5 ms·

And as usual a crypto plug into any thread.

yieldcrv 4y ago
I forgot to mention that also of the above applies at unlimited amounts Instead of arbitrarily low amounts It solves the friction for the person I replied to, and anyone that wants to avoid that particular kind of friction
flotzam 4y ago
mention a valid use case = "plugging crypto" never mention any = "there are no valid use cases for crypto" And this is a fairly common one. For example it's how GrapheneOS pays their developers, because TradFi (especially cross-border) is too capricious.
- JohnFen 4y ago
  That's the one use case that I think almost everyone agrees is valid, so it may be that people react that way because it isn't really educating anyone. It just feels more like evangelism. Just speculating. I'll never downvote or argue against anyone pointing out that use case, personally.
nibbleshifter 4y ago
To be fair here, they are handy if the bank wakes up one day and decides you are a wrong 'un for no good reason. Or if you are transacting with someone with a funny sounding name, or who lives in a developing country (especially in MENA). You can conduct your business without worrying about intermediary risk. Hell, I've had bizarre issues in the past trying to make transfers between some large American banks and a number of European banks, the transactions just get "stuck" for a couple weeks, then get refunded, because somewhere in the middle something goes tits up.
latchkey 4y ago
A comment I saw yesterday that seems oddly relevant.... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35320208 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35320208 "HN is weirdly inconsistent about digital currencies. Generally pro encryption, net neutrality, open-source software, VPNs, etc. But mention "Bitcoin," and suddenly half the commenters lose their shit about the Four Horsemen of the Infocalypse. Then they go back to commiserating with another Ask HN startup founder whose PayPal account was frozen."
- JohnFen 4y ago
  It might have more to do with the cryptocurrency space appearing more than a little shady than any sort of inconsistency.
  - latchkey 4y ago
    All industries around finance attract shady actors. In Vietnam, you get the best exchange rate for VND, by going to the gold dealers. Paypal doing shady things is par for the course. Banks going under because 97% of their deposits are over the FDIC limits is normal behavior. Simultaneously ignoring the benefits of cryptocurrencies and the problems they are trying to solve, while only looking at the negative edges that are covered by mainstream media, seems short-sighted at best. That's the inconsistency.
    - JohnFen 4y ago
      Yes, all industries attract bad actors. But the cryptocurrency space seems to be largely run by bad actors. Not everyone, of course, but a disturbingly large percentage. > Simultaneously ignoring the benefits of cryptocurrencies I don't actually see a lot of that happening here, though.
      - latchkey 4y ago
        > Yes, all industries attract bad actors. But the cryptocurrency space seems to be largely run by bad actors. Not everyone, of course, but a disturbingly large percentage. Source? Seriously. I mean, we have CEX going down with SBF and Molly White posting anti-web3 stuff. I'm sorry, but that isn't the core fundamental technology that we're talking about here. > I don't actually see a lot of that happening here, though. Again... media focuses on the failures and not on the successes. ETH moving to proof-of-stake was a massive technological advancement that only happened after many years of development, and has gone off without a hitch. While, at the same time literally decimating all of the GPU based proof-of-work mining in a single day. Not only that, but they were able to MVP release the code without even implementing withdraw! People have trusted the developers with 0.40T dollars worth of value [0]. It is not insignificant. Next up is some really interesting work being done with zero-knowledge proofs, which will enable the scaling phase of blockchain to happen. Please try to get past the HN trope of 'crypto has zero purpose other than number goes up or down and bitcoin mining is destroying the planet' and look at what is actually happening in the industry. [0] https://ultrasound.money/ https://ultrasound.money/

I forgot to mention that also of the above applies at unlimited amounts Instead of arbitrarily low amounts It solves the friction for the person I replied to, and anyone that wants to avoid that particular kind of friction

flotzam 4y ago

mention a valid use case = "plugging crypto" never mention any = "there are no valid use cases for crypto" And this is a fairly common one. For example it's how GrapheneOS pays their developers, because TradFi (especially cross-border) is too capricious.

JohnFen 4y ago
That's the one use case that I think almost everyone agrees is valid, so it may be that people react that way because it isn't really educating anyone. It just feels more like evangelism. Just speculating. I'll never downvote or argue against anyone pointing out that use case, personally.

nibbleshifter 4y ago

To be fair here, they are handy if the bank wakes up one day and decides you are a wrong 'un for no good reason. Or if you are transacting with someone with a funny sounding name, or who lives in a developing country (especially in MENA). You can conduct your business without worrying about intermediary risk. Hell, I've had bizarre issues in the past trying to make transfers between some large American banks and a number of European banks, the transactions just get "stuck" for a couple weeks, then get refunded, because somewhere in the middle something goes tits up.

latchkey 4y ago

A comment I saw yesterday that seems oddly relevant.... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35320208 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35320208 "HN is weirdly inconsistent about digital currencies. Generally pro encryption, net neutrality, open-source software, VPNs, etc. But mention "Bitcoin," and suddenly half the commenters lose their shit about the Four Horsemen of the Infocalypse. Then they go back to commiserating with another Ask HN startup founder whose PayPal account was frozen."

JohnFen 4y ago
It might have more to do with the cryptocurrency space appearing more than a little shady than any sort of inconsistency.
- latchkey 4y ago
  All industries around finance attract shady actors. In Vietnam, you get the best exchange rate for VND, by going to the gold dealers. Paypal doing shady things is par for the course. Banks going under because 97% of their deposits are over the FDIC limits is normal behavior. Simultaneously ignoring the benefits of cryptocurrencies and the problems they are trying to solve, while only looking at the negative edges that are covered by mainstream media, seems short-sighted at best. That's the inconsistency.
  - JohnFen 4y ago
    Yes, all industries attract bad actors. But the cryptocurrency space seems to be largely run by bad actors. Not everyone, of course, but a disturbingly large percentage. > Simultaneously ignoring the benefits of cryptocurrencies I don't actually see a lot of that happening here, though.
    - latchkey 4y ago
      > Yes, all industries attract bad actors. But the cryptocurrency space seems to be largely run by bad actors. Not everyone, of course, but a disturbingly large percentage. Source? Seriously. I mean, we have CEX going down with SBF and Molly White posting anti-web3 stuff. I'm sorry, but that isn't the core fundamental technology that we're talking about here. > I don't actually see a lot of that happening here, though. Again... media focuses on the failures and not on the successes. ETH moving to proof-of-stake was a massive technological advancement that only happened after many years of development, and has gone off without a hitch. While, at the same time literally decimating all of the GPU based proof-of-work mining in a single day. Not only that, but they were able to MVP release the code without even implementing withdraw! People have trusted the developers with 0.40T dollars worth of value [0]. It is not insignificant. Next up is some really interesting work being done with zero-knowledge proofs, which will enable the scaling phase of blockchain to happen. Please try to get past the HN trope of 'crypto has zero purpose other than number goes up or down and bitcoin mining is destroying the planet' and look at what is actually happening in the industry. [0] https://ultrasound.money/ https://ultrasound.money/