22 ms·

The Edited Latecomer’s Guide to Crypto

333 points by colesantiago 5y ago

Femtio 5y ago
woodruffw 5y ago
Excellent editing. I’m an otherwise fervent defender of the NYT (even through its many mistakes), but the lack of basic critical analysis and obvious conflicts of interest in this piece were a bridge too far for even me.
- danso 5y ago
  Yeah I'm generally open-minded to NYT articles (I'm still a subscriber, but at the please-dont-cancel-your-subscription-yet discount rate). When I read their "Crypto 101" guide last week, I only made it about halfway before quitting. I know a few things about crypto, but I just could not imagine how the NYT's explainer would clarify things for absolute beginners. Glad I wasn't totally off when thinking it felt a bit too upbeat and abstract.
- ilamont 5y ago
  The stat that suggests 20% of adults own crypto was a stunning inclusion, considering there was nothing on the methodology used in the survey, other than the sample size ("2,200 people"). If it was online, how we even know it was that many people?
- eatonphil 5y ago
  I agree this piece was embarrassingly lazy. But what were the conflicts of interest? Just a quick check and I can't exactly find him having ties to any crypto company.
  - woodruffw 5y ago
    From one of the footnotes: it sounds like Roose used his position at the NYT to boost an otherwise obscure NFT. He's also publicly advocated[1] for a loosening of the rules that newspapers have typically imposed for financial reporting (no ownership in/positions against the companies/assets being reported on.) Re-reading my original comment, I think I was too forward in asserting that there's a conflict of interest. But I find his public positions around becoming an interested party concerning and a potential risk to his objectivity. [1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20220219172535/https://twitter.com/kevinroose/status/1495085866192027655 https://web.archive.org/web/20220219172535/https://twitter.c...
di4na 5y ago
Worth adding >>> And in Silicon Valley, engineers and executives are bolting from cushy jobs in droves to join the crypto gold rush. No they do not. I am an engineer in a technology heavily used by crypto projects and they have a really hard time recruiting. Engineers slam the door in their face the moment you tell them the opening is for this industry.
- AlexCoventry 5y ago
  I'm not directly connected to Chainlink's recruiting, but as far as I can tell as an employee, many engineers are enthusiastic about working here. https://careers.chain.link/ https://careers.chain.link/
- jonathan-adly 5y ago
  Opposite anecdote, I would be happy to take a 30% paycut to work on (some) crypto projects and actually do 60+ hours of work (I do like 10 hours in my cushy job now). Unfortunately, I am not in SV and don't have a padded a resume, and they are flooded with better applicants - so I can't even compete.
  - woah 5y ago
    Please apply: https://informal.systems/careers/ https://informal.systems/careers/
- catsarebetter 5y ago
  Yup that statement is factually incorrect, many silicon valley engineers are jumping to web2 tech companies bc the pay is so damn high right now, very few engineers in crypto at the moment.
  - xmprt 5y ago
    Not to mention that anytime I see extremely high pay in crypto companies I think the salary is overinflated because they are paying a large portion in tokens.
randomhodler84 5y ago
- version_five 5y ago
  > precoiners This made the post
ludamad 5y ago
Quoting a 2017 book about how thinly traded bitcoin is? I appreciate the concept but it doesn't always feel like it rounds out the takes. (FTR, I appreciate it's thin enough to make market cap misleading, but up-to-date liquidity figures would be helpful if we're trying to criticize market cap)
- davidgerard 5y ago
  author of said book here. Nothing in the quoted statement has changed in the past five years. You don't appear to be disputing the claim, but casting about for a spurious reason to play "gotcha." Are you in fact disputing the claim?
- jacinabox 5y ago
  Most bitcoin have never been sold. Bitcoin is a commodity that is intended to serve as a store of value, and other commodities like gold and silver do their work as a store of value without an appreciable fraction of them ever being sold. So using the term market cap is not a misleading measure in relation to bitcoin; it is simply used by analogy to how it would be used for a company; it's not literally implying that all bitcoin is the equivalent of shareholder value.
  - acdha 5y ago
    Bitcoin is a failed currency - see the original paper. After around a decade of failing to find demand the big holders started to market it as a commodity but since there’s no inherent value to it unless it’s actively traded it doesn’t really fit the usual meaning of that term.
    - randomhodler84 5y ago
      Oh please do explain why it is failed? The only thing that has evolved over time, that is peoples time preference. There will always be demand for BTC. The software works as it was designed, and grows stronger every year. Gresham’s law might be the key to understanding this.
vasco 5y ago
This format is interesting at first but when it starts getting to 5 paragraphs of dissecting each phrase, it gets too much. Reminds me of the someone-is-wrong-on-the-internet, point-by-point-repliers in internet forums circa 2006.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- alex_sf 5y ago
  > This format is interesting at first I agree. > but when it starts getting to 5 paragraphs of dissecting each phrase, it gets too much. Yeah, that's true. > Reminds me of the someone-is-wrong-on-the-internet Isn't there usually? > point-by-point-repliers in internet forums I still think it's a good format. > circa 2006 What's wrong with 2006?
  - klyrs 5y ago
    Anybody who thinks HN doesn't do humor simply isn't dry enough. I, for one, miss brand-new websites with long and detailed FAQ's.
  - schainks 5y ago
    :clap emoji:
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- anchpop 5y ago
  True. It made me feel like microanalyzing one of their comments. Here goes: On: > What I couldn’t find was a sober, dispassionate explanation of what crypto actually is — how it works, who it’s for, what’s at stake, where the battle lines are drawn — along with answers to some of the most common questions it raises. They left this comment: > No technology is "sober" or "dispassionate" in its creation, nor is it neutral or apolitical, and thus anyone who is claiming to view it from that perspective is DEFINITELY selling you something. First of all, no one said anything was sober or dispassionate in its creation. And it's trivial to come up with a sober and dispassionate explanation of many technologies, even political ones. I'm certain I can find a sober and dispassionate explanation of how Israel's Iron Dome functions if I really wanted to. And second, if you have a definition of "political" that's so broad that it includes literally every technology, it's not really a very interesting statement to say that some technology is political, right?
trhaynes 5y ago
Does anyone know if there is a tool or platform that makes it easy to make/publish this type of "leave footnotes on an article"? The UX here is nice and simple, and I think there is utility in sharing feedback this way (vs. blockquotes in email, or Google Docs comments, etc).
- vageli 5y ago
  I too would like to know. I mailed the author and if they respond I will let you know as well.
  - daveed 5y ago
    fwiw she responded to a Q about this on twitter: https://twitter.com/glyph/status/1507425853243756544 https://twitter.com/glyph/status/1507425853243756544
  - molly0x57 5y ago
    It's just plain ol' HTML and CSS, plus a little JS that will highlight the corresponding annotation if someone clicks the highlighted text. https://github.com/molly/website-v2/blob/master/src/pug/pages/annotations/latecomers-guide-to-crypto.pug https://github.com/molly/website-v2/blob/master/src/pug/page... https://github.com/molly/website-v2/blob/master/src/sass/reviews.sass https://github.com/molly/website-v2/blob/master/src/sass/rev... https://github.com/molly/website-v2/blob/master/src/js/reviews.js https://github.com/molly/website-v2/blob/master/src/js/revie... It's all open-source, so by all means feel free to reuse it if you like!
