldwide economic failure _inevitably_ leading to increased use of crypto. Full stop. From my perspective, that probably does a lot of damage and doing anything other than leading, governing, non-violent protesting (in person) will not help. The wild west of complete lack of regulation over the economy is a scary and probably dangerous thing. As someone who actually _enjoys_ government regulation (gasp!), I hope you realize that this turn isn't at all likely in the western world from my point of view. Further, if your arguments only apply to countries with authoritarian regimes, please say so. You may say "well hey, but it's perfect for people living under authoritarian regimes tho!" to which I say, cool - let them get after it. Does it do _anything_ (other than lose/make me money) that I couldn't do with my current currency in the US? No? Okay, then that's a terrible idea.
DonHopkins 5y ago
My Web goes to 11. Did I miss something, or hasn't the rest of the World Wide Web moved on to Web11 or so by now? I seem to remember a little while after the Web2 craze, the Web was incrementing several times a year. Am I misunderstanding it, or is "Web3" meant to sound charmingly retro?

57 points by labrador 5y ago

spenrose 5y ago

Title should be plural: this is a roundup of links to critiques

doomrobo 5y ago
It's named this because GitHub repos called "awesome-X" are precisely that. I forgot where the pattern originated
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- datashaman 5y ago
  It started here, I believe. https://github.com/sindresorhus/awesome https://github.com/sindresorhus/awesome

tromp 5y ago

Even as a cryptocurrency developer myself, I concur with most of the criticism. I detest all the cash grabbing, speculation, hype, and scams. Where I diverge from most criticism is in PoW. In its early years, when Bitcoin was used as currency rather than for speculation, mining only consumed moderate amounts of energy, in line with the lower prices of a few dozen dollar per bitcoin at most. My hope is for Tether to crash, leading to a downward price spiral for Bitcoin, an end to rampant speculation, and a huge scaling down of mining. There should be no expectation of financial gain in cryptocurrency. It should just serve its original purpose of making convenient limited value purchases online. I don't support PoS as it leads to huge wealth concentration with the founders owning 100% of all initial coins.

vl 5y ago
With settlement time of 60 minutes Bitcoin was never designed as true currency, but more as a holdable asset. While some of the critiques are valid, as system matures, there will be less and less of it. Crypto is here to stay.
- user-the-name 5y ago
  The first line of the Bitcoin white paper: > A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution. Now, if you want to say that it was badly designed for its purpose, that is a different matter.
  - aaaaaaaaata 5y ago
    It will allow it — just not fast, and if you want that, it still allows it, via Layer 2 solutions, many of which guarantee the same security as their Layer 1.
    - user-the-name 5y ago
      There is no known functional and scalable layer 2 solution. Lightning, as designed, can not scale.
  - vl 5y ago
    "would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution" And it successfully achieved this specific goal, however it never claimed it is a good solution for micro/small payments, which is a requirement for "normal currency". Payments of small amounts require small fees and quick settlement time, neither of which Bitcoin has by design.
    - deanCommie 5y ago
      Well this is where, as any good developer, you have to look at the requirement and ask "why?" > ... without going through a financial institution. Why? Why don't we want to go through a financial institution? Well, honestly, the only REAL reasons are fees on large transactions, and the desire/preference to be able to conduct activities that are illegal by regulated financial institutions. And that, if we all remember, was the only usecase for bitcoin before speculation - buying drugs and even more illegal things on TOR marketplaces. Well, that and money laundering.
yulaow 5y ago
PoW already brought us to huge wealth concentration so it is not the solution either. This is one of the hard-not-so-talked problems of cryptos at the moment, and I can't see how to solve it.
- tromp 5y ago
  PoW tries to minimizes wealth concentration by imposing a competitive cost on obtaining coins. Of course it cannot reduce the wealth concentration already present in fiat. It can at best not make it much worse (as PoS does). PoW still suffers from wealth concentration due to varying block subsidies over time, which is why I'm a strong supporter of uncapped emissions like 1 coin per second forever, which gives no advantage to early miners.
  - lottin 5y ago
    How does PoW minimise wealth concentration? Minimising wealth concentration would imply distributing the coins evenly among the network participants. That's not what PoW does.
  - garren 5y ago
    Doesn’t “minimiz[ing] wealth concentration by imposing a competitive cost on obtaining coins”, basically translate to “only the wealthy can afford the compute resources needed to mine”? So, not really minimizing wealth concentration as practically gauranteeing that only those with a tremendous amount of resources to waste on PoW will see any return? In fact, the first link in the post [0] touches on this point very well in the first 30 min or so. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ_xWvX1n9g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ_xWvX1n9g
- tenuousemphasis 5y ago
  The problem is capitalism, but at least with Bitcoin there is no central authority to unilaterally alter monetary policy to benefit one specific group (those closest to supply of new money i.e. Gresham's Law).
  - 5y ago
user-the-name 5y ago
There is no safe way to wind down mining. As mining becomes unprofitable, mining equipment will be shut down. But it will still exist, and it will be in the hands of people desperate for cash. This means that the price of 51% attack will drop massively, and that completely undermines the safety that PoW provides. A large drop in price followed by a large drop in mining completely destroys the security of bitcoin.
- tromp 5y ago
  The price of a 51% relative to the total marketcap won't change drastically (only moderately due to wider availability of hardware), and that's what security is based on, not the absolute cost of a 51% attack.
  - lottin 5y ago
    No... security depends on the cost mounting an attack, and that's the absolute cost.
    - tromp 5y ago
      No... a chain that costs $1M to attack with a mktcap of $100K is more secure than a chain that costs $10M to attack with a mktcap of $100B, as the latter has huge financial incentives for doublespending (after depositing say $100M at an exchange), while the former has none. It's like how much you spend on a bike lock. A $100 lock on a $20 bike is probably quote secure, while a $200 lock on a $5000 bike is probably quite insecure.
      - lottin 5y ago
        No... an attacker that is able to successfully execute a 51% attack can crash the token price and make enormous profits in the derivatives market, so the market cap is irrelevant. Moreover, and attacker may have motivations other than financial gains, which again makes market cap irrelevant. If your security model only protects against financially motivated attackers it means it's basically rubbish.

