6 ms·

After everything that's happened in this space, the number of "true believers" I'm seeing here is astounding to me. After a decade of use the tech hasn't found

After everything that's happened in this space, the number of "true believers" I'm seeing here is astounding to me. After a decade of use the tech hasn't found many real world uses beyond gambling, drugs, confidence schemes, money laundering, tax evasion, and other financial criminality. This is 100% the community's fault, as they're the ones burning a lot of real world capital to build this stuff but have very little real value to show for it at the end of the day. I believe in creative destruction, this is just destructive destruction of capital. Meanwhile the rest of the world is rapidly catching up. I have no trouble sending fiat money where I need to at the click of a button, with fraud and clawback protections in place. No chance of accidentally losing my savings, etc. I don't understand how intelligent people can continue to believe this stuff is the future of finance. All signs point to this being a big nothingburger, crypto utopianism works great in theory but not in practice. The sooner this dream dies the better. I guess it's something something human nature. I guess it's why we can't have nice things as a species. sigh

jc_811 3y ago
This is a great comment, I’ve always thought that the huge blind spot of true believers is that if something looks good on paper, it does not automatically mean it will transfer into the real world. Crypto currency would work terrific in a society with fixed rules, unchanging laws & regulations, and constant rule followers. In other words, this would be amazing in a society filled with robots. Humans are not that. Humans are error-prone, emotional, conscious, questioning, moral, and very special creatures. No matter how strong your passwords are, how “offline” your crypto wallets be, or how hacker proof your crypto holdings are - this doesn’t matter! All someone has to do is break into your house, hold a gun to your head and say “transfer your entire bitcoin holdings right now or we kill you”. Just like that you lose your entire life savings with absolutely no recourse or chance to reverse anything. We are immediately faced with an undeniable human issue. A human is breaking the rules of society. A human is fraudulently taking something that is not theirs. A human is using the threat of physical violence in the real world. Not only is Crypto/blockchain technology not equipped to handle this situation, not being able to do anything about this situation is a fundamental feature of the ecosystem.
- lordfrito 3y ago
  > Not only is Crypto/blockchain technology not equipped to handle this situation, not being able to do anything about this situation is a fundamental feature of the ecosystem. Yeah, in it's pure form (no interop with fiat) it's the financial equivalent of anarchy. Rules/laws are impossible to enforce, no police or justice system to stop bad actors. It's lawlessness. This is a feature, not a bug.
misnome 3y ago
Crypto, Aliens, Science, and Equality are the topics that you really should’t look at discussions for here unless you know what you are getting yourself into, or just want to watch the burning dumpster fire. At least with Crypto it is relatively easy to spot the weird grudges or patently self-interested reasons for continuing to argue for a failed system. I’m sure when this use case fails there will be another new use case that can be used as the Single Thing that crypto was made and defined for, you always need to find more sources of Greater Fools..
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  >I’m sure when this use case fails there will be another new use case that can be used as the Single Thing that crypto was made and defined for, Nah, they just pretend it didn't fail, and blatantly ignore reality.
mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y ago
>I don't understand how... It's actually fairly simple. They're financially invested, one of the strongest biases of all.
- lordfrito 3y ago
  Hadn't considered this. I just figured there are a lot of people here that "believe" in crypto in theory but just don't happen to be playing in this space yet, instead watching from the sideline with interest. I was doing this for a long while (watching since 2011) but never spent a dime until I could be firmly convinced, which never happened. You're suggesting that most/all of these pro-crypto commenters have real skin in the game. If so, then there are a lot more people here than I guessed with with disappoint in their future. This is a pretty intelligent crowd, so the blind spot surprises me. Such is human nature.
  - mrguyorama 3y ago
    It's not a blind spot, it's very on brand for a VC message board to have a lot of "greed is good" philosophy people who think that making money by mild trickery is perfectly moral, and that there's nothing wrong with getting people to buy into your fancy MLM so you can extract some wealth from the system. The only value crypto has to the vast majority of people is to exit back into fiat, and doing that is only profitable if the trade value is higher than when you bought in, and that requires new money keep entering the system to be on the other side of your exit trade.
- tomputer 3y ago
  Isn't that almost always the logical consequence once you understand how Bitcoin works and you believe it can actually work as a safe haven investment? Those who believe it can not work are most probably not invested. Those who believe it can work are most probably invested.
