11 ms·

The End of My Childhood

82 points by ifvictr 3y ago

hsuduebc2 3y ago
Wholesome ending
smackeyacky 3y ago
The author sums up everything that is wrong with crypto in two sentences: > I was getting excited about every new cryptography protocol, and economics too seemed to me to be part of that broader worldview: it's the mathematical tool for understanding and figuring out how to improve the social world. No, it isn't. This kind of hubris is what hides what Crypto is, which is a game of greater fools and nothing more.
- mkatx 3y ago
  Inherently so, it is not. But nice try to lower your buy in price.. ;)
  - dartos 3y ago
    I’m not against crypto as a technology, but as a financial tool, how is it not a greater fools game? Broadly speaking, you can’t live on crypto alone. Most people aren’t able to buy food and shelter with it. So the goal, in those majority of cases, is to buy in low for the exact purpose of waiting for a “greater fool” to purchase it from you for more.
    - tough 3y ago
      there's plenty of offramps and onramps from crypto to trad finance. You can earn your money on crypto, get a debit card, and pay for your food and rent with it. I've done it.
      - dartos 3y ago
        Sure, but that’s my point exactly. You need an offramp. The only offramp is someone else (or some exchange) buying your crypto. They would be the “greater fool” in this case. Even if you earn crypto, that crypto came from a “lesser fool.” You’re just the intermediary.
        eaurouge 3y ago
        > Sure, but that’s my point exactly. > You need an offramp. > The only offramp is someone else (or some exchange) buying your stocks. > They would be the “greater fool” in this case. > Even if you earn stocks, that stock came from a “lesser fool.” > You’re just the intermediary.
        tough 3y ago
        > Sure, but that’s my point exactly. > You need an offramp. > The only offramp is someone else (or some exchange) buying your fiat. > They would be the “greater fool” in this case. > Even if you earn stocks, that stock came from a “lesser fool.” > You’re just the intermediary.
        dartos 3y ago
        That’s just not true. I can purchase food and shelter directly with fiat. (There may be some areas where crypto can do that too, but it’s far from the norm) That’s not a merchant “buying” my money with other representations of wealth, that’s me purchasing food and shelter. Framing it like that is a bad faith argument. And yeah, I’d say stocks without dividends is also a greater fool’s game.
        LegionMammal978 3y ago
        > The only offramp is someone else (or some exchange) buying your stocks. So dividends, buybacks, and takeovers don't exist?
        deleted 3y ago
    - mkatx 3y ago
      No one buys stocks for the hell of it, it is 100% a financial instrument used to profit by the buyer and the seller. If you couldn't sell to someone for a higher price, no one would buy them. If that's your bar, then cryptocurrencies are as legit as stocks as far as a financial tool is concerned. Stocks may arguably have more utility, but for the buyers/sellers, they aren't much more that a speculation instrument. If someone will take Pokemon cards for a pizza, or a house, whatever, then it has some utility. If someone collects pokemon cards, and has enough for a house, they might (probably) need to exchange them for some real currency to complete that transaction. But pokemon cards are not inherently a scam.. just because the price can go up and down.. they are probably considered a collectable. Now cryptocurrencies are not collectibles, and they are not currencies, but they have attributes of both I'd propose. They are entirely speculatory in nature, but can sometimes be used as a currency. So, in some ways, I argue, they should be treated like pokemon cards, in other ways, regarding regulation, they might need to be considered a currency to be able to regulate the industry in such a way that protects investors, just like private transactions (selling collectibles) and financial investing (trading stocks/etc) have regulations. Although this is nuanced, and cryptocurrency is not currency or a collectible entirely, it is not inherently a 'greaters fools game' any more than trading stocks or Pokemon cards. It's just another thing that needs to be regulated, and if people didn't use it for something, it would just go away, and we wouldn't be having this discussion.
      - dartos 3y ago
        So then crypto, as a financial asset, is a greater fool’s game. OP said it’s inherently not, which is what I was arguing against.
    - mkatx 3y ago
      On another note, there is a lot of fud on cryptocurrency right now.. and let me say this.. there are farms of individuals, soon to be llm's, flooding the Internet with all this negativity on crypto in every conceivable public forum. 100%, this is politics now, when you see people online with a certain perspective, you tend to at least consider it. This is the psychology of influence on the net, everyone's brains are connected to this same network, and business and government know it. If they can even suggest that individuals give any credence to a random post online, they will make that post, and to their ends. So now, we have entire buildings of people filling the net with their 'opinions', in the name of influencing. There are so many 'people' online that totally call cryptocurrency an inherit scam (which is pretty much impossible, inherently so, that the idea is itself a scam, and not just able to be used to scam.. cmon, the distinction is there), that I'm convinced that many of the anticrypto posts are simple persuasion,because either the riches want to buy in, or they are scared of what it can do (as far as replacing the status quo). Now I'm sure I'm that crazy internet crypto dude all of a sudden, but listen closely, cause we will all see in the next decade or two, and neither you nor me know the future. Remember me either way. :)
