5 ms·

From: https://twitter.com/smdiehl/status/1531920908696358912 https://twitter.com/smdiehl/status/1531920908696358912 Today the global community of technologists

From: https://twitter.com/smdiehl/status/1531920908696358912 https://twitter.com/smdiehl/status/1531920908696358912 Today the global community of technologists sent a letter to Congress urging them to resist the crypto industry’s lobbying influence. The letter was signed by some of the most respected scholars and technologists in our field. And now we need your help. Crypto fraud is spiraling out of control. So-called "web3" is not going great. Regulators are paralyzed and people are getting hurt left and right. It's on us as citizens and responsible engineers to help fix the problem we created by our inaction. https://web3isgoinggreat.com/ https://web3isgoinggreat.com/ Crypto lobby is spending millions to tell leaders that crypto-assets are "innovation" and all fintech innovation is unqualifiedly good, no matter the human cost. Today we set the record straight on what computer scientists really think about blockchain. https://twitter.com/JorgeStolfi/status/1522011168604409856 https://twitter.com/JorgeStolfi/status/1522011168604409856 "The claims that the blockchain advocates make are not true," said Bruce Schneier. "It's not secure, it's not decentralised. Any system where you forget your password and you lose your life savings is not a safe system," he added. "The computational power is equivalent to what you could do in a centralised way with a $100 computer," said Miguel de Icaza. "We’re essentially wasting millions of dollars’ worth of equipment because we’ve decided that we don’t trust the banking system." The externalities related to crypto investments are neither isolated nor are they growing pains of a nascent tech. They are the inevitable outcomes of a technology that is not built for purpose and will remain forever unsuitable as a foundation for large-scale economic activity. Our call to action is simple. If you are a computer scientist or developer concerned about this issue, we're opening the letter to the wider tech community to sign and tell our policymakers that enough is enough, the status quo has to change. Read the letter and sign at https://concerned.tech/ https://concerned.tech/

