6 ms·

The one interesting thing about all the rehashed boring arguments is that, despite being 13 years old, it's still so, so new that even smart, technically minded

The one interesting thing about all the rehashed boring arguments is that, despite being 13 years old, it's still so, so new that even smart, technically minded people like the HN readership will still bag it for not being whatever they heard it was attempting to be when it started. Bitcoin is a new thing, sitting on the shoulders of the giant technologies we're otherwise so proud of - all us highly paid software industry folks. But no, it's worthless, it shouldn't exist, it's not worth any further time or effort or research, fuck it off my fucking planet. It's so weird this attitude so prevalent on HN.

kranke155 4y ago
It is one of the saddest aspects of my interest in crypto that I cannot share it with anyone in HN, because somehow the hive mind here has decided that it is beyond worthless. So I stick to reddit.
- BLKNSLVR 4y ago
  Fuck 'em :) I'm no Bitcoin maxi or "crypto will kill traditional finance in 5 years" type, or even really a get rich quick chaser (it'd be nice, but I've lived in reality for too long to expect anything like that) but I'm smart enough and humble enough to recognise it's a brand new thing (even 13 years later) that will grow and evolve to find its own niche or niches and then they will grow and evolve and fragment as all things do. Cryptocurrency isn't going away, and Bitcoin has the 'original' going for it, the Veblen good association unrelated to any other pro or con argument. Ethereum is the 'original' smart contract version of Bitcoin, already an evolution of function, and has an ecosystem of vast proportions that any other smart contract platforms are a long way away from reaching (although getting closer faster than Ethereum is moving away). It's interesting to watch and there are a lot of smart developers working on difficult problems in the space. I'll also admit that I'm not smart enough to understand the intricacies of things like ZK proofs, but I somewhat understand their applicability in the space and look forward with interest to seeing whats possible when such technologies are applied to cryptocurrencies in practise. I'm rambling, but I want you to feel comfortable sharing here. I want to harvest the down votes on behalf of all those chilled.
  - kranke155 4y ago
    I agree with you. I actually think most of it is fraud, there are huge problems. But not being excited in it the least is so weird to me! This is exciting! This is tech!
- bayindirh 4y ago
  Well, I can't see the value of wasting so much energy for something looking for problems to solve. The idea is nice, but has no applications, esp. in Finance. Also the idea of replacing monetary systems built since the beginning of written history in a decade with cryptocurrencies is a bit naive. I'm a bit tired from discussing same things over and over, but at the end, banks gonna bank. OTOH, I'll not downvote/flag/harass/gatekeep for anyone sharing their views. Discussion is always good. This is how things move forward. So, go ahead, share on :)
  - BLKNSLVR 4y ago
    > Well, I can't see the value of wasting so much energy for something looking for problems to solve. The energy is being paid for though, so it's competing in the same energy market as everything else. "Waste" becomes entirely subjective at that point. Also, Ethereum is now proof of stake, reducing it's power usage by something like 95%. PoS has its own pros and cons though. > Also the idea of replacing monetary systems built since the beginning of written history in a decade with cryptocurrencies is a bit naive. That's why I say it's still new despite being 13 years old. It's naive to think it's already failed when it's barely learnt to walk. Happy to be either totally ignored or told where I'm wrong.
    - bayindirh 4y ago