      - spankalee 3y ago
        I think crypto is inherently a scam - a distributed pyramid scheme. Am I now "people" with "opinions"?
        mkatx 3y ago
        Fo sho, yes. Also, I like how you trim your front sail (cut if your jib), we should be friends. Edit: autocorrect
        mkatx 3y ago
        But seriously, there are 1000's of cryptocurencies, you can't logic the possibility that even one was built with 'non-scammy' intentions? Cause 1 is all it takes to refute that 'ceyotocurrencies are inherently a scam'. I'm sure your being vacecious, but there are those that would comment that seriously.
    - eaurouge 3y ago
      > Broadly speaking, you can’t live on commodities alone. Most people aren’t able to buy food and shelter with it. > So the goal, in those majority of cases, is to buy in low for the exact purpose of waiting for a “greater fool” to purchase it from you for more. Feel free to substitute with your preferred non-monetary asset.
      - dartos 3y ago
        Not _any_. I can live in a house while it appreciates. I can take dividends (in dollars) from certain stocks. But not crypto (or non dividend stocks) I’d argue that stocks without dividends are also a greater fool’s game. But back to the original point, so you agree that crypto is a greater fools game, financially.
  - mkatx 3y ago
    You know, I'm trying to have honest, intelligent discussion, care to explain why I deserved a down vote? If you disagree, comment!! Let's discuss! I guess I apologize for the little joke at the end if that's the problem.. sorry everyone! Also, sorry for my opinion! Darn, it does just happen to be contrary to some of y'all's, I'll be more careful!!
- underlipton 3y ago
  No, that quote is correct. Let me restate it in a way that may appeal more to pessimists: Money is a form of mind control. You use money to get people, groups, institutions, to do what they normally wouldn't. Economics is the study of manipulating that power. Cryptocurrencies would then be, or was supposed to be, about radically resetting economic priorities, in part by washing away the old incentives (by cutting the institutions that perpetuated them out of the money->behavior loop). It actually did manage this, to a limited and chagrin-inducing extent: 2-3 years ago, you could have convinced someone to pony up 2 year's worth of the average American's income for a picture of a cartoon monkey. Even today, people are paying "money" for digital art that they never would have a decade ago. The potential to have people value things differently because the means underlying that valuation had changed was there. The issue, to my eye, is that the traditional financial "megaliths" (as he put it) sunk their claws in, with people on the inside ready to sell out the space to become filthy rich (only to be betrayed, both by their own hubris and the incumbent power structures). This is where your "game of greater fools" comes into play, as well as the oft-noted notion that Capitalism subsumes and commodifies everything it can.
  - tomrod 3y ago
    > Economics is the study of manipulating that power. Hello! Your friendly neighborhood economist here. Economics is the study of resource allocation under scarcity. In your comment, I think you actually mean Game Theory and Mechanism Design, which are about assessing strategic behavior (Game Theory) and about creating mechanisms that align with strategic behavior to result in preferred outcomes (Mechanism Design, sort of the opposite approach to Game Theory). Alternatively, based on your comment here: > The potential to have people value things differently because the means underlying that valuation had changed was there. you might find your thoughts more appropriately align to sociology and social psychology than economics, as economics doesn't care where your valuation or preferences come from--just that you have them. Up, up, and away!
    - underlipton 3y ago
      If I'm wrong on this subject (and I would be interested in knowing how "resource allocation under scarcity" and "manipulation of the behavior of the people obtaining and using resources" are mutually exclusive), I might say that it's a product of the layman's (my) relationship to "economics" and "economists". The contact the most people have with economists is usually, "Talking heads or disembodied voices telling listeners how they should feel about developments in various markets that are connected to whether or not they'll be able to find their lifestyle affordable." The emphasis is decidedly on application, which I imagine runs into game theory and mechanism design, to the point where a reasonable observer might consider the latter two components of (applied?) economics. ...Which raises the question: DOES anyone subscribe to this model? What would an expert make of it? >you might find your thoughts more appropriately align to sociology and social psychology than economics Since economics is an emergent property of agents interacting with other agents and their environment, I'm failing to see how I'm misaligned with any of the three. I've heard economics described as "sociology with a veneer of statistics", which is something I can't say I'm unconvinced by. I respect your status as a relative expert, and also as someone close enough to the subject to have a conflict of interest in characterizing it fairly.
- roenxi 3y ago
  Bitcoin has been around for 15 years at this point and there is absolutely no confusion about the technical underpinnings. It has handily survived attempts at government shutdowns in China and serious interest rate hikes. Numerous scams have come, gone and had no impact on hodlers. At this point it is no longer reasonable to just claim it is a greater fools game without an argument for why. The evidence right now seems to put it in a similar category to gold in that people generally don't like that it has value, but nonetheless value is present. I also draw people's attention to the parallel with something like a RAID array - it is possible to make robust systems out of unreliable parts. The abundance of scammy and scummy operators in the crypto space is quite consistent with the similar prevalence in traditional finance. The system is robust regardless.