  - imtringued 3y ago
    Those who are invested have no reason to understand how it works. They just need to recruit more members.
logicchains 3y ago
>hasn't found many real world uses beyond gambling, drugs, confidence schemes, money laundering, tax evasion, and other financial criminality Lots of people believe the war on drugs is a stupid, counter-productive endeavour, and indeed empirically there's no evidence of its success. The value on crypto is absolutely in that it gives common people a means to "fight back" against the power of the state and it's never-ending quest to control their private lives. Most "financial criminality" in practice works out to "anyone doing anything the US government disagrees with", and not everyone believes the US has the right to police how the rest of the world spends its money. Nobody sanctioned the US when it killed hundreds of thousands of civilians in Iraq; do you think that's a fair system?
- gwbas1c 3y ago
  > Lots of people believe the war on drugs is a stupid Agree 100%. I must emphasize that the war on drugs is a political problem. > The value on crypto is absolutely in that it gives common people a means to "fight back" against the power of the state and it's never-ending quest to control their private lives. Cryptocurrency claims to offer a solution to political problems, but the political problems it creates are worse than the problems it claims to solve: Its very hard to conduct commerce when the value of your money fluctuates widely; and (for drugs) there's no regulations guaranteeing the quality of the product. I voted to legalize pot 8 years ago, and now I can go to a store and I have plenty of safe products to choose from. I wish I could do the same for psychedelics; and I'm rather sure that the opiate epidemic would be easier to contain if recreational opiates were also guarantied quality. Cryptocurrency (and drug markets hidden on Tor) aren't going to solve what really is a political problem.
- rootusrootus 3y ago
  > The value on crypto is absolutely in that it gives common people a means to "fight back" against the power of the state and it's never-ending quest to control their private lives. The cost of that bit of freedom being that it funnels all of their meager savings to the top of the pyramid, making a few very wealthy people even more so.
EscapeFromNY 3y ago
There are plenty of real world uses. - https://time.com/5486673/bitcoin-venezuela-authoritarian/ https://time.com/5486673/bitcoin-venezuela-authoritarian/ - https://coincodecap.com/danish-reporters-in-ukraine-buy-used-car-with-bitcoins https://coincodecap.com/danish-reporters-in-ukraine-buy-used... - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33644090 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33644090 People from wealthy countries tend to reject the legitimacy of these uses because "my country is stable and could never have these problems", or "if buying food is illegal, you shouldn't buy food, you financial criminal", or "I have no trouble sending fiat money where I need to at the click of a button", but that doesn't mean everyone on the planet is in as fortunate a position as you. It's quite selfish to say a technology is useless unless it benefits you personally. I wish humanity as a species could rise above that level of selfishness. Crypto gets its value from being a system that continues working quietly and reliably in the background when other centralized systems falter or turn against their users. As long as it's still helping people, we should keep building it.
- jacksnipe 3y ago
  People tend to reject it because it makes negative economic sense for a country with a powerful currency to allow the replacement of that currency, so they won’t. Becoming the next Greece cannot save you.
  - lordfrito 3y ago
    Yes, this exactly. The Greek economy may be better than the Somalian economy, but that doesn't make it The Future of Finance.
- lordfrito 3y ago
  > As long as it's still helping people, we should keep building it. What if it's hurting more people than it's helping? Just seems like a handwavy way to ignore the scams, fraud and collateral damage. We're talking billions. If we want to spend capital to help people in other countries, there are better ways of doing so. I do not believe for one second that the people from rich countries spending money in this space are doing it to help poor people in other countries. It's great spin though.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
olalonde 3y ago
> After a decade of use the tech hasn't found many real world uses The use case was found over a decade ago: "A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System"[0]. I don't know why HN commenters seem to think we are supposed to come up with other use cases. [0] https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf
- mindslight 3y ago
  To answer your question plainly: because Bitcoin addressed the value question by just letting it float, meaning that its value and the stability of that value are directly tied to its uses that drive demand (as with all currencies). This also led to the ecosystem being dominated by speculation, giving exchanges outsized importance - and simplistically implemented exchanges are a great setup for exit scams. Contrast with say Hashcash where anybody can make more for a fixed amount of computation, so there would be little point in speculating on Hashcash tokens. One also has to wonder how much Bitcoin's asymptotically limited supply directly caused the blooming of thousands of shitcoins [0] to satisfy the demand for monetary units. If newcomers could have just straightforwardly minted their own like Hashcash, would there have been as much of an incentive to go create competing currencies? (I'm not some Hashcash maximalist or something. It's just an example of a system with a different paradigm of monetary creation, regardless of its other flaws) [0] (not that Bitcoin itself isn't a shitcoin, being non-fungible and all)
