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On anti-crypto toxicity

• jesprenj 4y ago
  Crypto means cryptography!
• bni 4y ago
  Crypto is toxic
• MadSudaca 4y ago
  Just here to say that besides the good points that the author makes in defense of Crypto, I also support wholeheartedly its right-libertarian roots, despite the negative connotation it receives in the article.
  • rvz 4y ago
    Ah yes. So that must mean everyone supporting it is ‘right wing’ then? It only is just a ‘libertarian’ creation. I don’t know why one can try to assign a left/right political affiliation to a technology that is on neither side and can be used by anyone. Everyone knows she is hilariously incorrect on that one.
    • MadSudaca 4y ago
      I think that the widespread implementation of crypto would immediately make the world more complex and thus less susceptible to centralizing forces. This means that in order to get things done, society will have to rely more on self-organizing small groups of individuals. In my view, less centralization is the at the bottom what libertarianism strives for, so it makes sense crypto is seeing as supporting it.
      • MrMan 4y ago
        back to the dark ages, as you wish
        • MadSudaca 4y ago
          Why do you say that?
    • johnny22 4y ago
      no they don't. I don't. So it's not everybody.
• mschuster91 4y ago
  The key thing is, of course people are getting vocal - and vocally annoyed! - at crypto-bros, given what cryptocoins have brought upon us over the last years: - a shortage of all components used in building PCs, starting with CPUs, then GPUs, then RAM, then HDDs, and back to GPUs. Simply because scalpers and shitcoin miners could outbid everyone else. - People getting hacked left and right (particularly blue-checkmark accounts) on Twitter, Youtube or Facebook to rename them to Elon Musk and promise crypto airdrops - the amount of corruption that has been necessary to enable said hacks. "SIM swapping" attacks used to be something nation states did against top-of-wanted-list criminals, not something that could be bought on the darknet for a couple hundred dollars - the loot of said hacks ending up to fund Iranian or North Korean nuclear terrorism programs - the amount of large scale hacks made only possible by Bitcoin and friends providing a relatively easy way to launder money, in particular ransomware - an awful lot of "stars" peddled NFTs, ICOs and the likes and let their fans hang out to dry when the hype collapsed - an awful corresponding lot of friends and sometimes family that got lured in by shitcoins, actually made money and now peddles shitcoins instead of crap MLM products to everyone whose ears haven't fallen off since long - all the "rug pulls", "hacks" and other instances where serious amounts of money got stolen or vanished into thin air - artists getting their works minted as NFTs without authorization - people buying up coal power plants of all things to mine shitcoins - instead of delivering the promised "there are no banks and taxes!" world, all shitcoins (obviously... as everyone predicted) ended up depending on centralized institutions like exchanges, large mining pools, auditors and the likes, especially once governments around the world caught up with developments. And to make it worse, many of these institutions end up with lesser consumer protection than banks! Hooray! The only positive contribution that cryptocurrencies brought to the world was that people had a safe way to pay for and order illicit drugs, as taking out shady dealers and cutters reduced the amount of contaminations. Oh and maybe kick some arses at Western Union into reducing their rip-off rates for international currency transfers.
• bedobi 4y ago
  Waaay back, I thought Bitcoin was a cool technology, and convinced some friends of mine with businesses to accept it. We had a lot of fun with it - it was really cool to pay for your beer by scanning a QR code and seeing the transaction come through this public, distributed, tamper proof ledger, like magic, with no need for money, banks or any of the other financial infrastructure we're used to. Sadly, the "crypto space" was quickly invaded by hordes of people who never really cared about the technology itself, how it works and what it's actually useful for. (and what it's not useful for) These people, who know nothing about it, and for years had dismissed it as a joke, suddenly began to talk about it very seriously as a very serious "investment" in self-proclaimed "expert" capacity. You know the type of person I'm talking about! We've all seen them, and most of us can probably count one or two amongst our friends. The potential for cool applications of blockchains is still there, but so far it seems to me cryptocurrency has mostly just been abused as a vehicle for crazy, baseless manias, and little to no meaningful application.
  • dncornholio 4y ago
    It's not about the tech. IMO a payment should just work. You don't need to understand the technology. It's foolish to expect people to know the tech in and out, it is irrelevant for 90% of people. There's no need to have cool applications of blockchains, there's only need for decentralisation.
  • k__ 4y ago
    Depends on the people you hang with. I'm currently at devconnect in Amsterdam and it's full of people who care about tech. Really nice a crowd and even a bit more diverse than the rest of IT.
    • lekevicius 4y ago
      I had a fantastic experience at DevCon V. Ethereum developer conferences attract all the technical folks and almost none of "money" people. I haven't gone to any Bitcoin conference, but I can't see it being the same. Bitcoin's aversion to change means mostly demagogues are left, and all the talk is money talk.
• whywhywhywhy 4y ago
  >How can we create a more equitable financial system, where everyone has access to banking services? I don't think Crypto is a "more equitable financial system" but it is a more equal one.
  • ulzeraj 4y ago
    I've never heard of a bitcoin or Ethereum deterministic wallet being canceled because someone found out its owner is from Iran or Venezuela. That's a huge improvement over the crap that is the current financial system.
    • bluescrn 4y ago
      Which is also a reason for warmongers and organised criminals to love crypto
      • ulzeraj 4y ago
        Do they? https://www.bbc.com/news/business-59689581 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-59689581 Also have you thought about the novel idea of old school policing to catch criminals instead of collaterally damaging the lives every single human in the world other than the 13% privileged who happen to be citizens of stable democracies?
        • bluescrn 4y ago
          I was more positive about crypto before the big NFT grift came along. But even then, hardly anybody seemed to care about making crypto work as a currency. It was all about the speculation/gambling, get-rich-quick schemes, and memecoin pump+dumps. Nobody bought their groceries or paid their rent with crypto, it was just the currency of darknet drugs and cybercrime. And multi-million-dollar exchange hacks seemed to be almost weekly headlines. Crypto wasn't going well, even before NFTs came along, and before the environmental opposition to mining ramped up.
          • 4y ago
• yu-carm-kror 4y ago
  > Despite crypto’s unquestionably right-libertarian roots I had trouble reading beyond that in the second sentences. You can’t just retroactively assign a political affiliation to the origin of an algorithm application.
  • k__ 4y ago
    To me it had leftist anarcho roots, but whatever floats their boat, I guess.
    • EliRivers 4y ago
      And on my desk as I type, a slim volume entitled "The politics of bitcoin : Software as right-wing extremism". To be fair, it seems to be more about some bitcoiners rather than bitcoin itself. I suspect but cannot prove that we could argue any political leanings we like.