  - pinkmuffinere 3y ago
    I feel the comparison to gold is a bit of a reach. Gold is valuable because: 1. People see it as a store of value 2. It has some useful physical properties 3. People use it as a decoration Possibly there are other reasons as well, but those are the ones that come immediately to mind. As far as I can tell, Bitcoin only shares attribute #1. It doesn’t have intrinsic properties that make it useful into larger systems (though perhaps we just haven’t found the right systems yet?), and people don’t feel it’s intrinsically valuable. Not to completely bash Bitcoin though — if enough people find it valuable it can become a useful way to exchange value. Right now it’s just pretty bad at that.
    - roenxi 3y ago
      Crypto overall, including Bitcoin, have bunch of intrinsic properties. A lot of people just don't want to recognise them. It puts me in mind of the Sovereign citizen movement, and I expect it'll work just as well for them vs crypto as it did for the SovCits vs the US government. * Can only pull new bitcoin into existence by paying a hefty market-determined price. * Can transfer them iff you know a certain secret. * Can verify that a certain number of bitcoin are linked to a specific secret. * Can technically transfer bitcoin without approval from a legally blessed 3rd party There is no asset outside of crypto with those properties. Turns out that combination is worth, so far, billions. Probably more as it settles in and people get used to the idea. Will Bitcoin last forever like gold? No. Will it last long enough? Looks like it. Is crypto valuable? Judgement is in, market says yes.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- zamfi 3y ago
  …did you read the rest of it? I recommend it. (And I’m far from a crypto-optimist.)
throwawaycities 3y ago
The cool thing about Vitalik’s blog is that it is decentralized. The blog uses decentralized storage (IPFS) and uses a decentralized ENS domain (vitalik.eth). If you use a web3 browser like brave browser vitalik.eth resolves natively in the browser without the need to use the ENS+IPFS (eth.limo) gateway.
- tough 3y ago
  ty for the tidbit never really found an excuse to install brave before
  - IntelMiner 3y ago
    Given the CEO's "history" [1] I'd heavily recommend against installing Brave [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brendan_Eich https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brendan_Eich
    - thepasswordis 3y ago
      You really hate javascript that much?
    - throwawaycities 3y ago
      You boycott Brave browser because the CEO? The CEO invented JavaScript, do you boycott JavaScript and all websites that use JavaScript?
      - number6 3y ago
        For other reasons ;)
    - roenxi 3y ago
      His history of designing JavaScript, co-founding and CTO-ing the Mozilla project and being a general expert in coding and the web? Yeah screw this guy. No way he'll ever be able to develop a successful browser. If you make your technical decisions based on, as far as I can tell from Wikipedia, 1 minor political disagreement with the project lead then you'll be as limited as Stallman when it comes to using a computer. That is an extreme position.
latchkey 3y ago
> Your personality can completely change in 10 years. This was kind of a revelation to me a long time ago. When you're 20, you're a totally different person than when you're 10. When you're 30, different than 20. Just like the linked article suggests, you really tend to underestimate how much you're going to change in the future. At 10, you can't really consider how you're going to be when you're 20.
- Retric 3y ago
  The reverse is also true, people have a lot in common with who they were 10 years ago. It’s common for people to like many of the same songs at 60 that they did at 16. I may be more skilled, better informed, and care a great deal about people who didn’t exist back then, but I think my basic personality is shockingly close to 10 year old me.
  - badpun 3y ago
    Basic personality traits (like Big 4) stay roughly the same. What (hopefully)happens is personality development and maturation.
Baeocystin 3y ago
I enjoyed reading this, and it makes me happy to see that he's finding his way forward in a humane way. Thanks for posting the link.
secondary_op 3y ago
> When I met Vladimir Putin in 2017, I did not try to arrange the meeting; rather, someone else suggested it, and I pretty much said "ok sure". > Now, five years later, I finally realized that (i) I had been complicit in legitimizing a genocidal dictator, and (ii) within the crypto space too, I no longer had the luxury of sitting back and letting mystical "other people" run the show. Congrats on congratulating yourself on being the Benevolent dictator (in contrast with presumably genocidal dictator) and inventor of your own decentralised financial institution that enabled everything imaginable around money schemes, not matter how average and worst it is compared to regulated traditional banking. How much is you worth by the way ?
zubairq 3y ago
Really interesting to read about how people change over time. Sometimes I actually try reall hard to stay the same too
skynet305 3y ago
[flagged]
spacemadness 3y ago
Yeah, sorry for my lack of awe at 20 year olds wasting time with crypto and being seen as wunderkind. Now that my skepticism is through the roof with this blog, what exactly is anyone doing with synthetic biology that he mentions that’s interesting at the 20 year old hacker house level?