dagaci 3y ago
(1) The sole reason Bitcoin exists is because all governments decide inflate the money supply by printing, and in doing so, they knowingly devalued the efforts and work of everyone who saved their money or relied on fixed income like a pension. (2) Just this May the USA decided to add 1.5 trillions of inflation on top of the already high levels of inflation people are already experiencing. And I can guarantee that they will do this again and again, in good years and in bad years, both democrats and republicans equally (look at the record, not what they say). (3) Bitcoin was explicitly created for these reasons, and it has _way_ over succeeded in its goal _financially_. (4) The other complaints you have are the fault of the government, they have purposely let the space become lawless in the hope that it would diminish the space, or that it would die by itself, but the problem with this is (1), (2) and (3)
- lordfrito 3y ago
  (1) agreed this is why it was created (2) not sure what you mean by 1.5 trillions of inflation, but your point seems to be that inflation is bad. I disagree. High inflation is for sure bad, but zero inflation is also bad. Capital needs to be put to work, inflation forces people with capital to use it (productively) or lose it. (3) I don't agree that bitcoin has "way over succeeded", seems like an opinion and not a fact. (4) It's not the fault of the US Government that Bitcoin is lawless. It was designed that way from the get go. The government can't stop people from sending and receiving bitcoin on the blockchain. Why would anyone want to trade their ideologically pure bitcoin for those filthy fiat dollars they've been so desperate to escape from? Bitcoin maximalists say it's all about the bitcoin, but at the end of the day they want a pathway into the USD system. I don't see any real arguments here on how this is the future of finance.
  - tmn 3y ago
    There is a big difference between bitcoin having a relevant future. And it becoming 'the' future of finance
treestander 3y ago
SVB just collapsed. Do you blame the fiat dollar for that?
- lordfrito 3y ago
  No, I blame the executives at a poorly run bank. SVB execs knew the risks of having too many long term low interest securities. The Fed repeatedly warned SVB about it's problems. SVB ignored internal recommendations until it was too late. If this was a systemic "fiat dollar" problem then many more banks would be failing.
  - mrguyorama 3y ago
    Also, the "fiat dollar" system includes parts like "the justice system" that will attempt to resolve conflicts between independent parties in a fair way, and oversight system that attempts to push the value, use, and attributes of the fiat system in certain directions, which can be influenced by the democratic system, which isn't perfect but definitely exists, and includes the police system which ostensibly is there to protect your rights over any dollars you own, and a government system to offer you perks for taking part in the fiat dollar system (such as roads and other shit taxes pay for) and an economic system that assures you the availability of pretty much anything you want to trade for that fiat. Cryptocoin enthusiasts seem to look at all that, look at how it all isn't perfect, see how that imperfection allowed a big bad event (2008) to happen, and completely throw the baby out with the bathwater. They ignore how the imperfections in the system were intentional, based on misguided and purposefully inaccurate economic theory, that was broadly popular and pushed by the broad political system because of that popularity (literally democracy), and that it can be fixed. Instead, they want to replace it with a supposedly deflationary system (because gold bugs are still apparently taken seriously in their philosophies), where there is no such thing as property RIGHTS, because you only "have" what you physically control. This is considered a desirable property in fact. Then, this system is also DESIGNED, intentionally so, to profit a select few who already had significant resources. The system, by design, accrues more benefits to those who already have power or resources. Then they try to tell you that this system somehow benefits you, the normal person. It's insanity.
  - 3y ago
time_to_smile 3y ago
> I don't understand how intelligent people can continue to believe this stuff is the future of finance. My experience is that all of the really intelligent people interested in crypto did leave after the ~2012 wave of excitement. At that time when you saw people give talks on crypto they were almost entirely technical with very little focus (or interest) on becoming rich. That was when the people involved tended to be technical idealists. I didn't buy that crypto was the future then, but I wanted to be wrong. Fast forward to ~2017 during the next crypto boom and the conversation was around the non-technical people at technical companies getting excited. People did believe crypto was going to become the currency of the world, so there was still some idealism, but it was mainly about getting in to get rich. By this wave a good chunk of the idealists I knew were