- carmen_sandiego 5y ago
  Maybe https://hypothes.is/ https://hypothes.is/?
  - danShumway 5y ago
    Hypothesis is a really interesting platform, but in my mind it's kind of too community-focused. Hypothesis's restricted groups (https://web.hypothes.is/help/annotating-with-groups/ https://web.hypothes.is/help/annotating-with-groups/) are closer to what I think people would want, but to get them you'll have to self-host. Not trying to throw shade at them, but I feel like their push for annotations is hampered a little bit by how much their specific implementation of accounts and permissions feels like yet another social network, with all of the negatives that entails. There are other issues as well, but that's the big one that kept me using the platform. That being said, there is also an Open standard for this stuff that I remember at the time it came out being pretty excited about. But I haven't seen much if any adoption of it, so it again makes me wonder if there's something wrong with it or if it's just that nobody has made anything super-attractive yet to take advantage of it.
8f2ab37a-ed6c 5y ago
Oh yeah, the same Kevin Roose who years ago claimed that early stage startup CEOs made a million (maybe half a million?) a year in cash or something absurd along those lines. I don't have anything against the guy, but he seems completely disconnected from reality when it comes to his writing. It gets clicks, but it also shows either no interest in doing real research, or the desire the create a one-sided narrative.
lekevicius 5y ago
This format of critique is so snarky and tribalistic. I enjoy it sometimes, particularly John Gruber's "translations from corporate bullshit" articles, but there's no point in denying that this format works best for preaching to the choir, not nuanced analysis. Original NYT article was very biased; so is this one.
btown 5y ago
If you're getting frustrated at how thin the commentary column is, make your screen width less than 1800px wide; there's a bug in their CSS for wider breakpoints!
- Karawebnetwork 5y ago
  These days, I mostly browse the web at 150 to 200% zoom. This offsets a lot of such glitches for large screens.
- molly0x57 5y ago
  I've pushed a fix for that, apologies for wasting all your screen real estate!
paxys 5y ago
While I agree with it overall, endlessly nitpicking every line of an article, even unimportant throwaway ones, means people aren't going to stick around long enough to read your real arguments.
librish 5y ago
Until someone has built a crypto product that creates values (for the purpose of this discussion it can be a good or a service would be willing to spend USD on even if it wasn't a crypto) crypto is a negative-sum game. Any USD taken out of the system someone else has to have put in, plus whatever the miners take out. Fortunes aren't created, they are redistributed.
- twox2 5y ago
  How is it negative sum, and not just zero sum?
  - paxys 5y ago
    There are middlemen extracting fees at every step
  - FabHK 5y ago
    Miners are paid some $40m/day, through 1) creating more BTC (called "coinbase" here, "Seigniorage" more generally, leading to inflation) and 2) fees. For now, the $100 miners siphon off per transaction are predominantly from 1), so those costs are not very visible. And then of course the exchanges charging 20 to 120 bp (or more) for a roundtrip against money you can actually use. Coinbase (the exchange) alone takes around 0.4% of the entire crypto market cap per annum into its pockets.
    - jklm 5y ago
      If that seems crazy, wait until you hear about these companies called Stripe and Visa.
      - FabHK 5y ago
        Not sure what you are talking about. 1. Stripe has revenue of $bn 8, Visa $bn 25, and Coinbase $bn 8. Are you suggesting that Coinbase provides as much utility as Stripe? 2. The equity market cap is about $tr 100, so Stripe and Visa together take about 0.03% of that per annum. Mind you: That is way too much. Credit cards are an inefficient oligopoly, and they've been fined by regulators for their extravagant fees. That's a whole topic in itself. But: Crypto is 10x worse.
alligator1728 5y ago
- eropple 5y ago
  > Does it not make sense that a reporter on web3/crypto should be entitled to practice owning an ENS domain, in order to better write about the experience from a first hand perspective? It would be like banning a reporter from purchasing their own personal domain name, out of fear it may skew their bias on how they write about HTTP and web protocols. It absolutely does not. This is what a research budget is for from an organization--and you can shred it/render it nonfunctional afterwards to avoid a personally biasing stake. As for "personal identities": I know of about half of the folks cited in those articles and all of them, even crypto's scariest nemesis (one David Gerard), have plenty of other things that they do and that they are interested in. Perhaps what you read as a "personal vendetta" is a deep understanding of what a rotgut industry they criticize, and that morality is not fully dead.
  - alligator1728 5y ago
    I feel a journalist should be entitled to own their own personal ENS domain just like they might secure their own .com domain with their own personal funds. Seems wild to suggest that Kevin should sell his ENS domain to avoid any potential bias, considering it means he will have to later buy it back at a premium either when/if he retires (or changes jobs), or when/if the NYT changes their policy. (I am assuming (1) he actually wants to keep the ENS domain, and (2) he bought it with his own funds, rather than company dime.) I am sure they all have fulfilling lives outside of what they project online; but the single-track attitude and constant crypto snark is as tiring as the laser eyed BTC bros. Edit: just to add, if the ENS were solely to practice buying “nytdomaintest1234.eth” and using it, then sure I agree with you. I am asking this question in the context of Kevin owning a personal domain linked to his real life name and identity.
germanjoey 5y ago
The article (or, rather, the commentary in the link above on the article) talks about the fallacious notion of "market cap" in regards to cryptocurrencies. That is to say, e.g., multiplying the number of bitcoins in existence times the current market price is a silly metric because the entire market would never be able to cash-out at that maximum price. What I was wondering was: is there a better number? e.g., is there a way to calculate the amount of USD put into a cryptocurrency across a timeframe? What I'm imagining is a metric like (sum of all bitcoins bought by USD purchase price) - (sum of all bitcoins sold by USD sale price) = amount of USD that has been put "into" bitcoin. That first glance, one might expect this number to equal zero, but it should be greater than zero because of the new coins created by mining.
- jaggirs 5y ago
  For every btc bought there is one sold, the equation you gave thus adds up to zero.
- mrb 5y ago
  The market cap metric may seem silly to you, but it's the same metric used by publicly traded corporations. And there is nothing silly about it. All shareholders would never be able to cash out at the current share price, but this isn't a reason to disregard the market cap metric.
  - acdha 5y ago
    There’s a key difference: corporate shares have a value anchored in the company’s assets and revenue. The market cap can still fluctuate, of course, because different people will have different assessments of the future profitability but the floor is going to be based on the company’s assets, contracts and sales predictions, obligations, etc. In contrast, cryptocurrencies have no floor because there’s no inherent value to a random number and nobody has a need to pay for a specific token. If something falls out of favor, there’s no reason to expect to find a buyer at any price.
    - nightski 5y ago
dogman144 5y ago
