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The interesting thing about crypto to me is how there seems to be a deep divide among very smart people, some who think it's the greatest thing ever and some wh

The interesting thing about crypto to me is how there seems to be a deep divide among very smart people, some who think it's the greatest thing ever and some who think it's a fraud. I can't remember when there's ever been such a Bigendian-scale dispute in technology before. Can you?

metadat 4y ago
Where is the divide? Crypto is 99% full of hucksters, and the remaining 1% are the sorry saps. The intelligent people I know want nothing to do with it. Folks I've met IRL who are into it usually aren't all that bright. The traits they do have are affinity for risk taking, and being somewhat technical but not too much so, just enough to be dangerous. They certainly won't be opening any PRs to fix Ethereum bugs. In other words, they are perfectly ripened marks for the hucksters.
- seany 4y ago
  There is a real cohort of libertarian folks who really do want digital anonymous cash replacement.
  - throwaway82652 4y ago
    Cryptocurrency is not that, because it is not anonymous nor is it a cash replacement. I have sympathy for those folks who were led to believe those things, it's not their fault.
    - gotaquestion 4y ago
      Small correction: some cryptos are anonymous, Zcash and monero for example. Bitcoin and ether are not, and once those have been rolled into something like the Winklevoss's Gemini, it is harder to follow them publicly.
      - throwaway82652 4y ago
        But that's not true, even those privacycoins are still technically pseudonymous because transactions are still done by wallet ID. This fundamentally can't be fixed because otherwise you can't have something like a wallet that stores a balance which is assigned to you and only you. Also I would like to point out that the idea you can ever be fully anonymous on the internet is a lot of bunk. Regardless of what kind of cryptography you use or how many obfuscation layers you put things through you're still generating a great deal of identifying data just by accessing other servers. This is a problem I have with most of the marketing behind any privacy technology, it's not just these privacycoins that are making false promises.
        gotaquestion 4y ago
        > This fundamentally can't be fixed because otherwise you can't have something like a wallet that stores a balance which is assigned to you and only you. This statement is false. Zcash's shielded transactions hide both the wallet ID and the transaction via zero knowledge proof.
        throwaway82652 4y ago
        No it's not false. For practical or legal purposes you will need to have that ID disclosed eventually anyway. And actually it appears that most Zcash users are not even attempting to conceal their wallet IDs.
        gojomo 4y ago
        You should read more about Monero & especially Zcash, because their tech specifically overcomes this "pseudonymous" false-allegation in your 1st paragraph. If they in fact worked like Bitcoin, with balances & account-numbers transparent to everyone, I might believe as you do. But I know the tech obscures both amounts & recipients, so I don't. Your 2nd paragraph, that people are spraying all sorts of privacy-destroying info with every interaction, is mostly true. But it's not essentially true, and with education, & software, & further technical advances, far more privacy than we have now is possible. Especially, far more privacy from criminals & abusive regimes that would persecute/imprison/kill people for dumb reasons.
  - gotaquestion 4y ago
    I find it endlessly amusing that the subset of libertarians who love to berate socialism "as never having worked" by pointing to Bolshevik Russia have limitless patience for the at-scale failures of crypto. Obviously not all libertarians, but quite I large number that I've bickered with on HN/Reddit.
    - gojomo 4y ago
      Cryptoeconomics has been a mix of successes & failures, among the very-privileged who can afford to take financial risks, for just the last ~13y. Everyone involved knows there's a lot of things left to solve, but sees reasons for hope. For 100+ years, the most fervently 'socialist' regimes have promised various utopias but actually delivered famines, prison camps, pathologically dishonest & oppressive police states, and even genocides on a larger scale than famous 'fascist' regimes. I can see why you might get into bickering if you find those situations analogous!
      - gotaquestion 4y ago
        Thanks for proving my point with perfect irony.
        gojomo 4y ago
        And thanks to you, for demonstrating your flimsy analogy can only be defended with attitude, not reasoning!
