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HN hates crypto for no apparent reason other than hive-mind. Not even worth arguing around here.

by nbar1 3y ago

roland35 3y ago
Hate crypto for no apparent reason? There are so many reasons to hate it! Fraud and waste are the main problems for me personally. The entire enterprise is rotten.
- infamouscow 3y ago
  I'd be curious where you're gathering your information about how much fraud and waste exists in the current system.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- nailer 3y ago
  HN thinks crypto is scams and speculation. Crypto people think it’s getting rid of visa, Western Union, and government censorship.
hdjjhhvvhga 3y ago
> no apparent reason That's an oversight of the year.
- kibwen 3y ago
  For some reason I'm reminded of the famous essay "The Missing Missing Reasons", which is about the group behavior of parents who are estranged from their adult children: https://www.issendai.com/psychology/estrangement/missing-missing-reasons.html https://www.issendai.com/psychology/estrangement/missing-mis...
rhaway84773 3y ago
I’ve never seen crypto hate on HN which isn’t followed by a laundry list of specific complaints about crypto. Arguably it’s even more annoying than if we just had posts that only say “I hate crypto”. But the idea that there is no apparent reason is laughably wrong. People give a lot of reasons.
mschuster91 3y ago
> HN hates crypto for no apparent reason other than hive-mind. To give you an example of a HN reader with reasons to dislike most cryptocoin stuff: - cryptocurrencies, particularly those mineable on CPUs and/or easily laundrable, provide a serious financial incentive for scriptkiddies and other hackers to go and hack systems to have them mine for coins, encrypt them in coin-extortion schemes, or steal the content of wallets they find. Basically, it's like the absence of STIR/SHAKEN on a phone network - it invites scammers to robocall people and pull scams on them. - mining of cryptocurrencies, especially on Bitcoin and other ASIC based coins, consumes an awful lot of electricity, which has been incentive enough for multiple operators to reactivate fossil fuel plants that had already been shut. - cryptocurrency mines of everything but proof-of-stake coins produce an awful lot of e-waste. Some of that can be repurposed (e.g. CPUs, RAM, GPUs, FPGAs) which has serious side effects on its own (such as enormous gluts in the used markets when miners drop their rigs), some of that is uneconomical to repurpose (HDDs/SSDs for proof-of-storage coins, the mining process eats through them at an insane pace) and some of that is impossible to reuse (ASICs). - cryptocurrency mines can lock up large parts of the hardware supply because miners pay so much more than even the richest gamer can afford. One might argue that that's a natural function of a capitalist economy, but sorry when you can't get a new halfway-decent GPU for years because scalpers buy up all the stock then the market has fucking failed. - cryptocurrencies invite undesirable people and events. There have been almost infinite amounts of these, documented on [1] - legitimate hacks, legitimate coding issues that sent coins to null addresses, rug-pulls disguised as hacks, shoddy accounting or general business practices by people who got in way over their head (MtGox) or had no idea WTF they were doing (FTX). Or NFTs which all went down the drain once the free money spigot and the novelty wore off (on top of the OG NFT Bored Ape copying and thus promoting outright Third Reich Nazi symbols and edgy far-right memes [2]). - cryptocurrencies invite those who think it's a good idea to use them as a proxy to evade securities laws or KYC rules, luring in gullible morons in the process and leading to loss of money. tl;dr: too much money lures in too many morons and everyone but the original "investors" loses. [1] https://web3isgoinggreat.com/ https://web3isgoinggreat.com/ [2] https://gordongoner.com/ https://gordongoner.com/
- Abroszka 3y ago
  All of this is basically: * shitty people scamming other people: Yes, everyone knows. It happens with normal money as well. I regularly get "How to avoid scammers" emails from my bank too. As long as something has value someone will try to use it to scam someone else. * mining: Yes we know, mining is bad. Nobody wants it, it's going away. Could it go away faster? Yes, but it will happen eventually. Ban mining for all I care, nobody really needs it.
otikik 3y ago
> hive-mind Relevant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection

HN hates crypto for no apparent reason other than hive-mind. Not even worth arguing around here.

by nbar1 3y ago

HN hates crypto for no apparent reason other than hive-mind. Not even worth arguing around here.