> Bitcoin, which emerged out of the ashes of the 2008 financial crisis, first caught on among libertarians and anti-establishment activists who saw it as the cornerstone of a new, incorruptible monetary system > you’ll find a bottomless well of weird, interesting and thought-provoking projects I hope comment-think pieces like this aren't a norm going forward, as that was pretty brutal to read... "Molly White: so brave." This comes off as Twitter-zens getting together to criticize an insular, tribal world not too different from their own. The worst part of online culture is the snark. For what it is worth, much of the debate on crypto comes from people new to the space, and the long standing critics. For a lot of folks in it for longer, they've given up on the debate as the same arguments get recycled every several years. That aside, those two quotes "get it," and I was surprised to see them. Crypto has turned into meme culture by and large. But, the tech and design considerations behind btc comes out of one of the most impactful techno-ideological groups out there - the cypherpunks, with a strong helping of post-2008 anger included. btc and notable other parts of crypto, and supporting technology codifies that group's view of the world: permissionless, trustless, private digital action. This is the area to understand when studying crypto. They viewed it as critical to build three capabilities in digital interactions: private browsing, private comms, private spending. Well, they slowly built all three - Tor, PGP/consumer encryption, and then BTC. Tor and consumer access to encryption has had a tremendous effect, even beyond intense privacy circles. BTC is newer, but what are the odds it won't do the same? Judging by history and cypherpunk movement, it seems silly to ignore it. '08 wasn't too long ago, and not much has changed in the practices that caused the crash. BTC still remains a/the only warts-and-all viable way out of that system. For what it's worth, here is how I place a value crypto[0] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30439891#30441946 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30439891#30441946
- drBonkers 5y ago
  This is off-topic for this thread, but I didn't know how else to reply— thanks for this [1] comment. I'm going to dig into McChrystal's book at your recommendation. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30599612#30602787 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30599612#30602787
  - 5y ago
k__ 5y ago
"And in Silicon Valley, engineers and executives are bolting from cushy jobs in droves to join the crypto gold rush." Can't blame them. Crypto companies are overfunded right now and don't have that traditional big corp gatekeeping going on. Also, many younger people never had that sweet dotcom experience. So, why not grab a swash of nice investor money in a still crazy industry?
doogerdog 5y ago
Molly provides a great service to skeptics like me. She concise, easy to read, articulate and funny. I feel like I live in a world where a huge train wreck is getting set up. I would like to follow along but it has gotten to the point where I can't get myself to read many of these 'News' stories about a new crypto adventure. I only have a little news reading time in a day and the typical article about NFTs or whatever leaves me feeling assaulted by a hype machine. But I can peruse web3isgoinggreat and stay abreast of what is going on. Molly obviously has an opinion about the future of blockchain money but her comments all seem factual and fair to me. I'm pretty sure I would read her site even if I were on the other side of the argument.
- _zllx 5y ago
  > I would read her site even if I were on the other side of the argument It's been a great resource to confirm that I'm not falling for the most obvious scams (like NFTs or BNB chain scams which constitute a majority of web3isgoinggreat posts) nor investing in easily exploited projects. She perhaps inadvertently helps the cryptocurrency space by pointing out scam artists to avoid working with. There is a world of good going on outside of the typical bored ape garbage in the cryptocurrency space. You would be getting a raw deal if relying solely on her for cryptocurrency information.
- d13 5y ago
  It’s a brilliant site, but definitely cherry-picked for entertainment value. It’s only a small part of the whole picture and provides a very distorted view
  - cuteboy19 5y ago
    People shilling crypto are heavily incentivised to cover up the negatives or pretend they don't exist. Every crypto news site is basically paid news. Even when they publish negative articles, it's usually because they are shilling an alternative. The journalism quality is terrible. The site is probably the most neutral crypto view out there, just because the author has no perverse incentive
lowbloodsugar 5y ago
Also a puff piece.
loph 5y ago
"Crypto" to me is about cryptography, not cryptocurrencies. re: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_naming_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_naming_controversy and (of course) this: https://www.iacr.org/meetings/crypto/ https://www.iacr.org/meetings/crypto/ I wish that lazy people did not overload this term.
- scottiebarnes 5y ago
  Language is fluid and evolves over time, get over it.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- pixelpoet 5y ago
  > I wish that lazy people did not overload this term. You mean like how you just used the programming definition of "overload" that you won't find in the dictionary?
flaque 5y ago
The issue with crypto is that reasonable use cases are early, and don’t attract attention except for niche communities. There’s a few big ones, for example, filecoin right now has created a commodity market for storage that is currently 10,000 cheaper than S3 in some instances. (See file.app for stats) But realistically, the interesting projects are very small and hard to find. However, scams and ponzi schemes, by their nature are very public, easy to find, and have lots of people talking about them (often for financial gain). Everyone building anything sane is so tired of having to explain that their thing isn’t a ponzi, isn’t an nft thing, and isn’t shilling proof of work, that they don’t post to hacker news, and so they exist outside of your bubble. Crypto is like the story of the blind scientists studying an elephant. The first one touches its trunk and says “it’s a snake!”, the next one touches its tusk and says “it’s a spear!”, the next one touches its side and says “it’s a wall!”. None have the correct answer, because no single party has a full view. The crypto skeptics are as irrational as the crypto optimists: firm believers in their own view, based on an incomplete information.
- matheusmoreira 5y ago
  Yeah, it sucks. Monero for example is an actual privacy coin that's usable as currency but nobody seems to care. Very demoralizing. Bitcoin is obsolete technology at this point. It's continued existence does more harm than good to the cryptocurrency space because everyone gravitates towards it instead of better projects.
  - eoo 5y ago
    Bitcoin is as obsolete as POSIX. It's ossified, and not changing is a feature.
    - imachine1980_ 5y ago
      Not exacly posix isn't 100 times slower and 100 more expensive that other is more inconvenient standard, becouse is simply old standard, bitcoing is a product in itself not a protocol,and this product don't fulfill the need for fiat currency becouse is expensive to transact, and slow te best you can say is that is difficult to make changes but bitcoin isn't exactly the one of 10 years ago, protocol change to acomodate for more transactions and most votes are concentrated in few minority of big stakeholder, making kmposiblw to reduce comitions or change significantlythe protocol.
mcbuilder 5y ago
If you want someone to understand crypto, have them mine a little and then have them purchase something physical.
abetusk 5y ago
Many of the points brought up are completely valid but they're also heavily biased and often lack critical examination. Meaning, they take a stance of skeptic to the article but don't use the same bar for themselves. They purposefully take ungenerous interpretations of statements to build straw man arguments then accuse the article of making straw man arguments. They bring up studies and articles contradicting claims in the piece then dismiss the studies brought up in the piece as being ambiguous because they don't have more rigor. Often, the comments are nothing more than snide remarks deriding the claims without any citations while at the same time writing "citation needed" for various other parts of the article. As I said, there are many fair points in this criticism but this critique, and other pieces like it, are, in my opinion, not really trying to pursue the truth, they're written to cater to an audience that wants to dismiss cryptocurrency outright.