entirely disillusioned. Then the 3rd wave which just happened to correlated with a massive injection of money in the market by the Fed. At this point it was just literally get-rich-quick dreamers with more dollars in their hands than sense. Nobody I know who has gotten in during this period even has a coherent vision of what the future looks like, they just have too much money and think crypto is the way to get insanely rich one day. It's also when people completely unrelated to tech started getting involves. People who don't even know how to use a wallet, and rely 100% on 3rd parties to manage all of it. People are holding on to crypto for the same silly reasons that coworkers of mine keep all their vested stock in companies that have dropped 50%+ in value over the last year. It's because they earnest believe that the era of low interest, free money is the norm. They believe this current macro is just a blip, and if they just hodl a bit longer it everything will go back to "normal".
coldpie 3y ago
> After everything that's happened in this space, the number of "true believers" I'm seeing here is astounding to me. I think part of that appearance is the rest of us have just kinda moved on from commenting on this space. We've been saying "this crap is dumb" for ten years, it's getting old at this point. Let the true believers play around in their litter box; I got other stuff to do :)
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  The true believers keep throwing their litter all over my nice clean floor, that's why I don't want them playing in """their""" litter box.
rootusrootus 3y ago
> I don't understand how intelligent people can continue to believe this stuff is the future of finance. I think you're overestimating average intelligence, and/or how well intelligence translates to common sense. Some of the craziest people I've ever met were absolutely brilliant. Still crazy.
rib3ye 3y ago
Bitcoin is not just a technological play but also a political play. Try explaining to someone why they are wrong about voting for <idiot you voted against> and the reason becomes obvious.
progrus 3y ago
It’s the US empire collapsing, not Bitcoin.
taeric 3y ago
I mean, this isn't much different than the true believers in the liberating value of cash. And, at large, if you meet someone carrying 100s of thousands in cash with them, you have met a criminal. :D Just like if you have a small vendor that takes cash only, they are probably tax avoiding. Buying drugs? Heck, even legal drugs for some states require cash. I'm also still highly amused at just how inappropriate blockchain techs are for crime. It is literally recorded basically forever.
yieldcrv 3y ago
> After a decade of use the tech hasn't found an oft said criticism that ignores a lot..... standards within the crypto ecosystem follow a proposal and ratification process that takes years, this is a highly active area and highly collaborative there are people that have the exact same information as you that said "I'll contribute" instead of "I'll find reasons to reinforce my disdain" those standards get ratified and the crypto ecosystem begins catering to additional industries and additional people this chronology is very easy to follow
boring_twenties 3y ago
Gambling and drugs represent a ton of value, though.
RestlessMind 3y ago
> the number of "true believers" I'm seeing here is astounding to me. Because maybe when you see crypto, you see scams (SBF, Terra, etc). When we see crypto, we see legit decentralized asset like Bitcoin or massively successful open source project like Ethereum. > After a decade of use the tech hasn't found many real world uses Or maybe, there are legit uses but you are ignorant because of your bubble? I compiled some examples here long time back: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32406095 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32406095 (and this has only grown since) > money laundering, tax evasion, and other financial criminality That just depends on your pov ("freedom fighter vs terrorist"). If someone is trying to protect their wealth from Venezuela, Putin, Taliban or other despotic regimes, that is still "money laundering" in those regimes' eyes. See my examples above. > I have no trouble sending fiat money where I need to at the click of a button My colleague begs to disagree. He can send fiat USD to his native country but official exchange rate is suppressed and he loses a lot of value through fiat channels. > I don't understand how intelligent people can continue to believe this stuff is the future of finance. I don't think this will supplant finance as much as augment it. Also, maybe you haven't yet had real conversations with intelligent people who believe in crypto? > it's something something human nature Yup. Wanting to escape oppressive regimes with your wealth. Or freedom to protest your government's tyranny (imagine the uproar if Trump had frozen assets of all the BLM protestors in the summer of 2020. Now see what happened when Canadian goverment froze the assets of truckers).
vagab0nd 3y ago
My suggestion: Sometimes you just have to accept that there exists a vastly different perspective that you'll never understand. If you really want to try, go read all they have to say. There's no shortage of that here. If your goal is to convince them that they are "wrong", you simply can't.
asterix_pano 3y ago
Having internet money that is cross border, instant, efficient and censorship resistant is difficult to build, so it takes time, but it's incredibly valuable as it removes a lot of frictions.