82 points by ifvictr 3y ago

Wholesome ending

The author sums up everything that is wrong with crypto in two sentences: > I was getting excited about every new cryptography protocol, and economics too seemed to me to be part of that broader worldview: it's the mathematical tool for understanding and figuring out how to improve the social world. No, it isn't. This kind of hubris is what hides what Crypto is, which is a game of greater fools and nothing more.

mkatx 3y ago
Inherently so, it is not. But nice try to lower your buy in price.. ;)
- dartos 3y ago
  I’m not against crypto as a technology, but as a financial tool, how is it not a greater fools game? Broadly speaking, you can’t live on crypto alone. Most people aren’t able to buy food and shelter with it. So the goal, in those majority of cases, is to buy in low for the exact purpose of waiting for a “greater fool” to purchase it from you for more.
  - tough 3y ago
    there's plenty of offramps and onramps from crypto to trad finance. You can earn your money on crypto, get a debit card, and pay for your food and rent with it. I've done it.
    - dartos 3y ago
      Sure, but that’s my point exactly. You need an offramp. The only offramp is someone else (or some exchange) buying your crypto. They would be the “greater fool” in this case. Even if you earn crypto, that crypto came from a “lesser fool.” You’re just the intermediary.
      - eaurouge 3y ago
        > Sure, but that’s my point exactly. > You need an offramp. > The only offramp is someone else (or some exchange) buying your stocks. > They would be the “greater fool” in this case. > Even if you earn stocks, that stock came from a “lesser fool.” > You’re just the intermediary.
        tough 3y ago
        > Sure, but that’s my point exactly. > You need an offramp. > The only offramp is someone else (or some exchange) buying your fiat. > They would be the “greater fool” in this case. > Even if you earn stocks, that stock came from a “lesser fool.” > You’re just the intermediary.
        dartos 3y ago
        That’s just not true. I can purchase food and shelter directly with fiat. (There may be some areas where crypto can do that too, but it’s far from the norm) That’s not a merchant “buying” my money with other representations of wealth, that’s me purchasing food and shelter. Framing it like that is a bad faith argument. And yeah, I’d say stocks without dividends is also a greater fool’s game.
        LegionMammal978 3y ago
        > The only offramp is someone else (or some exchange) buying your stocks. So dividends, buybacks, and takeovers don't exist?
        deleted 3y ago
  - mkatx 3y ago
    No one buys stocks for the hell of it, it is 100% a financial instrument used to profit by the buyer and the seller. If you couldn't sell to someone for a higher price, no one would buy them. If that's your bar, then cryptocurrencies are as legit as stocks as far as a financial tool is concerned. Stocks may arguably have more utility, but for the buyers/sellers, they aren't much more that a speculation instrument. If someone will take Pokemon cards for a pizza, or a house, whatever, then it has some utility. If someone collects pokemon cards, and has enough for a house, they might (probably) need to exchange them for some real currency to complete that transaction. But pokemon cards are not inherently a scam.. just because the price can go up and down.. they are probably considered a collectable. Now cryptocurrencies are not collectibles, and they are not currencies, but they have attributes of both I'd propose. They are entirely speculatory in nature, but can sometimes be used as a currency. So, in some ways, I argue, they should be treated like pokemon cards, in other ways, regarding regulation, they might need to be considered a currency to be able to regulate the industry in such a way that protects investors, just like private transactions (selling collectibles) and financial investing (trading stocks/etc) have regulations. Although this is nuanced, and cryptocurrency is not currency or a collectible entirely, it is not inherently a 'greaters fools game' any more than trading stocks or Pokemon cards. It's just another thing that needs to be regulated, and if people didn't use it for something, it would just go away, and we wouldn't be having this discussion.
    - dartos 3y ago
      So then crypto, as a financial asset, is a greater fool’s game. OP said it’s inherently not, which is what I was arguing against.
  - mkatx 3y ago
