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I think each generation has a development where they just suspend disbelief. Both Brad and I lived through the dot com era of the nineties. After experiencing

by rmason 4y ago

I think each generation has a development where they just suspend disbelief. Both Brad and I lived through the dot com era of the nineties. After experiencing the crash it's natural that you're a little skeptical going forward. I wanted crypto to be more than digital gold. I wanted to believe that it was the future of money but there were too many hustlers and wavy hand explanations for me. They want me to invest my crypto to which they would pay me 7% interest. If you ask how it was it being invested you're told they were buying bitcoin in one part of the world and selling it in another. How is that any different an explanation than Ponzi's who took dollars funds that would then be converted into Spanish pesetas to use to purchase International Postal Reply Coupons which would be sent to the U.S. to be redeemed in U.S. postage stamps which could then be sold for dollars?

Melting_Harps 4y ago
> They want me to invest my crypto to which they would pay me 7% interest. If you ask how it was it being invested you're told they were buying bitcoin in one part of the world and selling it in another. Nigerian princes keep telling me they are in dire trouble and I need to pay them while they are in exile, I don't think this internet or email thing is going to work out. For being a tech based, and entrepreneurial no less, forum I struggle to think the average age of most in this space isn't some 70 year old boomer most times given how many lazy conclusions get thrown around here. If you really are foolish enough to give your money to scammers on the promise of 'guaranteed' returns regardless of market conditions, that says more about you ten the tech they are using to achieve said grift. > How is that any different an explanation than Ponzi's SBF, Do Kwon ELison et al... are all Ivy League educated, and just as reputable as Madoff or any other pump and dumper using an ICO or alt promising the same thing: something that cannot and will not exist, guaranteed returns. In short, most alts are BS and don't need to exist, and anyone with a cursory understanding of fintech can see that; that doesn't mean the tech itself isn't valuable and doesn't have many use-cases that may not apply you specifically. > And the bros...so many crypto bros. Is crypto an investment? sure. is it good smart financial sense? of course! can it deworm the dog and start my old Ford? buddy, its crypto and these nonsense peddling talking heads are about to waste your entire lunch reminding you that no matter how volatile the coin, no matter how hair-brained the leadership, and no matter how laughable the mascot, we'll all be rich by the end of the year and you have $wondercoin to thank for it. just dont ask them how blockchain actually works...it works and it aughta be used for everything... Ive been around sine YC was ran by Sam Altman and thought to be the King maker of the valley startup scene, who then joined open AI and subsequently pitched WolrdCoin that required biometrics in return of some tokens 'to save the World' but is now the darling of SV because of ChatGPT. I'd respect your arguments if they were at all cognizant of some basic premises, not least of which include being able to see the hypocrisy in these pointless analysis. I'm not a crypto bro, I guess I'm a BTC maxi according to the jargon, but the truth is that it has been understood that a fool and their money are soon parted long before the computer ever came to existence and to attribute all of Society's ills to something most don't even comprehend, as in cant tell te difference between Bitcoin the network and bitcoin the token, let alone the underlying mechanics that solved something thought to be impossible in Computer Science (Byzantine General's problem) then what is their really left to be said?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
wslh 4y ago
I think many of the fundamentals are completely wrong. A basic question is if you trust more in a zillion of unknown nodes were really few unknown ones run and decide on the protocol or will you trust more a few well known actors who at the end will be accountable by a legal system, assuming it is a good one. For example, was a cryptocurrency like Libra from FB where nodes were known actors less secure than a stable coin run by just one shady actor? If a few Bitcoin miners want to stop the show they can. Also Bitcoin is not trustless in the sense there are very few people who can modify or incorporate new features to the node. The lie is in the trustless word as if it would be run by a God. The spirit of a P2P financial infrastructure is fine, the question is if this one is the solution. BTW, I work in the field. I think I will never see the number of frauds and shady people I found in this space. I talked with many of the people appearing in the news now, and more will appear. If you ask me a number of things that I find interesting about the field, one is the security analysis of code. There are many interesting things to learn in this space that can be extrapolated. Another is cryptography and fault tolerance areas that are moving forward thanks all of this, a third one is that I expect DeFi could bring more new financial ideas to play that frauds.
- pfraze 4y ago
  I've found that question about bitcoin protocol governance rather interesting, wrote a bit about it here: https://paulfrazee.medium.com/the-rules-to-make-the-rules-be0c3b9d92b6 https://paulfrazee.medium.com/the-rules-to-make-the-rules-be... In summary, after a fair bit of research-from-home and talking to a couple of people deeply in the bitcoin space, I'm still not sure who really holds the reigns.
- saurik 4y ago
  > were really few unknown ones run and decide on the protocol That's not how Bitcoin works: you and the party you are giving money to decide the protocol, not the miners. If these unknown miners are doing something different than what your clients allow then those miners aren't part of the same network as you.
  - bcrl 4y ago
    The protocol for interacting with an exchange to trade for fiat isn't decided by the protocol. You just don't get to find out if you've been scammed by trusting your exchange to do what it said it did until it's too late. Trust is still required, but there's no governance to back it up.
henning 4y ago
It's not digital gold because you can't copy and paste gold to make new, separate elements with identical properties. You cannot just easily alter the elemental chart the way someone can copy and paste a new shitcoin for their latest pump and dump. Bitcoin is not digital gold because there could always be a hard fork -- it's controlled by an unaccountable cabal of miners and whales and if they wanted to do so, it would happen.
- sunshinerag 4y ago
  Sorry that is very poor understanding. No you cannot copy paste bitcoins(not sure what crypto is) into distinct pieces with identical properties. No, it is not trivially hard forkable compared to say the dollar or pound where the supply (a key property) is constantly adjusted by an unaccountable cabal of unelected bureaucrats whenever they fancy it.
  - henning 4y ago
    It is you who do not understand. You're conflating quantitative easing with cryptocurrency hard forks. Those are completely separate processes.
- kayamon 4y ago
  The miners are prevented from forming a cabal to successfully hard-fork. This is loosely referred to as a 51% attack, but basically as long as there are two people in the world who disagree then Bitcoin will continue along its existing fair path.
notch656c 4y ago
Buying goods in one country and selling them at a premium in another is the basis of international commerce. If you can't turn a profit why export? the issue is there actually wasn't a low-risk arbitrage opportunity at such ridiculous (7%) annual premiums and at such scale, and even if there were it's not what they were doing. I'd go far as to say most the people gaining from these guaranteed high interest schemes probably knew they were fraud or part of nasty victim involved crime and then they got botthurt when they found out they weren't the smart ones and pulled out too late.
jasmer 4y ago
There's a very different thing in hoping/misunderstanding the value of a creation (.com bubble) and doing things which have obviously zero-sum game characteristics. A lot of crypto is de-facto scammy and much of it is designed that way. Far less so in the rest of the system.