jc_811 3y ago

This is a great comment, I’ve always thought that the huge blind spot of true believers is that if something looks good on paper, it does not automatically mean it will transfer into the real world. Crypto currency would work terrific in a society with fixed rules, unchanging laws & regulations, and constant rule followers. In other words, this would be amazing in a society filled with robots. Humans are not that. Humans are error-prone, emotional, conscious, questioning, moral, and very special creatures. No matter how strong your passwords are, how “offline” your crypto wallets be, or how hacker proof your crypto holdings are - this doesn’t matter! All someone has to do is break into your house, hold a gun to your head and say “transfer your entire bitcoin holdings right now or we kill you”. Just like that you lose your entire life savings with absolutely no recourse or chance to reverse anything. We are immediately faced with an undeniable human issue. A human is breaking the rules of society. A human is fraudulently taking something that is not theirs. A human is using the threat of physical violence in the real world. Not only is Crypto/blockchain technology not equipped to handle this situation, not being able to do anything about this situation is a fundamental feature of the ecosystem.

lordfrito 3y ago
> Not only is Crypto/blockchain technology not equipped to handle this situation, not being able to do anything about this situation is a fundamental feature of the ecosystem. Yeah, in it's pure form (no interop with fiat) it's the financial equivalent of anarchy. Rules/laws are impossible to enforce, no police or justice system to stop bad actors. It's lawlessness. This is a feature, not a bug.

misnome 3y ago

Crypto, Aliens, Science, and Equality are the topics that you really should’t look at discussions for here unless you know what you are getting yourself into, or just want to watch the burning dumpster fire. At least with Crypto it is relatively easy to spot the weird grudges or patently self-interested reasons for continuing to argue for a failed system. I’m sure when this use case fails there will be another new use case that can be used as the Single Thing that crypto was made and defined for, you always need to find more sources of Greater Fools..

mrguyorama 3y ago
>I’m sure when this use case fails there will be another new use case that can be used as the Single Thing that crypto was made and defined for, Nah, they just pretend it didn't fail, and blatantly ignore reality.

mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y ago

>I don't understand how... It's actually fairly simple. They're financially invested, one of the strongest biases of all.

lordfrito 3y ago
Hadn't considered this. I just figured there are a lot of people here that "believe" in crypto in theory but just don't happen to be playing in this space yet, instead watching from the sideline with interest. I was doing this for a long while (watching since 2011) but never spent a dime until I could be firmly convinced, which never happened. You're suggesting that most/all of these pro-crypto commenters have real skin in the game. If so, then there are a lot more people here than I guessed with with disappoint in their future. This is a pretty intelligent crowd, so the blind spot surprises me. Such is human nature.
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  It's not a blind spot, it's very on brand for a VC message board to have a lot of "greed is good" philosophy people who think that making money by mild trickery is perfectly moral, and that there's nothing wrong with getting people to buy into your fancy MLM so you can extract some wealth from the system. The only value crypto has to the vast majority of people is to exit back into fiat, and doing that is only profitable if the trade value is higher than when you bought in, and that requires new money keep entering the system to be on the other side of your exit trade.
tomputer 3y ago
Isn't that almost always the logical consequence once you understand how Bitcoin works and you believe it can actually work as a safe haven investment? Those who believe it can not work are most probably not invested. Those who believe it can work are most probably invested.
- imtringued 3y ago
  Those who are invested have no reason to understand how it works. They just need to recruit more members.