k__ 5y ago

Isn't Stephen Diehl a grifter who sells private blockchain tech and hates on everyone who could threaten his business? I wouldn't call such a source an awesome critique.

jeroenvlek 5y ago
Interesting, I thought some of his articles were well put together. Do you have a source for that gossip? Would love get both sides of the story.
- k__ 5y ago
  https://medium.com/humanizing-the-singularity/adjoint-distributed-ledger-technology-and-smart-contracts-for-real-world-finance-72a5cd83e063 https://medium.com/humanizing-the-singularity/adjoint-distri...
  - b0sk 5y ago
    article from 2018?
    - hunterb123 5y ago
      what's your statute of limitations for sources?
user-the-name 5y ago
No.
jkarni 5y ago
I've seen this claim snowball over time as blockchain people desperately try to ad hominemate him. I do think he did once (quite a few years ago) consult for a blockchain company. That's about the only factual basis I've discerned for it. (Disclaimer/source: I met Stephen once or twice a while back, via the Haskell community.)
b0sk 5y ago

nateabele 5y ago

For as worthless as Stephen Diehl says crypto is, he's spent an impressive amount of time obsessing over it. (Seems like there's a proof-of-work joke in there somewhere.)

user-the-name 5y ago
Any decent human will speak up when they see a scam being perpetrated.

