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Crypto content on HN... this is either gonna go really great or the opposite of that.

jrm4 3y ago
Yup. It's always felt like there's a disproportionate amount of hate for crypto -- not that people should like it or love it, but that I'm surprised that tech people here don't appear to understand its inevitability. So it seems like they treat it as something to be killed (impossible) as opposed to something to buckle up and get ready to manage (more or less like they correctly do with AI.)
- birdyrooster 3y ago
  We are so familiar with the technology we have actual informed opinions in either direction. The only dispassionate people are those who don’t know yet.
  - jrm4 3y ago
    Not what I've seen here. This is one of the few topics here where I think emotion STRONGLY gets in the way of reason. Too few people are "first princpl-ing" this to understand that the crypto-train, to some extent, is happening whether any of us like it or not.
    - tedivm 3y ago
      Honestly I hear this a lot from crypto advocates, but it just seems like wishful thinking on their part. There are a ton of legitimate complaints about cryptocurrency that come up, and the fact that after a decade the field still hasn't made any real progress is telling to me. At this point the "shitcoins" have mostly collapses, NFT has been devalued, and use cases seem to be disappearing. While I do think things like migrating away from proof of work have been helpful, I still don't believe that we're going to see larger adoption. I do think you are right that this is a topic where emotion strongly gets in the way of reason, but I think the people lacking reason are the advocates and not the critics.
      - junofan 3y ago
        What progress do you want cryptocurrency to make? They’re bearer assets. You can go pay people with them today.
        imtringued 3y ago
        The most obvious first step is to stop all initial coin offerings against money. If the cryptocurrency is a security, then that is ok, but there are some regulations that need to be followed. In the EU there are plenty of companies willing to manage a security token offering for your company. A security token is basically a cryptocurrency that acts as an informal stock.
        junofan 3y ago
        I don’t see what that has to do with cryptocurrency like Monero, the topic of this post.
    - imtringued 3y ago
      The problem with the cryptocurrency advocates is that they have zero clue about money. Neoclassical economics declares money irrelevant and not something to study, so there is hardly any research how money influences a society beyond central bank policy about how much money there should be. Here is a tip. Money is a transaction cost reducing device. That is it's primary function. By transaction costs I don't mean just fees that a bank or payment service provider charges you, no I mean every economic cost that is involved in negotiating payments. You could think of transaction costs as friction and money as a lubricant. If you have to exchange currencies this causes friction, if you have to physically transport goods or meet in person to barter with them this causes friction. If the value of the goods you are trading is unknown this causes friction. The purpose of money is to be better than some alternative world without money and most cryptocurrencies are hardly better, they are worse or outright useless. The legitimate niches that cryptocurrencies occupy will barely even influence the real world.
      - jrm4 3y ago
        I 99% agree and and also argue that the 1% is significant. Money is sometimes that, but it's also merely a store of value. And I think this what people are missing. I agree that we're almost certainly not going to say paying for coffee in bitcoin. But where it has legs is as the 401k/money in the mattress replacement; a space that's still very "competitive," i.e. a lot of the options here still really suck, thanks to inflation and/or third parties.
    - zirgs 3y ago
      It's been almost 15 years. There's still no valid crypto use case outside of speculation and crime.
      - mrangle 3y ago
        Speculation is all that is required for validity. Parallel to barter, desire-to-use is all that is required for use-case. Governments are going to remain challenged by the need to now assert that possession or use of a legal instrument, with no inherent illegal characteristic, is now evidence of intent to crime. Not that I don't expect them to rise to the occasion. As they have been by implementing crude sanction power in place of legislation.
- toppy 3y ago
  Call it "programmable money" and we're good to skyrocket.
- tibbetts 3y ago
  I think of it as a bunch of bad early implementations that are being used for dubious financial purposes and outright fraud, fueling a bubble. The same could be said for joint stock corporations in the 1600s. Something can be inevitable (maybe it is maybe it isn’t) and the current situation can still be bad. Someone in the 1600s saying that joint stock companies are terrible, solve a problem that doesn’t really need solving, and are being used to rip off investors and fund unethical colonialism would have been right. It took a while before people used them in good ways. And even today they are questionable.
