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So - I love thoughtful criticism. My ego doesn’t, but I generally find it very valuable. This letter is honestly not thoughtful criticism. It reads like a gr

So - I love thoughtful criticism. My ego doesn’t, but I generally find it very valuable. This letter is honestly not thoughtful criticism. It reads like a group of academics and specialists annoyed they were too early to profit from a technology they spent a lot of time thinking about esoterically and avoids specificity in…well… any meaningful way. It also makes no effort to segment the space. If a critical letter created by supposedly credible experts in a field can’t spare a paragraph to delineate between DeFi, NFTs, L1’s, smart contracts, stablecoins, and whatever else is bothering them then I think it’s fair to assume they don’t know the difference. And if they don’t know the difference then why are we even reading this letter? It’s a waste of our time (and theirs) to try and unpack what is pretty clearly frustration at the fact that the effective application of basic research is all that matters for adoption. I think (at its core) everything crypto is a novel economic incentive layer wrapped in a technology package. This creates the opportunity for blazingly fast user feedback loops and incentive alignment that wasn’t possible before (for better or worse). Taken from that perspective, this letter misses basically everything interesting about the potential of Crypto. So. Read it. Form your own opinion. And move on with your day. Gm everyone

mfitzp 4y ago
> annoyed they were too early to profit "na na sore loser" is quite the angle for someone bemoaning a lack of "thoughtful criticism." Do try and grow up.
- martialg 4y ago
  This is somewhat fair. I guess my speculation stems from a lack of substance to poke holes in? Even going line by line beginning with the first real paragraph we find they launch into a classic straw man of rejecting the "industry claims that crypto-assets an innovative technology that is unreservedly good". Nobody with a whiff of tech acumen in crypto thinks or says this. Additionally, anyone not thoroughly anarcho-Libertarian also gets the need for guardrails to squash scams. A scattershot of the other tangible claims in the paper feel pretty similar. "Append-only digital ledgers are not a new innovation. They have been known and used since 1980 for rather limited functions." <- true, but the also can be said for the evolution of AI models and we see where we're finally at with those today. "Blockchain technology cannot, and will not, have transaction reversal mechanisms because they are antithetical to its base design." <- quasi true depending on the chain, but also we can approximate reversibility with clever escrow-like transactions (I'm actually building this full disclosure) "Financial technologies that serve the public must always have mechanisms for fraud mitigation and allow a human-in-the-loop to reverse transactions; blockchain permits neither." <- unequivocally stating blockchain tech can't mitigate fraud in ANY way is silly and reductionist. Deciding human-in-the-loop reversibility is the pinnacle of fraud mitigation is also pretty wild considered how much effort and resources developers just on HN put into removing humans from their process execution loops. "Finally, blockchain technologies facilitate few, if any, real-economy uses." <- partially true in the present tense (similar to how everything has to be adopted before it reaches mass adoption), but glaringly narrow minded if considering potential uses. Anywhere there is asymmetric trust and power between transacting parties one can imagine the possibility of an application! Not to say its necessarily the best use case, but the lack of effort of consideration seems intentional. There's more, but I hope this provides some context to my initial post
- AbrahamParangi 4y ago
  One does have to wonder if the level of vitriol around crypto would be quite so high if it was merely popular and had not made some people a lot of money.
  - mfitzp 4y ago
    Does one? Because that's a line straight out of the MLM playbook. One might also "wonder" why the only people with positive things to say about cryptocurrency are those with a vested interest in its success. That's not true of any other technology.
    - AbrahamParangi 4y ago
      Well, I guess if you don't want to think about it then you don't have to.
ryan_lane 4y ago
> If a critical letter created by supposedly credible experts in a field can’t spare a paragraph to delineate between DeFi, NFTs, L1’s, smart contracts, stablecoins, and whatever else is bothering them then I think it’s fair to assume they don’t know the difference. DeFi is a scam to let crypto gamblers avoid taxes on their gains by taking profits as a "loan". The space is filled with unrealistic interest rates, and in general is a scam. See stablegains as a good example of this fraud. NFTs are essentially a way to do money laundering with "art". The market, as a whole, is predatory, and is dominated by artwork stolen from legitimate artists who didn't mint the NFTs. It's mostly already collapsed, and essentially no one is making money on secondary sales. The space is filled with wash trading, often by the trading platforms or their employees directly. I don't see what L1s have to do with the conversation. No matter the layer, the same criticisms apply, because ultimately, they roll back to the L1. Smart contracts don't actually fulfill their basic premise. They don't replace normal legal contracts, and they can't stay in sync with real world assets. Nearly every day one of these contracts is owned and everyone loses their money. They're also incredibly inefficient and expensive. Stablecoins have proven to need very strict regulation, and in reality a bank charter should be required to run one. Tether alone shows that they're a very serious problem, though the recent issues with Terra/Luna also show their general problem. The entire stack, from top to bottom, is built on unfulfilled promises, and their very existence introduces new, horrible problems for us to deal with. For example, ransomware is simply not possible at its current scale without cryptocurrency.
- dropnerd 4y ago
  > defi is a scam [for] avoiding taxes using defi to minimize tax burden is neither a scam nor unethical. plenty of people borrow against their houses or stocks. > nfts are dominated by stolen pieces most nft volume is made of bored ape yacht club, moonbirds, doodles, and similar properly licensed pieces. > smart contracts don't replace legal contracts right, they allow you to transact trustlessly for defi and nfts. > stablecoins [should require] bank charter https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-13/circle-bank-charter-application-coming-in-near-future https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-13/circle-ba...