logicchains 3y ago

>hasn't found many real world uses beyond gambling, drugs, confidence schemes, money laundering, tax evasion, and other financial criminality Lots of people believe the war on drugs is a stupid, counter-productive endeavour, and indeed empirically there's no evidence of its success. The value on crypto is absolutely in that it gives common people a means to "fight back" against the power of the state and it's never-ending quest to control their private lives. Most "financial criminality" in practice works out to "anyone doing anything the US government disagrees with", and not everyone believes the US has the right to police how the rest of the world spends its money. Nobody sanctioned the US when it killed hundreds of thousands of civilians in Iraq; do you think that's a fair system?

gwbas1c 3y ago
> Lots of people believe the war on drugs is a stupid Agree 100%. I must emphasize that the war on drugs is a political problem. > The value on crypto is absolutely in that it gives common people a means to "fight back" against the power of the state and it's never-ending quest to control their private lives. Cryptocurrency claims to offer a solution to political problems, but the political problems it creates are worse than the problems it claims to solve: Its very hard to conduct commerce when the value of your money fluctuates widely; and (for drugs) there's no regulations guaranteeing the quality of the product. I voted to legalize pot 8 years ago, and now I can go to a store and I have plenty of safe products to choose from. I wish I could do the same for psychedelics; and I'm rather sure that the opiate epidemic would be easier to contain if recreational opiates were also guarantied quality. Cryptocurrency (and drug markets hidden on Tor) aren't going to solve what really is a political problem.
rootusrootus 3y ago
> The value on crypto is absolutely in that it gives common people a means to "fight back" against the power of the state and it's never-ending quest to control their private lives. The cost of that bit of freedom being that it funnels all of their meager savings to the top of the pyramid, making a few very wealthy people even more so.

EscapeFromNY 3y ago

There are plenty of real world uses. - https://time.com/5486673/bitcoin-venezuela-authoritarian/ https://time.com/5486673/bitcoin-venezuela-authoritarian/ - https://coincodecap.com/danish-reporters-in-ukraine-buy-used-car-with-bitcoins https://coincodecap.com/danish-reporters-in-ukraine-buy-used... - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33644090 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33644090 People from wealthy countries tend to reject the legitimacy of these uses because "my country is stable and could never have these problems", or "if buying food is illegal, you shouldn't buy food, you financial criminal", or "I have no trouble sending fiat money where I need to at the click of a button", but that doesn't mean everyone on the planet is in as fortunate a position as you. It's quite selfish to say a technology is useless unless it benefits you personally. I wish humanity as a species could rise above that level of selfishness. Crypto gets its value from being a system that continues working quietly and reliably in the background when other centralized systems falter or turn against their users. As long as it's still helping people, we should keep building it.

jacksnipe 3y ago
People tend to reject it because it makes negative economic sense for a country with a powerful currency to allow the replacement of that currency, so they won’t. Becoming the next Greece cannot save you.
- lordfrito 3y ago
  Yes, this exactly. The Greek economy may be better than the Somalian economy, but that doesn't make it The Future of Finance.
lordfrito 3y ago
> As long as it's still helping people, we should keep building it. What if it's hurting more people than it's helping? Just seems like a handwavy way to ignore the scams, fraud and collateral damage. We're talking billions. If we want to spend capital to help people in other countries, there are better ways of doing so. I do not believe for one second that the people from rich countries spending money in this space are doing it to help poor people in other countries. It's great spin though.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

olalonde 3y ago

> After a decade of use the tech hasn't found many real world uses The use case was found over a decade ago: "A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System"[0]. I don't know why HN commenters seem to think we are supposed to come up with other use cases. [0] https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

mindslight 3y ago
To answer your question plainly: because Bitcoin addressed the value question by just letting it float, meaning that its value and the stability of that value are directly tied to its uses that drive demand (as with all currencies). This also led to the ecosystem being dominated by speculation, giving exchanges outsized importance - and simplistically implemented exchanges are a great setup for exit scams. Contrast with say Hashcash where anybody can make more for a fixed amount of computation, so there would be little point in speculating on Hashcash tokens. One also has to wonder how much Bitcoin's asymptotically limited supply directly caused the blooming of thousands of shitcoins [0] to satisfy the demand for monetary units. If newcomers could have just straightforwardly minted their own like Hashcash, would there have been as much of an incentive to go create competing currencies? (I'm not some Hashcash maximalist or something. It's just an example of a system with a different paradigm of monetary creation, regardless of its other flaws) [0] (not that Bitcoin itself isn't a shitcoin, being non-fungible and all)