      • k__ 4y ago
        Yes. Probably. To be honest, I don't know much about BTC. I'm coming from the Ethereum side of things. It's just tech. If people like it, it belongs to their political side. If they resent it, it belongs to a political side they also resent.
    • Ekaros 4y ago
      For me it is rather hard to separate the Libetarians and Anarcho people... Other one might be right and other left, but there is some weird commonality when it comes to state and control of financial system...
      • k__ 4y ago
        Yes. I think, the main difference is that anarchism is about people can do what they want. Some interpret it as capital can do what it wants. I don't subscribe to that interpretation, but many crypto people do, sadly.
      • 4y ago
• tarkin2 4y ago
  Why must we use the loaded term 'toxicity'? It starts your argument with: "Those who disagree with me are poison".
  • bertil 4y ago
    Toxicity is the right term if we stick to its original, biological meaning. Energy generation leads to large toxic outputs. Wasting energy leads to more toxic outputs.
  • gwd 4y ago
    She said "toxic" because she's talking about poison. She basically said: "I myself am anti-crypto. But I don't think that we anti-crypto people should be poisonous in our interaction with pro-crypto people." I'd like to say more, but HN has a clear "Anti-Didn't-RTFA Toxicity" policy.
    • tarkin2 4y ago
      Framing conversations and discussions and disagreements as poison is troubling.
      • gwd 4y ago
        You're seriously making stuff up now. There are ways of expressing disagreement which are toxic, and there are ways of expressing disagreement which are not toxic. She has observed is that many anti-crypto people have been expressing their disagreement in toxic ways, and feeling justified in doing so. She is discouraging the first while encouraging the second. If you'd spent any effort trying to understand what she or I were saying, you'd know that. It seems rather that you'd rather fight against imaginary arguments from your own head, which is far more troubling.
  • jasamer 4y ago
    The author does not state that people "disagreeing" with crypto are toxic, just that a subset of anti-crypto people are toxic. (Same applies to some pro-crypto people).
• uglygoblin 4y ago
  It's hard to have a charitable take on a huge majority of the cryptocurrency space when the web is drowning in all of the greedy bad actors that use the ideologies listed in this article as cover to push the grifts that inevitability harm my less technical friends and family.
  • BrianOnHN 4y ago
    Well put. The same may also be said about both social media and, especially in context of less technical friends and family, even the general internet. Where do we go from here?
• codeflo 4y ago
  I don’t think there’s a bifurcation between “good” and “bad” people in crypto, the real world is a lot more grey, and how people behave doesn’t depend so much on their character, but on culture and incentives. These days, we painfully observe the culture of crypto in every single online medium that isn’t very carefully moderated, for example Twitter. And about incentives, I think it’s very hard not to become some kind of “evangelist” or “shill” when a significant fraction of your net worth is invested in a digital item whose sole value depends on enough other people also believing in the project. You need to spread the hype. In my opinion, all of this would be fun and games if it weren’t for the massive negative externalities all of this cause in terms of environmental damage and accelerating the climate catastrophe. This is completely evident, which doesn’t stop some crypto holders from denying it with all kinds of illogical arguments. That’s understandable — see previous paragraph.
  • asterix_pano 4y ago
    You have many cryptos with completely negligible environmental impact, thanks to smarter consensus mechanisms. It's a really new tech field, and as almost everything in tech, it improves over time.
    • JumpCrisscross 4y ago
      > as almost everything in tech, it improves over time This doesn't describe crypto over the past decade. It's become more pervasive, more corrupt, more destructive (from environmental impact to its role in facilitating hacking) and, with NFTs, more slot machinesque.
      • asterix_pano 4y ago
        You seem pretty biased. You now have cryptos that allow you to transact with anyone in the world, instantly and without fees, while consuming barely any energy. And all of that, while remaining 100% in control of your money. You have others that let you lend or borrow assets in a permission-less fashion, without many intermediaries. More and more companies are using it as a backbone for their operations, for example in IoT settings or in financial situations. If you look a bit more, you will see many interesting development. But like everything in tech, there are good and bad things.
• simias 4y ago
  The problem is that while these topics are interesting (and even crucial these days) they're often used in bad faith by people who are just in it because of the get-rich-quick scheme. You'll often see people push some cryptotoken using a thin veneer of political activism, saying that it's about taking control back or redistributing wealth etc... but it's rarely more than that. In my experience if you attempt to push back and ask how exactly they propose to fix these problems they'll just resort to enumerating the failings of our current system (the 2008 crisis, wealth inequality, tax evasion by the wealthiest etc...) which is all fair, but how does cryptocurrency fix this? I'd argue that so far it's mostly demonstrated that it shares all these issues, only even more pronounced. The pyramid scheme at the core of cryptocurrency poisons the well, that's the original issue with this entire thing. You can't have a good faith discussion when one side expects that they're going to be billionaires if things go their way. I acknowledge that there's definitely toxicity coming from us cryptoskeptics, but you have to acknowledge that these days easily 90% of any discussion involving cryptocurrencies is going to use shallow catchphrases pushed by people who don't understand the technology, don't understand basic economic principles and are just hoping that their $1000 in ShitCumShibaCoin is going to make them millionaires. On top of that the cryptocurrency side has over a decade of unfulfilled promises to account for. As far as I'm concerned we've exhausted the discussion years ago. Any debate surrounding cryptocurrencies on HN from 2017 is equally as relevant today, there's no need to keep repeating the same arguments over and over again from both sides. So today I mostly dismiss anything cryptocurrency-related as a scam and move on. It works well, too.
  • rvz 4y ago
    Your whole four paragraphs can be simplified to: 90% of projects out there are scams and have a crypto-token attached to it with a pyramid scheme on it and there also exists a 10% of projects somewhere that it is not purely a 'get-rich-quick-scheme', or a 'web3' crypto project that doesn't require a crypto-token attached to the product that has utility? Thus, it also must mean that it is not going away 100% guaranteed, despite the rampant scams? > So today I mostly dismiss anything cryptocurrency-related as a scam and move on. It works well, too. So since 2017, there has been no regulations, crackdowns and legislation that has been proposed to regulate anything related to crypto and nothing has changed? I really hope you try your best to avoid it and 'move on'. I should not expect you to continue to react to yet another HN post about crypto projects since you think all of them are a scam.
• wun0ne 4y ago
  TIL: Being critical of a technology whose fundamental implementation promotes extreme negative externalities is "toxic"
  • Tepix 4y ago
    What are you referring to? Proof of work destroying our planet? Luckily it is no longer fundamental. See Avalanche consensus etc.
  • caslon 4y ago
    The author is incredibly critical of these technologies, and very much does not like them. The article mentions this.
    • bertil 4y ago
      I read wun0ne point as how blockchain implementations has a disastrous environmental impact. The article doesn’t mention that at all, and openly advocate for blockchain.