- psychoslave 3y ago
  No hate, but no interest either. After all these years, all scam stories apart, what crypto allow its users to do that they would not be able to do otherwise with less resources? Really I don’t know, and I admit I never wanted to dig the topic as there are many other topic I will never have the time to learn and yet doesn’t seem to have such an issue of what is at best a tremendous noise/signal ratio.
  - suslik 3y ago
    > what crypto allow its users to do that they would not be able to do otherwise with less resources International money transfers, for instance. The traditional banking system was always slow and expensive, and, on top of that, countries cut each other out due to geopolitical reasons. Many third-world countries have a decent crypto adoption, you can send someone money in a matter of minutes (I do).
    - AlexandrB 3y ago
      > and, on top of that, countries cut each other out due to geopolitical reasons For a sovereign state this is a feature, not a bug. If you think that countries will take sending of funds to embargoed countries lying down you are sorely mistaken.
      - suslik 3y ago
        Sure, and that's exactly why sovereign states don't like monero and mixers - but that is their problem, not mine. Also, in many cases transferring crypto is not illegal - for instance, it is legal to transfer money to non-sanction banks in Russia, but in many countries, the banking system doesn't allow that. If you had a 90y.o. starving grandma there, you'd be grateful for the crypto.
        mrangle 3y ago
        Via sanctions, it is illegal for you to use specific mixers assuming you are a US citizen. Which does make it your problem. And if you have a mixer or private coin that isn't under sanction, it is only a matter of time as determined by the US gov's assessment of the risk of it being widely adopted.
- HideousKojima 3y ago
  >inevitability I think it's the crypto bros who misunderstand it's "inevitability." Crypto has far, far fewer practical applications than the people pushing for it it claim. There are two useful situations for crypto: 1) Where you need a trustless distributed consensus method or database (and where the Oracle Problem doesn't get in your way). Trustless is the key word here, 99% of the time that someone proposes a potential use for crypto it would be better served by traditional databases like Postgres, or traditional consensus algorithms like Raft, because being able to handle such things in a trustless manner isn't actually as desirable as crypto bros suggest. 2) Where you need to bypass financial regulations, sanctions, laws, etc. Crypto has shown some real utility for buying illegal drugs and guns online, for example. Whether or not you see this as a good or bad thing depends largely on your political leanings.
  - alphanullmeric 3y ago
    Bypassing financial regulations is indeed a great thing. It’s none of your business whether someone wants to trade derivatives or earn interest on their own money. Love it when supposed investor protections aren’t opt out, and then the surveillance infrastructure they put in place get used for tax enforcement or state sponsored looting of political enemies.
  - nonameking2026 3y ago
    Maybe if you lived in some 3rd world countries - you could find more utility for it. Hyperinflation is the default for some countries, being able to keep some evil dictators from your money might be a good thing. F.x. instead of your money funding illegal wars in Libya you could save some of that wealth and try to build a better future.
  - jrm4 3y ago
    One could quite easily construct arguments that sound exactly like this, but for encryption and/or online anonymity, for what its worth.
- nicholasbraker 3y ago
  I think tech people are in the best position to judge that in most cases the technology doesn't bring any benefits that a current / non-ledger like technology doesn't bring already. Use-cases are few and far between. I doubt it's actually inevitable. (again some use cases are, especially in the utility realm)
- AlexandrB 3y ago
  > I'm surprised that tech people here don't appear to understand its inevitability. All progress depends on the "unreasonable man". I don't think it's inevitable at all, nor have I seen any evidence that it will be. Thus far non-government blockchains have proven to be ill suited for applications other than speculation (and crime). Central bank "programmable money" is definitely a threat - but it's hardly inevitable if popular opposition is vigorous enough. If you were to ask a tech enthusiast in 2010, they'd might you that 3D TVs were inevitable. Instead they fizzled out. Then there's "the Metaverse", which seems to be on bumpy terrain as well. SPACs seem to be doing not so hot[1]. Not every tech/financial trend sticks around if the value proposition isn't there. And the value proposition for cryptocurrency is very poor in my view. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special-purpose_acquisition_company#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special-purpose_acquisition_co...