      > The energy is being paid for though, so it's competing in the same energy market as everything else. "Waste" becomes entirely subjective at that point. Actually, "I can do whatever do with electricity, because I pay for it", is a wrong perspective, esp. in today's energy climate. Let's put the fact that Bitcoin and Proof of Work systems are very energy inefficient as of today, and paying for it doesn't make this inefficiencies right. Today, supercomputer centers discuss about reducing capacity, or add downtimes. CERN is discussing about temporarily shutting down some experiments, incl. accelerator ring. Hotels in Europe is fixing (locking in fact) their rooms to 18 degrees Celcius, and turning off heating the second events/conferences end. Last, but not the least storefronts are turning off their extremely efficient LED lighting at nights, after stores close. In this climate, running a very inefficient network which uses equivalent energy to a small-mid European country "just because we pay for it" is wrong on many levels. I'm normally very lassiez-faire person, but in the face of this energy crisis, climate change and other existential threats looming, saying that "we can do that because we pay for it", really grinds my gears. It's just carelessness. I don't know when we have detached from ethics this far, and this is disturbing (AI has the same problem for different reasons, but let's not digress). Ethereum's Proof of Stake migration is something I support. I still don't believe in cryptocurrencies and all utopia surrounding it, but at least one step in a right direction. > It's naive to think it's already failed when it's barely learnt to walk. I don't think it's failed, but it has not won any battles either (yet alone the war). It's just another instrument which will be normalized under banks at most. I'm saying that it won't arrive where people dream, but somewhere else, and that place will be boring, if it ever arrives. Any people evangelizing cryptocurrencies are excited for small money (personal finance), any people evangelizing it for medium-sized money (hedge funds, etc.) are running Ponzi schemes. This is not a good outlook from my perspective.
- lucozade 4y ago
  > So I stick to reddit. Bless you. That made me laugh out loud.
  - kranke155 4y ago
    Im not happy about it!
almost 4y ago
At what point would you stop calling this 13 year old tech thing "new"? Is there some point at which that's a silly thing to say? Or is it only once everyone's thoughts on it agree with yours?
- MacsHeadroom 4y ago
  Data has been transferable by electric means for 184 years, since 1838, an entire order of magnitude longer than transferable value (Bitcoin). It took nearly all of those 184 years to get to a point where a majority of people had a regular use for telecommunications. Calling it "tech" misleadingly groups it with a category of things which largely tie into existing "tech" in every obvious and specific ways; most of which were created very recently. This is the wrong way to think about "tech" as fundamental as one which gives every person 'the ability to transfer real world value over photons in the form of IP packets', which is the essence of Bitcoin (and cryptocurrency generally). A better comparison for Bitcoin is something like telecommunications. Banking on regular use cases in the near term is probably a bad idea. But what is far worse is dismissing, much less prematurely regulating or banning, something fundamentally comparable to the advent of telecommunications.
  - Kbelicius 4y ago
    > Data has been transferable by electric means for 184 years, since 1838, an entire order of magnitude longer than transferable value (Bitcoin). Western Union started doing wire transfers in 1872.
    - MacsHeadroom 4y ago
      You could entrust a messenger to deliver a message long before electronic telecommunications. But a trusted mail carrier and direct end-to-end encrypted video calls from/to anywhere on the planet are not even in the same ballpark. Trusted wire transfers and trustless peer-to-peer value settlement are potentially just as dissimilar. I don't think it will take nearly 200 years for the scale of the difference to be as substantial as the difference pre-victorian mail and modern video calls. But it will take substantially longer than 13 years, that is pretty clear. Even still, it is obvious to me (and many others) that this eventual future is inevitable-- and no amount of price fluctuation, scamming, or environmental concerns can shake that belief because these things simply don't even remotely address the core of what a foundational change this "tech" is in any way.
rippercushions 4y ago
Many HN'ers like myself were crypto enthusiasts in the early days, because there were so many promising things it seemed like it could be used for. Over the last 13 years, every last use case with the arguable exception of Ponzi schemes and ransomware scams has turned to shit. Payments, store of value, distributed computing, NFTs, nope all across the board. You can't even buy drugs with Bitcoin anymore!
- mathieuh 4y ago
  You want drugs you use Monero these days (or so I understand). Dark net markets are still pretty big (or so I'm lead to believe).