      • wun0ne 4y ago
        Correct.
      • chipgap98 4y ago
        If you read any of her other posts it will be clear that she is a crypto critic. She also runs https://web3isgoinggreat.com/ https://web3isgoinggreat.com/.
  • WithinReason 4y ago
    Proof of work is not fundamental to crypto
  • conqueso 4y ago
    The author is well known for being an outspoken critic of crypto. She is speaking to the toxicity of cyber bullying, not criticism itself.
• ivoras 4y ago
  How's that diversification and equalitization and cyber-web3-rallying going in the light that wealth inequality of crypto closely follows that of real-world currencies? [ref: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2021.730122/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbloc.2021.7301...] Isn't that like, failing to admit that nothing's changed, just the names of the wealth holders (and sometimes not even that)? It looks like we as a species very much tend to form Pareto (or more accurately, power-law) distributions of wealth just by being ourselves.
• RainbowDashUwU 4y ago
• bertil 4y ago
  The largest and easiest argument against crypto is the environmental impact. It’s completely ignored in that piece.
  • telomero22 4y ago
    That's really irrelevant in 2022, since 90% of blockchains are not Proof of Work anymore.
    • K0nserv 4y ago
      Maybe 90% by count, but not 90% by volume of transactions, prominence, etc. Bitcoin seems to be entirely resistant to moving away from PoW and Ethereum have been in the process of moving to PoS for years. Pop quiz: What will happen first, Ethereum PoS or the year of linux on the desktop?
      • dcolkitt 4y ago
        You realize the merge has already successfully completed on a testnet last month. The Geth client code for the merge is complete. I’m willing to bet any amount you want up to $30,000 that Ethereum main net is running PoS by Dec 31 of this year.
        • saalweachter 4y ago
          At what odds?
          • dcolkitt 4y ago
            1:1 I think is most fair.
            • saalweachter 4y ago
              So you think there is only a 50-50 chance of Ethereum being proof of stake by EOY?
• Traster 4y ago
  I think toxicity from the anti-crypto crowd is basically inevitable at this point. It has been a decade of dumb claims and ridiculous assertions from the pro-crypto crowd. None of their claims have materially panned out. There's some promise in some places - mainly in the most nerdy corners of ETH, but it's still only promises. Meanwhile, this long protracted failure has been accompanied by a massive increase in stupid, toxic, illegal, scammy behaviour in the crypto community. Even if you're curious about hearing how the latest project is justifying itself, you can't have a conversation about it because the entire conversation is dominated by memes and spam about other scam projects. At some point the reasonable thing to do is to say "No, actually this whole thing is just bad, and shouldn't be treated seriously". There's only so many times that you can humor the same lie. Web3, NFTs, DAOs, Altcoins, Smart Contracts, Stable coins. It's just the same grift repeated every 6 months. For every claim of how this tech could help someone there are thousands of people who have been harmed by scams using this tech.
  • the_only_law 4y ago
    Heh I actually got an ad the other day about a lawsuit related to a certain notable name and a crypto scam.
  • DebtDeflation 4y ago
    >It has been a decade of dumb claims and ridiculous assertions from the pro-crypto crowd. Agreed. For me it was the NFT'ing of a fart that was the jumping the shark moment that drove me from being merely a crypto skeptic to being vociferously anti-crypto and advocating against it at every turn.
    • sharperguy 4y ago
      Funny because the bitcoin community hates NFTs just as much as the anti-crypto community.
      • javert 4y ago
        The bitcoin community hates NFTs and shitcoins much more than the anti-crypto community does. I'm basically an anti-crypto bitcoiner.
• egeozcan 4y ago
  You cannot solve contract/legal problems and wrong transactions through decentralization. You can't also make a democratic system act on every conflict. You assign a central authority to act on them and you select that authority through a democratic process, which is what we already have. - I want to have a beer! - ok, scan this QR, and accept the transaction - there you go! - thank you, here are your 5 beers - oh, did I just pay for 5? I wanted 1! can you refund me and take these back? - no can do! pretty sure you said 5! You can convince the 51% to cancel the transaction or you can call the police. What would you do? Bitcoin may fix some friction issues if it's integrated into the current financial system, but it'd then just be a very small cog in a giant machine. You may not agree, it may also be that you do not want to agree, and it's ok. Now if you start calling people toxic because they state what's obvious for them, you can never get a proper discussion. It's also a little red flag that should make you question if you are in a cult.
  • Andrew_nenakhov 4y ago
    No crypto software I know makes a transaction based on a QR code scan. It always shows you the address, and then you have to enter the total in the check and then complete the transaction. If you paid 5x more than was asked, have your 5 beers.
  • stavros 4y ago
    How is this different from cash?
    • egeozcan 4y ago
      I wasn't specifically giving a btc example, qr code can also be apple pay or anything like that. It's just that in the case of btc, there's no central authority to cancel the transaction. You need a court order to force the bar to manually send the money back to you. The bank cannot freeze the funds. Enforcement is crippled. If this is not a reputable business (unlikely for a bar and very unlikely for a small sum like that but bear with me), it's way more likely to lose your money. This is one of the reasons why money transactions are hard and costly. You cannot pretend that a blockchain fixes all that.
• brianolson 4y ago
  I'm grumpy about Visa/MC taking 3% of every transaction. I want a technofix for that. There are new blockchains that cost less than a penny per transaction use about a millionth of the wattage of bitcoin and I hope they turn out to be non-BS. I just want an efficient low-cost barrierless payment network.
  • maccard 4y ago
    Where are you located that visa and MasterCard are charging 3%? In the EU the fees are limited to 0.3%, and in other areas (e.g. the UK) it's 1%. As a card holder I'm pretty happy to pay a ~0.3% service fee to know that I have recourse with a merchant, for example. > I just want an efficient low-cost barrierless payment network. Whats low cost to you then?
    • hocuspocus 4y ago
      Note that the 0.3% cap is on the interchange, i.e. the fee that goes back to the card issuer, it doesn't affect Visa and Mastercard directly. PSPs in the EU/EEA charge around 1% overall, a bit more to small businesses (for instance SumUp), and a bit less to the really big retailers that have more bargaining power.
      • maccard 4y ago
        I'm aware of that, but OP was talking about 3% of his transaction going to visa/mc, not stripe/sumup.
    • xvello 4y ago
      > Where are you located that visa and MasterCard are charging 3%? I am guessing the good old unregulated free market of the US of A: https://www.valuepenguin.com/what-credit-card-processing-fees-costs https://www.valuepenguin.com/what-credit-card-processing-fee... There, banks and credit card companies offer huge perks and cash-back to card holders. That money must come from somewhere, and that's from the transaction fees paid by merchants (and transitively customers, as merchants still need to make a profit). AMEX has even higher transaction fees, which is why some businesses don't accept it. The situation is now at an idiotic local maximum: if I don't use one of these cashbacks cards, I am losing money paying for my neighbor's air miles, as I don't get a discount anyway. You don't need a "technofix" for that, you need regulations that cap interchange fees like the EU.