  - jrm4 3y ago
    You should look harder for the evidence. 1% is all you need. There is a not-insignificant number of people using crypto to move and store money today. I agree A LOT of garbage is going to get shaken out, but this says to me "okay, what part/idea in crypto survives this bloodbath and gets bigger," not "throw the whole thing out."
- Yizahi 3y ago
  Inevitable for law avoidance? Sure. We know quite well that humans like very much systems which allow them to avoid laws of any kind, so of course such a system will survive for a long time. Inevitable for lawful daily usage? Nope. Fundamental problems and lack of benefits will prevent blockchain based ledgers to be deployed in any useful scalable way. Actually not "will" but rather "did". Token proposals had a decade of time already and all failed (except for law avoidance of course). Any legitimate proposal has failed spectacularly: 1) Legal currency - failed due to no privacy, bad performance, atrocious UX, unstable exchange rate, shady providers; 2) Distributed storage - fail 3) Distributed calculator - fail 4) Distributed network (Helium) - fail 5) Smart contracts - neither smart nor contracts, very pricey, limited functions (on chain only), oracle problem unsolved 6) NFT - one big lie, impossible to implement any promise made about them because they don't facilitate transfer of the ownership 7) Supply chain ideas - fail, the problem is not securing the DB but securing the humans doing data input in the DB Anything else I've forgot? Basically most of the good ideas on paper turned out to be either impossible or impractical with blockchains.
  - Eisenstein 3y ago
    > Anything else I've forgot? Going by the claims I have encountered: * Inflation proof/Store of value/Stock market hedge * Bringing banking to the poor * Web3 * Play-and-get-paid gaming
    - landemva 3y ago
      Also, preventing corrupt goverment and court from finding and stealing stored value.
  - jrm4 3y ago
    Not daily and I think that's the thing. I suppose when one says "cryptocurrency," there are a lot of possible ways one might use it. I agree that for a daily driver, very unlikely. But "store of value" is still very much in play. Crypto as a competitor to the 401k or "money in the mattress" strikes me as damn near inevitable.
- imtringued 3y ago
  I don't see cryptocurrencies as something to be killed. I think the vast majority of them are illogical, based on wishful thinking and severe ignorance or outright scams. People will point out one among twenty thousand without realizing that the exception proves the rule. Yeah sure keep speculating on your "digital gold" I don't care. Unlike holding dollars as demand deposits or cash, you can't hijack the economy. You are accountable for the risks you take but that doesn't mean anyone is going to use Bitcoin or Ethereum to pay their groceries, especially since so many of the crypto credit card companies love operating in jurisdictions where they are completely unaware about the tax implications of their product. What a well thought out business model... Even though Europe/EU is embracing a regulatory framework for cryptocurrencies and making it easier to do business, crypto exchanges operate in regulatory safe havens, engage in shady practices or get hacked and lose your money.
  - roenxi 3y ago
    > People will point out one among twenty thousand without realizing that the exception proves the rule. This argument doesn't hold well. Creating huge amounts of value is expected to be the exception rather than the rule - one of the powerful mechanisms at play here is this is an unusually free market where failure is cheap and all the money clusters to success. It is reasonable to ignore the thousands of failures. They failed because they were easy to ignore.
    - landemva 3y ago
      >> this is an unusually free market where failure is cheap [public quick] The speed and amount of effort to innovate, by basically every demographic of persons, is breathtaking and exciting. Due to low startup costs (lack of gatekeepers), most will fail. That is okay, because the builders are not playing with super powder.
- 5350-uiop-1130 3y ago
  > its inevitability crypto's new paradigm is always just around the corner. i've been involved in cc for long enough to know that it's popularity (and price) are not driven by utility. as vb said, it's the linux of money. > step 1: install gentoo > step 2: install xmr wallet
sircastor 3y ago
I’m kind of surprised it made it to the top of the page. HN is certainly divided about crypto, not recently it has felt to me it’s slipped the wayside in favor of AI stories.