        ModernMech 4y ago
        The point I think the parent was making is not that they are analogous situations, but that in the reasoning they've encountered (and you helpfully provided to illustrate their point), one could literally just swap the positive aspects for negative aspects, and it would read as supportive of socialism and against crypto. Here: Socialist governments have been a mix of successes & failures, among the very-privileged who can afford to take risks, for just the last ~100y. Everyone involved knows there's a lot of things left to solve, but sees reasons for hope. For 13+ years, the most fervently 'crypto' fanboys have promised various utopias but actually delivered scams, fraud, pathologically dishonest companies, and even financial ruin on a larger scale than other technologies. It's the same exact logic. (please note I am not comparing genocide and financial ruin as being analogous)
- zelag 4y ago
  People like Ari Juels, Gavin Wood and Vitalik Buterin aren't intelligent to you?
  - lottin 4y ago
    I don't know the first two. Vitalik intelligent? He used to believe, and maybe still believes, that you could do quantum computing by simulating a quantum computer on a conventional computer. In fact, he even founded a start-up if I recall correctly, based around this bizarre idea.
  - faitswulff 4y ago
    I know who Guido van Rossum is. I have no idea who those three are.
    - tshaddox 4y ago
      Just to be clear, there's very little you (or any readers) ought to conclude from the fact that you know who Guido van Rossum is but are unaware of those other people.
      - faitswulff 4y ago
        Just to be clear, I have no idea who those people are or what their accomplishments are, but I do know and trust Guido's 1) intellect, and 2) judgment, so I'm inclined to trust a known factor over three unknown ones. And he's known for good reason. Reputation is a thing. I figure I'm not alone.
        __s 4y ago
        There's much better arguments for/against crypto than appeals to authority. Consequently, you then cited an appeal to majority to defend your appeal to authority https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum Granted, the crypto debate on HN is pretty well hashed & Guido's tweet doesn't add anything to the discussion besides making clear where he stands on the issue
- MikeTheRocker 4y ago
  In my anecdotal experience, every one of my closest friends who are all very successful silicon valley software engineers are hugely bullish on crypto and defi.
  - metadat 4y ago
    Sounds like you hang with a certain crowd. Unfortunately, being a "successful SV engineer" doesn't mean one is particularly intelligent. In fact, I think we tend towards some other common and frankly ugly human traits- primarily greed and selfishness, without giving much back to our communities. IME, crypto bros are especially guilty of this. "Crypto is bad for the earth? Well fuck it, ima still get mine." Even though I can't personally get behind it, it's easy understand the appeal of hopping on the wagon to make some easy money. Especially if one feels FOMO and has little empathy for others or concern about the long-term prospects for humanity surviving.
  - guyzero 4y ago
    every one of my closest friends who are all very successful Wall St finance guys are hugely bullish on Bernie Madoff's investment funds.
- Lordarminius 4y ago
  >The intelligent people I know want nothing to do with it. Eric Schmidt is president of ChainLink Silvio Micali professor at MIT created Algorand Emin Gün Sirer creator of Avalanche is a professor at Cornell Nicholas Szabo holds a honorary professorship etc. etc. etc I guess you either don't know these people, or they don't count as intelligent to you. On another note, Web3 technology will soon be everywhere. Individuals are building tools everyday, and so are governments. The latter because they have found a powerful tool to subvert your rights. Wake up, adapt, or die.
  - TremendousJudge 4y ago
    Or maybe they count as "hucksters". All of these people you mentioned seem to be quite invested into the ecosystem and therefore stand to gain quite a lot from crypto going to the moon. It's in their self interest to do everything they can to ignore or dismiss any negative arguments, and convince as many people as possible that their hustle is legitimate.
    - Lordarminius 4y ago
      Hucksters. Ok.
  - klyrs 4y ago
    I know who Linus Torvalds is. He's intelligent. I've read some stuff he wrote. I use some software he wrote. I don't know him.
- tquinn35 4y ago