rvz 4y ago
Seems to be going great for Stripe [0] and Moneygram [1] and FIDE Online Arena [2], but obviously crypto-skeptics and crypto-maximalists will not tell you that. Perhaps these companies waited for this executive order: [3] to go through before getting back into using cryptocurrencies. The reality is that both the hard crypto-skeptics and the crypto-maximalists will be disappointed in achieving their utopian goals of fully stopping crypto and also gaining full adoption of it. Only a few of them will survive the test of time and further regulations. [0] https://stripe.com/blog/expanding-global-payouts-with-crypto https://stripe.com/blog/expanding-global-payouts-with-crypto [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-05-29/moneygram-ceo-sees-a-future-in-stablecoin-remittances https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-05-29/moneygram... [2] https://www.bloomberg.com/press-releases/2020-06-23/algorand-to-record-official-chess-ratings-for-fide-online-arena-s-first-ever-digital-games https://www.bloomberg.com/press-releases/2020-06-23/algorand... [3] https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/03/09/fact-sheet-president-biden-to-sign-executive-order-on-ensuring-responsible-innovation-in-digital-assets/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases...
- Kbelicius 4y ago
  > Seems to be going great for Stripe [0] and Moneygram [1] and FIDE Online Arena [2], but obviously crypto-skeptics and crypto-maximalists will not tell you that. It must be going disastrously when your 3 examples of things going grate are a start of a pilot project, an announcement of a project and what seems to amount to a sponsorship deal. And you wonder why people don't speak more widely about it.
  - rvz 4y ago
    So those 3 projects I linked to have all been scrapped, abandoned or cancelled?, which would qualify your claim as what you described as 'going disastrously' assuming you have read the whole article and its links then? Can you at least backup your claims on them 'going disastrously' and being cancelled, scrapped or abandoned rather than making very unsubstantiated and baseless claims? Since I have already backed up my claims with links that these projects are still alive? > And you wonder why people don't speak more widely about it. Or is it because these companies know that the ones they selected are suitable for their use cases and are compliant with regulations and are not part of this extreme 'all cryptocurrencies is scam, ponzi, planet incinerating' narrative that these 'technologists' are pushing?
    - Kbelicius 4y ago
      > Since I have already backed up my claims with links that these projects are still alive? No you did not. You provided a link to a closed pilot project that started a month ago, technically not alive and no way for you to know if it is going great. A link to an announcement of starting a project in the future, so not alive and no way for you to know that it is going great. Finally you provided a link to a "project" that amounts to nothing more than a sponsorship deal.
      - rvz 4y ago
        Yes I have. There is a problem with your goal-post moving, dodging questions and continuous denial as an attempt to escape my questions. > You provided a link to a closed pilot project that started a month ago, technically not alive and no way for you to know if it is going great. So "technically" it is not cancelled, scrapped or abandoned then and the project is still alive. Yes or No? Where is this 'disaster' you are speaking of since they are still launching it? It seems you have admitted that it is still alive and going great by attempting to deny and shift the goal posts! > A link to an announcement of starting a project in the future, so not alive and no way for you to know that it is going great. In that link as of today, who is the partner that is using this crypto payouts product right now? Has that one been cancelled too? > Finally you provided a link to a "project" that amounts to nothing more than a sponsorship deal. And since then somehow they didn't use it and it was cancelled or abandoned, therefore a 'disaster' and they are not using it? My suspicions suggest that you read as far as the headline. So not only you have just admitted that you're yet to read them, none of your responses are a refutation to my claims as you continue to dodge the fact that these projects are still alive and once again unable to give a single link to backup your own so-called claims of all of them going 'disastrously'.
dubswithus 4y ago
If all blockchain is bad because 99.9% of tokens fail, why wouldn’t all startups be bad since a similar number fail as well?
- suriyaG 4y ago
  I think, Because startup investment is regulated and not accessible to any average joe. Else, we'd be overrun with conmen trying to make a quick buck. Not that we have less of them now.
  - leftbrain 4y ago
    Is startup investing really regulated, or is it just your mom and dad and nobody else who have heard about your statup? - ”Dad, all I need is 10k loan” - ”I will give you the money, son. And I’ll see you in court if it doesn’t work out.”
    - igorkraw 4y ago
      Securities are regulated, snd startups which try to collect cash from the public become securities
      - dubswithus 4y ago
        The government is letting crowd funding happen and the public can still lose a lot of money even when there are disclosures.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - dubswithus 4y ago
    WeFunder and StartEngine are accessible to the average person.
- pjc50 4y ago
  There's a reason random startups aren't allowed to make IPOs directly to the public, and attempts to circumvent this with ICOs got the hammer brought down on them.
dqpb 4y ago
You could replace “crypto” with “web” and it would make these statements equally broad and absurd.
- jameshart 4y ago
  This is the very definition of a shallow dismissal. You are trying to insinuate that people who believe crypto is bad technology and bad for society, are doing the equivalent of arguing that the web is bad technology and bad for society. But 1) the arguments against crypto are specific to crypto; 2) the very people who are arguing against crypto are the same people who have been the most vocal advocates of an open web; 3) this is a dismissal from a technologist perspective of the finance industry's self-interested pro-crypto lobbying - there's no obvious parallel of an industry lobbying for 'pro-web' policy over technologists' objections that you can analogize this to. If anything, web-related regulatory discussions in the 1990s were the opposite - entrenched industries lobbying against technological arguments.
  - dqpb 4y ago
    > This is the very definition of a shallow dismissal Short and succinct is not the same as shallow. > You are trying to insinuate that people who believe crypto is bad technology and bad for society, are doing the equivalent of arguing that the web is bad technology and bad for society. I’m not insinuating anything, I’m explicitly saying that is the case. > 1) the arguments against crypto are specific to crypto “Crypto” is so broad, there’s no such thing as an argument specific to crypto. Are you saying all crypto-related data structures, protocols, and algorithms are de-facto bad for society (and thereby anything that stems from them)? If so, that argument sounds blatantly absurd to me. And if not, then your argument is so non-specific it’s meaningless.
    - mfitzp 4y ago
      > Short and succinct is not the same as shallow. No it isn't. Which is presumably why they didn't use those words.
    - johnmcgee 4y ago
usrn 4y ago
There are plenty of far worse life destroying scams that we don't regulate. Variable interest rate loans are a huge example.
- jameshart 4y ago
  Variable interest rate loans are very tightly regulated. You could argue 'not tightly enough', but personal loans in general are probably one of the most tightly regulated industries there is.
  - usrn 4y ago
    If they're legal at all they're probably not tightly regulated enough. They're certainly not well regulated enough now, you have morons on YouTube telling each other to buy investment properties with HELOC loans. IMO that's a far larger issue than people blowing money on worthless crypto tokens.
gfodor 4y ago
> It's on us as citizens and responsible engineers to help fix the problem we created by our inaction. Engineers don't fix problems by begging the government to create laws that will throw people in jail for using a given technology in a way they don't like.
glerk 4y ago
> Today the global community of technologists sent a letter to Congress Bullshit. As a member of the "global community of technologists", I sent no such letter to Congress nor did I appoint anyone to send a letter on my behalf. I don't even see a point in addressing the same old anti-crypto arguments contained in the letter. The real story here is the presumption of these self-appointed "respected scholars and technologists".
- forum_ghost 4y ago
  Here is what a fairly prominent member of the global community of technologists, DHH, who is a known Bitcoin-sceptic thinks now: https://world.hey.com/dhh/i-was-wrong-we-need-crypto-587ccb03 https://world.hey.com/dhh/i-was-wrong-we-need-crypto-587ccb0...

