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It's hilarious how HN is consistently wrong, even on tech-heavy subjects. No bright minds popping up here tbh. You can glean some interesting stuff from this. T

It's hilarious how HN is consistently wrong, even on tech-heavy subjects. No bright minds popping up here tbh. You can glean some interesting stuff from this. The hive mind was wrong on dropbox, seemingly wrong on this, and they are likely wrong on blockchain today.

asutekku 4y ago
It's been over 10 years and we still don't have a decent usecase for blockchain outside of crypto.
- medo-bear 4y ago
  there has been a huge use-case the whole time: decentralized accounting / banking some people see value in this some people perhaps not
  - kranke155 4y ago
    Not to mention NFTs, but it seems impossible to convince the HN crowd that there is a real art market in them, with real buyers and real artists using it. Any attempt to demonstrate this is met with wild leaps of logic - it's wash trading, it's not big enough, it's all a scam. I point to Beeple, Wes Cockx, DeeWay sales and all they tell me is it must all be a fraud. I show them markets with vibrant activity - Versum, FXhash, Foundation - and all I get is repetitions of memes around how NFTs are dead.
    - DrScientist 4y ago
      Successful scams have customers - the presence of people putting in money isn't a defining trait. However I do think it's a bit harsh to call these things a scam - I mean take the art market itself - value is entirely subjective - doesn't mean it's a scam ( though scamming things happen in the normal art market to try and inflation prices ). The question you have to ask yourself is: Are you buying the NFT as an investment - because you think other people will value it, or are you spending the money because you are quite happy to own that thing forever and never sell - ie the value is to you. I'd argue if you are doing the former you are more likely to be 'scammed' than the latter.
      - kranke155 4y ago
        I buy art for my art collection. They happen to be NFTs. I also purchase physical art.
      - ShamelessC 4y ago
        NFT’s are fungible in practice, is the root of the issue.
  - DrScientist 4y ago
    For most people this has little value. The centralised banking model is cost efficient and for most people trust isn't an issue. The modern world runs on trust. Also if I want to trade anonymously there is always cash ( as least for now ), which is a simple, well understood, near universally accepted mechanism. There are niches where decentralized banking is useful - but they are niches - and many of them are associated with dubious activity. On top of that the current tech plaforms simply don't scale - the cost of replacing simple trusted parties with technology is huge.
    - medo-bear 4y ago
      > For most people this has little value for most people in the US or the world? i think everywhere banks rank amongst the most disliked institutions
      - idontpost 4y ago
        That doesn't make being "not a bank" valuable.
      - 8note 4y ago
        Blockchain asks the question: what if you couldn't regulate the banks through democracy? Which would imply that people love banks and want them to be even more powerful.
        medo-bear 4y ago
        ok
- throwaway98797 4y ago
  the global username by ethereum name service (ENS) see fallon.eth
medo-bear 4y ago
> No bright minds popping up here tbh i think that's harsh. why would you even expect an aggregate sentiment of hn to indicate where to invest one's money. on the other hand it might be worth pointing out that y combinator supports plenty of blockchain projects
koshnaranek 4y ago
It just shows that predicting the future is really difficult. It's also not logical why HN being wrong in one case means it will be wrong in another.
- kranke155 4y ago
  It shows that there is groupthink at play and that the overall HN commentary on subjects, even when they should know better (tech), is not particularly correct. Being wrong once is one thing, but HN commentary seems consistently wrong on a whole litany of topics. The biggest source of bad hot takes seems to be something new/different. HN seems to be consistently conservative. It’s a shame because I used to think that i would gain some insight on future trends from the fact that a lot of the people who comment here are in tech, but now I’m not so convinced.
webmobdev 4y ago
That's because it is hard to discern what is shilling and what is a real / expert opinion. Shilling happens here on HN, like it does on every social media platform / discussion forum. It doesn't help that we can't call out suspected shilling on HN as it is against the rule. But that rule makes sense because suspicion is not proof, and it would just bring down the quality of discussion here if everyone of us accuses the other of shilling :). (And as someone once pointed out to me, sometimes these shillings are not necessarily from the marketing team but from employees and shareholders here, who have a vested interest in seeing the company do well.)