    On another note, there is a lot of fud on cryptocurrency right now.. and let me say this.. there are farms of individuals, soon to be llm's, flooding the Internet with all this negativity on crypto in every conceivable public forum. 100%, this is politics now, when you see people online with a certain perspective, you tend to at least consider it. This is the psychology of influence on the net, everyone's brains are connected to this same network, and business and government know it. If they can even suggest that individuals give any credence to a random post online, they will make that post, and to their ends. So now, we have entire buildings of people filling the net with their 'opinions', in the name of influencing. There are so many 'people' online that totally call cryptocurrency an inherit scam (which is pretty much impossible, inherently so, that the idea is itself a scam, and not just able to be used to scam.. cmon, the distinction is there), that I'm convinced that many of the anticrypto posts are simple persuasion,because either the riches want to buy in, or they are scared of what it can do (as far as replacing the status quo). Now I'm sure I'm that crazy internet crypto dude all of a sudden, but listen closely, cause we will all see in the next decade or two, and neither you nor me know the future. Remember me either way. :)
    - spankalee 3y ago
      I think crypto is inherently a scam - a distributed pyramid scheme. Am I now "people" with "opinions"?
      - mkatx 3y ago
        Fo sho, yes. Also, I like how you trim your front sail (cut if your jib), we should be friends. Edit: autocorrect
      - mkatx 3y ago
        But seriously, there are 1000's of cryptocurencies, you can't logic the possibility that even one was built with 'non-scammy' intentions? Cause 1 is all it takes to refute that 'ceyotocurrencies are inherently a scam'. I'm sure your being vacecious, but there are those that would comment that seriously.
  - eaurouge 3y ago
    > Broadly speaking, you can’t live on commodities alone. Most people aren’t able to buy food and shelter with it. > So the goal, in those majority of cases, is to buy in low for the exact purpose of waiting for a “greater fool” to purchase it from you for more. Feel free to substitute with your preferred non-monetary asset.
    - dartos 3y ago
      Not _any_. I can live in a house while it appreciates. I can take dividends (in dollars) from certain stocks. But not crypto (or non dividend stocks) I’d argue that stocks without dividends are also a greater fool’s game. But back to the original point, so you agree that crypto is a greater fools game, financially.
- mkatx 3y ago
  You know, I'm trying to have honest, intelligent discussion, care to explain why I deserved a down vote? If you disagree, comment!! Let's discuss! I guess I apologize for the little joke at the end if that's the problem.. sorry everyone! Also, sorry for my opinion! Darn, it does just happen to be contrary to some of y'all's, I'll be more careful!!
underlipton 3y ago
No, that quote is correct. Let me restate it in a way that may appeal more to pessimists: Money is a form of mind control. You use money to get people, groups, institutions, to do what they normally wouldn't. Economics is the study of manipulating that power. Cryptocurrencies would then be, or was supposed to be, about radically resetting economic priorities, in part by washing away the old incentives (by cutting the institutions that perpetuated them out of the money->behavior loop). It actually did manage this, to a limited and chagrin-inducing extent: 2-3 years ago, you could have convinced someone to pony up 2 year's worth of the average American's income for a picture of a cartoon monkey. Even today, people are paying "money" for digital art that they never would have a decade ago. The potential to have people value things differently because the means underlying that valuation had changed was there. The issue, to my eye, is that the traditional financial "megaliths" (as he put it) sunk their claws in, with people on the inside ready to sell out the space to become filthy rich (only to be betrayed, both by their own hubris and the incumbent power structures). This is where your "game of greater fools" comes into play, as well as the oft-noted notion that Capitalism subsumes and commodifies everything it can.
- tomrod 3y ago
