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This is precisely the phenomenon that happens in HN with cryptocurrency-related topics. The stupid cousins of crypto (scams, ponzis, pump-and-dumps) have activa
by jsutton 4y ago
This is precisely the phenomenon that happens in HN with cryptocurrency-related topics. The stupid cousins of crypto (scams, ponzis, pump-and-dumps) have activated a heuristic in an intelligent body of people, leading to a blanket dismissal of crypto products.
Others (like myself) get defensive when their convictions are dismissed out of hand. And hence crypto/blockchain threads here tend to be the most polarizing.
- pragmatic 4y agoCan you point me to the legitimate usages of cryptocurrency?
- brrrrrm 4y ago“a system for electronic transactions without relying on trust.“ - From the original Bitcoin paper.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y agoThere is always some measure of trust involved in any transaction. The really hard problems of trust in transactions aren’t really about actual transfer of currency but stuff related stuff like can I change my mind, am I getting what I think I paid for, etc. Bitcoin, at great resource cost, tries to solve the problem of trust that most people don’t actually have.
- jsutton 4y agoAs the list would take me ages to write down, here are a few obvious ones: - Global financial settlement, including multi-party and Very Large sums, in under an hour for a few dollars. - Collateralized permissionless loans - Global Open-source computing in a shared execution environment - Proof of ownership that's quickly verifiable - Insurance settlements There's a limitless amount of bespoke use cases as well, as we'll continue to see pop up over the next decade.