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The thing to remember about Bitcoin, et al, is that it's decentralized. Sure, the code base may be gate-kept by a small clique of developers, sure, the mining

The thing to remember about Bitcoin, et al, is that it's decentralized. Sure, the code base may be gate-kept by a small clique of developers, sure, the mining may be largely done by a handful of coordinating mining pools, sure, you may need specialized hardware only manufactured by a couple of shady foundries, sure, all of the money may enter and exit through one or two exchanges pretending to comply with various money-laundering laws. But the scam, the scam is beautifully decentralized. In a normal scam, there's one or two people at the top who will eventually cut and run or go to jail, and the entire pyramid collapses beneath them. Bitcoin? There's no one at the top. Anyone can just jump in and start scamming, and they'll grow and grow until they maybe reach the top and implode, and then without missing a beat a new group of scammers will be ready to take over even as the last undergoes a very public trial or a very quiet disappearance. Behold, the power of decentralization.

rglullis 3y ago
Stop equating crypto with Bitcoin. This is one of the worst straw-men used by dishonest people.
- kkielhofner 3y ago
  I always hear this and I'm interested where the point of view comes from. Can you elaborate? Fair warning I am one of the people who thinks it's all the same. Even though I have a lot of experience in the space when you zoom out a tiny bit for the average person it starts to look a lot like us arguing vi vs emacs - religion and meaningless and esoteric distinctions to the 99.999%.
  - rglullis 3y ago
    Compare with Ethereum and you can quickly be disabused of this notion that they are at all similar. - Ethereum uses PoS, and you can run a validator with commodity hardware which costs a couple of hundred dollars. - All the validators online at this moment consume a fraction of electricity used by all current videogame consoles in stand-by. - Ethereum's value is not derived from the expectation that it is a "store of a value", but that it will be required to run a lot of basic activities in its blockchain. "If BTC is digital gold, ETH aims to be digital oil" is a good analogy coined by Buterin. - Because of this focus on the blockchain and its applications, very few people working in ETH actually worry about its price. Bitcoiners by and large do nothing but try convince other people that their coin is the chosen one. Ethereum developers don't really care about any specific coin, just that it runs on the Ethereum blockchain. Do you need more examples?
    - uhhhhhhh 3y ago
      None of this addresses control of code base, limited exchanges handling the majority of traffic, or the scam aspect. Sure eth solved some of bitcoins issues, it also increased the scope of crypto scams to a whole new level. The fact that a crypto 'currency' is supposedly operating at prices irrelevant to it's value is not an argument that helps you in any way in this situation.
      - rglullis 3y ago
        - Ethereum has (last I checked) 9 different independent implementations of the client. No centralized development. - Uniswap (one of the first decentralized exchanges running on the blockchain) has more transaction volume than Coinbase. All you need to use is an Ethereum wallet. No dependency on central exchanges. As for scams: do you also blame Western Union for the billions of dollars they enabled?
    - kkielhofner 3y ago
      So vi vs emacs then. I understand your points (I stayed up to watch the switch from PoW to PoS on my Ethereum nodes as one example) but no one else does, and that's my point. If anything you mentioned offered value other than "trade vs USD" there would be adoption - like oil and consoles. All you have to do is take a quick look at a block explorer, dappradar[0], tokens, etc to discover very quickly no one (0.5% of global internet users - literally) uses any of this stuff other than gambling. Horrible "play to earn" games, NFTs, tokens, DEXes to swap tokens around (more gambling and criminality), etc. The only thing the improved technology of Ethereum has done is continue the "crypto way" of inventing new ways to gamble and scam people. Even the vast majority of people that interact with the space see ETH, BTC, etc as just another trade ticker they denominate value in fiat with. All of these trades operate on an order book in an exchange and has nothing at all to do with the underlying blockchain and whatever supposed differences/advantages/etc the technology has. The entire underlying technology could disappear tomorrow and it would have meaningful impact to an even smaller group of people than your favorite text editor. No actual utility lost. [0] - https://dappradar.com/rankings https://dappradar.com/rankings
  - rsynnott 3y ago
    As a very long-term crypto-sceptic (it's a marvellous spectacle; I started watching in 2012 just before the pirateat40 Ponzi collapsed, and then got to see MtGox go), I used to think it was all the same, but in fairness, Ethereum, with its smart contracts, allows even more ridiculous nonsense than Bitcoin, and is thus a welcome addition to the space. With just bitcoin, the DAO chaos of the last few years would never have happened, and where would be the fun in that?
- lucisferre 3y ago
  The worst you say?
- SketchySeaBeast 3y ago
  I don't understand. If I say choose to use a German Shepard to represent dogs is that a dishonest straw-man? Bitcoin isn't all crypto, but it is a type of crypto, and just like how there are valid criticisms of German Shepards that can be used to expand to all dogs, the same can be done with Bitcoin, can it not?
  - rglullis 3y ago
    The problem and the dishonesty is that the criticism raised does not apply to all crypto.
    - saalweachter 3y ago
      For the record, 'et al' means 'and others', not 'and all the rest'. You're free to group your favorite cryptocurrency with Bitcoin, or not, as the criticism fits.
      - rglullis 3y ago
        So you are just couching your dishonest argument on semantics. Glad to clear that out. Still dishonest.
    - RegulationSize 3y ago
      Crypto is effectively all horseshit, because the space has attracted the worst people in both tech and finance, and the vast bulk of implementations and productizations are not useful to anyone other than scammers and gamblers. Perhaps crypto can be revitalized and made useful at scale, but that’s going to require a continued cleansing fire throughout the ecosystem and a new generation of devs and evangelists who actually give a shit about other people.