- StingyJelly 3y ago
  There are aspects to hate about crypto but monero is not one of them.

jrm4 3y ago

Yup. It's always felt like there's a disproportionate amount of hate for crypto -- not that people should like it or love it, but that I'm surprised that tech people here don't appear to understand its inevitability. So it seems like they treat it as something to be killed (impossible) as opposed to something to buckle up and get ready to manage (more or less like they correctly do with AI.)

birdyrooster 3y ago
We are so familiar with the technology we have actual informed opinions in either direction. The only dispassionate people are those who don’t know yet.
- jrm4 3y ago
  Not what I've seen here. This is one of the few topics here where I think emotion STRONGLY gets in the way of reason. Too few people are "first princpl-ing" this to understand that the crypto-train, to some extent, is happening whether any of us like it or not.
  - tedivm 3y ago
    Honestly I hear this a lot from crypto advocates, but it just seems like wishful thinking on their part. There are a ton of legitimate complaints about cryptocurrency that come up, and the fact that after a decade the field still hasn't made any real progress is telling to me. At this point the "shitcoins" have mostly collapses, NFT has been devalued, and use cases seem to be disappearing. While I do think things like migrating away from proof of work have been helpful, I still don't believe that we're going to see larger adoption. I do think you are right that this is a topic where emotion strongly gets in the way of reason, but I think the people lacking reason are the advocates and not the critics.
    - junofan 3y ago
      What progress do you want cryptocurrency to make? They’re bearer assets. You can go pay people with them today.
      - imtringued 3y ago
        The most obvious first step is to stop all initial coin offerings against money. If the cryptocurrency is a security, then that is ok, but there are some regulations that need to be followed. In the EU there are plenty of companies willing to manage a security token offering for your company. A security token is basically a cryptocurrency that acts as an informal stock.
        junofan 3y ago
        I don’t see what that has to do with cryptocurrency like Monero, the topic of this post.
  - imtringued 3y ago
    The problem with the cryptocurrency advocates is that they have zero clue about money. Neoclassical economics declares money irrelevant and not something to study, so there is hardly any research how money influences a society beyond central bank policy about how much money there should be. Here is a tip. Money is a transaction cost reducing device. That is it's primary function. By transaction costs I don't mean just fees that a bank or payment service provider charges you, no I mean every economic cost that is involved in negotiating payments. You could think of transaction costs as friction and money as a lubricant. If you have to exchange currencies this causes friction, if you have to physically transport goods or meet in person to barter with them this causes friction. If the value of the goods you are trading is unknown this causes friction. The purpose of money is to be better than some alternative world without money and most cryptocurrencies are hardly better, they are worse or outright useless. The legitimate niches that cryptocurrencies occupy will barely even influence the real world.
    - jrm4 3y ago
      I 99% agree and and also argue that the 1% is significant. Money is sometimes that, but it's also merely a store of value. And I think this what people are missing. I agree that we're almost certainly not going to say paying for coffee in bitcoin. But where it has legs is as the 401k/money in the mattress replacement; a space that's still very "competitive," i.e. a lot of the options here still really suck, thanks to inflation and/or third parties.
  - zirgs 3y ago
    It's been almost 15 years. There's still no valid crypto use case outside of speculation and crime.
    - mrangle 3y ago
      Speculation is all that is required for validity. Parallel to barter, desire-to-use is all that is required for use-case. Governments are going to remain challenged by the need to now assert that possession or use of a legal instrument, with no inherent illegal characteristic, is now evidence of intent to crime. Not that I don't expect them to rise to the occasion. As they have been by implementing crude sanction power in place of legislation.
toppy 3y ago
Call it "programmable money" and we're good to skyrocket.
tibbetts 3y ago
I think of it as a bunch of bad early implementations that are being used for dubious financial purposes and outright fraud, fueling a bubble. The same could be said for joint stock corporations in the 1600s. Something can be inevitable (maybe it is maybe it isn’t) and the current situation can still be bad. Someone in the 1600s saying that joint stock companies are terrible, solve a problem that doesn’t really need solving, and are being used to rip off investors and fund unethical colonialism would have been right. It took a while before people used them in good ways. And even today they are questionable.
psychoslave 3y ago
No hate, but no interest either. After all these years, all scam stories apart, what crypto allow its users to do that they would not be able to do otherwise with less resources? Really I don’t know, and I admit I never wanted to dig the topic as there are many other topic I will never have the time to learn and yet doesn’t seem to have such an issue of what is at best a tremendous noise/signal ratio.
