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What continues to surprise me about the shitcoin-skepticism (which verges on shrill around here) is not that people are skeptical, who wouldn’t be? It’s that t

What continues to surprise me about the shitcoin-skepticism (which verges on shrill around here) is not that people are skeptical, who wouldn’t be? It’s that there’s nothing new here. Maybe I’m just old, but I remember the late 90s and the 2001 wipeout. Companies were doing big IPOs with what we would now call a token white paper, selling garbage to retail investors that promptly went to zero. Under the shining flashlight of any and every Ayn Rand asshole who backed Greenspan in stomping on Brooksley Born over it. But once the garbage collector ran and all the Luna, err, Pets.com garbage had been flushed out, there were a few real things. Google survived that, and in fact picked up all the leftover fiber and engineers and other infrastructure on the cheap. It’ll be the same this time. Most of its garbage, but there will be one or two real things that will make it.

lmm 4y ago
Eh maybe. Sometimes the whole sector really is just bunk. When the Armenian Ponzi schemes fell apart there weren't one or two that really were raking in massive drug profits like they said they were, there was just a whole lot of nothing.
benreesman 4y ago
I could give a shit less about internet points, but I do love hearing contrary opinions. So downvote until you’re heart’s content, but do please comment if you disagree?
- kevinventullo 4y ago
  I didn’t downvote you, but I’m personally pretty skeptical that there is anything of value for me that will come out of cryptocurrencies. Even pets.com offered value for customers, it just wasn’t profitable. For the case of Google, it was always clear that search engines provided value, but Google figured out how to do it way better than its competitors. I’ll be honest, I just haven’t seen a use case for cryptocurrencies that I actually want in my life.
  - benreesman 4y ago
    So I’m also really skeptical of blockchain-panacea. But there are a lot of wicked smart people (like Turing winners and shit) working on the Byzantine distributed consensus problem. It’s by no means solved, but also not proven insoluble, so kind of a toss up. And even if crypto-shitcoin mania did nothing but fund successful research into that problem it would have manifold applications outside of cyber-money. Cyber-money is also kind of cool in that conventional electronic securities markets (which are every bit as crooked btw) don’t really innovate much because there’s no Jobs/Wozniak version of being an electronic financial market participant. When that stuff gets more efficient, everyone’s 401k compounds a little faster. So as a farm league for ARCA there’s some value there. But the main use case that speaks to me is going from “unbanked” to “quite reasonably banked” in remittance scenarios. I live in California and sadly we put most of our crap jobs on semi-legal folks from Central and South America. Speaks a bit to their superior moral fiber that they often work hard to send every spare dollar home. Difficult to do via SWIFT, easy to do via USDC. So, no fanboy here, but it’s not all bullshit.
    - bombcar 4y ago
      I suspect something will come of it but it won’t actually be blockchain in the end. The reason SWIFT is difficult has nothing to do with technological reasons.
      - benreesman 4y ago
        There are both technological and non-technological reasons why you’re lucky to get an international wire done in less than 2-5 days even if you’re the kind of person who has a law firm retained. I don’t mind people having the last word in general, but a vague and inaccurate swipe at one of several substantial points that I raised isn’t really HN style. In the spirit of giving you the last word I’d like to invite you to reply substantially.
        henrikschroder 4y ago
        > an international wire done in less than 2-5 days Uh... What? Every time I transfer money from my US bank account to my European bank account it's the same story. I put in the transfer at Chase, they go "Oh, sorry, the bank is closed now because it's after 3pm in New York, because that's apparently still a thing, but we'll transfer it first thing tomorrow morning." At 6am New York time or whatever, their shitty batch job runs, and seconds later the money is available to me in my EU bank account. A couple of hours later I then get an email from Chase telling me that the money has been sent and I should anticipate it in about three business days. You don't know what you don't know, and most Americans simply have no idea how much US banks suck in an international comparison. SWIFT transfers are instant when your bank doesn't suck.
- twiceaday 4y ago
  It is fine to say "Yeah, yeah, I've already heard all this skepticism" but it is ridiculous to then make the leap "and therefore all of you should stop saying this stuff," which is what your comment reads like. Also, why are you singling out skepticism? Shilling is okay? Why was your comment not just "I can't believe people are still passionate about crypto, I am bored with it, you should be too."
  - benreesman 4y ago
    I’ve made so many comments about why I wish we could go back to arguing about Rust vs C++ or whatever. This thing has been done to death, and the signal-to-noise ratio on it is one of the few instances where HN falls below the Reddit median. People have a real chip on their shoulder about not being rich from owning BTC. I can identify more than most, I personally know a lot of people who have poo that doesn’t stink from owning BTC. But it’s a deeper issue: people on here are wired up as hell over anyone who made serious cash. Which is super weird given that everyone’s all Ayn Rand. I’ve said it before, and I’ll (unfortunately) have to say it again: the only kind of getting rich on here that’s not some kind of sour grapes is via a YC company. Because no one wants a comment history that’s going to fuck up their YC app. And it’s so ironic because if you breathe a bad word about Ayn Rand you get downvoted to grey.
    - notduncansmith 4y ago
      I don’t know how popular Alice (better known as Ayn) is around here. I disagree with a lot of her philosophy and am not charitable with my time to her fans, and I can’t say for certain I’m in a minority. The HN you get really depends on what threads you’re in, and it doesn’t surprise me that her fans show up in crypto threads; that said, I would expect (hope?) off-topic badmouthing of random people to attract downvotes in most threads.
      - benreesman 4y ago
        It’s always a pleasure to run into someone who isn’t playing to the crowd. The ceaseless running gang-tackle of people who haven’t read very much does get tiring at times. Good day to you.