dagaci 3y ago

(1) The sole reason Bitcoin exists is because all governments decide inflate the money supply by printing, and in doing so, they knowingly devalued the efforts and work of everyone who saved their money or relied on fixed income like a pension. (2) Just this May the USA decided to add 1.5 trillions of inflation on top of the already high levels of inflation people are already experiencing. And I can guarantee that they will do this again and again, in good years and in bad years, both democrats and republicans equally (look at the record, not what they say). (3) Bitcoin was explicitly created for these reasons, and it has _way_ over succeeded in its goal _financially_. (4) The other complaints you have are the fault of the government, they have purposely let the space become lawless in the hope that it would diminish the space, or that it would die by itself, but the problem with this is (1), (2) and (3)

lordfrito 3y ago
(1) agreed this is why it was created (2) not sure what you mean by 1.5 trillions of inflation, but your point seems to be that inflation is bad. I disagree. High inflation is for sure bad, but zero inflation is also bad. Capital needs to be put to work, inflation forces people with capital to use it (productively) or lose it. (3) I don't agree that bitcoin has "way over succeeded", seems like an opinion and not a fact. (4) It's not the fault of the US Government that Bitcoin is lawless. It was designed that way from the get go. The government can't stop people from sending and receiving bitcoin on the blockchain. Why would anyone want to trade their ideologically pure bitcoin for those filthy fiat dollars they've been so desperate to escape from? Bitcoin maximalists say it's all about the bitcoin, but at the end of the day they want a pathway into the USD system. I don't see any real arguments here on how this is the future of finance.
- tmn 3y ago
  There is a big difference between bitcoin having a relevant future. And it becoming 'the' future of finance

treestander 3y ago

SVB just collapsed. Do you blame the fiat dollar for that?

lordfrito 3y ago
No, I blame the executives at a poorly run bank. SVB execs knew the risks of having too many long term low interest securities. The Fed repeatedly warned SVB about it's problems. SVB ignored internal recommendations until it was too late. If this was a systemic "fiat dollar" problem then many more banks would be failing.
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  Also, the "fiat dollar" system includes parts like "the justice system" that will attempt to resolve conflicts between independent parties in a fair way, and oversight system that attempts to push the value, use, and attributes of the fiat system in certain directions, which can be influenced by the democratic system, which isn't perfect but definitely exists, and includes the police system which ostensibly is there to protect your rights over any dollars you own, and a government system to offer you perks for taking part in the fiat dollar system (such as roads and other shit taxes pay for) and an economic system that assures you the availability of pretty much anything you want to trade for that fiat. Cryptocoin enthusiasts seem to look at all that, look at how it all isn't perfect, see how that imperfection allowed a big bad event (2008) to happen, and completely throw the baby out with the bathwater. They ignore how the imperfections in the system were intentional, based on misguided and purposefully inaccurate economic theory, that was broadly popular and pushed by the broad political system because of that popularity (literally democracy), and that it can be fixed. Instead, they want to replace it with a supposedly deflationary system (because gold bugs are still apparently taken seriously in their philosophies), where there is no such thing as property RIGHTS, because you only "have" what you physically control. This is considered a desirable property in fact. Then, this system is also DESIGNED, intentionally so, to profit a select few who already had significant resources. The system, by design, accrues more benefits to those who already have power or resources. Then they try to tell you that this system somehow benefits you, the normal person. It's insanity.
- 3y ago

time_to_smile 3y ago

> I don't understand how intelligent people can continue to believe this stuff is the future of finance. My experience is that all of the really intelligent people interested in crypto did leave after the ~2012 wave of excitement. At that time when you saw people give talks on crypto they were almost entirely technical with very little focus (or interest) on becoming rich. That was when the people involved tended to be technical idealists. I didn't buy that crypto was the future then, but I wanted to be wrong. Fast forward to ~2017 during the next crypto boom and the conversation was around the non-technical people at technical companies getting excited. People did believe crypto was going to become the currency of the world, so there was still some idealism, but it was mainly about getting in to get rich. By this wave a good chunk of the idealists I knew were entirely disillusioned. Then the 3rd wave which just happened to correlated with a massive injection of money in the market by the Fed. At this point it was just literally get-rich-quick dreamers with more dollars in their hands than sense. Nobody I know who has gotten in during this period even has a coherent vision of what the future looks like, they just have too much money and think crypto is the way to get insanely rich one day. It's also when people completely unrelated to tech started getting involves. People who don't even know how to use a wallet, and rely 100% on 3rd parties to manage all of it. People are holding on to crypto for the same silly reasons that coworkers of mine keep all their vested stock in companies that have dropped 50%+ in value over the last year. It's because they earnest believe that the era of low interest, free money is the norm. They believe this current macro is just a blip, and if they just hodl a bit longer it everything will go back to "normal".