rglullis 3y ago

Stop equating crypto with Bitcoin. This is one of the worst straw-men used by dishonest people.

kkielhofner 3y ago
I always hear this and I'm interested where the point of view comes from. Can you elaborate? Fair warning I am one of the people who thinks it's all the same. Even though I have a lot of experience in the space when you zoom out a tiny bit for the average person it starts to look a lot like us arguing vi vs emacs - religion and meaningless and esoteric distinctions to the 99.999%.
- rglullis 3y ago
  Compare with Ethereum and you can quickly be disabused of this notion that they are at all similar. - Ethereum uses PoS, and you can run a validator with commodity hardware which costs a couple of hundred dollars. - All the validators online at this moment consume a fraction of electricity used by all current videogame consoles in stand-by. - Ethereum's value is not derived from the expectation that it is a "store of a value", but that it will be required to run a lot of basic activities in its blockchain. "If BTC is digital gold, ETH aims to be digital oil" is a good analogy coined by Buterin. - Because of this focus on the blockchain and its applications, very few people working in ETH actually worry about its price. Bitcoiners by and large do nothing but try convince other people that their coin is the chosen one. Ethereum developers don't really care about any specific coin, just that it runs on the Ethereum blockchain. Do you need more examples?
  - uhhhhhhh 3y ago
    None of this addresses control of code base, limited exchanges handling the majority of traffic, or the scam aspect. Sure eth solved some of bitcoins issues, it also increased the scope of crypto scams to a whole new level. The fact that a crypto 'currency' is supposedly operating at prices irrelevant to it's value is not an argument that helps you in any way in this situation.
    - rglullis 3y ago
      - Ethereum has (last I checked) 9 different independent implementations of the client. No centralized development. - Uniswap (one of the first decentralized exchanges running on the blockchain) has more transaction volume than Coinbase. All you need to use is an Ethereum wallet. No dependency on central exchanges. As for scams: do you also blame Western Union for the billions of dollars they enabled?
  - kkielhofner 3y ago
    So vi vs emacs then. I understand your points (I stayed up to watch the switch from PoW to PoS on my Ethereum nodes as one example) but no one else does, and that's my point. If anything you mentioned offered value other than "trade vs USD" there would be adoption - like oil and consoles. All you have to do is take a quick look at a block explorer, dappradar[0], tokens, etc to discover very quickly no one (0.5% of global internet users - literally) uses any of this stuff other than gambling. Horrible "play to earn" games, NFTs, tokens, DEXes to swap tokens around (more gambling and criminality), etc. The only thing the improved technology of Ethereum has done is continue the "crypto way" of inventing new ways to gamble and scam people. Even the vast majority of people that interact with the space see ETH, BTC, etc as just another trade ticker they denominate value in fiat with. All of these trades operate on an order book in an exchange and has nothing at all to do with the underlying blockchain and whatever supposed differences/advantages/etc the technology has. The entire underlying technology could disappear tomorrow and it would have meaningful impact to an even smaller group of people than your favorite text editor. No actual utility lost. [0] - https://dappradar.com/rankings https://dappradar.com/rankings
- rsynnott 3y ago
  As a very long-term crypto-sceptic (it's a marvellous spectacle; I started watching in 2012 just before the pirateat40 Ponzi collapsed, and then got to see MtGox go), I used to think it was all the same, but in fairness, Ethereum, with its smart contracts, allows even more ridiculous nonsense than Bitcoin, and is thus a welcome addition to the space. With just bitcoin, the DAO chaos of the last few years would never have happened, and where would be the fun in that?
lucisferre 3y ago
The worst you say?
SketchySeaBeast 3y ago
I don't understand. If I say choose to use a German Shepard to represent dogs is that a dishonest straw-man? Bitcoin isn't all crypto, but it is a type of crypto, and just like how there are valid criticisms of German Shepards that can be used to expand to all dogs, the same can be done with Bitcoin, can it not?
- rglullis 3y ago
  The problem and the dishonesty is that the criticism raised does not apply to all crypto.
  - saalweachter 3y ago
    For the record, 'et al' means 'and others', not 'and all the rest'. You're free to group your favorite cryptocurrency with Bitcoin, or not, as the criticism fits.
    - rglullis 3y ago
      So you are just couching your dishonest argument on semantics. Glad to clear that out. Still dishonest.
  - RegulationSize 3y ago
    Crypto is effectively all horseshit, because the space has attracted the worst people in both tech and finance, and the vast bulk of implementations and productizations are not useful to anyone other than scammers and gamblers. Perhaps crypto can be revitalized and made useful at scale, but that’s going to require a continued cleansing fire throughout the ecosystem and a new generation of devs and evangelists who actually give a shit about other people.