• ggm 4y ago
  What level of economic activity in crypto is unrelated to speculative gain. If you want to stop angry responses to claims for the value to economic process you need to be honest about the extent to which crypto is a game for massive speculative gain, pump and dump, washing and money laundering. Use of public signed ledger to audit value flow and provide certainty to low doc activity like cash in Africa, payments to farmers worldwide, ending the game of 90 day credit and discounting for prompt payment, reducing rent seeking. All laudible. But please instead of just listing them, give us some numbers.
  • aww_dang 4y ago
    Is speculation unacceptable?
    • ggm 4y ago
      A smaller amount of speculation is informing of belief on future value. When it dominates, it tends to be gambling, ponzi, or both, as in ponzi to enrich a few, fuelled by gambling by many.
• mnw21cam 4y ago
  I don't think I am ever going to get used to "crypto" meaning "cryptocurrency" and not "cryptography". Can't we just keep calling it "cryptocurrency"? I thought this article would be about the various misguided governments' attempts to outlaw cryptography.
  • lekevicius 4y ago
    HN probably could return to "crypto" and "cryptocurrency"; the rest of the world will keep on being "crypto" and "cryptography". Orders of magnitude more people care about cryptocurrencies than cryptography.
  • sneak 4y ago
    The infectious disease people would like a word. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptosporidiosis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptosporidiosis
    • graypegg 4y ago
      I think we’d be all OK if this was the crypto we were outlawing.
  • danaris 4y ago
    Given the recent decline in interest in both NFTs and cryptocurrency in general, I'd say within the next 5 years or so we'll be able to go back to using "crypto" to mean "cryptography" without much fear of confusion.
    • soco 4y ago
      Maybe we should call all those products "cryptids".
    • dropnerd 4y ago
      "decline in interest" seems incorrect https://dune.com/rchen8/opensea https://dune.com/rchen8/opensea looks like up and to the right
• gigatexal 4y ago
  It's hard for me to be sympathtic to cryptocoin maximalists when there are so many in their camp that push "shit" coins and coin-drop scams. Then there's power usage. It's use in aiding fraud and crime (something cash does as well and money laundering with fiat is not new...) as well as it's inability to scale compared to existing solutions to be used as a clearing house (yes, there are other blockchains that seek to speed this up but it's not at parity from what I can tell). So all of this allows me to not feel bad about reveling in the latest crash, or scam, or exchange hack, or when the price falls or what not because I have no skin in this game and can't care any less than I do. I think the whole thing is a speculative farce that has hit a critical mass of adoption and intertia (at least for bitcoin) that will continue to be a puzzle (at best and a scam at worse) for years to come.
• Capira 4y ago
  It took me quite a while to understand what Bitcoin is about. Of course, decentralised systems are exciting tech, but what's really interesting is that Bitcoin focuses attention onto fundamental questions of society: - How can we transport value through space at the speed of light? - How can we transport value through time? - How can we protect our life savings from inflation? - How can we develop a free market of currencies which solves the issues of centrally controlled currencies? - How can we align incentives such that we stop consuming low quality products that produce lots of waste and start valuing high quality products that last for decades? - In general: How can we, as a society, enjoy the benefits of a low time preference? Such questions are the reason why I believe Bitcoin is one of the most disruptive technologies of our century.
  • ea550ff70a 4y ago
    I started as a hater and skeptic but the more curious I got about the technical details of it and the more I learned, the more it started to grow on me.
• traceroute66 4y ago
  IMHO the problem with crypto is the very thing that its proponents cite as one of its key benefits, its decentralised nature. We are told that crypto is supposedly a way to "stick it to the man", to fight those "evil banks/governments". The trouble is that unlike fiat currency, there is no fundamental means of valuation. Crypto is worth what its worth on the day based largely or exclusively on entirely non-economic valuation, which is why its so incredibly volatile. The trouble is that you cannot escape the truth that the world is based on trade. People make goods, people supply services and other people buy goods and buy services. People also buy and sell essential commodities. This happens both domestically and cross-border. The value of fiat currency is ultimately tied to the economics of global, and therefore provides an objective means to value said currencies, both themselves and relative to other currencies. You don't get that with crypto. Well, you could argue that you do to a limited extent, but that limited extent would only make crypto comparible to emerging world fiat currency of some tiny country.... high-frequency boom and bust cycles, high volatility, potential for episodes of illiquidity etc.
  • eldenwrong 4y ago
    • OGWhales 4y ago
      You should elaborate after making such a claim, otherwise your comment will be dismissed as meaningless.
      • the_only_law 4y ago
        This has sadly become a more common debate strategy on HN recently.
      • eldenwrong 4y ago
        He contradicts himself multiple times and has an extremely shallow understanding of what money is/should be People have been crying for more than 10 years that Bitcoin is bad because "volatility". You can't help people not wanting to spend a few hours learning the basics
• greybox 4y ago
  Regarding the list of questions that are presented here EG - "How can we create a more equitable financial system, where everyone has access to banking services?" Can anyone explain to me how crypto is uniquely suited to solve this problem? I'm not in principal against crypto currencies existing, but more and more I just see people trying to apply it to problems that they think exist because "the financial system is over regulated" - without providing any argument for why regulation is causing the unfairness in the first place? I have yet to see anyone define a single problem in the financial system that crypto is uniquely placed to solve (besides funding criminal activity and bypassing sanctions), that wouldn't be better solved from better competition between banks. Not every country in the world has a banking sector that serves it's customers as badly as in the US.
  • bedobi 4y ago
    I'm 100% onboard with the enabling underbanked people argument for crypto. There's countless people all over the world who can't get a bank account, or if they could, can't get one that is reliable or useful enough for their needs. Eg, maybe the currency is too unstable, or maybe there's too many restrictions on international transfers and commerce etc etc. These people are left with cash and predatory "businesses" like Western Union as their only options. It's not fair and can and should change, but sadly, crypto has spectacularly failed to deliver on its potential here.
    • greybox 4y ago
      I agree here, it would be nice if this was the case. Like you I also worry that in it's current form a crypto banking implementation for the underbanked people of the world would be a worse solution for everyone. - No human being that's able to reverse fraudulent or mistaken transactions - Currency that's hardly more stable (probably less so) than the world's the least stable currencies - A digital environment that's rife with fraud and a completely fresh and unknown attack surface due to the nature of smart contracts - Sky high transaction costs. Meaning the poor (the unbanked) will may more for banking than the rich do. (like they do for furniture https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/storyline/wp/2014/10/16/she-bought-a-sofa-on-installment-payments-now-its-straining-her-life/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/storyline/wp/2014/10/16/...)
