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The quality of discourse at this stage of the thread (2 hours, 20 comments) is incredibly disappointing. Hn usually has high quality discussions. What is it ab

The quality of discourse at this stage of the thread (2 hours, 20 comments) is incredibly disappointing. Hn usually has high quality discussions. What is it about crypto that causes us to lose our minds?

make3 3y ago
it's not because you disagree with them that the quality is bad. Saying that crypto is very heavily linked to scams is an empirical fact at this point
- coralreef 3y ago
  I feel like this is a weak point. There are countless spam/scam websites out there, because anyone can spin up a page and publish something. That’s why you exercise a bit of caution and skepticism. That’s the tradeoff of an open web. When you have a limitless design space, you get lots of trash. But saying “websites are a scam” is just disingenuous to the fact that some websites are very legit and very useful.
  - viro 3y ago
    Are you American?
- redsky880 3y ago
  'heavily linked' is a subjective phrase. It cannot be a 'fact'. Is the Internet 'heavily linked', 'lightly linked', or just 'linked' to scams? Your research would be appreciated.
USB5 3y ago
The same thing about housing that causes us to lose our minds. Under capitalism, investments (risky and otherwise) are commonly working people's only hope for a taste of freedom. If you don't like it, you have a friend in me.
matheusmoreira 3y ago
There's some kind of bias against crypto here on HN. I've seen people here who revel in rubbing it in whenever the market crashes just because some so called "crypto bros" were smug about their profits.
- jfghi 3y ago
  There is a strong bias against scams in general, let alone multi-billion dollar scams.
  - matheusmoreira 3y ago
    I would agree if the bias was against the shitcoin casino game where you play to see who can rugpull the fastest. The truth is HN hates even proper cryptocurrencies like BTC, ETH, XMR.
    - nradov 3y ago
      No, That's misinformation. There are actually no "proper" cryptocurrencies.
      - cypress66 3y ago
        I'll bite. What would a proper cryptocurrency be?
        AlexCoventry 3y ago
        Using cryptographic signatures and distributed systems theory to authenticate asset transfers is against natural law. It's in Leviticus.
        jerry1979 3y ago
        Pardon my ignorance, but what do you mean by "it's in Leviticus"?
barking_biscuit 3y ago
I remember fondly participating in the hype around crypto in 2017 and going in on btc/eth and also building a mining rig etc. The discourse on HN back then is quite different from today. These days we've seen scam after scam, fraud after fraud, failure after failure. From a technology perspective it's neat, but the kinds of individuals it tends to attract make it seemingly not actually all that useful in wider society. These days I'm ultra skeptical of anything crypto.
- staplers 3y ago
  *finance and money in general attracts these individuals, not exclusive to crypto
- codehalo 3y ago
  I don't know what "discourse" you are talking about. I've been reading about crypto on hacker news before bitcoin hit one dollar. Other than r/buttcoin and yahoo groups, this site has been one of the most anti crypto places you can visit, to the point of being an absolute embarrassment. It has been a lesson to me about humans and intelligence since that time. Still love the place though, but I learned never to let comments be the source of the things I need to investigate.
  - shermanyo 3y ago
    I'm convinced if the internet was created today, most of HN would be faxing each other, decrying it as a scammers wasteland and useless technology..
    - TeMPOraL 3y ago
      Yes, if we had the previous Internet to go on. It's a sobering moment when you realize that a lot of tech is actually net negative to you - not the least because it outsourced to you the work that previously was done, much more efficiently, by specialized labor.
      - 3y ago
RjQoLCOSwiIKfpm 3y ago
The problem IMHO is that it is so well-known that HN hates crypto that anyone who wants to voice a reasonable opinion is likely to avoid doing so in order to not get piled on with downvotes, hatred, etc. - At least for me that's it, it would be stressful to deal with that so I go elsewhere to discuss the technology. And this is probably precisely how an echo chamber can be created even without recommendation algorithms. The "in-group" harasses the "out-group" until all of them leave - or not dare to speak anymore - and only the "in-group" is left.
- matheusmoreira 3y ago