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- BLKNSLVR 4y ago
  Payments, store of value, and NFTs I don't think has turned to shit. Distributed computing I don't know much about, but if you're talking smart contracts that seems to be pretty healthy and well, but if you're talking decentralized AWS then I think there's a ways to go before that's a realistic expectation. Payments, can work well in certain scenarios and better / worse for different cryptocurrencies. Cross border large value transfers Bitcoin can still be a cheaper and faster option than some (countries) banks. Store of value is an interesting one, more so because we're (maybe?) near a local bottom down 80-odd percent from all time highs, but on a single line from inception to now, it's outperformed much of the stock market (I have no direct citation for this, but have heard it from a number of not necessarily trustworthy sources). The whole stock market being down a large percentage takes some of the stink off Bitcoin's store of value argument as well. Gold seems fairly consistent; boring, but boring can be good as an investment or store of value. NFTs, that's all just in fashion mode at the moment, the new application of cryptocurrency / blockchain. Better applications of NFTs will surely appear.
olabyne 4y ago
Lol, the good old crypto-bro attitude that uses the "you don't know what you're talking about, stop bashing the technology". Except you are mixing the technology (blockchain) and the usage (crypto). On HN the consensus is that every current usage is either worthless, utopic or scammy. Nobody denies the technology. A recent post on HN about AWS and blockchain ended with the following sentence : "the blockchain is a solution looking for a problem" https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2022/11/19/AWS-Blockchain https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2022/11/19/AWS-Block...
- cinntaile 4y ago
  Those things that claim to use blockchain but don't have the crypto are marketing technologies that could be better served by other and better solutions. Blockchain and crypto are intertwined and one without the other doesn't exist.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- fmajid 4y ago
  As a distributed database technology, the blockchain and its mediocre transactions per second are quite unimpressive. Now High-Frequency Trading is technically impressive, the ridiculous lengths they go to to shave microseconds are awe-inspiring. Too bad it's for a purpose that is almost as devoid of redeeming value to society as cryptocurrencies.
- lamontcg 4y ago
  > "you don't know what you're talking about, stop bashing the technology". It would be nice if any of them understood finance or just bank panics and financial contagion.
  - BLKNSLVR 4y ago
    It seems to be the people / groups starting companies offering cryptocurrency services that don't understand that stuff and fall into well-signposted-by-history traps. People then fall into the (equally?) well-signposted-by-history trap of thinking that any company is trustworthy.
roenxi 4y ago
> It's so weird this attitude so prevalent on HN. If you want a quick rundown of what might be happening... People have a very finely tuned sense of who is winning status games. It is clear that some people in crypto are winning by several billion dollars. Add to that a (fairly reasonable) argument that there is cheating afoot in this status game and you get people arcing up trying to do get something done about it. Very natural response - people don't like cheaters and do play status games. I think they're mistaken though - I'm put in mind of Utopia, Limited (a classic 1893 production) lampooning the obvious stupidity of a limited liability corporation. Turned out limited liability corporations were a game changer and extremely beneficial to society.
- edanm 4y ago
  I mean, it could also be happening because people are genuinely evaluating the technology and deciding it's not worthwhile, right? It could just be status games that's making people say things, but it could also be... reality.
  - BLKNSLVR 4y ago
    I'm finding less and less that people are driven by reality.
    - edanm 4y ago
      True. But if you use that idea every time someone disagrees with you, you'll never learn when you're wrong.
  - roenxi 4y ago
    Crypto is regularly turning up on HN with tides of negative comments, including people calling for it to be banned. We've got this article theorising how it will go to zero, including calls for it to be banned. This isn't a usual response for people who just think that a technology is not worthwhile. I'm sure people are genuine in their beliefs, but the aggregate response is unusually ferocious.