- rvz 5y ago
  Precisely. Most of the points about where it doesn't make sense to use blockchains are valid (Social media, storing images on-chain, etc) but the critics themselves like to filter, dismiss and scream ALL of it as an entire scam, which is quite a dangerous assumption for them in the long term, but we'll see. Who knows if the larger cryptocurrencies will still be around in 10 years time due to those criticisms or will they just adapt and fit in to better use cases? I also dislike the hype around NFTs as them being a marketplace for JPEGs but not all of them are like this. Perhaps 90% of NFTs will crumble with only 10% of them still being around that have a use case. Due to a few of them having some utility, I certainly won't dismiss the whole thing or the technologies behind them. Otherwise we will see yet another HN crypto post with the same comments and dismissals attached to them. I expect for them to easily ignore it since they are convinced it will completely collapse in the future. I'm not sure why they find it very difficult to do this but even I also think the majority of the hype will collapse too due to regulations, but the technologies (including blockchain) will still live on.
aprinsen 5y ago
I gave the original NYT article a read when it was published and I have no idea how it could have been approved outside of the opinion section. Really shameful to present the obviously pro crypto piece as neutral or informational and I have only two explanations: - ancient editorial staff approved it because they really don't understand crypto or - there's some kind of market for front page real estate
- shimonabi 5y ago
  I wrote the same two points in the comments of the article when it was published. I'm really disappointed with the NYT, having subscribed just a week before.
  - biztos 5y ago
    I’ve been a subscriber for some years and I share your cringe whenever they publish anything about tech. But for most actual news it’s still worth the money, IMO, if you’re trying to stay informed and your focus is the US. Also, whenever I start feeling indignant and thinking about canceling I check out the archive. Lots of great, great stuff down that rabbit hole: https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/browser https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/browser
- rdiddly 5y ago
  Maybe it was pushed by the CIA spooks known to be close collaborators and/or on staff there? (Like Saddam's WMDs?) Let's brainstorm what interest the CIA might have in crypto.
- uncomputation 5y ago
  > there's some kind of market for front page real estate Absolutely there is. If you want an even clearer example, take a look at the front page of the Wall Street Journal under the “Editorial Staff” section. The “reporting” there is almost always some rich, more conservative guy who basically paid to get his post on the front page of a relatively dry, and even somewhat activist-oriented (eg Facebook Files) paper.
- davidgerard 5y ago
ideamotor 5y ago
Animats 5y ago
I read the NYT article and wondered how that got in there. The article mentions a "Let's Go Brandon" coin, personally promoted by Trump. Here are its current statistics.[1] There's a huge incentive to hype crypto products. They're mostly zero-sum games, which means you need a growing supply of suckers to keep the thing going. I'm into 3D virtual worlds, and the NFT clown car is destroying the potential of the metaverse. The 3D NFT worlds range from weak to very poor to nonexistent to total scam. Nobody in the NFT world is even trying to get to Ready Player One level. There is now someone selling virtual land in a 2D sidescroller. [1] https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/lets-go-brandon/ https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/lets-go-brandon/
cantrevealname 5y ago
I like the format very much -- the original New York Times article on the left and commentary about it on the right -- but how is this not a copyright violation? I'd be worried about the New York Times threatening to sue.
- jerrybender 5y ago
  Criticism falls under fair use.
  - cantrevealname 5y ago
    But can you quote the entire original article and still claim fair use for purposes of criticism?
    - stjohnswarts 5y ago
      Of course, it's obviously criticism all the way through
    - Kye 5y ago
      Character of use tends to weigh higher than quantity in the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use#U.S._fair_use_factors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use#U.S._fair_use_factors
malthaus 5y ago
You can edit the guide down even better to: "Don't"
oleganza 5y ago
If you and all your family and friends live in a country with a single currency, no bombs over yours or their heads, no serious inflation and no foreseeble risk of account freezes/closures, ATM restrictions and economic sanctions, then you probably can argue that crypto is some fringe tech that brings nothing, but PITA and risks. But many people have themselves or have family/friends that need to save their money, or escape with their money. Or, recently: escape with all banking cards being blocked and find themselves having to live off Bitcoin. Cryptocurrencies are solving very real problems right now, for millions of people in Latin America, Asia and Europe: 1. They help remit money across the globe: Hawala network is way more scalable since there is a secure global settlement layer - the blockchain. No need to have 3-4 hops through trusted parties. You can directly exchange cash for bitcoin in one place and the opposite in another. 2. They help moving personal cash across the border: if you can't trust or use your bank, you won't be able to safely move more than a small pack of $$$ through customs. Crypto is your only option to save your money. 3. They help you pay the bills wherever you are regardless of your residence/visa status. You may not be able to open a bank account in a foreign country, but you would be able to book a flight, a place to live, pay for taxi, pay for cellphone, pay for food delivery through crypto-interfaces such as cheapair, travala and gift-card gateways like bitrefill to use amazon/uber/airbnb/careem and thousands of other merchants.
plaguepilled 5y ago
polypodiopsi 5y ago
Why is that thing an accumulation of comments, when it claims to be an authoritative journalistic source? (What the NYT didn't succees at). And on that note: claims to not be simply affirmative, but critical voices are reaerved for that ode "commentsection". Really weird.
xtat 5y ago
It's a rather dishonest title for a take down article.
JanDietch 5y ago
dan-robertson 5y ago
I don’t really understand what this document is for. Or rather, I would have guessed it would be an attempt to respond to the NYT article and to convince readers to come to their point of view, but I think it totally fails at that. The format is difficult to read, and the phrase-by-phrase analysis leaves it incohesive, scattershot and makes it feel nitpicky. Lots of the arguments are fundamentally ideological (basically ‘crypto is libertarian but libertarianism is bad compared to my preferred ideology so crypto is bad’) and I think most people will recognise an ideological argument and decide the merits of the thing based on their own ideology. I think these arguments don’t do much to convince or inform. It’s largely appealing to the in-group of crypto-skeptics with commenters riffing off each other or referring to unmentioned but agreed-upon facts. I think a better argument could be made with a more cohesive narrative sticking to the most defensible points.
- datagram 5y ago
  I think the article is mainly for a bunch of skeptics to dunk on both the author for writing the piece and the NYT for publishing it. As the introduction says: > Here, a group of around fifteen cryptocurrency researchers and critics have done what the New York Times apparently won't. Between this and the title, I assume they're mainly referring to the perceived lack of editing that went in to the original. I think it's pretty safe to say that this was mainly written for the amusement of crypto skeptics (which it does a good job of, imo) and to serve as an example of how to identify irresponsible crypto reporting, rather than to actually convince anyone.