  > anyone who wants to voice a reasonable opinion is likely to avoid doing so in order to not get piled on with downvotes, hatred, etc I think refraining from posting due to fear of downvotes is a massive disservice to HN. People should be exposed to views of all kinds. It wouldn't be very interesting if we all agreed. I actively try to post and reply even when downvoted. In the course of doing so I often discover that I'm not alone. Posting freely seems to somehow embolden others to reply as well. Besides, I've got what 17k HN points? I can't even keep track of them anymore anyway.
  - politician 3y ago
    The haves and have nots in the HN karma game is precisely the set of people who submit stories and the set of people who merely leave comments. A mediocre story submission trumps a great comment. So, you have to consider that when talking about downvotes being discouraging— for people that don’t submit stories it can feel very real.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - matheusmoreira 3y ago
      My karma is almost entirely from comments. Karma is a function of time and participation. If you comment a lot, you'll get points because chances are someone somewhere will like what you said. I care a lot more about the names of people than internet points. I've commented on threads here only to realize days later I was interacting with the creator of a major programming language. Some people are interesting enough that I've bookmarked their comments page.
berkle4455 3y ago
We’re sick of seeing frontpage news about the latest crypto scam and fallout.
- ToValueFunfetti 3y ago
  Presumably it's not the crypto bros upvoting them into that position
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- lost_tourist 3y ago
  Yeah but these are the two biggest bros in the btc universe.
- redsky880 3y ago
  so sick that you had to click and participate in the conversation
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
someguydave 3y ago
Lots of people on HN knew about crypto early and did not invest; they lost out big time and they take out their frustrations regularly.
ahahahahah 3y ago
> Hn usually has high quality discussions. It doesn't.
- smolder 3y ago
  Relative to other pseudonymous links-with-comments aggregation stations, I think it very much does.
  - lost_tourist 3y ago
    Exactly, relative to other sites like reddit and 4chan and wallstreet journal comments.
lmm 3y ago
HN discussion quality has been declining for years, ever since dang took over and changed the moderation priorities (though it's not necessarily causal). Crypto is just the leading edge of that.
hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
I take issue with something about crypto "causes us to lose our minds?". Couple points: 1. At this stage of the game, there is not a lot new under the sun to discuss that is likely to alter people's opinions. I would say that I did think there were some good comments in some of the other posts about what constitutes a security by the legal definition, and helped me understand better the specific points of the SEC's argument. This story, though, is just about the SEC wanting to freeze Binance US's assets. To be frank, I don't think there is a lot of substantive things to discuss about this particular story. 2. I feel the need to roll my eyes whenever I see the "Well, it's well known HN hates crypto..." lamentations. I will only speak for myself, but I don't "hate crypto". On the contrary, I remember reading the Bitcoin whitepaper early on and thinking how brilliant it was. As time has gone on, however, I've simply come to the conclusion that most crypto technology has very little actual utility. I believe the primary thesis of crypto enthusiasts, that it can somehow "escape" the legal frameworks of human beings (the "code is the law" stuff), is just fundamentally wrong and misguided. I think things like NFTs are just dumb. All this coupled with the fact that the crypto "ecosystem" has drawn in the scummiest set of characters I can think of, and that I think its net utility over the past decade has been negative, just leads me to believe that most crypto technologies deserve to die. This isn't some irrational "I hate crypto" take. This is my (fair, in my opinion) assessment that crypto has little overall utility. I also think this is highlighted by the fact that the amount of real crypto utility that its backers can point to is extremely limited. In general, I think the HN community is by-and-large quite rational when it comes to evaluating and discussing new technologies. I'm not saying it is always "right", and of course you always have fan boys on all sides, but I do think that reasonable, insightful comments about crypto still bubble to the top.
- TheOtherHobbes 3y ago
  Which boils down to the fact that it's entirely rational to be negative about crypto. Crypto is interesting as a kind of libertarian pseudo-oppositional secular religion that flatters itself that it's edgy and non-conformist but is actually dead-centre mainstream in a capitalist culture with consistent shades of criminality dedicated to making money at any cost.
activiation 3y ago
Your own comment adds nothing.
111111101101 3y ago