  I disagree with this. I work at a large US bank and from the conversations I have been apart all the big banks are moving into crypto. So much float is moving out of the banks that they are scramble to catch up to try and control the damage. They are all planning to become crypto banks in a custodial sense to maintain float. Lots of people want to hate the new trendy thing but once this gets mainstream banking support everyone one will be on board.
  - gtirloni 4y ago
    Could you give us a ballpark number of how much is moving out of banks compared to the reaming that is not? Is it 10, 50 or 90% of the current economy?
    - tquinn35 4y ago
      The number that was quoted was "in the ballpark of 30%"
- flotzam 4y ago
  > Crypto is 99% full of hucksters, and the remaining 1% are the sorry saps. > The intelligent people I know want nothing to do with it. "political tribes self-segregate to an impressive extent – a 1/10^45 extent, I will never tire of hammering in – based on their implicit tribal characteristics." - https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything-except-the-outgroup/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anythin... > Folks I've met IRL who are into it usually aren't all that bright. The traits they do have are affinity for risk taking, and being somewhat technical but not too much so, just enough to be dangerous. They certainly won't be opening any PRs to fix Ethereum bugs. Replace "risk taking" with "compliance" for outgroup point of view. (Being "into it" then meaning heavy investment into being opposed to cryptocurrency.)
  - metadat 4y ago
    I'm having a hard time following your message, are you saying people who don't like crypto are intolerant and narrow-minded?
    - flotzam 4y ago
      Those character traits are well represented in both the pro- and the anti-cryptocurrency crowds, no doubt. But it was more of a meta comment on GGP saying "there's a deep divide" and GP responding "what are you talking about, every good person I can see is anti"
      - metadat 4y ago
        Haha, now I got it! Thanks for clarifying. Salient point for sure, and thanks for the interesting article.
- ea550ff70a 4y ago
  Omg your personal experience has finally proved that crypto is a waste of time. Thanks so much. I will share with the CEO of bitcoin and the altcoins.
- T_ReV 4y ago
  So the intelligent people that do open the PRs to fix the ethereum bugs. Are they hucksters or sorry saps?
  - metadat 4y ago
    Part of the hucksters, naturally.
PragmaticPulp 4y ago
> The interesting thing about crypto to me is how there seems to be a deep divide among very smart people, some who think it's the greatest thing ever and some who think it's a fraud. Most people, even web3 proponents, seem to agree that the current crop of web3 companies is largely scammy or without real value propositions beyond speculation. It's actually hard to argue otherwise when you look at what's out there. You also have to look very closely at financial interests. There are a lot of "smart people" who invested heavily in web3 tokens and have a vested interest in hyping them to the moon.
- twblalock 4y ago
  At some point people need to realize that building a platform that primarily enables hucksters and scammers is not a good thing to do. Unless there is a reason to believe that somehow the scams will be outdone by legitimate use cases, the platform should be abandoned.
twblalock 4y ago
I think you overestimate the number of smart people who are actually into crypto. One side of the debate is very vocal and the other is silent.
- foobar2021 4y ago
  Which side is which? As someone not on twitter I’m constantly bombarded with anti-crypto stuff while almost never organically see pro-crypto pieces. I’m assuming you see the opposite? Gotta love algorithmic echo chambers.
heavyset_go 4y ago
How many of those smart people have vested interests in the crypto market or the Web 3.0 rebranding?
pg_bot 4y ago
How many of these "very smart" people were just early adopters of cryptocurrencies? Usually there is a financial conflict of interest which causes people to overlook the extremely negative aspects of web3/cryptocurrencies. Anecdotally I have seen a lot of people who were previously gung-ho cash out and sour on the whole space.
- Frondo 4y ago
  My take on smart people in the crypto space comes down to the Upton Sinclair quote, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
  - reflexco 4y ago
    Ironically the same quote also describes the extreme feelings of the opposite camp. Established tech companies and their employees have a lot to lose if web3 and related tech would actually become successful.
    - ahtihn 4y ago
      Really? Why? I don't see anything concrete coming out of web3 that would threaten the established big tech companies.
      - reflexco 4y ago