333 points by colesantiago 5y ago

Excellent editing. I’m an otherwise fervent defender of the NYT (even through its many mistakes), but the lack of basic critical analysis and obvious conflicts of interest in this piece were a bridge too far for even me.

danso 5y ago
Yeah I'm generally open-minded to NYT articles (I'm still a subscriber, but at the please-dont-cancel-your-subscription-yet discount rate). When I read their "Crypto 101" guide last week, I only made it about halfway before quitting. I know a few things about crypto, but I just could not imagine how the NYT's explainer would clarify things for absolute beginners. Glad I wasn't totally off when thinking it felt a bit too upbeat and abstract.
ilamont 5y ago
The stat that suggests 20% of adults own crypto was a stunning inclusion, considering there was nothing on the methodology used in the survey, other than the sample size ("2,200 people"). If it was online, how we even know it was that many people?
eatonphil 5y ago
I agree this piece was embarrassingly lazy. But what were the conflicts of interest? Just a quick check and I can't exactly find him having ties to any crypto company.
- woodruffw 5y ago
  From one of the footnotes: it sounds like Roose used his position at the NYT to boost an otherwise obscure NFT. He's also publicly advocated[1] for a loosening of the rules that newspapers have typically imposed for financial reporting (no ownership in/positions against the companies/assets being reported on.) Re-reading my original comment, I think I was too forward in asserting that there's a conflict of interest. But I find his public positions around becoming an interested party concerning and a potential risk to his objectivity. [1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20220219172535/https://twitter.com/kevinroose/status/1495085866192027655 https://web.archive.org/web/20220219172535/https://twitter.c...

di4na 5y ago

Worth adding >>> And in Silicon Valley, engineers and executives are bolting from cushy jobs in droves to join the crypto gold rush. No they do not. I am an engineer in a technology heavily used by crypto projects and they have a really hard time recruiting. Engineers slam the door in their face the moment you tell them the opening is for this industry.

AlexCoventry 5y ago
I'm not directly connected to Chainlink's recruiting, but as far as I can tell as an employee, many engineers are enthusiastic about working here. https://careers.chain.link/ https://careers.chain.link/
jonathan-adly 5y ago
Opposite anecdote, I would be happy to take a 30% paycut to work on (some) crypto projects and actually do 60+ hours of work (I do like 10 hours in my cushy job now). Unfortunately, I am not in SV and don't have a padded a resume, and they are flooded with better applicants - so I can't even compete.
- woah 5y ago
  Please apply: https://informal.systems/careers/ https://informal.systems/careers/
catsarebetter 5y ago
Yup that statement is factually incorrect, many silicon valley engineers are jumping to web2 tech companies bc the pay is so damn high right now, very few engineers in crypto at the moment.
- xmprt 5y ago
  Not to mention that anytime I see extremely high pay in crypto companies I think the salary is overinflated because they are paying a large portion in tokens.

randomhodler84 5y ago

version_five 5y ago
> precoiners This made the post

ludamad 5y ago

Quoting a 2017 book about how thinly traded bitcoin is? I appreciate the concept but it doesn't always feel like it rounds out the takes. (FTR, I appreciate it's thin enough to make market cap misleading, but up-to-date liquidity figures would be helpful if we're trying to criticize market cap)

davidgerard 5y ago
author of said book here. Nothing in the quoted statement has changed in the past five years. You don't appear to be disputing the claim, but casting about for a spurious reason to play "gotcha." Are you in fact disputing the claim?
jacinabox 5y ago
Most bitcoin have never been sold. Bitcoin is a commodity that is intended to serve as a store of value, and other commodities like gold and silver do their work as a store of value without an appreciable fraction of them ever being sold. So using the term market cap is not a misleading measure in relation to bitcoin; it is simply used by analogy to how it would be used for a company; it's not literally implying that all bitcoin is the equivalent of shareholder value.
- acdha 5y ago
  Bitcoin is a failed currency - see the original paper. After around a decade of failing to find demand the big holders started to market it as a commodity but since there’s no inherent value to it unless it’s actively traded it doesn’t really fit the usual meaning of that term.
  - randomhodler84 5y ago
    Oh please do explain why it is failed? The only thing that has evolved over time, that is peoples time preference. There will always be demand for BTC. The software works as it was designed, and grows stronger every year. Gresham’s law might be the key to understanding this.

vasco 5y ago

This format is interesting at first but when it starts getting to 5 paragraphs of dissecting each phrase, it gets too much. Reminds me of the someone-is-wrong-on-the-internet, point-by-point-repliers in internet forums circa 2006.

deleted 5y ago
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alex_sf 5y ago
> This format is interesting at first I agree. > but when it starts getting to 5 paragraphs of dissecting each phrase, it gets too much. Yeah, that's true. > Reminds me of the someone-is-wrong-on-the-internet Isn't there usually? > point-by-point-repliers in internet forums I still think it's a good format. > circa 2006 What's wrong with 2006?
- klyrs 5y ago
  Anybody who thinks HN doesn't do humor simply isn't dry enough. I, for one, miss brand-new websites with long and detailed FAQ's.
- schainks 5y ago
  :clap emoji:
deleted 5y ago
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anchpop 5y ago
True. It made me feel like microanalyzing one of their comments. Here goes: On: > What I couldn’t find was a sober, dispassionate explanation of what crypto actually is — how it works, who it’s for, what’s at stake, where the battle lines are drawn — along with answers to some of the most common questions it raises. They left this comment: > No technology is "sober" or "dispassionate" in its creation, nor is it neutral or apolitical, and thus anyone who is claiming to view it from that perspective is DEFINITELY selling you something. First of all, no one said anything was sober or dispassionate in its creation. And it's trivial to come up with a sober and dispassionate explanation of many technologies, even political ones. I'm certain I can find a sober and dispassionate explanation of how Israel's Iron Dome functions if I really wanted to. And second, if you have a definition of "political" that's so broad that it includes literally every technology, it's not really a very interesting statement to say that some technology is political, right?

trhaynes 5y ago

Does anyone know if there is a tool or platform that makes it easy to make/publish this type of "leave footnotes on an article"? The UX here is nice and simple, and I think there is utility in sharing feedback this way (vs. blockquotes in email, or Google Docs comments, etc).