  > Economics is the study of manipulating that power. Hello! Your friendly neighborhood economist here. Economics is the study of resource allocation under scarcity. In your comment, I think you actually mean Game Theory and Mechanism Design, which are about assessing strategic behavior (Game Theory) and about creating mechanisms that align with strategic behavior to result in preferred outcomes (Mechanism Design, sort of the opposite approach to Game Theory). Alternatively, based on your comment here: > The potential to have people value things differently because the means underlying that valuation had changed was there. you might find your thoughts more appropriately align to sociology and social psychology than economics, as economics doesn't care where your valuation or preferences come from--just that you have them. Up, up, and away!
  - underlipton 3y ago
    If I'm wrong on this subject (and I would be interested in knowing how "resource allocation under scarcity" and "manipulation of the behavior of the people obtaining and using resources" are mutually exclusive), I might say that it's a product of the layman's (my) relationship to "economics" and "economists". The contact the most people have with economists is usually, "Talking heads or disembodied voices telling listeners how they should feel about developments in various markets that are connected to whether or not they'll be able to find their lifestyle affordable." The emphasis is decidedly on application, which I imagine runs into game theory and mechanism design, to the point where a reasonable observer might consider the latter two components of (applied?) economics. ...Which raises the question: DOES anyone subscribe to this model? What would an expert make of it? >you might find your thoughts more appropriately align to sociology and social psychology than economics Since economics is an emergent property of agents interacting with other agents and their environment, I'm failing to see how I'm misaligned with any of the three. I've heard economics described as "sociology with a veneer of statistics", which is something I can't say I'm unconvinced by. I respect your status as a relative expert, and also as someone close enough to the subject to have a conflict of interest in characterizing it fairly.
roenxi 3y ago
Bitcoin has been around for 15 years at this point and there is absolutely no confusion about the technical underpinnings. It has handily survived attempts at government shutdowns in China and serious interest rate hikes. Numerous scams have come, gone and had no impact on hodlers. At this point it is no longer reasonable to just claim it is a greater fools game without an argument for why. The evidence right now seems to put it in a similar category to gold in that people generally don't like that it has value, but nonetheless value is present. I also draw people's attention to the parallel with something like a RAID array - it is possible to make robust systems out of unreliable parts. The abundance of scammy and scummy operators in the crypto space is quite consistent with the similar prevalence in traditional finance. The system is robust regardless.
- pinkmuffinere 3y ago
  I feel the comparison to gold is a bit of a reach. Gold is valuable because: 1. People see it as a store of value 2. It has some useful physical properties 3. People use it as a decoration Possibly there are other reasons as well, but those are the ones that come immediately to mind. As far as I can tell, Bitcoin only shares attribute #1. It doesn’t have intrinsic properties that make it useful into larger systems (though perhaps we just haven’t found the right systems yet?), and people don’t feel it’s intrinsically valuable. Not to completely bash Bitcoin though — if enough people find it valuable it can become a useful way to exchange value. Right now it’s just pretty bad at that.
  - roenxi 3y ago
    Crypto overall, including Bitcoin, have bunch of intrinsic properties. A lot of people just don't want to recognise them. It puts me in mind of the Sovereign citizen movement, and I expect it'll work just as well for them vs crypto as it did for the SovCits vs the US government. * Can only pull new bitcoin into existence by paying a hefty market-determined price. * Can transfer them iff you know a certain secret. * Can verify that a certain number of bitcoin are linked to a specific secret. * Can technically transfer bitcoin without approval from a legally blessed 3rd party There is no asset outside of crypto with those properties. Turns out that combination is worth, so far, billions. Probably more as it settles in and people get used to the idea. Will Bitcoin last forever like gold? No. Will it last long enough? Looks like it. Is crypto valuable? Judgement is in, market says yes.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
zamfi 3y ago
…did you read the rest of it? I recommend it. (And I’m far from a crypto-optimist.)