astoor 4y ago
Thirteen years is a very long time in technology. The "problem" with HN is that many of us have been around since the start of cryptocurrency, and have a very deep rather than superficial understanding of the technology. That means we have seen how the cycles work out (start out with something reasonable, e.g. a system for "small casual transactions" in Bitcoin's case, fail to deliver, change promises, fail to deliver, and rinse and repeat, each time with a new generation of greater fools) and understand that each new wave of promises are impossible to deliver for various technical and in some cases non-technical reasons. Unfortunately the current generation of proponents just don't have the depth of experience to understand this, and are blinded by false hope that this is their generation's breakthrough technology, so are doomed to repeat the mistakes of their forebears. FWIW I don't think it'll go to zero or disappear - it satisfies a niche in some human's psyche to try to "get rich quick" with little effort - just like we've had Multi Level Marketing schemes like Mary Kay for decades, and casinos and various forms of gambling for centuries.
- BLKNSLVR 4y ago
  It's a long time in technology, but that's just the foundation upon which it's built. The industry it's placing itself alongside to compete with is one of the pillars of society, and as such 13 years is a long time to survive in competition, but also a short time in which to create a defendable position. It took 20 years to go from the car phone suitcase in Lethal Weapon to the first release iPhone.
  - RareBean 4y ago
    By the mid-1990s, tens—if not hundreds—of million of people had mobile phone subscriptions, and those who didn’t clearly understood the tech offered humanity a profoundly new ability: communicate anywhere, all the time. What’s the crypto equivalent?
    - BLKNSLVR 4y ago
      https://img.phemex.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/09074656/technology-adoption-curve.jpg https://img.phemex.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/09074656/t... https://peterdavidconley.com/crypto-vs-internet-adoption/ https://peterdavidconley.com/crypto-vs-internet-adoption/
edanm 4y ago
> The one interesting thing about all the rehashed boring arguments is that, despite being 13 years old, it's still so, so new that even smart, technically minded people like the HN readership will still bag it for not being whatever they heard it was attempting to be when it started. That's not really what people are "bagging" it for. Or at least, not why I'm "against" crypto. > But no, it's worthless, it shouldn't exist, it's not worth any further time or effort or research, fuck it off my fucking planet. I think the technology is super interesting as a technology (I'm talking of blockchains here). I think there is currently one solid, known use case for that technology - cryptocurrencies. I'm not sure how "beneficial" they are overall, but I'm not so sure how beneficial Facebook is either. They are for sure providing some value to some people. My big problem is that for the last 8 years, I've been hearing about how the Blockchain technology will solve other problems, revolutionize other fields. And as of now, that just isn't the case. There are no other problems that blockchain solves that can't be solved better with other technologies. I'm not saying that no further time or effort to research this should be done, not at all. I'm just saying that people claiming there currently are use cases for it are wrong, and pushing back against them.
- BLKNSLVR 4y ago
  Decentralisation is the thing. But most people don't care about that, or even really understand what it means. If people don't even care about the privacy of their personal data, they're already two layers away from caring about decentralisation.
- splix 4y ago
  I remember what people in 90s were talking about the future of internet. All the crazy ideas and how it will solve everything in a crazy way. But yet we are here, using internet in a completely different way (I mean, nobody were talking about Tiktok back then, right?). But even more people were saying that internet have no use case and no future. That's normal for every disrupting technology, it doesn't just directly applies to the existing things, but brings something new instead.
  - Yizahi 4y ago