vageli 5y ago
I too would like to know. I mailed the author and if they respond I will let you know as well.
- daveed 5y ago
  fwiw she responded to a Q about this on twitter: https://twitter.com/glyph/status/1507425853243756544 https://twitter.com/glyph/status/1507425853243756544
- molly0x57 5y ago
  It's just plain ol' HTML and CSS, plus a little JS that will highlight the corresponding annotation if someone clicks the highlighted text. https://github.com/molly/website-v2/blob/master/src/pug/pages/annotations/latecomers-guide-to-crypto.pug https://github.com/molly/website-v2/blob/master/src/pug/page... https://github.com/molly/website-v2/blob/master/src/sass/reviews.sass https://github.com/molly/website-v2/blob/master/src/sass/rev... https://github.com/molly/website-v2/blob/master/src/js/reviews.js https://github.com/molly/website-v2/blob/master/src/js/revie... It's all open-source, so by all means feel free to reuse it if you like!
carmen_sandiego 5y ago
Maybe https://hypothes.is/ https://hypothes.is/?
- danShumway 5y ago
  Hypothesis is a really interesting platform, but in my mind it's kind of too community-focused. Hypothesis's restricted groups (https://web.hypothes.is/help/annotating-with-groups/ https://web.hypothes.is/help/annotating-with-groups/) are closer to what I think people would want, but to get them you'll have to self-host. Not trying to throw shade at them, but I feel like their push for annotations is hampered a little bit by how much their specific implementation of accounts and permissions feels like yet another social network, with all of the negatives that entails. There are other issues as well, but that's the big one that kept me using the platform. That being said, there is also an Open standard for this stuff that I remember at the time it came out being pretty excited about. But I haven't seen much if any adoption of it, so it again makes me wonder if there's something wrong with it or if it's just that nobody has made anything super-attractive yet to take advantage of it.

8f2ab37a-ed6c 5y ago

Oh yeah, the same Kevin Roose who years ago claimed that early stage startup CEOs made a million (maybe half a million?) a year in cash or something absurd along those lines. I don't have anything against the guy, but he seems completely disconnected from reality when it comes to his writing. It gets clicks, but it also shows either no interest in doing real research, or the desire the create a one-sided narrative.

lekevicius 5y ago

This format of critique is so snarky and tribalistic. I enjoy it sometimes, particularly John Gruber's "translations from corporate bullshit" articles, but there's no point in denying that this format works best for preaching to the choir, not nuanced analysis. Original NYT article was very biased; so is this one.

btown 5y ago

If you're getting frustrated at how thin the commentary column is, make your screen width less than 1800px wide; there's a bug in their CSS for wider breakpoints!

Karawebnetwork 5y ago
These days, I mostly browse the web at 150 to 200% zoom. This offsets a lot of such glitches for large screens.
molly0x57 5y ago
I've pushed a fix for that, apologies for wasting all your screen real estate!

paxys 5y ago

While I agree with it overall, endlessly nitpicking every line of an article, even unimportant throwaway ones, means people aren't going to stick around long enough to read your real arguments.

librish 5y ago

Until someone has built a crypto product that creates values (for the purpose of this discussion it can be a good or a service would be willing to spend USD on even if it wasn't a crypto) crypto is a negative-sum game. Any USD taken out of the system someone else has to have put in, plus whatever the miners take out. Fortunes aren't created, they are redistributed.

twox2 5y ago
How is it negative sum, and not just zero sum?
- paxys 5y ago
  There are middlemen extracting fees at every step
- FabHK 5y ago
  Miners are paid some $40m/day, through 1) creating more BTC (called "coinbase" here, "Seigniorage" more generally, leading to inflation) and 2) fees. For now, the $100 miners siphon off per transaction are predominantly from 1), so those costs are not very visible. And then of course the exchanges charging 20 to 120 bp (or more) for a roundtrip against money you can actually use. Coinbase (the exchange) alone takes around 0.4% of the entire crypto market cap per annum into its pockets.
  - jklm 5y ago
    If that seems crazy, wait until you hear about these companies called Stripe and Visa.
    - FabHK 5y ago
      Not sure what you are talking about. 1. Stripe has revenue of $bn 8, Visa $bn 25, and Coinbase $bn 8. Are you suggesting that Coinbase provides as much utility as Stripe? 2. The equity market cap is about $tr 100, so Stripe and Visa together take about 0.03% of that per annum. Mind you: That is way too much. Credit cards are an inefficient oligopoly, and they've been fined by regulators for their extravagant fees. That's a whole topic in itself. But: Crypto is 10x worse.

alligator1728 5y ago

eropple 5y ago
> Does it not make sense that a reporter on web3/crypto should be entitled to practice owning an ENS domain, in order to better write about the experience from a first hand perspective? It would be like banning a reporter from purchasing their own personal domain name, out of fear it may skew their bias on how they write about HTTP and web protocols. It absolutely does not. This is what a research budget is for from an organization--and you can shred it/render it nonfunctional afterwards to avoid a personally biasing stake. As for "personal identities": I know of about half of the folks cited in those articles and all of them, even crypto's scariest nemesis (one David Gerard), have plenty of other things that they do and that they are interested in. Perhaps what you read as a "personal vendetta" is a deep understanding of what a rotgut industry they criticize, and that morality is not fully dead.
- alligator1728 5y ago
  I feel a journalist should be entitled to own their own personal ENS domain just like they might secure their own .com domain with their own personal funds. Seems wild to suggest that Kevin should sell his ENS domain to avoid any potential bias, considering it means he will have to later buy it back at a premium either when/if he retires (or changes jobs), or when/if the NYT changes their policy. (I am assuming (1) he actually wants to keep the ENS domain, and (2) he bought it with his own funds, rather than company dime.) I am sure they all have fulfilling lives outside of what they project online; but the single-track attitude and constant crypto snark is as tiring as the laser eyed BTC bros. Edit: just to add, if the ENS were solely to practice buying “nytdomaintest1234.eth” and using it, then sure I agree with you. I am asking this question in the context of Kevin owning a personal domain linked to his real life name and identity.

germanjoey 5y ago

The article (or, rather, the commentary in the link above on the article) talks about the fallacious notion of "market cap" in regards to cryptocurrencies. That is to say, e.g., multiplying the number of bitcoins in existence times the current market price is a silly metric because the entire market would never be able to cash-out at that maximum price. What I was wondering was: is there a better number? e.g., is there a way to calculate the amount of USD put into a cryptocurrency across a timeframe? What I'm imagining is a metric like (sum of all bitcoins bought by USD purchase price) - (sum of all bitcoins sold by USD sale price) = amount of USD that has been put "into" bitcoin. That first glance, one might expect this number to equal zero, but it should be greater than zero because of the new coins created by mining.