rvz 4y ago

Seems to be going great for Stripe [0] and Moneygram [1] and FIDE Online Arena [2], but obviously crypto-skeptics and crypto-maximalists will not tell you that. Perhaps these companies waited for this executive order: [3] to go through before getting back into using cryptocurrencies. The reality is that both the hard crypto-skeptics and the crypto-maximalists will be disappointed in achieving their utopian goals of fully stopping crypto and also gaining full adoption of it. Only a few of them will survive the test of time and further regulations. [0] https://stripe.com/blog/expanding-global-payouts-with-crypto https://stripe.com/blog/expanding-global-payouts-with-crypto [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-05-29/moneygram-ceo-sees-a-future-in-stablecoin-remittances https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-05-29/moneygram... [2] https://www.bloomberg.com/press-releases/2020-06-23/algorand-to-record-official-chess-ratings-for-fide-online-arena-s-first-ever-digital-games https://www.bloomberg.com/press-releases/2020-06-23/algorand... [3] https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/03/09/fact-sheet-president-biden-to-sign-executive-order-on-ensuring-responsible-innovation-in-digital-assets/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases...

Kbelicius 4y ago
> Seems to be going great for Stripe [0] and Moneygram [1] and FIDE Online Arena [2], but obviously crypto-skeptics and crypto-maximalists will not tell you that. It must be going disastrously when your 3 examples of things going grate are a start of a pilot project, an announcement of a project and what seems to amount to a sponsorship deal. And you wonder why people don't speak more widely about it.
- rvz 4y ago
  So those 3 projects I linked to have all been scrapped, abandoned or cancelled?, which would qualify your claim as what you described as 'going disastrously' assuming you have read the whole article and its links then? Can you at least backup your claims on them 'going disastrously' and being cancelled, scrapped or abandoned rather than making very unsubstantiated and baseless claims? Since I have already backed up my claims with links that these projects are still alive? > And you wonder why people don't speak more widely about it. Or is it because these companies know that the ones they selected are suitable for their use cases and are compliant with regulations and are not part of this extreme 'all cryptocurrencies is scam, ponzi, planet incinerating' narrative that these 'technologists' are pushing?
  - Kbelicius 4y ago
    > Since I have already backed up my claims with links that these projects are still alive? No you did not. You provided a link to a closed pilot project that started a month ago, technically not alive and no way for you to know if it is going great. A link to an announcement of starting a project in the future, so not alive and no way for you to know that it is going great. Finally you provided a link to a "project" that amounts to nothing more than a sponsorship deal.
    - rvz 4y ago
      Yes I have. There is a problem with your goal-post moving, dodging questions and continuous denial as an attempt to escape my questions. > You provided a link to a closed pilot project that started a month ago, technically not alive and no way for you to know if it is going great. So "technically" it is not cancelled, scrapped or abandoned then and the project is still alive. Yes or No? Where is this 'disaster' you are speaking of since they are still launching it? It seems you have admitted that it is still alive and going great by attempting to deny and shift the goal posts! > A link to an announcement of starting a project in the future, so not alive and no way for you to know that it is going great. In that link as of today, who is the partner that is using this crypto payouts product right now? Has that one been cancelled too? > Finally you provided a link to a "project" that amounts to nothing more than a sponsorship deal. And since then somehow they didn't use it and it was cancelled or abandoned, therefore a 'disaster' and they are not using it? My suspicions suggest that you read as far as the headline. So not only you have just admitted that you're yet to read them, none of your responses are a refutation to my claims as you continue to dodge the fact that these projects are still alive and once again unable to give a single link to backup your own so-called claims of all of them going 'disastrously'.