[flagged]
- ulrashida 3y ago
  Counterview: those who made gobs of money who transpose that outcome to "gosh, crypto must be great and I don't know why everyone is bashing it so much". Lots of older generations felt that way about housing price increases as well -- are they right too?
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > those who made gobs of money who transpose that outcome to "gosh, crypto must be great and I don't know why everyone is bashing it so much" Most of us can profit off something while decrying it as dumb. I’ve made money from crypto, and I think I did so ethically. But the whole thing is stupid, and I think we have a civic responsibility to ensuring that is understood.
  - 111111101101 3y ago
    They're right in that, seeing how it turned out, everyone who could have bought a house really should have bought a house. The thing about bitcoin is that EVERYONE could have bought in, either with cash or through mining. You didn't need to save a large deposit or get approved for a loan. It was an opportunity that was right there for everyone. I regret not investing more or mining. I can only imagine how those who missed the boat completely feel.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
- ninepoints 3y ago
  This is a typical sort of projection I see from crypto-owners. They can't seem to contemplate the fact that there are people that think crypto is a bad idea _regardless_ of how much profit they might or might not have made by buying or selling at various points in history.
thryg 3y ago
[flagged]
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
politician 3y ago
There are a great many people who chose to see crypto as an existential threat to the earth because proof of work requires energy and energy is derived from fossil fuels and therefore any expansion of its use exacerbates climate change. Proponents of crypto are frequently corralled into a “climate change denier” corner by this faction. The other large contingent, myself included, sees the never ending scams, shady dealings, and blatant money laundering. Some of these projects, like Bitcoin Lightning Network, are like honey pots for smart people that have no idea how serious the government is about sanctions.
- TeMPOraL 3y ago
  > There are a great many people who chose to see crypto as an existential threat to the earth because proof of work requires energy and energy is derived from fossil fuels and therefore any expansion of its use exacerbates climate change. (...) Don't miss: and energy costs grow much faster than linear with that expansion, and the incentives are all wrong - with traditional financial systems, energy expenditure is waste, upkeep, something you need to pay but want to minimize; with PoW, it's value generation and something everyone wants to maximize. Long-term, fossil fuels don't even matter here. Even with 100% clean energy derived from a Dyson sphere or something, it's still pure waste of energy, done for the sake of not having to ever trust each other. What crypto people missed is that trust is a feature, not a bug.
  - tom_ 3y ago
    You can't waste energy. It can't be destroyed!
    - TeMPOraL 3y ago
      Of course you can. Waste != destroy. The First Law tells you can't create or destroy energy, but you can transform it. The Second Law tells you that this transformation always reduces the amount of useful work you can extract from it. This is how energy is "used up" - it's transformed from a high-grade form (e.g. electricity) to a lower-grade form (e.g. waste heat). Per the Second Law, you can't then go back the opposite direction. (For a hands-on example, compare the utility of an egg vs. that of a smashed egg, and the amount of effort required to convert one into the other.) So no, Proof of Work isn't destroying energy, but it's wasting it. It's literally the whole point: you're meant to burn high-grade energy down to waste heat in order to prove you can afford it - there is math to show that trying to make it not wasteful (by e.g. doing some useful math like protein folding, instead of brute-forcing a random hash) creates incentives that defeat the whole system that PoW is supposed to establish.
tbrownaw 3y ago
Cryptocoins are far from the only topic that get people to be very insistent about clearly bad takes.
olalonde 3y ago
I think you can largely find your answer here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31356857 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31356857 tl;dr: frustration towards people in the cryptocurrency scene, feeling they've gained wealth through luck rather than skill or hard work. Also a disdain for how some cryptocurrencies are overzealously promoted. It was the top comment of a 640 comments thread, so it presumably had a lot of up votes and is representative of how HN feels about cryptocurrency. Unfortunately, the low quality discussion on crypto related threads dates back a long time and some of us just got tired of always correcting the same misinformation and low effort criticism.