jaggirs 5y ago
For every btc bought there is one sold, the equation you gave thus adds up to zero.
mrb 5y ago
The market cap metric may seem silly to you, but it's the same metric used by publicly traded corporations. And there is nothing silly about it. All shareholders would never be able to cash out at the current share price, but this isn't a reason to disregard the market cap metric.
- acdha 5y ago
  There’s a key difference: corporate shares have a value anchored in the company’s assets and revenue. The market cap can still fluctuate, of course, because different people will have different assessments of the future profitability but the floor is going to be based on the company’s assets, contracts and sales predictions, obligations, etc. In contrast, cryptocurrencies have no floor because there’s no inherent value to a random number and nobody has a need to pay for a specific token. If something falls out of favor, there’s no reason to expect to find a buyer at any price.
  - nightski 5y ago

dogman144 5y ago

> Bitcoin, which emerged out of the ashes of the 2008 financial crisis, first caught on among libertarians and anti-establishment activists who saw it as the cornerstone of a new, incorruptible monetary system > you’ll find a bottomless well of weird, interesting and thought-provoking projects I hope comment-think pieces like this aren't a norm going forward, as that was pretty brutal to read... "Molly White: so brave." This comes off as Twitter-zens getting together to criticize an insular, tribal world not too different from their own. The worst part of online culture is the snark. For what it is worth, much of the debate on crypto comes from people new to the space, and the long standing critics. For a lot of folks in it for longer, they've given up on the debate as the same arguments get recycled every several years. That aside, those two quotes "get it," and I was surprised to see them. Crypto has turned into meme culture by and large. But, the tech and design considerations behind btc comes out of one of the most impactful techno-ideological groups out there - the cypherpunks, with a strong helping of post-2008 anger included. btc and notable other parts of crypto, and supporting technology codifies that group's view of the world: permissionless, trustless, private digital action. This is the area to understand when studying crypto. They viewed it as critical to build three capabilities in digital interactions: private browsing, private comms, private spending. Well, they slowly built all three - Tor, PGP/consumer encryption, and then BTC. Tor and consumer access to encryption has had a tremendous effect, even beyond intense privacy circles. BTC is newer, but what are the odds it won't do the same? Judging by history and cypherpunk movement, it seems silly to ignore it. '08 wasn't too long ago, and not much has changed in the practices that caused the crash. BTC still remains a/the only warts-and-all viable way out of that system. For what it's worth, here is how I place a value crypto[0] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30439891#30441946 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30439891#30441946

drBonkers 5y ago
This is off-topic for this thread, but I didn't know how else to reply— thanks for this [1] comment. I'm going to dig into McChrystal's book at your recommendation. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30599612#30602787 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30599612#30602787
- 5y ago

k__ 5y ago

"And in Silicon Valley, engineers and executives are bolting from cushy jobs in droves to join the crypto gold rush." Can't blame them. Crypto companies are overfunded right now and don't have that traditional big corp gatekeeping going on. Also, many younger people never had that sweet dotcom experience. So, why not grab a swash of nice investor money in a still crazy industry?

doogerdog 5y ago

Molly provides a great service to skeptics like me. She concise, easy to read, articulate and funny. I feel like I live in a world where a huge train wreck is getting set up. I would like to follow along but it has gotten to the point where I can't get myself to read many of these 'News' stories about a new crypto adventure. I only have a little news reading time in a day and the typical article about NFTs or whatever leaves me feeling assaulted by a hype machine. But I can peruse web3isgoinggreat and stay abreast of what is going on. Molly obviously has an opinion about the future of blockchain money but her comments all seem factual and fair to me. I'm pretty sure I would read her site even if I were on the other side of the argument.

_zllx 5y ago
> I would read her site even if I were on the other side of the argument It's been a great resource to confirm that I'm not falling for the most obvious scams (like NFTs or BNB chain scams which constitute a majority of web3isgoinggreat posts) nor investing in easily exploited projects. She perhaps inadvertently helps the cryptocurrency space by pointing out scam artists to avoid working with. There is a world of good going on outside of the typical bored ape garbage in the cryptocurrency space. You would be getting a raw deal if relying solely on her for cryptocurrency information.
d13 5y ago
It’s a brilliant site, but definitely cherry-picked for entertainment value. It’s only a small part of the whole picture and provides a very distorted view
- cuteboy19 5y ago
  People shilling crypto are heavily incentivised to cover up the negatives or pretend they don't exist. Every crypto news site is basically paid news. Even when they publish negative articles, it's usually because they are shilling an alternative. The journalism quality is terrible. The site is probably the most neutral crypto view out there, just because the author has no perverse incentive

lowbloodsugar 5y ago

Also a puff piece.

loph 5y ago

"Crypto" to me is about cryptography, not cryptocurrencies. re: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_naming_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_naming_controversy and (of course) this: https://www.iacr.org/meetings/crypto/ https://www.iacr.org/meetings/crypto/ I wish that lazy people did not overload this term.

scottiebarnes 5y ago
Language is fluid and evolves over time, get over it.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
pixelpoet 5y ago
> I wish that lazy people did not overload this term. You mean like how you just used the programming definition of "overload" that you won't find in the dictionary?

flaque 5y ago

The issue with crypto is that reasonable use cases are early, and don’t attract attention except for niche communities. There’s a few big ones, for example, filecoin right now has created a commodity market for storage that is currently 10,000 cheaper than S3 in some instances. (See file.app for stats) But realistically, the interesting projects are very small and hard to find. However, scams and ponzi schemes, by their nature are very public, easy to find, and have lots of people talking about them (often for financial gain). Everyone building anything sane is so tired of having to explain that their thing isn’t a ponzi, isn’t an nft thing, and isn’t shilling proof of work, that they don’t post to hacker news, and so they exist outside of your bubble. Crypto is like the story of the blind scientists studying an elephant. The first one touches its trunk and says “it’s a snake!”, the next one touches its tusk and says “it’s a spear!”, the next one touches its side and says “it’s a wall!”. None have the correct answer, because no single party has a full view. The crypto skeptics are as irrational as the crypto optimists: firm believers in their own view, based on an incomplete information.

matheusmoreira 5y ago
Yeah, it sucks. Monero for example is an actual privacy coin that's usable as currency but nobody seems to care. Very demoralizing. Bitcoin is obsolete technology at this point. It's continued existence does more harm than good to the cryptocurrency space because everyone gravitates towards it instead of better projects.
- eoo 5y ago
  Bitcoin is as obsolete as POSIX. It's ossified, and not changing is a feature.
  - imachine1980_ 5y ago
    Not exacly posix isn't 100 times slower and 100 more expensive that other is more inconvenient standard, becouse is simply old standard, bitcoing is a product in itself not a protocol,and this product don't fulfill the need for fiat currency becouse is expensive to transact, and slow te best you can say is that is difficult to make changes but bitcoin isn't exactly the one of 10 years ago, protocol change to acomodate for more transactions and most votes are concentrated in few minority of big stakeholder, making kmposiblw to reduce comitions or change significantlythe protocol.

mcbuilder 5y ago

If you want someone to understand crypto, have them mine a little and then have them purchase something physical.

abetusk 5y ago

Many of the points brought up are completely valid but they're also heavily biased and often lack critical examination. Meaning, they take a stance of skeptic to the article but don't use the same bar for themselves. They purposefully take ungenerous interpretations of statements to build straw man arguments then accuse the article of making straw man arguments. They bring up studies and articles contradicting claims in the piece then dismiss the studies brought up in the piece as being ambiguous because they don't have more rigor. Often, the comments are nothing more than snide remarks deriding the claims without any citations while at the same time writing "citation needed" for various other parts of the article. As I said, there are many fair points in this criticism but this critique, and other pieces like it, are, in my opinion, not really trying to pursue the truth, they're written to cater to an audience that wants to dismiss cryptocurrency outright.