- suslik 3y ago
  > what crypto allow its users to do that they would not be able to do otherwise with less resources International money transfers, for instance. The traditional banking system was always slow and expensive, and, on top of that, countries cut each other out due to geopolitical reasons. Many third-world countries have a decent crypto adoption, you can send someone money in a matter of minutes (I do).
  - AlexandrB 3y ago
    > and, on top of that, countries cut each other out due to geopolitical reasons For a sovereign state this is a feature, not a bug. If you think that countries will take sending of funds to embargoed countries lying down you are sorely mistaken.
    - suslik 3y ago
      Sure, and that's exactly why sovereign states don't like monero and mixers - but that is their problem, not mine. Also, in many cases transferring crypto is not illegal - for instance, it is legal to transfer money to non-sanction banks in Russia, but in many countries, the banking system doesn't allow that. If you had a 90y.o. starving grandma there, you'd be grateful for the crypto.
      - mrangle 3y ago
        Via sanctions, it is illegal for you to use specific mixers assuming you are a US citizen. Which does make it your problem. And if you have a mixer or private coin that isn't under sanction, it is only a matter of time as determined by the US gov's assessment of the risk of it being widely adopted.
HideousKojima 3y ago
>inevitability I think it's the crypto bros who misunderstand it's "inevitability." Crypto has far, far fewer practical applications than the people pushing for it it claim. There are two useful situations for crypto: 1) Where you need a trustless distributed consensus method or database (and where the Oracle Problem doesn't get in your way). Trustless is the key word here, 99% of the time that someone proposes a potential use for crypto it would be better served by traditional databases like Postgres, or traditional consensus algorithms like Raft, because being able to handle such things in a trustless manner isn't actually as desirable as crypto bros suggest. 2) Where you need to bypass financial regulations, sanctions, laws, etc. Crypto has shown some real utility for buying illegal drugs and guns online, for example. Whether or not you see this as a good or bad thing depends largely on your political leanings.
- alphanullmeric 3y ago
  Bypassing financial regulations is indeed a great thing. It’s none of your business whether someone wants to trade derivatives or earn interest on their own money. Love it when supposed investor protections aren’t opt out, and then the surveillance infrastructure they put in place get used for tax enforcement or state sponsored looting of political enemies.
- nonameking2026 3y ago
  Maybe if you lived in some 3rd world countries - you could find more utility for it. Hyperinflation is the default for some countries, being able to keep some evil dictators from your money might be a good thing. F.x. instead of your money funding illegal wars in Libya you could save some of that wealth and try to build a better future.
- jrm4 3y ago
  One could quite easily construct arguments that sound exactly like this, but for encryption and/or online anonymity, for what its worth.
nicholasbraker 3y ago
I think tech people are in the best position to judge that in most cases the technology doesn't bring any benefits that a current / non-ledger like technology doesn't bring already. Use-cases are few and far between. I doubt it's actually inevitable. (again some use cases are, especially in the utility realm)
AlexandrB 3y ago
> I'm surprised that tech people here don't appear to understand its inevitability. All progress depends on the "unreasonable man". I don't think it's inevitable at all, nor have I seen any evidence that it will be. Thus far non-government blockchains have proven to be ill suited for applications other than speculation (and crime). Central bank "programmable money" is definitely a threat - but it's hardly inevitable if popular opposition is vigorous enough. If you were to ask a tech enthusiast in 2010, they'd might you that 3D TVs were inevitable. Instead they fizzled out. Then there's "the Metaverse", which seems to be on bumpy terrain as well. SPACs seem to be doing not so hot[1]. Not every tech/financial trend sticks around if the value proposition isn't there. And the value proposition for cryptocurrency is very poor in my view. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special-purpose_acquisition_company#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special-purpose_acquisition_co...