        The whole selling pitch is about replacing intermediaries, and that's what most tech giants are. P2P payment systems and P2P collateralized loans are already there more or less working with a clear path to scaling. If they gain adoption they directly obsolete existing fintech companies. I'm not saying there's much concrete stuff there yet, but web3 has a clear MAGMA hostile discourse, so it's natural that reactionary feelings arise when web3 gets hype (deserved or not, that's not the point).
        ahtihn 4y ago
the_cat_kittles 4y ago
if you define "smart" as rich, then your comment makes sense i guess.
deleted 4y ago
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blahblah123456 4y ago
Web3 proponents have been repeating that all the smartest people they know are in web3. It's more of a meme that's been repeated than a real observation, and I would guess the "smartest people they know" aren't very smart at all or have a large financial interest in it.
Mikeb85 4y ago
The very smart pro-crypto people are making money from the dumber pro-crypto people.
Barrin92 4y ago
I don't see the divide. Among the very smart CS people I know both working in the software sector or in academia I'd estimate 90%+ think web3 and crypto is bullshit.
- moffkalast 4y ago
  Idk, my university teaches Solidity and has students write smart contracts. Maybe it's that 10 percent.
stuaxo 4y ago
The fraud is a tiny issue compared to the massive massive waste inherent in the system.
malthaus 4y ago
There's many people who are smart, know that it's all crap, but also know that there will be a greater fool they can dump their coins to while using their clout to hype it up in the meantime. After you sell your crap just in time, people will either forget your stance or you say "but nobody knew it was all crap back then!"
shadowgovt 4y ago
To its credit, Bitcoin and some of the other crypto implementations are very technically-clever Harder Drives (http://tom7.org/papers/murphy2022harder.pdf http://tom7.org/papers/murphy2022harder.pdf). And that will attract folks who like puzzles for puzzle's sake.
- TremendousJudge 4y ago
  "Bitcoin would make a solid SIGBOVIK paper" is honestly one of the greatest put downs I've ever read on the topic.
smoe 4y ago
I think usually the divide in other areas is much more about technical aspects. Whereas with crypto a lot of proponents fairly aggressively push an ideology, and trying to make you literally buy into it. Which leads to, at time, fairly aggressive responses. The most similar dispute I can remember during my career were the early years of MongoDB. The gripe of people with it wasn't much about that there is no space for no-sql databases and that they don't have their uses cases (after all they existed long before mongo), but how it was marketed and pushed by some people.
nootropicat 4y ago
That's because it's a combination of envy and the fact it's mostly a ponzi. Many people got into 8 or 9 figures from ~zero by being active into crypto, they are overwhelmingly below 40 years old. Basically everyone in tech heard about crypto years ago. If you missed it, you can either admit to yourself you missed probably the easiest way to get rich in your entire life, or rationalize to yourself it's all a scam and you didn't get in because you're morally virtuous.
- rurp 4y ago
  I looked into crypto early and passed because I figured it would either not live up to the hype as a usable currency, or if it did take off governments would step in and squash it. Turns out both concerns were largely correct. The part I missed was that people would still buy it anyway. I don't really feel bad about the decision since the process that lead me to it will work out more often than not. I'm sure plenty of tech folks had a similar thought process.
lottin 4y ago
I don't see any such divide. What "very smart people" think crypto is a great invention?
Tao331 4y ago
Those categories aren't mutually exclusive.
cynusx 4y ago
It mostly comes down to whether you trust in democratic institutions or not and whether you think it's a good idea to have markets operate outside the control and supervision of regulators and an enforceable rule of law.
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
  Exactly this. All these promises of crypto being "independent" of banks and governments all rely on the relative obscurity and novelty of the technology. If crypto became the default currency, it would have to play nice with existing economic and political structures, and all of those "advantages" would be gone.
zem 4y ago
all the very smart people know it's a combination of speculative bubble and pyramid scheme; they're just divided between those who think it's fine as long as they can be part of the group who get to make money off it, and those who find the entire thing repugnant or too akin to gambling.