• nathias 4y ago
  No amount of crypto scams outweighs the good crypto has and will done for us. Technology is empowering, there is no comparison on the effect crypto has on the poor. There is no other way I would be ever able to participate in trading, speculation or investment, no other way I'd ever be able to afford a home.
• S6eUL 4y ago
  In my view it is quite difficult to find insightful and civilized long-form discussion on the topic of crypto, compared to most other "controversial" topics I'm personally intersted in (e.g. geopolitics or economics). I might be mistaken – but it is my impression that the blockchain-space is fast growing and attracts a ton of intelligent people. Surely there must be a lot to talk about? On reddit, the crypto-themed subreddits (that I know of) are almost entirely comprised of doom-and-gloom-sentiment and astroturfing, while subreddits outside of this bubble are reminiscent of HN, where specific crypto projects almost never reach the frontpage and if they do, the discussion is seldomly about specifics.
  • scyclow 4y ago
    I've found that all the smart crypto people congregate on twitter and discord, which is sort of a shame because it results in a lot of the conversation being ephemeral.
  • lukeramsden 4y ago
    There is plenty of interesting discussion, both on Twitter and in community-specific areas like blogs and Discords and such. It’s just drowned out by the nonsense, which is inevitable due to the association so many people have with getting rich quick with cryptocurrencies. It’s the same with retail traders buying options - there is some interesting discussions happening in some places, and interesting strategies being run, but it’s hard to find over the masses of spam.
    • S6eUL 4y ago
      Granted, but discussions on Twitter and Discord are quite a bit different in nature from long-form comment chains on HN or reddit.
      • deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
• Shadonototra 4y ago
  because it takes hours to validate a payment? because it consumes too much power? because it created wealth out of farts because it promotes money laundering because it promotes toxicity (pump and dump) because it is backed by the USD because USA owns the majority of it because it is centralized (exchanges) because it is CIA's testbed for the digital USD
• Werewolf255 4y ago
  The article goes to some length to talk about what questions the crypto community is asking itself. Very conspicuously, there is no discussion of sustainability, operational effectiveness, or how to ensure people born in 2022 can get into this system when bitcoin is already 40k a pop. Like any system, how do new entrants get a foothold? Why are questions of energy use and lag time on each transaction left for only the reader to ponder?
• Quindecillion 4y ago
  It's unfortunate that Bitcoin has become so mired in partisan politics. For me its purpose is simple. If my money is a representation of my time and effort, why should I accept the central banks' inflation "target" of even 2%, due to money printing? I don't see why anyone should be okay with that, particularly given that central banks rarely meet that target for long and more often than not overshoot by a significant amount. It's insane to me that anyone should expect the purchasing power of their money to reduce, debasing their own time and effort. Why is that acceptable to people?
  • liminvorous 4y ago
    Money is a leaky representation of your time and effort that we accept because it is better than isolated subsistence agriculture. It's purpose is to motivate you to devote time and effort to satisfying the needs and wants of other people, opinions differ on how well it accomplishes that. Mine is roughly it's not very good but I don't think bitcoin as it exists is likely an improvement. I kind of suspect you're missing some idea about how your particular idea of money leaks but I can't tell from your comment what in particular you're missing. Maybe try thinking through the relationship between not consuming something now, and wanting to consume something in the future without using the idea of money?
    • mr_spothawk 4y ago
      > it is better than isolated subsistence agriculture. Have you ever considered why banks look like temples? Do you know the weight of a shekle? Consider discovering more about these topics before you opine on "money". > Maybe try thinking through the relationship between not consuming something now, and wanting to consume something in the future without using the idea of money? Do you know about "time preference"? Do you appreciate how an inflationary currency promotes a shorter time preference? Can you see how that impacts the world by promoting rapid consumption? Consider investigating how hard money impacts time preference.
  • the_only_law 4y ago
    > Why is that acceptable to people? Because I can’t make 99% of my transactions with Bitcoin. Sure there’s a handful of vendors online that take BTC and a BTC ATM in the gas station in the shady part of town, but for majority of pitches, money is probably going to have to be converted to USD and go through a bank.
• janandonly 4y ago
  Nowadays, I don't really discuss Bitcoin anymore with anyone. The people who need it the most will ask questions like: "How can I send money from the EU to the Dominican Republic without paying 25% 'banking commissions'?" or "How can I help my mother in Jakarta to get money quickly?" and totally organically, we come to the conclusion that Bitcoin is the answer... We in the West tend to be blind from the problems and solutions that the rest of humanity has found by using bitcoin... See also: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/check-your-financial-privilege https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/check-your-financial-pri...
  • shkkmo 4y ago
    Funny, because when I lived in the Dominican Republic, not a single one of the people I knew used Bitcoin to transfer money from the EU to the DR (and that wasn't for lacking of knowing people doing that.) Meanwhile, overall computer literacy and even access to a computer was a massive challenge for many people in that country.
    • wcfields 4y ago
      Yeah, because with transfering money via Western Union you have one problem: they take a cut, but the person on the other end gets fiat in their local currency and you pay in your local currency. With sending bitcoin you have many more problems: converting your local currency to bitcoin, and if you're like 99% of regular people using a hot-wallet like Coinbase and they take a cut to buy bitcoin, waiting for that to clear, sending it to another bitcoin address, waiting for that to clear, then the person on the other end has to cash out. Is there a coinbase-like in DR? If we're talking about underbanked, then how do they get their money? Is there a window for this coinbase-like thing that will pay out in fiat of the local currency? I've seen plenty of bitcoin ATMs around my area, but none are for withdrawal.
• janandonly 4y ago
  It is funny that all the problems with "crypto" have long ago been solved by bitcoin... [sad face]
• oldgradstudent 4y ago
  I hope the next article would touch upon anti-tulip toxicity.
• SpicyLemonZest 4y ago
  Any Internet conversation is going to have some toxic people just due to low barriers to entry. When you see someone who thinks “that maybe a lucky crypto buy could help them dig out of crushing debt”, you shouldn’t be mean to them, but it’s very important to let them know that it’s a bad idea! I remember going on a few snarky rants back during the Safemoon pump, and I probably should have moderated my tone a bit, but it was just incredibly frustrating to see people close to me sinking substantial sums of money into an obvious, obvious scam.
• theknocker 4y ago
• keskival 4y ago
  "How can we create a more equitable financial system, where everyone has access to banking services?" The same as national health insurance. You make a law that everyone must be served by the banks. Easy.