- jrm4 3y ago
  You should look harder for the evidence. 1% is all you need. There is a not-insignificant number of people using crypto to move and store money today. I agree A LOT of garbage is going to get shaken out, but this says to me "okay, what part/idea in crypto survives this bloodbath and gets bigger," not "throw the whole thing out."
Yizahi 3y ago
Inevitable for law avoidance? Sure. We know quite well that humans like very much systems which allow them to avoid laws of any kind, so of course such a system will survive for a long time. Inevitable for lawful daily usage? Nope. Fundamental problems and lack of benefits will prevent blockchain based ledgers to be deployed in any useful scalable way. Actually not "will" but rather "did". Token proposals had a decade of time already and all failed (except for law avoidance of course). Any legitimate proposal has failed spectacularly: 1) Legal currency - failed due to no privacy, bad performance, atrocious UX, unstable exchange rate, shady providers; 2) Distributed storage - fail 3) Distributed calculator - fail 4) Distributed network (Helium) - fail 5) Smart contracts - neither smart nor contracts, very pricey, limited functions (on chain only), oracle problem unsolved 6) NFT - one big lie, impossible to implement any promise made about them because they don't facilitate transfer of the ownership 7) Supply chain ideas - fail, the problem is not securing the DB but securing the humans doing data input in the DB Anything else I've forgot? Basically most of the good ideas on paper turned out to be either impossible or impractical with blockchains.
- Eisenstein 3y ago
  > Anything else I've forgot? Going by the claims I have encountered: * Inflation proof/Store of value/Stock market hedge * Bringing banking to the poor * Web3 * Play-and-get-paid gaming
  - landemva 3y ago
    Also, preventing corrupt goverment and court from finding and stealing stored value.
- jrm4 3y ago
  Not daily and I think that's the thing. I suppose when one says "cryptocurrency," there are a lot of possible ways one might use it. I agree that for a daily driver, very unlikely. But "store of value" is still very much in play. Crypto as a competitor to the 401k or "money in the mattress" strikes me as damn near inevitable.
imtringued 3y ago
I don't see cryptocurrencies as something to be killed. I think the vast majority of them are illogical, based on wishful thinking and severe ignorance or outright scams. People will point out one among twenty thousand without realizing that the exception proves the rule. Yeah sure keep speculating on your "digital gold" I don't care. Unlike holding dollars as demand deposits or cash, you can't hijack the economy. You are accountable for the risks you take but that doesn't mean anyone is going to use Bitcoin or Ethereum to pay their groceries, especially since so many of the crypto credit card companies love operating in jurisdictions where they are completely unaware about the tax implications of their product. What a well thought out business model... Even though Europe/EU is embracing a regulatory framework for cryptocurrencies and making it easier to do business, crypto exchanges operate in regulatory safe havens, engage in shady practices or get hacked and lose your money.
- roenxi 3y ago
  > People will point out one among twenty thousand without realizing that the exception proves the rule. This argument doesn't hold well. Creating huge amounts of value is expected to be the exception rather than the rule - one of the powerful mechanisms at play here is this is an unusually free market where failure is cheap and all the money clusters to success. It is reasonable to ignore the thousands of failures. They failed because they were easy to ignore.
  - landemva 3y ago
    >> this is an unusually free market where failure is cheap [public quick] The speed and amount of effort to innovate, by basically every demographic of persons, is breathtaking and exciting. Due to low startup costs (lack of gatekeepers), most will fail. That is okay, because the builders are not playing with super powder.
5350-uiop-1130 3y ago
> its inevitability crypto's new paradigm is always just around the corner. i've been involved in cc for long enough to know that it's popularity (and price) are not driven by utility. as vb said, it's the linux of money. > step 1: install gentoo > step 2: install xmr wallet

sircastor 3y ago

I’m kind of surprised it made it to the top of the page. HN is certainly divided about crypto, not recently it has felt to me it’s slipped the wayside in favor of AI stories.

StingyJelly 3y ago
There are aspects to hate about crypto but monero is not one of them.