metadat 4y ago

Where is the divide? Crypto is 99% full of hucksters, and the remaining 1% are the sorry saps. The intelligent people I know want nothing to do with it. Folks I've met IRL who are into it usually aren't all that bright. The traits they do have are affinity for risk taking, and being somewhat technical but not too much so, just enough to be dangerous. They certainly won't be opening any PRs to fix Ethereum bugs. In other words, they are perfectly ripened marks for the hucksters.

seany 4y ago
There is a real cohort of libertarian folks who really do want digital anonymous cash replacement.
- throwaway82652 4y ago
  Cryptocurrency is not that, because it is not anonymous nor is it a cash replacement. I have sympathy for those folks who were led to believe those things, it's not their fault.
  - gotaquestion 4y ago
    Small correction: some cryptos are anonymous, Zcash and monero for example. Bitcoin and ether are not, and once those have been rolled into something like the Winklevoss's Gemini, it is harder to follow them publicly.
    - throwaway82652 4y ago
      But that's not true, even those privacycoins are still technically pseudonymous because transactions are still done by wallet ID. This fundamentally can't be fixed because otherwise you can't have something like a wallet that stores a balance which is assigned to you and only you. Also I would like to point out that the idea you can ever be fully anonymous on the internet is a lot of bunk. Regardless of what kind of cryptography you use or how many obfuscation layers you put things through you're still generating a great deal of identifying data just by accessing other servers. This is a problem I have with most of the marketing behind any privacy technology, it's not just these privacycoins that are making false promises.
      - gotaquestion 4y ago
        > This fundamentally can't be fixed because otherwise you can't have something like a wallet that stores a balance which is assigned to you and only you. This statement is false. Zcash's shielded transactions hide both the wallet ID and the transaction via zero knowledge proof.
        throwaway82652 4y ago
        No it's not false. For practical or legal purposes you will need to have that ID disclosed eventually anyway. And actually it appears that most Zcash users are not even attempting to conceal their wallet IDs.
      - gojomo 4y ago
        You should read more about Monero & especially Zcash, because their tech specifically overcomes this "pseudonymous" false-allegation in your 1st paragraph. If they in fact worked like Bitcoin, with balances & account-numbers transparent to everyone, I might believe as you do. But I know the tech obscures both amounts & recipients, so I don't. Your 2nd paragraph, that people are spraying all sorts of privacy-destroying info with every interaction, is mostly true. But it's not essentially true, and with education, & software, & further technical advances, far more privacy than we have now is possible. Especially, far more privacy from criminals & abusive regimes that would persecute/imprison/kill people for dumb reasons.
- gotaquestion 4y ago
  I find it endlessly amusing that the subset of libertarians who love to berate socialism "as never having worked" by pointing to Bolshevik Russia have limitless patience for the at-scale failures of crypto. Obviously not all libertarians, but quite I large number that I've bickered with on HN/Reddit.
  - gojomo 4y ago
    Cryptoeconomics has been a mix of successes & failures, among the very-privileged who can afford to take financial risks, for just the last ~13y. Everyone involved knows there's a lot of things left to solve, but sees reasons for hope. For 100+ years, the most fervently 'socialist' regimes have promised various utopias but actually delivered famines, prison camps, pathologically dishonest & oppressive police states, and even genocides on a larger scale than famous 'fascist' regimes. I can see why you might get into bickering if you find those situations analogous!
    - gotaquestion 4y ago
      Thanks for proving my point with perfect irony.
      - gojomo 4y ago
        And thanks to you, for demonstrating your flimsy analogy can only be defended with attitude, not reasoning!
        ModernMech 4y ago
        The point I think the parent was making is not that they are analogous situations, but that in the reasoning they've encountered (and you helpfully provided to illustrate their point), one could literally just swap the positive aspects for negative aspects, and it would read as supportive of socialism and against crypto. Here: Socialist governments have been a mix of successes & failures, among the very-privileged who can afford to take risks, for just the last ~100y. Everyone involved knows there's a lot of things left to solve, but sees reasons for hope. For 13+ years, the most fervently 'crypto' fanboys have promised various utopias but actually delivered scams, fraud, pathologically dishonest companies, and even financial ruin on a larger scale than other technologies. It's the same exact logic. (please note I am not comparing genocide and financial ruin as being analogous)
zelag 4y ago
People like Ari Juels, Gavin Wood and Vitalik Buterin aren't intelligent to you?
- lottin 4y ago
  I don't know the first two. Vitalik intelligent? He used to believe, and maybe still believes, that you could do quantum computing by simulating a quantum computer on a conventional computer. In fact, he even founded a start-up if I recall correctly, based around this bizarre idea.
- faitswulff 4y ago
  I know who Guido van Rossum is. I have no idea who those three are.