  • obelos 4y ago
    Bring back postal banking! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postal_Savings_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postal_Savings_S...
  • trutannus 4y ago
    Use the state to fix failures of the state? There's a weird cyclic optimism here that I don't think can really be supported by the facts. After all, those who write a law can just as easily add addendum to that law, or remove it all together. Even with equal banking laws, there's always going to be an individual who the state deems as less equal than others. That's just how it's always been. Its bizarre that this is such an unpopular idea, when if posted in a thread about anything other than crypto, it'd likely not be scoffed at this hard.
    • pjerem 4y ago
      > Use the state to fix failures of the state? Yup, that's how it works in democracies...
      • trutannus 4y ago
        You have to accept though that just saying "ah, the government will fix it" when historically governments have been a major contributor to wealth inequality, is somewhat glib. There's a reason NGOs and private charity exist. I think this approach is just as wrong as saying "crypto is the answer".
        • a_humean 4y ago
          And that is another instance where many people part ways, because another big aspect of crypto is that it is partially motivated by a political ideology that most people politely reject and many people think is full of crackpots and scam artists (because it is).
• malthaus 4y ago
  Unfortunately, given: "How can we create a more equitable financial system, where everyone has access to banking services? How can we reduce the power that a small few currently hold over the web? How can we improve data privacy and ensure that people have control over their personal information? How can we create reasonable privacy in the financial system? How can we make information more available to everyone? How can we fix a society where so many people are in untenable financial situations? How can we reduce the enormous wealth disparity in today’s society—both in the existing distribution of wealth but also in access to new opportunities to earn it? How can we enable creatives to make a fair living from their art? How can we address inequities on a global scale? How can we create self-governing communities around shared interests or goals?" Cryptocurrencies as a tech are not the answer for any of those questions, they could be a tool to support some of those things but as of now are not the most efficient way to improve those. Maybe the "movement" / hype behind cryptos could help but you have to an absolute uncynical person to think that given the types that are most loudely hyping it up, society won't be worse off in the end.
  • PragmaticPulp 4y ago
    Bootstrapping a new cryptocurrency where 90% of the coins go to relatively few early adopters is the worst possible way to fix financial inequality. The crypto holders would love if the world switched to using the cryptocurrency they’re invested in because it would make them extraordinarily wealthy relative to the average person buying in late. I don’t understand how anyone can honestly suggest that a gradual changeover to a specific cryptocurrency would be anything other than disastrous for financial inequality.
    • bombcar 4y ago
      Pretending a system that has specific names for various scams will somehow reduce inequality is hilarious. I feel people think “if everyone had bought Bitcoin when it was cheap, everyone would be rich now” and then think that Safemoon rugpull #42053 will somehow do it.
      • ______-_-______ 4y ago
• cryptica 4y ago
  > hostile against people who have become involved with crypto because they felt they had no other option I've been a victim of this. People in crypto hate you for trying to do things the right way (connecting crypto to real economic value instead of engaging in tribal maximalism and hypemongering popular projects) and people outside of crypto hate you for being involved in crypto which they think is all scams. The irony is that only the scammers on both sides win.
• twirlock 4y ago
  [dead]
• coopierez 4y ago
  I agree that it's aimless to just be toxic or mean to (most) crypto fans, especially those that are genuinely arguing in good faith. That won't stop me chuckling at those that have been duped by a blatant pump and dump.
• formerkrogemp 4y ago
  I was once a crypto advocate, but thanks to Molly White and a few lost shirts, I unequivocally can say cryptocurrencies are just a bunch of scams.
• aww_dang 4y ago
  >Or the policymakers and governmental agencies who have failed to uphold their duty in regulating crypto and enforcing existing regulation that would protect people from rampant fraud. This is completely tone deaf. Crypto exists because markets are too regulated. Look at PayPal's fees and understand that they exist due to regulatory compliance. Want to pay users fractions of a cent for killing monsters in a game? Not possible with PayPal. The regulatory overhead is too high for microtransactions. If you want to participate in heavily regulated markets because you feel that is the safe or morally correct way to transact, then stick with the existing infrastructure. Why prohibit others and force your views upon them? I expect the paternalist response to go along the lines of, "Well, the plebs are being taken advantage of. They aren't as smart as us. We need to step in and protect them from spending their money incorrectly" Meanwhile, those magical regulators the author loves so well have centrally planned interest rates. Savings accounts have negative real interest rates. "Stimulus" is repeatedly injected into the economy by the wise, all knowing regulators. Don't blame the regulators though, demand more regulation instead?
  • the_only_law 4y ago
    > Look at PayPal's fees and understand that they exist due to regulatory compliance. Look I’d be thrilled to be rid of paypal but until eBay let’s you accept payouts to a Bitcoin wallet, I’m stuck with the banks and companies built on their platforms. Oh whoops eBay doesn’t even let you receive payouts through PayPal anymore it has to be done through an ACH transaction.
• jokoon 4y ago
  Even if crypto doesn't become a problem, I hope politicians will try hard to regulate them, and add tight regulations on companies who convert crypto to dollars and vice versa. I'm afraid crypto will become a tool to launder money, escape taxes and do all sorts of things that are illegal with normal money. It might already be the case and be full of corrupt practices, but I can clearly see people defend it on a political premise of libertarian ideology. By the way, I wonder if Russia is involved a lot with crypto.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• beckman466 4y ago
  like others have said, crypto doesn't meaningfully solve much of anything. we need more anti-crypto sentiments, not less. the really exciting, yet unexplored, leverage point that a new ecology of mutual credit currencies will likely have is in their use in what pioneers have dubbed Network Resource Planning (NRP) software. the DWeb project http://mikorizal.org http://mikorizal.org is working on this. essentially it entails the open mapping of supply chains using DWeb p2p app frameworks (self-describing protocols, instead of centralized third party Silicon Valley-made platforms), using new (e.g. collaborative, automated) forms of resource accounting already employed by ERP systems behind closed doors (undemocratic stewardship of resources as done today is the real reason we are overusing resources). if anyone can see what i mean i'd love to hear you explain in your own words what you see and what you think of the impact it could have. http://mikorizal.org/Fromprivateownershipaccountingtocommonsaccoun.html http://mikorizal.org/Fromprivateownershipaccountingtocommons...