throwawaycities 3y ago

The cool thing about Vitalik’s blog is that it is decentralized. The blog uses decentralized storage (IPFS) and uses a decentralized ENS domain (vitalik.eth). If you use a web3 browser like brave browser vitalik.eth resolves natively in the browser without the need to use the ENS+IPFS (eth.limo) gateway.

tough 3y ago
ty for the tidbit never really found an excuse to install brave before
- IntelMiner 3y ago
  Given the CEO's "history" [1] I'd heavily recommend against installing Brave [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brendan_Eich https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brendan_Eich
  - thepasswordis 3y ago
    You really hate javascript that much?
  - throwawaycities 3y ago
    You boycott Brave browser because the CEO? The CEO invented JavaScript, do you boycott JavaScript and all websites that use JavaScript?
    - number6 3y ago
      For other reasons ;)
  - roenxi 3y ago
    His history of designing JavaScript, co-founding and CTO-ing the Mozilla project and being a general expert in coding and the web? Yeah screw this guy. No way he'll ever be able to develop a successful browser. If you make your technical decisions based on, as far as I can tell from Wikipedia, 1 minor political disagreement with the project lead then you'll be as limited as Stallman when it comes to using a computer. That is an extreme position.

latchkey 3y ago

> Your personality can completely change in 10 years. This was kind of a revelation to me a long time ago. When you're 20, you're a totally different person than when you're 10. When you're 30, different than 20. Just like the linked article suggests, you really tend to underestimate how much you're going to change in the future. At 10, you can't really consider how you're going to be when you're 20.

Retric 3y ago
The reverse is also true, people have a lot in common with who they were 10 years ago. It’s common for people to like many of the same songs at 60 that they did at 16. I may be more skilled, better informed, and care a great deal about people who didn’t exist back then, but I think my basic personality is shockingly close to 10 year old me.
- badpun 3y ago
  Basic personality traits (like Big 4) stay roughly the same. What (hopefully)happens is personality development and maturation.

Baeocystin 3y ago

I enjoyed reading this, and it makes me happy to see that he's finding his way forward in a humane way. Thanks for posting the link.

secondary_op 3y ago

> When I met Vladimir Putin in 2017, I did not try to arrange the meeting; rather, someone else suggested it, and I pretty much said "ok sure". > Now, five years later, I finally realized that (i) I had been complicit in legitimizing a genocidal dictator, and (ii) within the crypto space too, I no longer had the luxury of sitting back and letting mystical "other people" run the show. Congrats on congratulating yourself on being the Benevolent dictator (in contrast with presumably genocidal dictator) and inventor of your own decentralised financial institution that enabled everything imaginable around money schemes, not matter how average and worst it is compared to regulated traditional banking. How much is you worth by the way ?

zubairq 3y ago

Really interesting to read about how people change over time. Sometimes I actually try reall hard to stay the same too

skynet305 3y ago

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spacemadness 3y ago

Yeah, sorry for my lack of awe at 20 year olds wasting time with crypto and being seen as wunderkind. Now that my skepticism is through the roof with this blog, what exactly is anyone doing with synthetic biology that he mentions that’s interesting at the 20 year old hacker house level?