  - tshaddox 4y ago
    Just to be clear, there's very little you (or any readers) ought to conclude from the fact that you know who Guido van Rossum is but are unaware of those other people.
    - faitswulff 4y ago
      Just to be clear, I have no idea who those people are or what their accomplishments are, but I do know and trust Guido's 1) intellect, and 2) judgment, so I'm inclined to trust a known factor over three unknown ones. And he's known for good reason. Reputation is a thing. I figure I'm not alone.
      - __s 4y ago
        There's much better arguments for/against crypto than appeals to authority. Consequently, you then cited an appeal to majority to defend your appeal to authority https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum Granted, the crypto debate on HN is pretty well hashed & Guido's tweet doesn't add anything to the discussion besides making clear where he stands on the issue
MikeTheRocker 4y ago
In my anecdotal experience, every one of my closest friends who are all very successful silicon valley software engineers are hugely bullish on crypto and defi.
- metadat 4y ago
  Sounds like you hang with a certain crowd. Unfortunately, being a "successful SV engineer" doesn't mean one is particularly intelligent. In fact, I think we tend towards some other common and frankly ugly human traits- primarily greed and selfishness, without giving much back to our communities. IME, crypto bros are especially guilty of this. "Crypto is bad for the earth? Well fuck it, ima still get mine." Even though I can't personally get behind it, it's easy understand the appeal of hopping on the wagon to make some easy money. Especially if one feels FOMO and has little empathy for others or concern about the long-term prospects for humanity surviving.
- guyzero 4y ago
  every one of my closest friends who are all very successful Wall St finance guys are hugely bullish on Bernie Madoff's investment funds.
Lordarminius 4y ago
>The intelligent people I know want nothing to do with it. Eric Schmidt is president of ChainLink Silvio Micali professor at MIT created Algorand Emin Gün Sirer creator of Avalanche is a professor at Cornell Nicholas Szabo holds a honorary professorship etc. etc. etc I guess you either don't know these people, or they don't count as intelligent to you. On another note, Web3 technology will soon be everywhere. Individuals are building tools everyday, and so are governments. The latter because they have found a powerful tool to subvert your rights. Wake up, adapt, or die.
- TremendousJudge 4y ago
  Or maybe they count as "hucksters". All of these people you mentioned seem to be quite invested into the ecosystem and therefore stand to gain quite a lot from crypto going to the moon. It's in their self interest to do everything they can to ignore or dismiss any negative arguments, and convince as many people as possible that their hustle is legitimate.
  - Lordarminius 4y ago
    Hucksters. Ok.
- klyrs 4y ago
  I know who Linus Torvalds is. He's intelligent. I've read some stuff he wrote. I use some software he wrote. I don't know him.
tquinn35 4y ago
I disagree with this. I work at a large US bank and from the conversations I have been apart all the big banks are moving into crypto. So much float is moving out of the banks that they are scramble to catch up to try and control the damage. They are all planning to become crypto banks in a custodial sense to maintain float. Lots of people want to hate the new trendy thing but once this gets mainstream banking support everyone one will be on board.
- gtirloni 4y ago
  Could you give us a ballpark number of how much is moving out of banks compared to the reaming that is not? Is it 10, 50 or 90% of the current economy?
  - tquinn35 4y ago
    The number that was quoted was "in the ballpark of 30%"
flotzam 4y ago
> Crypto is 99% full of hucksters, and the remaining 1% are the sorry saps. > The intelligent people I know want nothing to do with it. "political tribes self-segregate to an impressive extent – a 1/10^45 extent, I will never tire of hammering in – based on their implicit tribal characteristics." - https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything-except-the-outgroup/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anythin... > Folks I've met IRL who are into it usually aren't all that bright. The traits they do have are affinity for risk taking, and being somewhat technical but not too much so, just enough to be dangerous. They certainly won't be opening any PRs to fix Ethereum bugs. Replace "risk taking" with "compliance" for outgroup point of view. (Being "into it" then meaning heavy investment into being opposed to cryptocurrency.)
- metadat 4y ago
  I'm having a hard time following your message, are you saying people who don't like crypto are intolerant and narrow-minded?
  - flotzam 4y ago
    Those character traits are well represented in both the pro- and the anti-cryptocurrency crowds, no doubt. But it was more of a meta comment on GGP saying "there's a deep divide" and GP responding "what are you talking about, every good person I can see is anti"
    - metadat 4y ago
      Haha, now I got it! Thanks for clarifying. Salient point for sure, and thanks for the interesting article.
ea550ff70a 4y ago
Omg your personal experience has finally proved that crypto is a waste of time. Thanks so much. I will share with the CEO of bitcoin and the altcoins.
T_ReV 4y ago
So the intelligent people that do open the PRs to fix the ethereum bugs. Are they hucksters or sorry saps?
- metadat 4y ago
  Part of the hucksters, naturally.