kranke155 4y ago

It is one of the saddest aspects of my interest in crypto that I cannot share it with anyone in HN, because somehow the hive mind here has decided that it is beyond worthless. So I stick to reddit.

BLKNSLVR 4y ago
Fuck 'em :) I'm no Bitcoin maxi or "crypto will kill traditional finance in 5 years" type, or even really a get rich quick chaser (it'd be nice, but I've lived in reality for too long to expect anything like that) but I'm smart enough and humble enough to recognise it's a brand new thing (even 13 years later) that will grow and evolve to find its own niche or niches and then they will grow and evolve and fragment as all things do. Cryptocurrency isn't going away, and Bitcoin has the 'original' going for it, the Veblen good association unrelated to any other pro or con argument. Ethereum is the 'original' smart contract version of Bitcoin, already an evolution of function, and has an ecosystem of vast proportions that any other smart contract platforms are a long way away from reaching (although getting closer faster than Ethereum is moving away). It's interesting to watch and there are a lot of smart developers working on difficult problems in the space. I'll also admit that I'm not smart enough to understand the intricacies of things like ZK proofs, but I somewhat understand their applicability in the space and look forward with interest to seeing whats possible when such technologies are applied to cryptocurrencies in practise. I'm rambling, but I want you to feel comfortable sharing here. I want to harvest the down votes on behalf of all those chilled.
- kranke155 4y ago
  I agree with you. I actually think most of it is fraud, there are huge problems. But not being excited in it the least is so weird to me! This is exciting! This is tech!
bayindirh 4y ago
Well, I can't see the value of wasting so much energy for something looking for problems to solve. The idea is nice, but has no applications, esp. in Finance. Also the idea of replacing monetary systems built since the beginning of written history in a decade with cryptocurrencies is a bit naive. I'm a bit tired from discussing same things over and over, but at the end, banks gonna bank. OTOH, I'll not downvote/flag/harass/gatekeep for anyone sharing their views. Discussion is always good. This is how things move forward. So, go ahead, share on :)
- BLKNSLVR 4y ago
  > Well, I can't see the value of wasting so much energy for something looking for problems to solve. The energy is being paid for though, so it's competing in the same energy market as everything else. "Waste" becomes entirely subjective at that point. Also, Ethereum is now proof of stake, reducing it's power usage by something like 95%. PoS has its own pros and cons though. > Also the idea of replacing monetary systems built since the beginning of written history in a decade with cryptocurrencies is a bit naive. That's why I say it's still new despite being 13 years old. It's naive to think it's already failed when it's barely learnt to walk. Happy to be either totally ignored or told where I'm wrong.
  - bayindirh 4y ago
    > The energy is being paid for though, so it's competing in the same energy market as everything else. "Waste" becomes entirely subjective at that point. Actually, "I can do whatever do with electricity, because I pay for it", is a wrong perspective, esp. in today's energy climate. Let's put the fact that Bitcoin and Proof of Work systems are very energy inefficient as of today, and paying for it doesn't make this inefficiencies right. Today, supercomputer centers discuss about reducing capacity, or add downtimes. CERN is discussing about temporarily shutting down some experiments, incl. accelerator ring. Hotels in Europe is fixing (locking in fact) their rooms to 18 degrees Celcius, and turning off heating the second events/conferences end. Last, but not the least storefronts are turning off their extremely efficient LED lighting at nights, after stores close. In this climate, running a very inefficient network which uses equivalent energy to a small-mid European country "just because we pay for it" is wrong on many levels. I'm normally very lassiez-faire person, but in the face of this energy crisis, climate change and other existential threats looming, saying that "we can do that because we pay for it", really grinds my gears. It's just carelessness. I don't know when we have detached from ethics this far, and this is disturbing (AI has the same problem for different reasons, but let's not digress). Ethereum's Proof of Stake migration is something I support. I still don't believe in cryptocurrencies and all utopia surrounding it, but at least one step in a right direction. > It's naive to think it's already failed when it's barely learnt to walk. I don't think it's failed, but it has not won any battles either (yet alone the war). It's just another instrument which will be normalized under banks at most. I'm saying that it won't arrive where people dream, but somewhere else, and that place will be boring, if it ever arrives. Any people evangelizing cryptocurrencies are excited for small money (personal finance), any people evangelizing it for medium-sized money (hedge funds, etc.) are running Ponzi schemes. This is not a good outlook from my perspective.
lucozade 4y ago
> So I stick to reddit. Bless you. That made me laugh out loud.
- kranke155 4y ago
  Im not happy about it!

almost 4y ago

At what point would you stop calling this 13 year old tech thing "new"? Is there some point at which that's a silly thing to say? Or is it only once everyone's thoughts on it agree with yours?

MacsHeadroom 4y ago
Data has been transferable by electric means for 184 years, since 1838, an entire order of magnitude longer than transferable value (Bitcoin). It took nearly all of those 184 years to get to a point where a majority of people had a regular use for telecommunications. Calling it "tech" misleadingly groups it with a category of things which largely tie into existing "tech" in every obvious and specific ways; most of which were created very recently. This is the wrong way to think about "tech" as fundamental as one which gives every person 'the ability to transfer real world value over photons in the form of IP packets', which is the essence of Bitcoin (and cryptocurrency generally). A better comparison for Bitcoin is something like telecommunications. Banking on regular use cases in the near term is probably a bad idea. But what is far worse is dismissing, much less prematurely regulating or banning, something fundamentally comparable to the advent of telecommunications.
- Kbelicius 4y ago
  > Data has been transferable by electric means for 184 years, since 1838, an entire order of magnitude longer than transferable value (Bitcoin). Western Union started doing wire transfers in 1872.
  - MacsHeadroom 4y ago
    You could entrust a messenger to deliver a message long before electronic telecommunications. But a trusted mail carrier and direct end-to-end encrypted video calls from/to anywhere on the planet are not even in the same ballpark. Trusted wire transfers and trustless peer-to-peer value settlement are potentially just as dissimilar. I don't think it will take nearly 200 years for the scale of the difference to be as substantial as the difference pre-victorian mail and modern video calls. But it will take substantially longer than 13 years, that is pretty clear. Even still, it is obvious to me (and many others) that this eventual future is inevitable-- and no amount of price fluctuation, scamming, or environmental concerns can shake that belief because these things simply don't even remotely address the core of what a foundational change this "tech" is in any way.

