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Cryptocurrency don’t need defense. I think that people outside of cryptocurrency communities don’t realise how accepted the technology is within them. HN is bei

Cryptocurrency don’t need defense. I think that people outside of cryptocurrency communities don’t realise how accepted the technology is within them. HN is being misled into thinking they are widely hated

mrcus 4y ago
samvher 4y ago
Accepted in what sense? Everyone I know who is involved with cryptocurrencies is so for “investment”, not for other kinds of usage.
- bowsamic 4y ago
  Accepted as a speculation asset, yes
AlexandrB 4y ago
Saying that cryptocurrency is widely accepted within cryptocurrency communities seems tautological. Meanwhile many attempts to force NFTs into games have been met with a lot of pushback from the "general" gaming public. I think it's fair to say that there's definitely a group of people for whom cryptocurrency is a "no way, no how" issue. Whether this group is large enough to justify the "widely" in "widely hated" is open to debate.
kkielhofner 4y ago
The truth is they’re completely irrelevant to 99% of the internet population. Pick the top 20 coins. Look at their respective block explorers and check tx/day, unique address/day, etc. You’ll quickly come to the conclusion that maybe 100M people actually use cryptocurrencies in any meaningful way. The internet has 5B users. Cryptocurrency use is irrelevant. The cryptocurrency debate in technical circles reminds me of two extremely obscure religious sects screaming at each other while meanwhile the rest of the world doesn’t know either of them exists.
- bowsamic 4y ago
  There are huge crypto.com ads plastered over every F1 track, I don't think this is extremely obscure stuff. I've encountered a lot of non tech people who own crypto. I saw some number somewhere that estimated that around 17% of Ukrainians own crypto, with similar numbers for other countries. The idea that it is an extremely obscure thing also seems like a function of being in a HN tech bubble. There are crypto ads and exchanges everywhere
  - kkielhofner 4y ago
    Owning crypto != actually using it. Exchanges run private order books like any other investment org. People trading (gambling?) one ticker symbol (crypto or not) vs another (crypto or not) has absolutely nothing to do with real world use or utility. I can watch the Euro move up and down on forex and buy/sell to make money in my currency of choice while never touching a Euro, using it for anything, or having any real long term confidence, understanding, or belief in anything Euro or European related. I just know it made me X in USD this day/week/month and that's all I care about. Fill in EUR with BTC, ETH, etc. No one on exchanges cares about anything other than what it means for them in their local currency. The use of exchanges is a get rich quick scheme not unlike penny stocks in the late 80s/early 90s or dot coms in the late 90s. In the late 90s very few in the general population jumping on dot com stocks had any idea what the hell any of it meant. They just heard a story about someone making $100k in a day and wanted in. Look at the FOMO ads during the SuperBowl... There was zero value or utility demonstrated and 100% of the messaging was "everyone else is getting rich quick at crypto.com so don't miss out". Their fees (in real money) are absolutely bonkers so of course they're doing everything they can to bring people in. Have you seen Wolf of Wall Street? There's a scene where the main character gets taken to lunch by an experienced broker. Long story short the lesson was this: "Fuck the clients. Best case scenario let them think they're getting rich on paper while meanwhile we take home cold hard cash every time they trade via commission." Be careful with surveys you "read somewhere"... The often cited "300 million crypto users worldwide" stat[0] (for example) comes from a blockchain payments company (surely they're unbiased, right?) that for some reason estimated this number from a Central Bank of Canada phone survey extrapolated to the worldwide population... It's really interesting that whenever I bring up blockchain explorers and the fact that blockchain has the most transparent and reliable adoption metrics ever no one takes me up on an analysis of the data and deflects to virtually anything else instead. Adoption and use data is there without bias. It requires some interpretation to determine something more akin to MAU/DAU but even very generous measure will show that 13 years after the launch of bitcoin blockchain is the most poorly adopted technology platform in recent history[1]. 0 - https://triple-a.io/crypto-ownership/ https://triple-a.io/crypto-ownership/ 1 - https://blog.cryptostars.is/blockchain-the-most-poorly-adopted-platform-in-recent-history-6f5d97f7d51f https://blog.cryptostars.is/blockchain-the-most-poorly-adopt...