PragmaticPulp 4y ago

> The interesting thing about crypto to me is how there seems to be a deep divide among very smart people, some who think it's the greatest thing ever and some who think it's a fraud. Most people, even web3 proponents, seem to agree that the current crop of web3 companies is largely scammy or without real value propositions beyond speculation. It's actually hard to argue otherwise when you look at what's out there. You also have to look very closely at financial interests. There are a lot of "smart people" who invested heavily in web3 tokens and have a vested interest in hyping them to the moon.

twblalock 4y ago
At some point people need to realize that building a platform that primarily enables hucksters and scammers is not a good thing to do. Unless there is a reason to believe that somehow the scams will be outdone by legitimate use cases, the platform should be abandoned.

twblalock 4y ago

I think you overestimate the number of smart people who are actually into crypto. One side of the debate is very vocal and the other is silent.

foobar2021 4y ago
Which side is which? As someone not on twitter I’m constantly bombarded with anti-crypto stuff while almost never organically see pro-crypto pieces. I’m assuming you see the opposite? Gotta love algorithmic echo chambers.

heavyset_go 4y ago

How many of those smart people have vested interests in the crypto market or the Web 3.0 rebranding?

pg_bot 4y ago

How many of these "very smart" people were just early adopters of cryptocurrencies? Usually there is a financial conflict of interest which causes people to overlook the extremely negative aspects of web3/cryptocurrencies. Anecdotally I have seen a lot of people who were previously gung-ho cash out and sour on the whole space.