niahmiah 5y ago

ohCh6zos 5y ago
So no interesting tech, no benefit, the only high point is you extracted a lot of rent.
brazzy 5y ago
...says the parasite to its host.
user-the-name 5y ago
Every single one of those dollars came out of the pockets of somebody who lost money because they invested. You got lucky. The majority of people did not.
- throwaway392321 5y ago
  Markets are not zero sum in aggregate. Every trade is zero sum-- a buyer has to be matched with a seller at a price. However, the price of an asset can move without any trades. Your perspective would seem to imply that overall economic growth of all markets could not happen without an equivalent amount of loss somewhere else. Clearly this is not the case.
  - user-the-name 5y ago
    Cryptocurrency trading is not the same as a regular market. None of the things that make a regular stock market not a zero-sum game do not apply to cryptocurrency markets. And cryptocurrencies are actually negative sum, due to miners and fees.
    - throwaway392321 5y ago
      > Cryptocurrency trading is not the same as a regular market. Could you substantiate what you see here with a concrete difference? Particularly in terms of my argument that an asset price can move without actual trades being made. If positive news comes out about bitcoin, the price can immediately move without any trading, or at least without every bitcoin needing to realize a gain through trading. This would be an example of growth in value that is not zero sum. Stocks can do the same thing as well. This is actually very visible when a stock opens with a gap from prior closing price. > And cryptocurrencies are actually negative sum, due to miners and fees. I'm not sure how you reached that conclusion. Fees and miner inflation are a drag on the asset class, I agree. But stocks also have fees to trade and issue, and are subject to dilution through new issuing. The issue is whether the drag is larger or smaller than growth of the asset.

syncerr 5y ago

Web3 has many reasons it could fail. I choose to be optimistic. > The truth is no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works. https://www.newsweek.com/clifford-stoll-why-web-wont-be-nirvana-185306 https://www.newsweek.com/clifford-stoll-why-web-wont-be-nirv...

user-the-name 5y ago
The optimistic view is that it will all crash and burn tomorrow. The pessimistic view is that it will survive, and cause even more harm than it has already.
- hunterb123 5y ago
  - freen 5y ago
    I like tulips. I buy tulip bulbs. That they are worth 10x the annual wages of a skilled worker is preposterous. At least they don’t churn through terawatts and terawatts. Blockchains will exist. They’ll do stuff. Like tulips. Anyone who bet on tulips continuing to be worth 10x the annual wages of a skilled worker was, in fact, the greater fool and discovered the hard way that there was no greater fool than them. They are beautiful, though, tulips.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
hunterb123 5y ago
A user replied to you, then I asked him to expand on his doomsday prediction. He went made an analogy involving tulips and and flagged my rebuttal and now the conversation is gone. The gist was, tulips are flowers, not distributed apps and ledgers. He has no specific criticism, just a doomsday prediction, fear mongering, and false equivalencies.

robbiex88 5y ago

I'm pretty poorly educated on the nuances of crypto/web3 but it seems every time it comes up in conversation only the benefits are discussed. Thanks for posting this and helping me educate myself a bit more on this

shimonabi 5y ago

I follow r/Buttcoin on Reddit to stay sane.

hunterb123 5y ago

Yeah, no thank you, I don't come to Hacker News for crypto talk, the bias is comical and the talking points are recycled as a new article every week (scams!, speculation!, hype!, wasted electricity!, tether!) All of those have rebuttals, but I don't want to get into the politics of it, there's plenty of that already. Can we please talk about the fucking tech here? I'm talking about what's made with it, not some sort of philosophical debate about how authoritarian we should be to protect people we deem gullible, or who can spend electricity on what, or who is allowed to speculate. For those who actually are interested in the tech and not some faux moral crusade, here's better "awesome" lists, that are actually awesome, not toxic. https://github.com/OffcierCia/DeFi-Developer-Road-Map https://github.com/OffcierCia/DeFi-Developer-Road-Map https://github.com/bkrem/awesome-solidity https://github.com/bkrem/awesome-solidity https://github.com/btomashvili/awesome-ethereum https://github.com/btomashvili/awesome-ethereum https://github.com/bkrem/awesome-solidity https://github.com/bkrem/awesome-solidity https://github.com/vinsgo/awesome-ethereum https://github.com/vinsgo/awesome-ethereum https://github.com/toadkicker/awesome-ethereum https://github.com/toadkicker/awesome-ethereum https://github.com/void4/awesome-ethereum https://github.com/void4/awesome-ethereum https://github.com/JoinColony/awesome-web3 https://github.com/JoinColony/awesome-web3