rippercushions 4y ago

Many HN'ers like myself were crypto enthusiasts in the early days, because there were so many promising things it seemed like it could be used for. Over the last 13 years, every last use case with the arguable exception of Ponzi schemes and ransomware scams has turned to shit. Payments, store of value, distributed computing, NFTs, nope all across the board. You can't even buy drugs with Bitcoin anymore!

mathieuh 4y ago
You want drugs you use Monero these days (or so I understand). Dark net markets are still pretty big (or so I'm lead to believe).
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
BLKNSLVR 4y ago
Payments, store of value, and NFTs I don't think has turned to shit. Distributed computing I don't know much about, but if you're talking smart contracts that seems to be pretty healthy and well, but if you're talking decentralized AWS then I think there's a ways to go before that's a realistic expectation. Payments, can work well in certain scenarios and better / worse for different cryptocurrencies. Cross border large value transfers Bitcoin can still be a cheaper and faster option than some (countries) banks. Store of value is an interesting one, more so because we're (maybe?) near a local bottom down 80-odd percent from all time highs, but on a single line from inception to now, it's outperformed much of the stock market (I have no direct citation for this, but have heard it from a number of not necessarily trustworthy sources). The whole stock market being down a large percentage takes some of the stink off Bitcoin's store of value argument as well. Gold seems fairly consistent; boring, but boring can be good as an investment or store of value. NFTs, that's all just in fashion mode at the moment, the new application of cryptocurrency / blockchain. Better applications of NFTs will surely appear.

olabyne 4y ago

Lol, the good old crypto-bro attitude that uses the "you don't know what you're talking about, stop bashing the technology". Except you are mixing the technology (blockchain) and the usage (crypto). On HN the consensus is that every current usage is either worthless, utopic or scammy. Nobody denies the technology. A recent post on HN about AWS and blockchain ended with the following sentence : "the blockchain is a solution looking for a problem" https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2022/11/19/AWS-Blockchain https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2022/11/19/AWS-Block...

cinntaile 4y ago
Those things that claim to use blockchain but don't have the crypto are marketing technologies that could be better served by other and better solutions. Blockchain and crypto are intertwined and one without the other doesn't exist.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
fmajid 4y ago
As a distributed database technology, the blockchain and its mediocre transactions per second are quite unimpressive. Now High-Frequency Trading is technically impressive, the ridiculous lengths they go to to shave microseconds are awe-inspiring. Too bad it's for a purpose that is almost as devoid of redeeming value to society as cryptocurrencies.
lamontcg 4y ago
> "you don't know what you're talking about, stop bashing the technology". It would be nice if any of them understood finance or just bank panics and financial contagion.
- BLKNSLVR 4y ago
  It seems to be the people / groups starting companies offering cryptocurrency services that don't understand that stuff and fall into well-signposted-by-history traps. People then fall into the (equally?) well-signposted-by-history trap of thinking that any company is trustworthy.

roenxi 4y ago

> It's so weird this attitude so prevalent on HN. If you want a quick rundown of what might be happening... People have a very finely tuned sense of who is winning status games. It is clear that some people in crypto are winning by several billion dollars. Add to that a (fairly reasonable) argument that there is cheating afoot in this status game and you get people arcing up trying to do get something done about it. Very natural response - people don't like cheaters and do play status games. I think they're mistaken though - I'm put in mind of Utopia, Limited (a classic 1893 production) lampooning the obvious stupidity of a limited liability corporation. Turned out limited liability corporations were a game changer and extremely beneficial to society.