Frondo 4y ago
My take on smart people in the crypto space comes down to the Upton Sinclair quote, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
- reflexco 4y ago
  Ironically the same quote also describes the extreme feelings of the opposite camp. Established tech companies and their employees have a lot to lose if web3 and related tech would actually become successful.
  - ahtihn 4y ago
    Really? Why? I don't see anything concrete coming out of web3 that would threaten the established big tech companies.
    - reflexco 4y ago
      The whole selling pitch is about replacing intermediaries, and that's what most tech giants are. P2P payment systems and P2P collateralized loans are already there more or less working with a clear path to scaling. If they gain adoption they directly obsolete existing fintech companies. I'm not saying there's much concrete stuff there yet, but web3 has a clear MAGMA hostile discourse, so it's natural that reactionary feelings arise when web3 gets hype (deserved or not, that's not the point).
      - ahtihn 4y ago

the_cat_kittles 4y ago

if you define "smart" as rich, then your comment makes sense i guess.

deleted 4y ago

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blahblah123456 4y ago

Web3 proponents have been repeating that all the smartest people they know are in web3. It's more of a meme that's been repeated than a real observation, and I would guess the "smartest people they know" aren't very smart at all or have a large financial interest in it.

Mikeb85 4y ago

The very smart pro-crypto people are making money from the dumber pro-crypto people.

Barrin92 4y ago

I don't see the divide. Among the very smart CS people I know both working in the software sector or in academia I'd estimate 90%+ think web3 and crypto is bullshit.

moffkalast 4y ago
Idk, my university teaches Solidity and has students write smart contracts. Maybe it's that 10 percent.

stuaxo 4y ago

The fraud is a tiny issue compared to the massive massive waste inherent in the system.

malthaus 4y ago

There's many people who are smart, know that it's all crap, but also know that there will be a greater fool they can dump their coins to while using their clout to hype it up in the meantime. After you sell your crap just in time, people will either forget your stance or you say "but nobody knew it was all crap back then!"

shadowgovt 4y ago

To its credit, Bitcoin and some of the other crypto implementations are very technically-clever Harder Drives (http://tom7.org/papers/murphy2022harder.pdf http://tom7.org/papers/murphy2022harder.pdf). And that will attract folks who like puzzles for puzzle's sake.

TremendousJudge 4y ago
"Bitcoin would make a solid SIGBOVIK paper" is honestly one of the greatest put downs I've ever read on the topic.

smoe 4y ago

I think usually the divide in other areas is much more about technical aspects. Whereas with crypto a lot of proponents fairly aggressively push an ideology, and trying to make you literally buy into it. Which leads to, at time, fairly aggressive responses. The most similar dispute I can remember during my career were the early years of MongoDB. The gripe of people with it wasn't much about that there is no space for no-sql databases and that they don't have their uses cases (after all they existed long before mongo), but how it was marketed and pushed by some people.

nootropicat 4y ago

That's because it's a combination of envy and the fact it's mostly a ponzi. Many people got into 8 or 9 figures from ~zero by being active into crypto, they are overwhelmingly below 40 years old. Basically everyone in tech heard about crypto years ago. If you missed it, you can either admit to yourself you missed probably the easiest way to get rich in your entire life, or rationalize to yourself it's all a scam and you didn't get in because you're morally virtuous.

rurp 4y ago
I looked into crypto early and passed because I figured it would either not live up to the hype as a usable currency, or if it did take off governments would step in and squash it. Turns out both concerns were largely correct. The part I missed was that people would still buy it anyway. I don't really feel bad about the decision since the process that lead me to it will work out more often than not. I'm sure plenty of tech folks had a similar thought process.

lottin 4y ago

I don't see any such divide. What "very smart people" think crypto is a great invention?

Tao331 4y ago

Those categories aren't mutually exclusive.

cynusx 4y ago

It mostly comes down to whether you trust in democratic institutions or not and whether you think it's a good idea to have markets operate outside the control and supervision of regulators and an enforceable rule of law.

mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
Exactly this. All these promises of crypto being "independent" of banks and governments all rely on the relative obscurity and novelty of the technology. If crypto became the default currency, it would have to play nice with existing economic and political structures, and all of those "advantages" would be gone.

zem 4y ago

all the very smart people know it's a combination of speculative bubble and pyramid scheme; they're just divided between those who think it's fine as long as they can be part of the group who get to make money off it, and those who find the entire thing repugnant or too akin to gambling.