_zllx 5y ago
I wish I could be this positive and resourceful on this topic. It just gives me the urge to write a passive-aggressive tirade against the unfounded (almost manufactured) hate against this powerful technology. Nobody is putting it back in the box, no matter how many years they spend whining on their ironically named "dunning-kruger" blogs. Dammit, there I go again. I could go on for 12 more paragraphs but I'll cut it short here.
- user-the-name 5y ago
  None of it is unfounded or manufactured. If you think it is, you are blinding yourself to some pretty obvious truth that you do not want to believe in.
sagarm 5y ago
I am genuinely curious on useful applications for a decentralized ledger, so I skimmed this linkdump. > https://github.com/OffcierCia/DeFi-Developer-Road-Map https://github.com/OffcierCia/DeFi-Developer-Road-Map Background and development information, no applications. This link, by itself, has a massive number of links. > https://github.com/bkrem/awesome-solidity https://github.com/bkrem/awesome-solidity This links is later duplicated, but is also mostly background and developer information. There is one section titled "deployed on Ethereum mainnet" which seems to be mostly dev tools again - rarity, an MMO (example UI: https://raritymmo.com/ https://raritymmo.com/). That's kind of cool, if unlikely to be monetizable. - ronin, a sidechain implementation to support another game called "Axie Infinity". > https://github.com/bekatom/awesome-ethereum https://github.com/bekatom/awesome-ethereum Another giant linkfarm. Has a "DAPPS" section. Again mostly dev tools or tools for interacting with Ethereum itself, but a few things that look like applications: - a decentralized crowdfunding platform: err, doesn't the money eventually go to a particular endpoint? What's the point of decentralizing this. - zeronet decentralized websites: bitcoin doesn't provide compute infrastructure or a high-bandwidth distribution mechanism (bittorrent is used for this), so...what does this actually _do_? auth can be handled by TLS. - augur: platform for prediction markets. interesting idea, but ... ultimately the actual result has to be certified? I'm out of time but in general I haven't seen a simple example of what problems a decentralized ledger solves, ignoring all the technical issues like energy use and 51% attacks.

danuker 5y ago

From here: https://www.stephendiehl.com/blog/crypto-absurd.html https://www.stephendiehl.com/blog/crypto-absurd.html > There are no fundamentals to any crypto token and it’s discounted future cashflows are all strictly zero and thus its present value must be strictly zero. This is demonstrably false. Cash has no future cash flow, yet its value is clearly not zero. The way I see it, the value of an asset depends on how desirable it is to market participants (demand), as well as on its supply. If Bitcoin has a believable enough story ("there will only ever be 21M units"), and it draws people in, while national currencies inflate ceaselessly as economic growth stalls, the relative value of Bitcoin grows. Other assets are far from better. Current public companies' Shiller PE ratios are in the "ridiculous" area - it takes 35 years to recoup costs of an investment. https://www.multpl.com/shiller-pe https://www.multpl.com/shiller-pe Current inflation is much higher than government bond yields. This is one definition of financial repression - the government sponsors itself with its own currency, in spite of the real negative return.

ShamelessC 5y ago
Well of course it will when enough people (globally) decide to have a literal revolution (including the crime and punishment that entails) after realizing that neo-libertarian ideals are _obviously_ the only plausible way to maintain a society. /s I see an argument like this in every crypto thread. Come on. You should know that this is a political argument and that, in the US at least, we're pretty damn divided. Talk about stuff that you can plausibly predict at least. You can't predict worldwide economic failure _inevitably_ leading to increased use of crypto. Full stop. From my perspective, that probably does a lot of damage and doing anything other than leading, governing, non-violent protesting (in person) will not help. The wild west of complete lack of regulation over the economy is a scary and probably dangerous thing. As someone who actually _enjoys_ government regulation (gasp!), I hope you realize that this turn isn't at all likely in the western world from my point of view. Further, if your arguments only apply to countries with authoritarian regimes, please say so. You may say "well hey, but it's perfect for people living under authoritarian regimes tho!" to which I say, cool - let them get after it. Does it do _anything_ (other than lose/make me money) that I couldn't do with my current currency in the US? No? Okay, then that's a terrible idea.

DonHopkins 5y ago

My Web goes to 11. Did I miss something, or hasn't the rest of the World Wide Web moved on to Web11 or so by now? I seem to remember a little while after the Web2 craze, the Web was incrementing several times a year. Am I misunderstanding it, or is "Web3" meant to sound charmingly retro?