lmm 4y ago

Eh maybe. Sometimes the whole sector really is just bunk. When the Armenian Ponzi schemes fell apart there weren't one or two that really were raking in massive drug profits like they said they were, there was just a whole lot of nothing.

benreesman 4y ago

I could give a shit less about internet points, but I do love hearing contrary opinions. So downvote until you’re heart’s content, but do please comment if you disagree?

kevinventullo 4y ago
I didn’t downvote you, but I’m personally pretty skeptical that there is anything of value for me that will come out of cryptocurrencies. Even pets.com offered value for customers, it just wasn’t profitable. For the case of Google, it was always clear that search engines provided value, but Google figured out how to do it way better than its competitors. I’ll be honest, I just haven’t seen a use case for cryptocurrencies that I actually want in my life.
- benreesman 4y ago
  So I’m also really skeptical of blockchain-panacea. But there are a lot of wicked smart people (like Turing winners and shit) working on the Byzantine distributed consensus problem. It’s by no means solved, but also not proven insoluble, so kind of a toss up. And even if crypto-shitcoin mania did nothing but fund successful research into that problem it would have manifold applications outside of cyber-money. Cyber-money is also kind of cool in that conventional electronic securities markets (which are every bit as crooked btw) don’t really innovate much because there’s no Jobs/Wozniak version of being an electronic financial market participant. When that stuff gets more efficient, everyone’s 401k compounds a little faster. So as a farm league for ARCA there’s some value there. But the main use case that speaks to me is going from “unbanked” to “quite reasonably banked” in remittance scenarios. I live in California and sadly we put most of our crap jobs on semi-legal folks from Central and South America. Speaks a bit to their superior moral fiber that they often work hard to send every spare dollar home. Difficult to do via SWIFT, easy to do via USDC. So, no fanboy here, but it’s not all bullshit.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    I suspect something will come of it but it won’t actually be blockchain in the end. The reason SWIFT is difficult has nothing to do with technological reasons.
    - benreesman 4y ago
      There are both technological and non-technological reasons why you’re lucky to get an international wire done in less than 2-5 days even if you’re the kind of person who has a law firm retained. I don’t mind people having the last word in general, but a vague and inaccurate swipe at one of several substantial points that I raised isn’t really HN style. In the spirit of giving you the last word I’d like to invite you to reply substantially.
      - henrikschroder 4y ago
        > an international wire done in less than 2-5 days Uh... What? Every time I transfer money from my US bank account to my European bank account it's the same story. I put in the transfer at Chase, they go "Oh, sorry, the bank is closed now because it's after 3pm in New York, because that's apparently still a thing, but we'll transfer it first thing tomorrow morning." At 6am New York time or whatever, their shitty batch job runs, and seconds later the money is available to me in my EU bank account. A couple of hours later I then get an email from Chase telling me that the money has been sent and I should anticipate it in about three business days. You don't know what you don't know, and most Americans simply have no idea how much US banks suck in an international comparison. SWIFT transfers are instant when your bank doesn't suck.
twiceaday 4y ago
It is fine to say "Yeah, yeah, I've already heard all this skepticism" but it is ridiculous to then make the leap "and therefore all of you should stop saying this stuff," which is what your comment reads like. Also, why are you singling out skepticism? Shilling is okay? Why was your comment not just "I can't believe people are still passionate about crypto, I am bored with it, you should be too."
- benreesman 4y ago
  I’ve made so many comments about why I wish we could go back to arguing about Rust vs C++ or whatever. This thing has been done to death, and the signal-to-noise ratio on it is one of the few instances where HN falls below the Reddit median. People have a real chip on their shoulder about not being rich from owning BTC. I can identify more than most, I personally know a lot of people who have poo that doesn’t stink from owning BTC. But it’s a deeper issue: people on here are wired up as hell over anyone who made serious cash. Which is super weird given that everyone’s all Ayn Rand. I’ve said it before, and I’ll (unfortunately) have to say it again: the only kind of getting rich on here that’s not some kind of sour grapes is via a YC company. Because no one wants a comment history that’s going to fuck up their YC app. And it’s so ironic because if you breathe a bad word about Ayn Rand you get downvoted to grey.
  - notduncansmith 4y ago
    I don’t know how popular Alice (better known as Ayn) is around here. I disagree with a lot of her philosophy and am not charitable with my time to her fans, and I can’t say for certain I’m in a minority. The HN you get really depends on what threads you’re in, and it doesn’t surprise me that her fans show up in crypto threads; that said, I would expect (hope?) off-topic badmouthing of random people to attract downvotes in most threads.
    - benreesman 4y ago
      It’s always a pleasure to run into someone who isn’t playing to the crowd. The ceaseless running gang-tackle of people who haven’t read very much does get tiring at times. Good day to you.