Hate crypto for no apparent reason? There are so many reasons to hate it! Fraud and waste are the main problems for me personally. The entire enterprise is rotten.

infamouscow 3y ago
I'd be curious where you're gathering your information about how much fraud and waste exists in the current system.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
nailer 3y ago
HN thinks crypto is scams and speculation. Crypto people think it’s getting rid of visa, Western Union, and government censorship.

hdjjhhvvhga 3y ago

> no apparent reason That's an oversight of the year.

kibwen 3y ago
For some reason I'm reminded of the famous essay "The Missing Missing Reasons", which is about the group behavior of parents who are estranged from their adult children: https://www.issendai.com/psychology/estrangement/missing-missing-reasons.html https://www.issendai.com/psychology/estrangement/missing-mis...

rhaway84773 3y ago

I’ve never seen crypto hate on HN which isn’t followed by a laundry list of specific complaints about crypto. Arguably it’s even more annoying than if we just had posts that only say “I hate crypto”. But the idea that there is no apparent reason is laughably wrong. People give a lot of reasons.

mschuster91 3y ago

> HN hates crypto for no apparent reason other than hive-mind. To give you an example of a HN reader with reasons to dislike most cryptocoin stuff: - cryptocurrencies, particularly those mineable on CPUs and/or easily laundrable, provide a serious financial incentive for scriptkiddies and other hackers to go and hack systems to have them mine for coins, encrypt them in coin-extortion schemes, or steal the content of wallets they find. Basically, it's like the absence of STIR/SHAKEN on a phone network - it invites scammers to robocall people and pull scams on them. - mining of cryptocurrencies, especially on Bitcoin and other ASIC based coins, consumes an awful lot of electricity, which has been incentive enough for multiple operators to reactivate fossil fuel plants that had already been shut. - cryptocurrency mines of everything but proof-of-stake coins produce an awful lot of e-waste. Some of that can be repurposed (e.g. CPUs, RAM, GPUs, FPGAs) which has serious side effects on its own (such as enormous gluts in the used markets when miners drop their rigs), some of that is uneconomical to repurpose (HDDs/SSDs for proof-of-storage coins, the mining process eats through them at an insane pace) and some of that is impossible to reuse (ASICs). - cryptocurrency mines can lock up large parts of the hardware supply because miners pay so much more than even the richest gamer can afford. One might argue that that's a natural function of a capitalist economy, but sorry when you can't get a new halfway-decent GPU for years because scalpers buy up all the stock then the market has fucking failed. - cryptocurrencies invite undesirable people and events. There have been almost infinite amounts of these, documented on [1] - legitimate hacks, legitimate coding issues that sent coins to null addresses, rug-pulls disguised as hacks, shoddy accounting or general business practices by people who got in way over their head (MtGox) or had no idea WTF they were doing (FTX). Or NFTs which all went down the drain once the free money spigot and the novelty wore off (on top of the OG NFT Bored Ape copying and thus promoting outright Third Reich Nazi symbols and edgy far-right memes [2]). - cryptocurrencies invite those who think it's a good idea to use them as a proxy to evade securities laws or KYC rules, luring in gullible morons in the process and leading to loss of money. tl;dr: too much money lures in too many morons and everyone but the original "investors" loses. [1] https://web3isgoinggreat.com/ https://web3isgoinggreat.com/ [2] https://gordongoner.com/ https://gordongoner.com/

Abroszka 3y ago
All of this is basically: * shitty people scamming other people: Yes, everyone knows. It happens with normal money as well. I regularly get "How to avoid scammers" emails from my bank too. As long as something has value someone will try to use it to scam someone else. * mining: Yes we know, mining is bad. Nobody wants it, it's going away. Could it go away faster? Yes, but it will happen eventually. Ban mining for all I care, nobody really needs it.

otikik 3y ago

> hive-mind Relevant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection