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From the Tweet: I hope I never become as intensely default-skeptical of new technologies. That's an absurd take. It's ten years of hype, get-rich-quick scheme

From the Tweet: I hope I never become as intensely default-skeptical of new technologies. That's an absurd take. It's ten years of hype, get-rich-quick schemes and other scams, hardly new. It's not "default-skeptical" to be questioning it after all that. The bizarre position is the wide-eyed naive butt-hurt of the tweet.

postingawayonhn 5y ago
It has been over 13 years now since the release of Bitcoin.
- grapeskin 5y ago
  13 years and absolutely nothing interesting has happened with it, except people saying "You need to get in on this!!!" so they can push the value up and buy low and sell high. The internet was doing interesting stuff well within 5 years. Modern smartphones were interesting and taking over the world within 5 years. Graphics cards came and revolutionized the gaming industry immediately. Crypto has been around for 13 years and all we've seen are pump and dump schemes, and by extension randomly generated chimpanzee pictures whose market has already collapsed.
ShamelessC 5y ago
> It's ten years of hype, get-rich-quick schemes and other scams, hardly new. Right, a portion of which happened right here on HN until it became too blindingly scammy to ignore. NFT's came out which are demonstrably a scam that don't actually do what they claim to. DAO's show up, claiming members will have cryptographic (?) guarantees about decision-making when in fact they are ultimately dependent on some level of human decision-making, so ripe for scams. This maybe climaxed with the push for "web 3.0" to be some sort of new crypto-based meta-internet. People are trying to cash out, I think. I'll be honest, until then I wasn't even aware of things like the oracle problem, the "nothing at stake" issue inherent to proof-of-stake systems, and the horrible horrible idea that is programmable smart contracts. Cryptocurrency seems like a nice idea when you handwave the actual implementation details as "the tech people figured it out somehow!" Unfortunately, they never really did. This stuff only "works" in a frictionless vacuum.
- erk__ 5y ago
  Could be fun to do a sentiment analysis of block chain posts/comments on HackerNews and see if it possible to see the break
- mypastself 5y ago
  The jury is still out on whether or not blockchain’s originally intended purpose, currency, has value, and if it will see anything resembling widespread adoption in the future. I’m personally skeptical. But almost all of the problems you list apply to blockchain uses other than cryptocurrency. The failures and scamminess of Web3, DAOs, oracles, and Proof-of-Stake are not arguments against the original Bitcoin whitepaper. The “tech people” have definitely figured out something. The question is whether or not enough people really want to use whatever that something is.
  - ShamelessC 5y ago
    It's a distributed ledger that is verified via proof-of-work. People have decided to assign it speculative value, largely as a sort of fin-tech smart-banking pitch. Ultimately though, there just aren't many non-financial usecases for a _public_ distributed ledger. Simply verifying transactions doesn't solve much - you need to vet the _nature_ of the transaction to make sure that screwy things aren't happening using _other_ stores of value (not bound by the laws of proof-of-work). Centralization will appear to "solve" these problems, just as it does with USD. That's why I feel that bitcoin is always going to be ripe for abuse and highly adjacent to scams, even if the original paper is impressive and an interesting result.
    - mypastself 5y ago
      I think we’re mostly in agreement here, I just found it important to distinguish the original idea from the numerous questionable applications that have been developed in its wake.
      - ShamelessC 5y ago
        Fair enough!
jakupovic 5y ago
For the first 20+ years internet was relegated to a niche technology that will fail as we have faxes. I think your take on crypto is absurd and nonsensical in light of internet success. Here is the relevant quote: "By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet's impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine's." Maybe you don't remember that quote, but it was said by Nobel winner, Krugman.
- ShamelessC 5y ago
  Krugman responded to this: https://www.businessinsider.com/paul-krugman-responds-to-internet-quote-2013-12 https://www.businessinsider.com/paul-krugman-responds-to-int... > The reason people are dredging up this old quote is that Krugman jokingly said Bitcoin is Evil. He doesn't think it's evil, but he is skeptical that Bitcoin can be a real store of money, and actually work as a currency. [...] > We emailed Krugman for a comment on the quote and here's his explanation: Krugman: > Well, two things. > First, look at the whole piece. It was a thing for the Times magazine's 100th anniversary, written as if by someone looking back from 2098, so the point was to be fun and provocative, not to engage in careful forecasting; I mean, there are lines in there about St. Petersburg having more skyscrapers than New York, which was not a prediction, just a thought-provoker. > But the main point is that I don't claim any special expertise in technology -- I almost never make technological forecasts, and the only reason there was stuff like that in the 98 piece was because the assignment required that I do that sort of thing. The issues about Bitcoin, however, are not technological! Everyone agrees that it's technically very sweet. But does it work as money? That's a very different kind of question. > And the fact that people are throwing around my 98 quote actually shows that they don't get this point -- that they're confusing technology with monetary economics.
  - jakupovic 5y ago
    Yes, Krugman responded after throwing something like that in ether. Doesn't make him right or more knowledgeable having to reassess his original thinking. Also, Krugman had to go back on his take of the internet, all I'm saying is that none can predict future and the "smartest" of us can be and often are wrong.
danaris 5y ago
Furthermore, at least from what I recall, for the first several years of the existence of cryptocurrency, HN was not particularly negative toward it. It's only in the last few years—when the scams have exploded, especially the NFT craze—that a clear majority of HN's position on cryptocurrency has turned sour.