- methodical 3y ago
  Thanks for pointing that out. Clearly, the only people who hold anti-crypto views are just jealous and spiteful people. There totally doesn't exist any group of people who are just sick and tired of people propping up an almost totally useless technology as the savior of all financial, political, and social woes. /s Please, point out one single application of blockchain that is useful and more efficient, beneficially transparent, and faster than a different implementation that doesn't utilize blockchain. Being somebody who is a big fan of blockchain yourself, surely this should be a very straightforward thing to point out.
  - olalonde 3y ago
    See above (and below) for the kind of low level effort comments you can find in most cryptocurrency threads.
    - methodical 3y ago
      See above for the typical coiner response to anybody who brings up counterpoints. I mention that people might not like how crypto is posited as a miracle-drug to all world issues- low effort. You add a comment which doesn't address my comment at all and just comes across like a wannabe reddit zinger- not low effort? The irony is palpable. Just go back to /r/bitcoin or whichever echo chamber you prefer.
  - 3y ago
JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> What is it about crypto that causes us to lose our minds? There may simply not be that much that is novel to be said about this. The SEC's complaint was discussed at length yesterday. This order is a prophylactic procedure tied to the complaint. It seems even the best of us fill vacuums with tribal genuflection.
btilly 3y ago
What is it about crypto that causes us to lose our minds? People are unable to have discussions when talking across a divide where people who think one thing think things that cause pain for the other side. If you have money in crypto, you think you're rich. The thought you might not be tends to be painful. If you are in tech and don't have money in crypto, you think crypto is a scam. The thought you missed out tends to be painful. Those two groups aren't going to talk to each other very well.
- redsky880 3y ago
  I have money in crypto, but don't think I'm rich. Why try to generalize large groups of people?
codegeek 3y ago
Coz most crypto is scam and get rich quick schemes ?
- redsky880 3y ago
  how did you calculate 'most'? Marketshare? Daily volume? Number of projects? Pulled out of thin air?
paxys 3y ago
Some topics just automatically make people turn their brains off and speak purely out of emotion – crypto, Apple, Elon, immigration, "woke culture" etc. You are never getting meaningful discussions on them here or anywhere else.
kahnclusions 3y ago
I think it’s because many people are quite deeply invested in crypto, and the result is that they can be extremely emotional and irrational. Efforts to regulate crypto and make it “not a scam” essentially means they will have wasted tens/hundreds of thousands of dollars and that is embarrassing and shameful. They’re locked into irrationally promoting crypto because it’s the only way to protect their “investments” and their dignity.
- redsky880 3y ago
  Lot of assumptions and leaps here. Besides generalizing a group of crypto owners, you are assuming regulation would devalue crypto. Has there been less or more regulation around crypto in the past 10 years? and how has the value of BTC, Ether fared during the past 10 years?
LatteLazy 3y ago
Crypto is just crypto. But it was hyped up to be the future, cure cancer, end poverty etc. And now none of that has materialised it is just being hyped "down". People are understandably disappointed or disillusioned. But unbridled pessimism is no more realism that unbridled optimism. You see the same basic "roller coaster" with other "phenomenon". Elon Musk was a god, now he is the devil. Obama had the same Hope->Disappointment thing. Self driving cars, fusion (and fission) power, various climate accords, there are many examples. AI is the current biggest bubble. To speculate wildly: I think it is caused by a mix of the same bubble-forming forces you see in financial markets AND a sort of In-Group psychology of humans where they value "being on the right side" (where popular=right) very highly. Crypto is a strong example but not unique I think. It's concerning that people on HN are not introspective enough to see what their own psychology is doing to them, but the same applies to me some times. Minds are slippery...
irthomasthomas 3y ago
[flagged]
- dang 3y ago
  The posts and comments you're talking about aren't coming from new users and there hasn't been a surge of new users. I think it's just the usual stochastic flux.
the_only_law 3y ago
> Hn usually has high quality discussions. Lmao keep deluding yourself. What the hell did y’all put in this kool aid.
- idontwantthis 3y ago
  flavoraid