rvz 5y ago
Precisely. Most of the points about where it doesn't make sense to use blockchains are valid (Social media, storing images on-chain, etc) but the critics themselves like to filter, dismiss and scream ALL of it as an entire scam, which is quite a dangerous assumption for them in the long term, but we'll see. Who knows if the larger cryptocurrencies will still be around in 10 years time due to those criticisms or will they just adapt and fit in to better use cases? I also dislike the hype around NFTs as them being a marketplace for JPEGs but not all of them are like this. Perhaps 90% of NFTs will crumble with only 10% of them still being around that have a use case. Due to a few of them having some utility, I certainly won't dismiss the whole thing or the technologies behind them. Otherwise we will see yet another HN crypto post with the same comments and dismissals attached to them. I expect for them to easily ignore it since they are convinced it will completely collapse in the future. I'm not sure why they find it very difficult to do this but even I also think the majority of the hype will collapse too due to regulations, but the technologies (including blockchain) will still live on.

aprinsen 5y ago

I gave the original NYT article a read when it was published and I have no idea how it could have been approved outside of the opinion section. Really shameful to present the obviously pro crypto piece as neutral or informational and I have only two explanations: - ancient editorial staff approved it because they really don't understand crypto or - there's some kind of market for front page real estate

shimonabi 5y ago
I wrote the same two points in the comments of the article when it was published. I'm really disappointed with the NYT, having subscribed just a week before.
- biztos 5y ago
  I’ve been a subscriber for some years and I share your cringe whenever they publish anything about tech. But for most actual news it’s still worth the money, IMO, if you’re trying to stay informed and your focus is the US. Also, whenever I start feeling indignant and thinking about canceling I check out the archive. Lots of great, great stuff down that rabbit hole: https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/browser https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/browser
rdiddly 5y ago
Maybe it was pushed by the CIA spooks known to be close collaborators and/or on staff there? (Like Saddam's WMDs?) Let's brainstorm what interest the CIA might have in crypto.
uncomputation 5y ago
> there's some kind of market for front page real estate Absolutely there is. If you want an even clearer example, take a look at the front page of the Wall Street Journal under the “Editorial Staff” section. The “reporting” there is almost always some rich, more conservative guy who basically paid to get his post on the front page of a relatively dry, and even somewhat activist-oriented (eg Facebook Files) paper.
davidgerard 5y ago

ideamotor 5y ago

Animats 5y ago

I read the NYT article and wondered how that got in there. The article mentions a "Let's Go Brandon" coin, personally promoted by Trump. Here are its current statistics.[1] There's a huge incentive to hype crypto products. They're mostly zero-sum games, which means you need a growing supply of suckers to keep the thing going. I'm into 3D virtual worlds, and the NFT clown car is destroying the potential of the metaverse. The 3D NFT worlds range from weak to very poor to nonexistent to total scam. Nobody in the NFT world is even trying to get to Ready Player One level. There is now someone selling virtual land in a 2D sidescroller. [1] https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/lets-go-brandon/ https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/lets-go-brandon/

cantrevealname 5y ago

I like the format very much -- the original New York Times article on the left and commentary about it on the right -- but how is this not a copyright violation? I'd be worried about the New York Times threatening to sue.

jerrybender 5y ago
Criticism falls under fair use.
- cantrevealname 5y ago
  But can you quote the entire original article and still claim fair use for purposes of criticism?
  - stjohnswarts 5y ago
    Of course, it's obviously criticism all the way through
  - Kye 5y ago
    Character of use tends to weigh higher than quantity in the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use#U.S._fair_use_factors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use#U.S._fair_use_factors

malthaus 5y ago

You can edit the guide down even better to: "Don't"

oleganza 5y ago

If you and all your family and friends live in a country with a single currency, no bombs over yours or their heads, no serious inflation and no foreseeble risk of account freezes/closures, ATM restrictions and economic sanctions, then you probably can argue that crypto is some fringe tech that brings nothing, but PITA and risks. But many people have themselves or have family/friends that need to save their money, or escape with their money. Or, recently: escape with all banking cards being blocked and find themselves having to live off Bitcoin. Cryptocurrencies are solving very real problems right now, for millions of people in Latin America, Asia and Europe: 1. They help remit money across the globe: Hawala network is way more scalable since there is a secure global settlement layer - the blockchain. No need to have 3-4 hops through trusted parties. You can directly exchange cash for bitcoin in one place and the opposite in another. 2. They help moving personal cash across the border: if you can't trust or use your bank, you won't be able to safely move more than a small pack of $$$ through customs. Crypto is your only option to save your money. 3. They help you pay the bills wherever you are regardless of your residence/visa status. You may not be able to open a bank account in a foreign country, but you would be able to book a flight, a place to live, pay for taxi, pay for cellphone, pay for food delivery through crypto-interfaces such as cheapair, travala and gift-card gateways like bitrefill to use amazon/uber/airbnb/careem and thousands of other merchants.

plaguepilled 5y ago

polypodiopsi 5y ago

Why is that thing an accumulation of comments, when it claims to be an authoritative journalistic source? (What the NYT didn't succees at). And on that note: claims to not be simply affirmative, but critical voices are reaerved for that ode "commentsection". Really weird.

xtat 5y ago

It's a rather dishonest title for a take down article.

JanDietch 5y ago

dan-robertson 5y ago

I don’t really understand what this document is for. Or rather, I would have guessed it would be an attempt to respond to the NYT article and to convince readers to come to their point of view, but I think it totally fails at that. The format is difficult to read, and the phrase-by-phrase analysis leaves it incohesive, scattershot and makes it feel nitpicky. Lots of the arguments are fundamentally ideological (basically ‘crypto is libertarian but libertarianism is bad compared to my preferred ideology so crypto is bad’) and I think most people will recognise an ideological argument and decide the merits of the thing based on their own ideology. I think these arguments don’t do much to convince or inform. It’s largely appealing to the in-group of crypto-skeptics with commenters riffing off each other or referring to unmentioned but agreed-upon facts. I think a better argument could be made with a more cohesive narrative sticking to the most defensible points.

datagram 5y ago
I think the article is mainly for a bunch of skeptics to dunk on both the author for writing the piece and the NYT for publishing it. As the introduction says: > Here, a group of around fifteen cryptocurrency researchers and critics have done what the New York Times apparently won't. Between this and the title, I assume they're mainly referring to the perceived lack of editing that went in to the original. I think it's pretty safe to say that this was mainly written for the amusement of crypto skeptics (which it does a good job of, imo) and to serve as an example of how to identify irresponsible crypto reporting, rather than to actually convince anyone.