coldpie 3y ago

> After everything that's happened in this space, the number of "true believers" I'm seeing here is astounding to me. I think part of that appearance is the rest of us have just kinda moved on from commenting on this space. We've been saying "this crap is dumb" for ten years, it's getting old at this point. Let the true believers play around in their litter box; I got other stuff to do :)

mrguyorama 3y ago
The true believers keep throwing their litter all over my nice clean floor, that's why I don't want them playing in """their""" litter box.

rootusrootus 3y ago

> I don't understand how intelligent people can continue to believe this stuff is the future of finance. I think you're overestimating average intelligence, and/or how well intelligence translates to common sense. Some of the craziest people I've ever met were absolutely brilliant. Still crazy.

rib3ye 3y ago

Bitcoin is not just a technological play but also a political play. Try explaining to someone why they are wrong about voting for <idiot you voted against> and the reason becomes obvious.

progrus 3y ago

It’s the US empire collapsing, not Bitcoin.

taeric 3y ago

I mean, this isn't much different than the true believers in the liberating value of cash. And, at large, if you meet someone carrying 100s of thousands in cash with them, you have met a criminal. :D Just like if you have a small vendor that takes cash only, they are probably tax avoiding. Buying drugs? Heck, even legal drugs for some states require cash. I'm also still highly amused at just how inappropriate blockchain techs are for crime. It is literally recorded basically forever.

yieldcrv 3y ago

> After a decade of use the tech hasn't found an oft said criticism that ignores a lot..... standards within the crypto ecosystem follow a proposal and ratification process that takes years, this is a highly active area and highly collaborative there are people that have the exact same information as you that said "I'll contribute" instead of "I'll find reasons to reinforce my disdain" those standards get ratified and the crypto ecosystem begins catering to additional industries and additional people this chronology is very easy to follow

boring_twenties 3y ago

Gambling and drugs represent a ton of value, though.

RestlessMind 3y ago

> the number of "true believers" I'm seeing here is astounding to me. Because maybe when you see crypto, you see scams (SBF, Terra, etc). When we see crypto, we see legit decentralized asset like Bitcoin or massively successful open source project like Ethereum. > After a decade of use the tech hasn't found many real world uses Or maybe, there are legit uses but you are ignorant because of your bubble? I compiled some examples here long time back: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32406095 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32406095 (and this has only grown since) > money laundering, tax evasion, and other financial criminality That just depends on your pov ("freedom fighter vs terrorist"). If someone is trying to protect their wealth from Venezuela, Putin, Taliban or other despotic regimes, that is still "money laundering" in those regimes' eyes. See my examples above. > I have no trouble sending fiat money where I need to at the click of a button My colleague begs to disagree. He can send fiat USD to his native country but official exchange rate is suppressed and he loses a lot of value through fiat channels. > I don't understand how intelligent people can continue to believe this stuff is the future of finance. I don't think this will supplant finance as much as augment it. Also, maybe you haven't yet had real conversations with intelligent people who believe in crypto? > it's something something human nature Yup. Wanting to escape oppressive regimes with your wealth. Or freedom to protest your government's tyranny (imagine the uproar if Trump had frozen assets of all the BLM protestors in the summer of 2020. Now see what happened when Canadian goverment froze the assets of truckers).

vagab0nd 3y ago

My suggestion: Sometimes you just have to accept that there exists a vastly different perspective that you'll never understand. If you really want to try, go read all they have to say. There's no shortage of that here. If your goal is to convince them that they are "wrong", you simply can't.

asterix_pano 3y ago

Having internet money that is cross border, instant, efficient and censorship resistant is difficult to build, so it takes time, but it's incredibly valuable as it removes a lot of frictions.