4 ms·
If you end up being wrong, and crypto becomes a globally ubiquitous economic backbone, how will you rationalize having been incorrect in your present view? You
by spir 3y ago
If you end up being wrong, and crypto becomes a globally ubiquitous economic backbone, how will you rationalize having been incorrect in your present view?
You're a long-term hacker news community member. Like all of us, you pride yourself on the rational exploration of technology. Does "They've had more than a decade to find a single usecase other than crime, and they haven't" strike you as a particularly rigorous argument? Why would a decade be the magic number? Might there be more objective or intrinsic metrics of realization of potential than a set number of years? For example, Ethereum invented the crypto app layer and launched eight years ago, so perhaps ten years is both arbitrary and incorrect?
You seem to be somebody who is certain that crypto is- paraphrasing- useless for anything but crime. Given your conviction in this view, what up-to-date evidence do you have? For example, how would you contrast the capabilities of modern non-blockchain payment systems, like FedNow or India's UPI, versus the emerging network of public blockchains? If you can't answer the question, maybe your strong conviction is unjustified?
It seems that many technologists in the HN community have been whipped into an anti-crypto frenzy by crypto's many scams and now, blinded by rage and disgust, are unable to pursue any semblance of the kind of rational inquiry that otherwise is a fixture in their intellectual lives.
- coldpie 3y agoI'll rationalize it by being wrong. It's happened before, it'll happen again. But given that all the blockchain/crypto community has to show so far is "a really crummy database" and "a way for criminals to more easily avoid repercussions," I'm feeling pretty good about this one.
- trompetenaccoun 3y agoThere is an example use case right in the article we're commenting on.
- benreesman 3y agoI say this as one strident HN loudmouth to another, not as a guy in a glass house with a rock in his hand. If you have a substantive argument about how PayPal, or Paxos, or the regulators have blown this, or why it's a net-negative, or why this case is so exceptional that you aren't "closing the tab" this time: I will listen with avid interest, and I imagine everyone else on the site will do the same. But as someone who takes too many cheap shots at groups of people too large and too diverse to generalize about too often myself: chip in on all of us being better. If you think it's a bad thing, explain why. My read is that it's a net improvement in a flawed world, and if I've got that wrong, I'd like to get un-wrong. But it's pretty much an unwritten rule of HN that "shitty X technology" and cavalier uses of the word "criminal" are party fouls (which I still make, I'm also working on this). My read is that the consensus view of the community is that prohibition of e.g. drugs or prostitution or selling sex toys or whatever is stupid and ways around those things are necessary, and I'm basically sure that it's a consensus view that there are regimes in the world where being a criminal is the only ethical move. So even if "Bitcoin is for Drugs", I still think an argument with some meat on it's bones is merited here.