by rmason 4y ago

Melting_Harps 4y ago

> They want me to invest my crypto to which they would pay me 7% interest. If you ask how it was it being invested you're told they were buying bitcoin in one part of the world and selling it in another. Nigerian princes keep telling me they are in dire trouble and I need to pay them while they are in exile, I don't think this internet or email thing is going to work out. For being a tech based, and entrepreneurial no less, forum I struggle to think the average age of most in this space isn't some 70 year old boomer most times given how many lazy conclusions get thrown around here. If you really are foolish enough to give your money to scammers on the promise of 'guaranteed' returns regardless of market conditions, that says more about you ten the tech they are using to achieve said grift. > How is that any different an explanation than Ponzi's SBF, Do Kwon ELison et al... are all Ivy League educated, and just as reputable as Madoff or any other pump and dumper using an ICO or alt promising the same thing: something that cannot and will not exist, guaranteed returns. In short, most alts are BS and don't need to exist, and anyone with a cursory understanding of fintech can see that; that doesn't mean the tech itself isn't valuable and doesn't have many use-cases that may not apply you specifically. > And the bros...so many crypto bros. Is crypto an investment? sure. is it good smart financial sense? of course! can it deworm the dog and start my old Ford? buddy, its crypto and these nonsense peddling talking heads are about to waste your entire lunch reminding you that no matter how volatile the coin, no matter how hair-brained the leadership, and no matter how laughable the mascot, we'll all be rich by the end of the year and you have $wondercoin to thank for it. just dont ask them how blockchain actually works...it works and it aughta be used for everything... Ive been around sine YC was ran by Sam Altman and thought to be the King maker of the valley startup scene, who then joined open AI and subsequently pitched WolrdCoin that required biometrics in return of some tokens 'to save the World' but is now the darling of SV because of ChatGPT. I'd respect your arguments if they were at all cognizant of some basic premises, not least of which include being able to see the hypocrisy in these pointless analysis. I'm not a crypto bro, I guess I'm a BTC maxi according to the jargon, but the truth is that it has been understood that a fool and their money are soon parted long before the computer ever came to existence and to attribute all of Society's ills to something most don't even comprehend, as in cant tell te difference between Bitcoin the network and bitcoin the token, let alone the underlying mechanics that solved something thought to be impossible in Computer Science (Byzantine General's problem) then what is their really left to be said?