make3 3y ago

it's not because you disagree with them that the quality is bad. Saying that crypto is very heavily linked to scams is an empirical fact at this point

coralreef 3y ago
I feel like this is a weak point. There are countless spam/scam websites out there, because anyone can spin up a page and publish something. That’s why you exercise a bit of caution and skepticism. That’s the tradeoff of an open web. When you have a limitless design space, you get lots of trash. But saying “websites are a scam” is just disingenuous to the fact that some websites are very legit and very useful.
- viro 3y ago
  Are you American?
redsky880 3y ago
'heavily linked' is a subjective phrase. It cannot be a 'fact'. Is the Internet 'heavily linked', 'lightly linked', or just 'linked' to scams? Your research would be appreciated.

USB5 3y ago

The same thing about housing that causes us to lose our minds. Under capitalism, investments (risky and otherwise) are commonly working people's only hope for a taste of freedom. If you don't like it, you have a friend in me.

matheusmoreira 3y ago

There's some kind of bias against crypto here on HN. I've seen people here who revel in rubbing it in whenever the market crashes just because some so called "crypto bros" were smug about their profits.

jfghi 3y ago
There is a strong bias against scams in general, let alone multi-billion dollar scams.
- matheusmoreira 3y ago
  I would agree if the bias was against the shitcoin casino game where you play to see who can rugpull the fastest. The truth is HN hates even proper cryptocurrencies like BTC, ETH, XMR.
  - nradov 3y ago
    No, That's misinformation. There are actually no "proper" cryptocurrencies.
    - cypress66 3y ago
      I'll bite. What would a proper cryptocurrency be?
      - AlexCoventry 3y ago
        Using cryptographic signatures and distributed systems theory to authenticate asset transfers is against natural law. It's in Leviticus.
        jerry1979 3y ago
        Pardon my ignorance, but what do you mean by "it's in Leviticus"?

barking_biscuit 3y ago

I remember fondly participating in the hype around crypto in 2017 and going in on btc/eth and also building a mining rig etc. The discourse on HN back then is quite different from today. These days we've seen scam after scam, fraud after fraud, failure after failure. From a technology perspective it's neat, but the kinds of individuals it tends to attract make it seemingly not actually all that useful in wider society. These days I'm ultra skeptical of anything crypto.

staplers 3y ago
*finance and money in general attracts these individuals, not exclusive to crypto
codehalo 3y ago
I don't know what "discourse" you are talking about. I've been reading about crypto on hacker news before bitcoin hit one dollar. Other than r/buttcoin and yahoo groups, this site has been one of the most anti crypto places you can visit, to the point of being an absolute embarrassment. It has been a lesson to me about humans and intelligence since that time. Still love the place though, but I learned never to let comments be the source of the things I need to investigate.
- shermanyo 3y ago
  I'm convinced if the internet was created today, most of HN would be faxing each other, decrying it as a scammers wasteland and useless technology..
  - TeMPOraL 3y ago
    Yes, if we had the previous Internet to go on. It's a sobering moment when you realize that a lot of tech is actually net negative to you - not the least because it outsourced to you the work that previously was done, much more efficiently, by specialized labor.
    - 3y ago

RjQoLCOSwiIKfpm 3y ago

The problem IMHO is that it is so well-known that HN hates crypto that anyone who wants to voice a reasonable opinion is likely to avoid doing so in order to not get piled on with downvotes, hatred, etc. - At least for me that's it, it would be stressful to deal with that so I go elsewhere to discuss the technology. And this is probably precisely how an echo chamber can be created even without recommendation algorithms. The "in-group" harasses the "out-group" until all of them leave - or not dare to speak anymore - and only the "in-group" is left.