edanm 4y ago
I mean, it could also be happening because people are genuinely evaluating the technology and deciding it's not worthwhile, right? It could just be status games that's making people say things, but it could also be... reality.
- BLKNSLVR 4y ago
  I'm finding less and less that people are driven by reality.
  - edanm 4y ago
    True. But if you use that idea every time someone disagrees with you, you'll never learn when you're wrong.
- roenxi 4y ago
  Crypto is regularly turning up on HN with tides of negative comments, including people calling for it to be banned. We've got this article theorising how it will go to zero, including calls for it to be banned. This isn't a usual response for people who just think that a technology is not worthwhile. I'm sure people are genuine in their beliefs, but the aggregate response is unusually ferocious.

astoor 4y ago

Thirteen years is a very long time in technology. The "problem" with HN is that many of us have been around since the start of cryptocurrency, and have a very deep rather than superficial understanding of the technology. That means we have seen how the cycles work out (start out with something reasonable, e.g. a system for "small casual transactions" in Bitcoin's case, fail to deliver, change promises, fail to deliver, and rinse and repeat, each time with a new generation of greater fools) and understand that each new wave of promises are impossible to deliver for various technical and in some cases non-technical reasons. Unfortunately the current generation of proponents just don't have the depth of experience to understand this, and are blinded by false hope that this is their generation's breakthrough technology, so are doomed to repeat the mistakes of their forebears. FWIW I don't think it'll go to zero or disappear - it satisfies a niche in some human's psyche to try to "get rich quick" with little effort - just like we've had Multi Level Marketing schemes like Mary Kay for decades, and casinos and various forms of gambling for centuries.

BLKNSLVR 4y ago
It's a long time in technology, but that's just the foundation upon which it's built. The industry it's placing itself alongside to compete with is one of the pillars of society, and as such 13 years is a long time to survive in competition, but also a short time in which to create a defendable position. It took 20 years to go from the car phone suitcase in Lethal Weapon to the first release iPhone.
- RareBean 4y ago
  By the mid-1990s, tens—if not hundreds—of million of people had mobile phone subscriptions, and those who didn’t clearly understood the tech offered humanity a profoundly new ability: communicate anywhere, all the time. What’s the crypto equivalent?
  - BLKNSLVR 4y ago
    https://img.phemex.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/09074656/technology-adoption-curve.jpg https://img.phemex.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/09074656/t... https://peterdavidconley.com/crypto-vs-internet-adoption/ https://peterdavidconley.com/crypto-vs-internet-adoption/

edanm 4y ago

> The one interesting thing about all the rehashed boring arguments is that, despite being 13 years old, it's still so, so new that even smart, technically minded people like the HN readership will still bag it for not being whatever they heard it was attempting to be when it started. That's not really what people are "bagging" it for. Or at least, not why I'm "against" crypto. > But no, it's worthless, it shouldn't exist, it's not worth any further time or effort or research, fuck it off my fucking planet. I think the technology is super interesting as a technology (I'm talking of blockchains here). I think there is currently one solid, known use case for that technology - cryptocurrencies. I'm not sure how "beneficial" they are overall, but I'm not so sure how beneficial Facebook is either. They are for sure providing some value to some people. My big problem is that for the last 8 years, I've been hearing about how the Blockchain technology will solve other problems, revolutionize other fields. And as of now, that just isn't the case. There are no other problems that blockchain solves that can't be solved better with other technologies. I'm not saying that no further time or effort to research this should be done, not at all. I'm just saying that people claiming there currently are use cases for it are wrong, and pushing back against them.

BLKNSLVR 4y ago
Decentralisation is the thing. But most people don't care about that, or even really understand what it means. If people don't even care about the privacy of their personal data, they're already two layers away from caring about decentralisation.
splix 4y ago
I remember what people in 90s were talking about the future of internet. All the crazy ideas and how it will solve everything in a crazy way. But yet we are here, using internet in a completely different way (I mean, nobody were talking about Tiktok back then, right?). But even more people were saying that internet have no use case and no future. That's normal for every disrupting technology, it doesn't just directly applies to the existing things, but brings something new instead.
- Yizahi 4y ago