• crispyambulance 4y ago
  > If you feel the urge to “cyberbully” someone in crypto, direct it at the powerful players behind crypto projects that are actively taking advantage of the vulnerable. Phrased like that, sure, how can anyone disagree? But what about urging folks to not loose their shirts in a scam? Situations like going to a wedding, meeting up with relatives/family-friends, and finding out they're about to get involved in Amway, bizarre religions, Tony Robbins or other self-help guru's, or nutritional supplement scams? Does it ever work to intervene? Probably not often, but there's value in speaking to them about it. Same thing with crypto. One useful thing you can do is to direct folks to the "Line Goes Up" video from Dan Olson (https://youtu.be/YQ_xWvX1n9g https://youtu.be/YQ_xWvX1n9g). It's an epic, 2 hour long take-down that's perhaps the most comprehensive and air-tight argument against crypto thus far. Does it convince people? I hope so. It should? It pains me to see even smart progressive orgs like Popula (https://popula.com/ https://popula.com/) get themselves involved in crypto. And I don't want the most vulnerable people to be left "holding the bag" when this stuff inevitably pops.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
• m0llusk 4y ago
  Crypto offers nothing but highly volatile securities trading. That can never accomplish any of the positive goals listed in the article. Simple realistic analysis is all that is necessary to reject crypto as currently offered as an agent of positive change. Having noble ideas or goals is no excuse for doing damage with inherently unstable technologies.
• nathanaldensr 4y ago
  Get back to me when you've watched all of KiraTV's[1] excellent videos on various crypto scams and rug pulls. [1] https://www.youtube.com/c/KiraTV1 https://www.youtube.com/c/KiraTV1
  • a_bonobo 4y ago
    One should point out that OP's author is also behind 'Web3 is going just great', a time line/news feed of all the various rug pulls and scams https://web3isgoinggreat.com/ https://web3isgoinggreat.com/
• cool_dude85 4y ago
  The whole article seems like a cop-out. You could write it about any group or movement, good or bad: identify some legitimate grievances and then frame the group as just trying to solve those grievances. Hand wave away any disagreement by saying "well, I'm not saying they have a good solution..." In this case it's set up as "they're asking the right questions". But everyone's "asking the right questions" as long as you don't look too deeply into whether they're actually asking those questions or not, or whether their proposals could even hypothetically answer those questions, or what other actions they take aside from answering those questions.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• bannedbybros 4y ago
• _moof 4y ago
  I don't think everyone who engages in crypto is evil. Some are, to be sure (as some are in any human endeavor), but for the most part I think they're just credulous. I think that's a belief shared by a lot of anti-crypto people, which makes me wonder if the toxicity stems more from exasperation with evangelism of a thing people find ridiculous. Like, yes, we know about crypto and we think it's silly; please go away—that sort of thing.
• agentultra 4y ago
  Ok... so the political and economic foundations of the crypto ecosystem are flawed. It's a movement driven by fascists and criminals posing as libertarians. It's based on the Austrian school idea of, "sound money," itself a poorly conceived idea with roots in racism and fascism. If that doesn't corrupt the entire enterprise, what are the good parts? In the pursuit of this, crypto supporters have blasted exorbitant amounts of excess CO2 into the atmosphere for very little work done in over a decade. And it literally doesn't do anything. It was adopted as a national currency by one country and hardly anyone who lives there seems to use it. It doesn't by-pass international sanctions. It's not free from government regulation like the criminals want. All it seems good for is divesting money from technologically illiterate rich people who jumped on the bandwagon, advertised their crypto holdings, and have poor or non-existent opsec. It's a scammers' dream: it's way easier and far more profitable to rip these people off than to run a scam against a bank or old people. If your goal is truly altruistic and you want to see more transparency in the financial system, access for people from all economic and diverse backgrounds, etc: get into politics, banking, or just vote. Start a non-profit think-tank and hire analysts to help inform positive policy changes. The technology behind this stuff is pretty useless at providing financial services because those systems are social/political systems. Technology is but a small part of supporting them.
• sneak 4y ago
  > Despite crypto’s unquestionably right-libertarian roots Citation needed. (This is actually me being charitable; it's not remotely "unquestionable", and in my view it's not even supported by the evidence available.)
  • rvz 4y ago
    I am also questioning this claim and given there is zero evidence for that, I can also only conclude that it is completely unfounded and baseless. That's is the problem with some of the crypto-critics and the crypto-maximalists as they are just as bad as each other attempting to demonize, categorize and outrage one another with such absolutist rhetoric with zero evidence. It really doesn't help.
• yowlingcat 4y ago
  Some interesting observations muddled by poor articulation. I hope this trend of describing everything as "toxic" (when other more specific words exist) will go away. For example, the author could use the word "evangelism" rather than "toxicity" and drill down much deeper to the core mechanism of what's going on. Are individuals being toxic within a community? Absolutely. But are they being accepted because "the ends justify the means" for the evangelists? Almost certainly. That, I think, could be a real story being buried beneath the baited lede of "not only crypto supporters but DETRACTORS are being 'toxic'" so it's unfortunate that's never explored in more detail.
• awr 4y ago
  As somebody who's delved into the crypto world and attempted to provide utility in the space by building a token aggregator / scam detector [1], I'm more disillusioned than ever with the state of crypto. "Legitimate" projects are in between a rock and a hard place - either pay outrageous sums to the shillers or have no avenue to promote your project, as Google/Twitter/Facebook won't touch your crypto ads. Instead of the decentralised utopia we were promised, we've shifted power from traditional marketing channels with a vested interest in providing some ROI to scammers with no accountability, only in it to make a dollar at whatever cost. Scammers and hustlers are the gatekeepers of new tokens - unless you're paying thousands of dollars [2], it's almost impossible to get recognised. Most projects are scams/get-rich-quick schemes preying on people's ignorance. There are well intentioned tokens out there, but even these have very dubious links between the price of the token and the utility of the project. The buybacks, reflections, stable-coin rewards, promises of guaranteed returns b/c we reinvest into other projects quickly part the ignorant from their hard-earned. Any attempt to dig deeper and understand project economics are met with the same platitudes and flawed arguments. Of course there's the other side of the ecosystem where smart and talented people are raising VC money and working on interesting problems. I do believe there's something there around business model innovations (e.g. near fee-less micro-transactions tied to a crypto identity as a low impedance alternative to SSO) or technological innovations (blockchain-based serverless compute powering dApps - I do see a whole host of problems to which smart contract based dApps are a viable solution). The end result of this isn't a financial revolution but rather a host of entrepreneurs utilising web3 technologies to build the next generation of software startups. [1] - https://agentsinu.com https://agentsinu.com [2] - 5k-10k USD for a single Telegram post is not uncommon
• someguywhoposts 4y ago
• Geee 4y ago
  You can't get rich with bitcoin any more. That's a good thing and also separates the people who believe in better money, from the "get rich quick with crypto" types. If you believe that Bitcoin is better money, then you also realize that we need just one Bitcoin. In this world view, every copy-cat project doesn't serve any purpose, other than making their founders and early investors rich. Bitcoin toxicity stems from this mindset. Bitcoiners are anti-crypto. There has been so many broken promises, and so much lost money from newbies, that it's better to just defend toxically against every crypto project, rather trying to go through their arguments and trying to rationally invalidate them. You can safely assume that everything in crypto is a scam.