matheusmoreira 3y ago
> anyone who wants to voice a reasonable opinion is likely to avoid doing so in order to not get piled on with downvotes, hatred, etc I think refraining from posting due to fear of downvotes is a massive disservice to HN. People should be exposed to views of all kinds. It wouldn't be very interesting if we all agreed. I actively try to post and reply even when downvoted. In the course of doing so I often discover that I'm not alone. Posting freely seems to somehow embolden others to reply as well. Besides, I've got what 17k HN points? I can't even keep track of them anymore anyway.
- politician 3y ago
  The haves and have nots in the HN karma game is precisely the set of people who submit stories and the set of people who merely leave comments. A mediocre story submission trumps a great comment. So, you have to consider that when talking about downvotes being discouraging— for people that don’t submit stories it can feel very real.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - matheusmoreira 3y ago
    My karma is almost entirely from comments. Karma is a function of time and participation. If you comment a lot, you'll get points because chances are someone somewhere will like what you said. I care a lot more about the names of people than internet points. I've commented on threads here only to realize days later I was interacting with the creator of a major programming language. Some people are interesting enough that I've bookmarked their comments page.

berkle4455 3y ago

We’re sick of seeing frontpage news about the latest crypto scam and fallout.

ToValueFunfetti 3y ago
Presumably it's not the crypto bros upvoting them into that position
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
lost_tourist 3y ago
Yeah but these are the two biggest bros in the btc universe.
redsky880 3y ago
so sick that you had to click and participate in the conversation
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

someguydave 3y ago

Lots of people on HN knew about crypto early and did not invest; they lost out big time and they take out their frustrations regularly.

ahahahahah 3y ago

> Hn usually has high quality discussions. It doesn't.

smolder 3y ago
Relative to other pseudonymous links-with-comments aggregation stations, I think it very much does.
- lost_tourist 3y ago
  Exactly, relative to other sites like reddit and 4chan and wallstreet journal comments.

lmm 3y ago

HN discussion quality has been declining for years, ever since dang took over and changed the moderation priorities (though it's not necessarily causal). Crypto is just the leading edge of that.

hn_throwaway_99 3y ago

I take issue with something about crypto "causes us to lose our minds?". Couple points: 1. At this stage of the game, there is not a lot new under the sun to discuss that is likely to alter people's opinions. I would say that I did think there were some good comments in some of the other posts about what constitutes a security by the legal definition, and helped me understand better the specific points of the SEC's argument. This story, though, is just about the SEC wanting to freeze Binance US's assets. To be frank, I don't think there is a lot of substantive things to discuss about this particular story. 2. I feel the need to roll my eyes whenever I see the "Well, it's well known HN hates crypto..." lamentations. I will only speak for myself, but I don't "hate crypto". On the contrary, I remember reading the Bitcoin whitepaper early on and thinking how brilliant it was. As time has gone on, however, I've simply come to the conclusion that most crypto technology has very little actual utility. I believe the primary thesis of crypto enthusiasts, that it can somehow "escape" the legal frameworks of human beings (the "code is the law" stuff), is just fundamentally wrong and misguided. I think things like NFTs are just dumb. All this coupled with the fact that the crypto "ecosystem" has drawn in the scummiest set of characters I can think of, and that I think its net utility over the past decade has been negative, just leads me to believe that most crypto technologies deserve to die. This isn't some irrational "I hate crypto" take. This is my (fair, in my opinion) assessment that crypto has little overall utility. I also think this is highlighted by the fact that the amount of real crypto utility that its backers can point to is extremely limited. In general, I think the HN community is by-and-large quite rational when it comes to evaluating and discussing new technologies. I'm not saying it is always "right", and of course you always have fan boys on all sides, but I do think that reasonable, insightful comments about crypto still bubble to the top.

TheOtherHobbes 3y ago
Which boils down to the fact that it's entirely rational to be negative about crypto. Crypto is interesting as a kind of libertarian pseudo-oppositional secular religion that flatters itself that it's edgy and non-conformist but is actually dead-centre mainstream in a capitalist culture with consistent shades of criminality dedicated to making money at any cost.

activiation 3y ago

Your own comment adds nothing.