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

wslh 4y ago

I think many of the fundamentals are completely wrong. A basic question is if you trust more in a zillion of unknown nodes were really few unknown ones run and decide on the protocol or will you trust more a few well known actors who at the end will be accountable by a legal system, assuming it is a good one. For example, was a cryptocurrency like Libra from FB where nodes were known actors less secure than a stable coin run by just one shady actor? If a few Bitcoin miners want to stop the show they can. Also Bitcoin is not trustless in the sense there are very few people who can modify or incorporate new features to the node. The lie is in the trustless word as if it would be run by a God. The spirit of a P2P financial infrastructure is fine, the question is if this one is the solution. BTW, I work in the field. I think I will never see the number of frauds and shady people I found in this space. I talked with many of the people appearing in the news now, and more will appear. If you ask me a number of things that I find interesting about the field, one is the security analysis of code. There are many interesting things to learn in this space that can be extrapolated. Another is cryptography and fault tolerance areas that are moving forward thanks all of this, a third one is that I expect DeFi could bring more new financial ideas to play that frauds.

pfraze 4y ago
I've found that question about bitcoin protocol governance rather interesting, wrote a bit about it here: https://paulfrazee.medium.com/the-rules-to-make-the-rules-be0c3b9d92b6 https://paulfrazee.medium.com/the-rules-to-make-the-rules-be... In summary, after a fair bit of research-from-home and talking to a couple of people deeply in the bitcoin space, I'm still not sure who really holds the reigns.
saurik 4y ago
> were really few unknown ones run and decide on the protocol That's not how Bitcoin works: you and the party you are giving money to decide the protocol, not the miners. If these unknown miners are doing something different than what your clients allow then those miners aren't part of the same network as you.
- bcrl 4y ago
  The protocol for interacting with an exchange to trade for fiat isn't decided by the protocol. You just don't get to find out if you've been scammed by trusting your exchange to do what it said it did until it's too late. Trust is still required, but there's no governance to back it up.

henning 4y ago

It's not digital gold because you can't copy and paste gold to make new, separate elements with identical properties. You cannot just easily alter the elemental chart the way someone can copy and paste a new shitcoin for their latest pump and dump. Bitcoin is not digital gold because there could always be a hard fork -- it's controlled by an unaccountable cabal of miners and whales and if they wanted to do so, it would happen.

sunshinerag 4y ago
Sorry that is very poor understanding. No you cannot copy paste bitcoins(not sure what crypto is) into distinct pieces with identical properties. No, it is not trivially hard forkable compared to say the dollar or pound where the supply (a key property) is constantly adjusted by an unaccountable cabal of unelected bureaucrats whenever they fancy it.
- henning 4y ago
  It is you who do not understand. You're conflating quantitative easing with cryptocurrency hard forks. Those are completely separate processes.
kayamon 4y ago
The miners are prevented from forming a cabal to successfully hard-fork. This is loosely referred to as a 51% attack, but basically as long as there are two people in the world who disagree then Bitcoin will continue along its existing fair path.

notch656c 4y ago

Buying goods in one country and selling them at a premium in another is the basis of international commerce. If you can't turn a profit why export? the issue is there actually wasn't a low-risk arbitrage opportunity at such ridiculous (7%) annual premiums and at such scale, and even if there were it's not what they were doing. I'd go far as to say most the people gaining from these guaranteed high interest schemes probably knew they were fraud or part of nasty victim involved crime and then they got botthurt when they found out they weren't the smart ones and pulled out too late.

jasmer 4y ago

There's a very different thing in hoping/misunderstanding the value of a creation (.com bubble) and doing things which have obviously zero-sum game characteristics. A lot of crypto is de-facto scammy and much of it is designed that way. Far less so in the rest of the system.