• JohnHaugeland 4y ago
  "Hey, guys, the people are promising all the socially friendly things. Why are you so toxic at us for participating in an illegal subsidy gambling system which is massively polluting the planet? You're bullies."
• zackmorris 4y ago
  I just want to say that I really appreciate the writing style in this article. I consider crypto a highly-politicized subject, but there are ways of talking about such things without getting political. Specifically: But I also think that these proposed solutions are enormously attractive to people who see them as a tangible option in a world where these problems are not being solved—where we are being failed by our political establishments in so, so many ways. I may disagree with the author about where to place blame, but I think saying "political establishments" is more authentic than "the government". At least in the US, it's We the People. We're the government. So when I hear anti-government sentiments, I generally start to discount whatever it is that the person is saying. Especially in this era, when the main problem is concentrated wealth in private institutions and corporations, who unlike the government, operate outside of election oversight. Meaning we can't throw them out of office when they do wrong. And that's been my main concern with stuff like crypto. I feel the sentiment that the political establishment often lets us all down. But rather than creating an anarchist playground in crypto to get mathematically free of regulation, maybe it might have been good to put some energy into getting involved politically and solving the actual problems. Vote, raise money for non-establishment candidates, run for office, all that stuff. The long game for crypto looks like any other unregulated game: winner takes all. Perfect wealth inequality. Whatever edge I think I may have to skim a little capital out of that pool, would only end up being used to exacerbate inequality as I take from someone else. Which is why I feel that the original goal of crypto to empower people (by bypassing the rules of the system) is only going to backfire and make things worse. Just like with trickle-down economics, the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act or any other policy that claimed it would enrich all but only enriched some. We don't fix the evils of the system by feeding from it. We fix them by paying into the good, getting involved and doing the work.
• vmception 4y ago
  > But when you come across someone on Twitter with a hexagon-shaped profile picture, your chances are at least as good that you’ve come across someone in the first bucket than in the second Ah so this is about twitter culture. I agree, it is strange that people showing some outward interest in crypto are ignored. These conversations basically go like this <user with nft monkey avatar>: thats not accurate, the flash loan was used to borrow and acquire a bunch of the governance token and then launch and pass an emergency governance proposal and the primary issue is that the protocol allowed for this to occur in a single block, not the flash loan <user with predisposition that requires crypto to be bad>: you have an NFT profile picture your opinion is invalid! I just screenshot it! so the technical person that could improve understanding is surrounded by perpetual ignorance
  • 1270018080 4y ago
    I'll have to side with <user with predisposition that requires crypto to be bad> for the same reason I wouldn't give a Scientologist a chance to speak either.
    • vmception 4y ago
      that's ignorant by all four Oxford listed definitions of ignorant.
      • 1270018080 4y ago
        I would argue I have a less ignorant view of Scientology or cryptocurrency than someone who is indoctrinated. There isn't going to be any useful information to glean from an active cult member expressing their views on their cult. Who is really ignorant?
        • vmception 4y ago
          My example was about the accuracy of a statement, it seems the conversation should more often be about accuracy instead of deflection. Or if the accuracy was undermined by indoctrination then the conversation should be about why its not accurate and why that would be clouded by indoctrination. And even in your Scientology analogy, I think there are limited similarities because you are talking about scientology often to scientologists? Do you get into those kind of conversations? If you're not getting into those kind of conversations than thats just an ad hominem attack which is a very poor form of argument and also meets one of the Oxford definitions of ignorant ( informal - discourteous or rude; west indies - angry or quick-tempered.) These are traits to avoid, pejoratives.
• garbanz0 4y ago
  The crypto world is full of serious, borderline genius innovation as well as scammers and lies. I don't know why people can't accept that both can be true at the same time. What percentage of emails sent in the world are legitimate vs spam? I don't think in principle we care about the volume of BS, we only care about how easily we can filter it out from the genuine stuff. I think over time our ability to do that will get better. Once crypto as a platform has more useful products, it'll be more obvious that it's worth it to put in the work to filter out the BS. For now, I can see why it's not so obvious. But don't be disappointed that you didn't get in early.
  • miohtama 4y ago
    As a related information nugget, HashCash that popularised proof-of-work concept before Bitcoin, was originally designed a email spam prevention tool. Goes far back as 1997. http://www.hashcash.org/ http://www.hashcash.org/
    • garbanz0 4y ago
      Maybe in some scifi future where energy is cheap and clean, we could use PoW for all kinds of things where PoS doesn't make sense.
      • saurik 4y ago
        What you are doing with Proof of Work is demonstrating that you are spending a relative amount of money to accomplish something by demonstrating some energy usage. As energy gets cheaper you would have to do more of it to keep up.
• peterth3 4y ago
  The other night I watched the Crypto Startup School video series by a16z on YouTube [0]. It includes presentations from smart people saying that blockchain/ethereum is the computing platform of the future. One issue with ETH/smart-contracts that is not addressed in the series is how to ship patches to a smart contract. Let’s say there’s a vulnerability in my contract that accidentally leaks ETH. How do I ship a patch to fix the contract? Could my buggy contract be taken advantage of indefinitely? Maybe I could move all my ETH to a new wallet and leave the bad contract? How is this problem handled today? [0] https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLK9Lwn4_TfLS3I9huJjd-k_FeMKiTkAff https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLK9Lwn4_TfLS3I9huJjd-k_Fe...
  • wait_a_minute 4y ago
    There are upgradeable smart contracts. https://docs.openzeppelin.com/upgrades-plugins/1.x/writing-upgradeable https://docs.openzeppelin.com/upgrades-plugins/1.x/writing-u... There is also the concept of a standard upgradeable proxy contract. https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-1822#motivation https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-1822#motivation This is an area in which someone could build useful tools and libraries to facilitate this need even more.
    • ShamelessC 4y ago
      If it is upgradeable and only one party has to agree to it, could be ripe for abuse.
• throwawaymanbot 4y ago
• quags 4y ago
  Crypto has solved one problem and that is removing consumer protections - which was really not a problem that needed to be solved. Accept crypto directly - chargebacks are a thing of the past. Once that payment is made, it can't be taken back. This changes dynamics a bit - a company can do less checks for fraud (say an isp/cloud provider can accept more abusive things with out penalty) with out the fear of getting a chargeback fee, loosing that money or getting a merchant/payment processor closed for too many chargebacks or even fraud. Sure the market might be able to solve that with bad reviews but this simply shifts the burden to the holder of crypto.
• cdaringe 4y ago
  Questionable usage of unquestionable