111111101101 3y ago

[flagged]

ulrashida 3y ago
Counterview: those who made gobs of money who transpose that outcome to "gosh, crypto must be great and I don't know why everyone is bashing it so much". Lots of older generations felt that way about housing price increases as well -- are they right too?
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > those who made gobs of money who transpose that outcome to "gosh, crypto must be great and I don't know why everyone is bashing it so much" Most of us can profit off something while decrying it as dumb. I’ve made money from crypto, and I think I did so ethically. But the whole thing is stupid, and I think we have a civic responsibility to ensuring that is understood.
- 111111101101 3y ago
  They're right in that, seeing how it turned out, everyone who could have bought a house really should have bought a house. The thing about bitcoin is that EVERYONE could have bought in, either with cash or through mining. You didn't need to save a large deposit or get approved for a loan. It was an opportunity that was right there for everyone. I regret not investing more or mining. I can only imagine how those who missed the boat completely feel.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
ninepoints 3y ago
This is a typical sort of projection I see from crypto-owners. They can't seem to contemplate the fact that there are people that think crypto is a bad idea _regardless_ of how much profit they might or might not have made by buying or selling at various points in history.

thryg 3y ago

[flagged]

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

politician 3y ago

There are a great many people who chose to see crypto as an existential threat to the earth because proof of work requires energy and energy is derived from fossil fuels and therefore any expansion of its use exacerbates climate change. Proponents of crypto are frequently corralled into a “climate change denier” corner by this faction. The other large contingent, myself included, sees the never ending scams, shady dealings, and blatant money laundering. Some of these projects, like Bitcoin Lightning Network, are like honey pots for smart people that have no idea how serious the government is about sanctions.

TeMPOraL 3y ago
> There are a great many people who chose to see crypto as an existential threat to the earth because proof of work requires energy and energy is derived from fossil fuels and therefore any expansion of its use exacerbates climate change. (...) Don't miss: and energy costs grow much faster than linear with that expansion, and the incentives are all wrong - with traditional financial systems, energy expenditure is waste, upkeep, something you need to pay but want to minimize; with PoW, it's value generation and something everyone wants to maximize. Long-term, fossil fuels don't even matter here. Even with 100% clean energy derived from a Dyson sphere or something, it's still pure waste of energy, done for the sake of not having to ever trust each other. What crypto people missed is that trust is a feature, not a bug.
- tom_ 3y ago
  You can't waste energy. It can't be destroyed!
  - TeMPOraL 3y ago
    Of course you can. Waste != destroy. The First Law tells you can't create or destroy energy, but you can transform it. The Second Law tells you that this transformation always reduces the amount of useful work you can extract from it. This is how energy is "used up" - it's transformed from a high-grade form (e.g. electricity) to a lower-grade form (e.g. waste heat). Per the Second Law, you can't then go back the opposite direction. (For a hands-on example, compare the utility of an egg vs. that of a smashed egg, and the amount of effort required to convert one into the other.) So no, Proof of Work isn't destroying energy, but it's wasting it. It's literally the whole point: you're meant to burn high-grade energy down to waste heat in order to prove you can afford it - there is math to show that trying to make it not wasteful (by e.g. doing some useful math like protein folding, instead of brute-forcing a random hash) creates incentives that defeat the whole system that PoW is supposed to establish.

tbrownaw 3y ago

Cryptocoins are far from the only topic that get people to be very insistent about clearly bad takes.

olalonde 3y ago

I think you can largely find your answer here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31356857 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31356857 tl;dr: frustration towards people in the cryptocurrency scene, feeling they've gained wealth through luck rather than skill or hard work. Also a disdain for how some cryptocurrencies are overzealously promoted. It was the top comment of a 640 comments thread, so it presumably had a lot of up votes and is representative of how HN feels about cryptocurrency. Unfortunately, the low quality discussion on crypto related threads dates back a long time and some of us just got tired of always correcting the same misinformation and low effort criticism.