mfitzp 4y ago

> annoyed they were too early to profit "na na sore loser" is quite the angle for someone bemoaning a lack of "thoughtful criticism." Do try and grow up.

martialg 4y ago
This is somewhat fair. I guess my speculation stems from a lack of substance to poke holes in? Even going line by line beginning with the first real paragraph we find they launch into a classic straw man of rejecting the "industry claims that crypto-assets an innovative technology that is unreservedly good". Nobody with a whiff of tech acumen in crypto thinks or says this. Additionally, anyone not thoroughly anarcho-Libertarian also gets the need for guardrails to squash scams. A scattershot of the other tangible claims in the paper feel pretty similar. "Append-only digital ledgers are not a new innovation. They have been known and used since 1980 for rather limited functions." <- true, but the also can be said for the evolution of AI models and we see where we're finally at with those today. "Blockchain technology cannot, and will not, have transaction reversal mechanisms because they are antithetical to its base design." <- quasi true depending on the chain, but also we can approximate reversibility with clever escrow-like transactions (I'm actually building this full disclosure) "Financial technologies that serve the public must always have mechanisms for fraud mitigation and allow a human-in-the-loop to reverse transactions; blockchain permits neither." <- unequivocally stating blockchain tech can't mitigate fraud in ANY way is silly and reductionist. Deciding human-in-the-loop reversibility is the pinnacle of fraud mitigation is also pretty wild considered how much effort and resources developers just on HN put into removing humans from their process execution loops. "Finally, blockchain technologies facilitate few, if any, real-economy uses." <- partially true in the present tense (similar to how everything has to be adopted before it reaches mass adoption), but glaringly narrow minded if considering potential uses. Anywhere there is asymmetric trust and power between transacting parties one can imagine the possibility of an application! Not to say its necessarily the best use case, but the lack of effort of consideration seems intentional. There's more, but I hope this provides some context to my initial post
AbrahamParangi 4y ago
One does have to wonder if the level of vitriol around crypto would be quite so high if it was merely popular and had not made some people a lot of money.
- mfitzp 4y ago
  Does one? Because that's a line straight out of the MLM playbook. One might also "wonder" why the only people with positive things to say about cryptocurrency are those with a vested interest in its success. That's not true of any other technology.
  - AbrahamParangi 4y ago
    Well, I guess if you don't want to think about it then you don't have to.

ryan_lane 4y ago

> If a critical letter created by supposedly credible experts in a field can’t spare a paragraph to delineate between DeFi, NFTs, L1’s, smart contracts, stablecoins, and whatever else is bothering them then I think it’s fair to assume they don’t know the difference. DeFi is a scam to let crypto gamblers avoid taxes on their gains by taking profits as a "loan". The space is filled with unrealistic interest rates, and in general is a scam. See stablegains as a good example of this fraud. NFTs are essentially a way to do money laundering with "art". The market, as a whole, is predatory, and is dominated by artwork stolen from legitimate artists who didn't mint the NFTs. It's mostly already collapsed, and essentially no one is making money on secondary sales. The space is filled with wash trading, often by the trading platforms or their employees directly. I don't see what L1s have to do with the conversation. No matter the layer, the same criticisms apply, because ultimately, they roll back to the L1. Smart contracts don't actually fulfill their basic premise. They don't replace normal legal contracts, and they can't stay in sync with real world assets. Nearly every day one of these contracts is owned and everyone loses their money. They're also incredibly inefficient and expensive. Stablecoins have proven to need very strict regulation, and in reality a bank charter should be required to run one. Tether alone shows that they're a very serious problem, though the recent issues with Terra/Luna also show their general problem. The entire stack, from top to bottom, is built on unfulfilled promises, and their very existence introduces new, horrible problems for us to deal with. For example, ransomware is simply not possible at its current scale without cryptocurrency.

dropnerd 4y ago
> defi is a scam [for] avoiding taxes using defi to minimize tax burden is neither a scam nor unethical. plenty of people borrow against their houses or stocks. > nfts are dominated by stolen pieces most nft volume is made of bored ape yacht club, moonbirds, doodles, and similar properly licensed pieces. > smart contracts don't replace legal contracts right, they allow you to transact trustlessly for defi and nfts. > stablecoins [should require] bank charter https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-13/circle-bank-charter-application-coming-in-near-future https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-13/circle-ba...