asutekku 4y ago

It's been over 10 years and we still don't have a decent usecase for blockchain outside of crypto.

medo-bear 4y ago
there has been a huge use-case the whole time: decentralized accounting / banking some people see value in this some people perhaps not
- kranke155 4y ago
  Not to mention NFTs, but it seems impossible to convince the HN crowd that there is a real art market in them, with real buyers and real artists using it. Any attempt to demonstrate this is met with wild leaps of logic - it's wash trading, it's not big enough, it's all a scam. I point to Beeple, Wes Cockx, DeeWay sales and all they tell me is it must all be a fraud. I show them markets with vibrant activity - Versum, FXhash, Foundation - and all I get is repetitions of memes around how NFTs are dead.
  - DrScientist 4y ago
    Successful scams have customers - the presence of people putting in money isn't a defining trait. However I do think it's a bit harsh to call these things a scam - I mean take the art market itself - value is entirely subjective - doesn't mean it's a scam ( though scamming things happen in the normal art market to try and inflation prices ). The question you have to ask yourself is: Are you buying the NFT as an investment - because you think other people will value it, or are you spending the money because you are quite happy to own that thing forever and never sell - ie the value is to you. I'd argue if you are doing the former you are more likely to be 'scammed' than the latter.
    - kranke155 4y ago
      I buy art for my art collection. They happen to be NFTs. I also purchase physical art.
    - ShamelessC 4y ago
      NFT’s are fungible in practice, is the root of the issue.
- DrScientist 4y ago
  For most people this has little value. The centralised banking model is cost efficient and for most people trust isn't an issue. The modern world runs on trust. Also if I want to trade anonymously there is always cash ( as least for now ), which is a simple, well understood, near universally accepted mechanism. There are niches where decentralized banking is useful - but they are niches - and many of them are associated with dubious activity. On top of that the current tech plaforms simply don't scale - the cost of replacing simple trusted parties with technology is huge.
  - medo-bear 4y ago
    > For most people this has little value for most people in the US or the world? i think everywhere banks rank amongst the most disliked institutions
    - idontpost 4y ago
      That doesn't make being "not a bank" valuable.
    - 8note 4y ago
      Blockchain asks the question: what if you couldn't regulate the banks through democracy? Which would imply that people love banks and want them to be even more powerful.
      - medo-bear 4y ago
        ok
throwaway98797 4y ago
the global username by ethereum name service (ENS) see fallon.eth

medo-bear 4y ago

> No bright minds popping up here tbh i think that's harsh. why would you even expect an aggregate sentiment of hn to indicate where to invest one's money. on the other hand it might be worth pointing out that y combinator supports plenty of blockchain projects

koshnaranek 4y ago

It just shows that predicting the future is really difficult. It's also not logical why HN being wrong in one case means it will be wrong in another.

kranke155 4y ago
It shows that there is groupthink at play and that the overall HN commentary on subjects, even when they should know better (tech), is not particularly correct. Being wrong once is one thing, but HN commentary seems consistently wrong on a whole litany of topics. The biggest source of bad hot takes seems to be something new/different. HN seems to be consistently conservative. It’s a shame because I used to think that i would gain some insight on future trends from the fact that a lot of the people who comment here are in tech, but now I’m not so convinced.

webmobdev 4y ago

That's because it is hard to discern what is shilling and what is a real / expert opinion. Shilling happens here on HN, like it does on every social media platform / discussion forum. It doesn't help that we can't call out suspected shilling on HN as it is against the rule. But that rule makes sense because suspicion is not proof, and it would just bring down the quality of discussion here if everyone of us accuses the other of shilling :). (And as someone once pointed out to me, sometimes these shillings are not necessarily from the marketing team but from employees and shareholders here, who have a vested interest in seeing the company do well.)