mrcus 4y ago

samvher 4y ago

Accepted in what sense? Everyone I know who is involved with cryptocurrencies is so for “investment”, not for other kinds of usage.

bowsamic 4y ago
Accepted as a speculation asset, yes

AlexandrB 4y ago

Saying that cryptocurrency is widely accepted within cryptocurrency communities seems tautological. Meanwhile many attempts to force NFTs into games have been met with a lot of pushback from the "general" gaming public. I think it's fair to say that there's definitely a group of people for whom cryptocurrency is a "no way, no how" issue. Whether this group is large enough to justify the "widely" in "widely hated" is open to debate.

kkielhofner 4y ago

The truth is they’re completely irrelevant to 99% of the internet population. Pick the top 20 coins. Look at their respective block explorers and check tx/day, unique address/day, etc. You’ll quickly come to the conclusion that maybe 100M people actually use cryptocurrencies in any meaningful way. The internet has 5B users. Cryptocurrency use is irrelevant. The cryptocurrency debate in technical circles reminds me of two extremely obscure religious sects screaming at each other while meanwhile the rest of the world doesn’t know either of them exists.

bowsamic 4y ago
There are huge crypto.com ads plastered over every F1 track, I don't think this is extremely obscure stuff. I've encountered a lot of non tech people who own crypto. I saw some number somewhere that estimated that around 17% of Ukrainians own crypto, with similar numbers for other countries. The idea that it is an extremely obscure thing also seems like a function of being in a HN tech bubble. There are crypto ads and exchanges everywhere
- kkielhofner 4y ago
  Owning crypto != actually using it. Exchanges run private order books like any other investment org. People trading (gambling?) one ticker symbol (crypto or not) vs another (crypto or not) has absolutely nothing to do with real world use or utility. I can watch the Euro move up and down on forex and buy/sell to make money in my currency of choice while never touching a Euro, using it for anything, or having any real long term confidence, understanding, or belief in anything Euro or European related. I just know it made me X in USD this day/week/month and that's all I care about. Fill in EUR with BTC, ETH, etc. No one on exchanges cares about anything other than what it means for them in their local currency. The use of exchanges is a get rich quick scheme not unlike penny stocks in the late 80s/early 90s or dot coms in the late 90s. In the late 90s very few in the general population jumping on dot com stocks had any idea what the hell any of it meant. They just heard a story about someone making $100k in a day and wanted in. Look at the FOMO ads during the SuperBowl... There was zero value or utility demonstrated and 100% of the messaging was "everyone else is getting rich quick at crypto.com so don't miss out". Their fees (in real money) are absolutely bonkers so of course they're doing everything they can to bring people in. Have you seen Wolf of Wall Street? There's a scene where the main character gets taken to lunch by an experienced broker. Long story short the lesson was this: "Fuck the clients. Best case scenario let them think they're getting rich on paper while meanwhile we take home cold hard cash every time they trade via commission." Be careful with surveys you "read somewhere"... The often cited "300 million crypto users worldwide" stat[0] (for example) comes from a blockchain payments company (surely they're unbiased, right?) that for some reason estimated this number from a Central Bank of Canada phone survey extrapolated to the worldwide population... It's really interesting that whenever I bring up blockchain explorers and the fact that blockchain has the most transparent and reliable adoption metrics ever no one takes me up on an analysis of the data and deflects to virtually anything else instead. Adoption and use data is there without bias. It requires some interpretation to determine something more akin to MAU/DAU but even very generous measure will show that 13 years after the launch of bitcoin blockchain is the most poorly adopted technology platform in recent history[1]. 0 - https://triple-a.io/crypto-ownership/ https://triple-a.io/crypto-ownership/ 1 - https://blog.cryptostars.is/blockchain-the-most-poorly-adopted-platform-in-recent-history-6f5d97f7d51f https://blog.cryptostars.is/blockchain-the-most-poorly-adopt...