methodical 3y ago
Thanks for pointing that out. Clearly, the only people who hold anti-crypto views are just jealous and spiteful people. There totally doesn't exist any group of people who are just sick and tired of people propping up an almost totally useless technology as the savior of all financial, political, and social woes. /s Please, point out one single application of blockchain that is useful and more efficient, beneficially transparent, and faster than a different implementation that doesn't utilize blockchain. Being somebody who is a big fan of blockchain yourself, surely this should be a very straightforward thing to point out.
- olalonde 3y ago
  See above (and below) for the kind of low level effort comments you can find in most cryptocurrency threads.
  - methodical 3y ago
    See above for the typical coiner response to anybody who brings up counterpoints. I mention that people might not like how crypto is posited as a miracle-drug to all world issues- low effort. You add a comment which doesn't address my comment at all and just comes across like a wannabe reddit zinger- not low effort? The irony is palpable. Just go back to /r/bitcoin or whichever echo chamber you prefer.
- 3y ago

JumpCrisscross 3y ago

> What is it about crypto that causes us to lose our minds? There may simply not be that much that is novel to be said about this. The SEC's complaint was discussed at length yesterday. This order is a prophylactic procedure tied to the complaint. It seems even the best of us fill vacuums with tribal genuflection.

btilly 3y ago

What is it about crypto that causes us to lose our minds? People are unable to have discussions when talking across a divide where people who think one thing think things that cause pain for the other side. If you have money in crypto, you think you're rich. The thought you might not be tends to be painful. If you are in tech and don't have money in crypto, you think crypto is a scam. The thought you missed out tends to be painful. Those two groups aren't going to talk to each other very well.

redsky880 3y ago
I have money in crypto, but don't think I'm rich. Why try to generalize large groups of people?

codegeek 3y ago

Coz most crypto is scam and get rich quick schemes ?

redsky880 3y ago
how did you calculate 'most'? Marketshare? Daily volume? Number of projects? Pulled out of thin air?

paxys 3y ago

Some topics just automatically make people turn their brains off and speak purely out of emotion – crypto, Apple, Elon, immigration, "woke culture" etc. You are never getting meaningful discussions on them here or anywhere else.

kahnclusions 3y ago

I think it’s because many people are quite deeply invested in crypto, and the result is that they can be extremely emotional and irrational. Efforts to regulate crypto and make it “not a scam” essentially means they will have wasted tens/hundreds of thousands of dollars and that is embarrassing and shameful. They’re locked into irrationally promoting crypto because it’s the only way to protect their “investments” and their dignity.

redsky880 3y ago
Lot of assumptions and leaps here. Besides generalizing a group of crypto owners, you are assuming regulation would devalue crypto. Has there been less or more regulation around crypto in the past 10 years? and how has the value of BTC, Ether fared during the past 10 years?

LatteLazy 3y ago

Crypto is just crypto. But it was hyped up to be the future, cure cancer, end poverty etc. And now none of that has materialised it is just being hyped "down". People are understandably disappointed or disillusioned. But unbridled pessimism is no more realism that unbridled optimism. You see the same basic "roller coaster" with other "phenomenon". Elon Musk was a god, now he is the devil. Obama had the same Hope->Disappointment thing. Self driving cars, fusion (and fission) power, various climate accords, there are many examples. AI is the current biggest bubble. To speculate wildly: I think it is caused by a mix of the same bubble-forming forces you see in financial markets AND a sort of In-Group psychology of humans where they value "being on the right side" (where popular=right) very highly. Crypto is a strong example but not unique I think. It's concerning that people on HN are not introspective enough to see what their own psychology is doing to them, but the same applies to me some times. Minds are slippery...

irthomasthomas 3y ago

[flagged]

dang 3y ago
The posts and comments you're talking about aren't coming from new users and there hasn't been a surge of new users. I think it's just the usual stochastic flux.

the_only_law 3y ago

> Hn usually has high quality discussions. Lmao keep deluding yourself. What the hell did y’all put in this kool aid.

idontwantthis 3y ago
flavoraid