dubswithus 4y ago

If all blockchain is bad because 99.9% of tokens fail, why wouldn’t all startups be bad since a similar number fail as well?

suriyaG 4y ago
I think, Because startup investment is regulated and not accessible to any average joe. Else, we'd be overrun with conmen trying to make a quick buck. Not that we have less of them now.
- leftbrain 4y ago
  Is startup investing really regulated, or is it just your mom and dad and nobody else who have heard about your statup? - ”Dad, all I need is 10k loan” - ”I will give you the money, son. And I’ll see you in court if it doesn’t work out.”
  - igorkraw 4y ago
    Securities are regulated, snd startups which try to collect cash from the public become securities
    - dubswithus 4y ago
      The government is letting crowd funding happen and the public can still lose a lot of money even when there are disclosures.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- dubswithus 4y ago
  WeFunder and StartEngine are accessible to the average person.
pjc50 4y ago
There's a reason random startups aren't allowed to make IPOs directly to the public, and attempts to circumvent this with ICOs got the hammer brought down on them.

dqpb 4y ago

You could replace “crypto” with “web” and it would make these statements equally broad and absurd.

jameshart 4y ago
This is the very definition of a shallow dismissal. You are trying to insinuate that people who believe crypto is bad technology and bad for society, are doing the equivalent of arguing that the web is bad technology and bad for society. But 1) the arguments against crypto are specific to crypto; 2) the very people who are arguing against crypto are the same people who have been the most vocal advocates of an open web; 3) this is a dismissal from a technologist perspective of the finance industry's self-interested pro-crypto lobbying - there's no obvious parallel of an industry lobbying for 'pro-web' policy over technologists' objections that you can analogize this to. If anything, web-related regulatory discussions in the 1990s were the opposite - entrenched industries lobbying against technological arguments.
- dqpb 4y ago
  > This is the very definition of a shallow dismissal Short and succinct is not the same as shallow. > You are trying to insinuate that people who believe crypto is bad technology and bad for society, are doing the equivalent of arguing that the web is bad technology and bad for society. I’m not insinuating anything, I’m explicitly saying that is the case. > 1) the arguments against crypto are specific to crypto “Crypto” is so broad, there’s no such thing as an argument specific to crypto. Are you saying all crypto-related data structures, protocols, and algorithms are de-facto bad for society (and thereby anything that stems from them)? If so, that argument sounds blatantly absurd to me. And if not, then your argument is so non-specific it’s meaningless.
  - mfitzp 4y ago
    > Short and succinct is not the same as shallow. No it isn't. Which is presumably why they didn't use those words.
  - johnmcgee 4y ago

usrn 4y ago

There are plenty of far worse life destroying scams that we don't regulate. Variable interest rate loans are a huge example.

jameshart 4y ago
Variable interest rate loans are very tightly regulated. You could argue 'not tightly enough', but personal loans in general are probably one of the most tightly regulated industries there is.
- usrn 4y ago
  If they're legal at all they're probably not tightly regulated enough. They're certainly not well regulated enough now, you have morons on YouTube telling each other to buy investment properties with HELOC loans. IMO that's a far larger issue than people blowing money on worthless crypto tokens.

gfodor 4y ago

> It's on us as citizens and responsible engineers to help fix the problem we created by our inaction. Engineers don't fix problems by begging the government to create laws that will throw people in jail for using a given technology in a way they don't like.

glerk 4y ago

> Today the global community of technologists sent a letter to Congress Bullshit. As a member of the "global community of technologists", I sent no such letter to Congress nor did I appoint anyone to send a letter on my behalf. I don't even see a point in addressing the same old anti-crypto arguments contained in the letter. The real story here is the presumption of these self-appointed "respected scholars and technologists".

forum_ghost 4y ago
Here is what a fairly prominent member of the global community of technologists, DHH, who is a known Bitcoin-sceptic thinks now: https://world.hey.com/dhh/i-was-wrong-we-need-crypto-587ccb03 https://world.hey.com/dhh/i-was-wrong-we-need-crypto-587ccb0...