postingawayonhn 5y ago

It has been over 13 years now since the release of Bitcoin.

grapeskin 5y ago
13 years and absolutely nothing interesting has happened with it, except people saying "You need to get in on this!!!" so they can push the value up and buy low and sell high. The internet was doing interesting stuff well within 5 years. Modern smartphones were interesting and taking over the world within 5 years. Graphics cards came and revolutionized the gaming industry immediately. Crypto has been around for 13 years and all we've seen are pump and dump schemes, and by extension randomly generated chimpanzee pictures whose market has already collapsed.

ShamelessC 5y ago

> It's ten years of hype, get-rich-quick schemes and other scams, hardly new. Right, a portion of which happened right here on HN until it became too blindingly scammy to ignore. NFT's came out which are demonstrably a scam that don't actually do what they claim to. DAO's show up, claiming members will have cryptographic (?) guarantees about decision-making when in fact they are ultimately dependent on some level of human decision-making, so ripe for scams. This maybe climaxed with the push for "web 3.0" to be some sort of new crypto-based meta-internet. People are trying to cash out, I think. I'll be honest, until then I wasn't even aware of things like the oracle problem, the "nothing at stake" issue inherent to proof-of-stake systems, and the horrible horrible idea that is programmable smart contracts. Cryptocurrency seems like a nice idea when you handwave the actual implementation details as "the tech people figured it out somehow!" Unfortunately, they never really did. This stuff only "works" in a frictionless vacuum.

erk__ 5y ago
Could be fun to do a sentiment analysis of block chain posts/comments on HackerNews and see if it possible to see the break
mypastself 5y ago
The jury is still out on whether or not blockchain’s originally intended purpose, currency, has value, and if it will see anything resembling widespread adoption in the future. I’m personally skeptical. But almost all of the problems you list apply to blockchain uses other than cryptocurrency. The failures and scamminess of Web3, DAOs, oracles, and Proof-of-Stake are not arguments against the original Bitcoin whitepaper. The “tech people” have definitely figured out something. The question is whether or not enough people really want to use whatever that something is.
- ShamelessC 5y ago
  It's a distributed ledger that is verified via proof-of-work. People have decided to assign it speculative value, largely as a sort of fin-tech smart-banking pitch. Ultimately though, there just aren't many non-financial usecases for a _public_ distributed ledger. Simply verifying transactions doesn't solve much - you need to vet the _nature_ of the transaction to make sure that screwy things aren't happening using _other_ stores of value (not bound by the laws of proof-of-work). Centralization will appear to "solve" these problems, just as it does with USD. That's why I feel that bitcoin is always going to be ripe for abuse and highly adjacent to scams, even if the original paper is impressive and an interesting result.
  - mypastself 5y ago
    I think we’re mostly in agreement here, I just found it important to distinguish the original idea from the numerous questionable applications that have been developed in its wake.
    - ShamelessC 5y ago
      Fair enough!

jakupovic 5y ago

For the first 20+ years internet was relegated to a niche technology that will fail as we have faxes. I think your take on crypto is absurd and nonsensical in light of internet success. Here is the relevant quote: "By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet's impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine's." Maybe you don't remember that quote, but it was said by Nobel winner, Krugman.

ShamelessC 5y ago
Krugman responded to this: https://www.businessinsider.com/paul-krugman-responds-to-internet-quote-2013-12 https://www.businessinsider.com/paul-krugman-responds-to-int... > The reason people are dredging up this old quote is that Krugman jokingly said Bitcoin is Evil. He doesn't think it's evil, but he is skeptical that Bitcoin can be a real store of money, and actually work as a currency. [...] > We emailed Krugman for a comment on the quote and here's his explanation: Krugman: > Well, two things. > First, look at the whole piece. It was a thing for the Times magazine's 100th anniversary, written as if by someone looking back from 2098, so the point was to be fun and provocative, not to engage in careful forecasting; I mean, there are lines in there about St. Petersburg having more skyscrapers than New York, which was not a prediction, just a thought-provoker. > But the main point is that I don't claim any special expertise in technology -- I almost never make technological forecasts, and the only reason there was stuff like that in the 98 piece was because the assignment required that I do that sort of thing. The issues about Bitcoin, however, are not technological! Everyone agrees that it's technically very sweet. But does it work as money? That's a very different kind of question. > And the fact that people are throwing around my 98 quote actually shows that they don't get this point -- that they're confusing technology with monetary economics.
- jakupovic 5y ago
  Yes, Krugman responded after throwing something like that in ether. Doesn't make him right or more knowledgeable having to reassess his original thinking. Also, Krugman had to go back on his take of the internet, all I'm saying is that none can predict future and the "smartest" of us can be and often are wrong.

danaris 5y ago

Furthermore, at least from what I recall, for the first several years of the existence of cryptocurrency, HN was not particularly negative toward it. It's only in the last few years—when the scams have exploded, especially the NFT craze—that a clear majority of HN's position on cryptocurrency has turned sour.