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Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against blockchain technologies

• abzolv 5y ago
  From a technical perspective you are correct. However, in the midst of a mania, unfortunately nobody is going to listen to a group of engineers telling them about the dangers of blockchain. The only thing that will, and can, stop the madness is politicians getting off their backsides and implementing related laws and regulations. If you want to talk to anyone, and have any potential effect, talk to the people in government.
  • doedoedoedoe 5y ago
    I think that there is still time to inform general consumers so the vast majority are aware of the dangers before cryptocurrencies are made friendly enough to use for the average non-tech or finance folk. We are definitely hitting a point where these scams have to reach out beyond crypto-bros, finance gamblers, and the tech-savvy so that they can sustain the pyramid - and if people are aware before that happens, hopefully the bubble will burst and the fad will end.
    • tim333 5y ago
      Yesterday in Central London there was a van going around with LED displays on the side, I think flogging ape NFTs. They seem to be reaching out.
• exolymph 5y ago
  Alright, go for it. Speak out all you want. Cryptocurrency users will continue ignoring and/or deriding you. Telling people that you don't like what they're doing is not an effective way to modify their behavior. You need to provide competing incentives, and somehow I doubt y'all are up to that.
  • throwhauser 5y ago
    The point isn't to convince cryptocurrency users, the point is to convince the average person ("the public").
    • Charlie_26 5y ago
      But aren't the current users the problem?
      • ArnoVW 5y ago
        Crypto is hot because there's some greater fool to sell to. Eliminate that greater fool (by informing) and the whole pyramid scheme comes tumbling down.
    • exolymph 5y ago
      That only works until they see other people getting rich by not listening to you.
      • yencabulator 5y ago
        Meanwhile, another centralized platform for hodling your crypto got hacked to the tune of $80M.
  • johnday 5y ago
    The OP doesn't say complain to crypto users. It says that we need to inform the general public so that they are immunised against the draw of these schemes.
• dags156 5y ago
  OP, you are correct and you have motivated me to call my US rep who is on the "blockchain caucus" and tell him I think he needs to get on the right side of history and regulate this destructive fad (the "technology" is irrelevant and useless)
• econeuler 5y ago
  It is important to inform people about the potential dangers with the technology and investing in it, especially since there are no regulations to create, e.g., new tokens. There are scams going on and it is easier to get away with it because it is an unregulated market. However, blockchain technology is an emerging area and it's bound to be chaotic in the beginning. We should highlight the risks but not condemn the tech. Also, stay positive!
  • tchock23 5y ago
    How is it an "emerging area?" It came out in 2008. In the tech world that is a lifetime.
    • chairmanmow 5y ago
      Smart contracts came out in 2015 on Ethereum apparently. What came out in 2008? Bitcoin 1.0? Things do move fast in tech, you may want to keep up with the latest versions before writing off the web saying you've got it figured out based on your experience with the Mosaic browser. Sometimes opinions need updating too, everything evolves.
      • tchock23 5y ago
        Yes, I was referring to blockchain and bitcoin rather than ‘smart’ contracts.
• d--b 5y ago
  The worst part of it is the carbon cost to be frank, it's ridiculous. But regardless, no one cares. I've been telling people for years, but all you get is either: "screw you, I didn't invest, and look where it's at now." or "well I was right not to listen to you". Hopefully the Ponzi scheme stops with the fed tightening policy. Oh, and it has expanding into the average consumer markets. A lot of retired people I know are in.
• abrahms 5y ago
  I did writing to a similar effect yesterday. https://justin.abrah.ms/2022-01-27-my-thoughts-on-crypto.html https://justin.abrah.ms/2022-01-27-my-thoughts-on-crypto.htm... tl;dr - I would really love to like the crypto stuff that's being worked on, I just can't get on board with the big problems I'm seeing.
• suyash 5y ago
  It's not just technologists anymore, there is a whole bunch of powerful investors, marketing agencies, media companies all pushing their agenda via Web 3.0 guise. Not to mention 'get rich quick' scammers taking full advantage of this. I do believe there is value in 'Decentralation' and some other blockchain ideas but all implementations of it thus far as proven not very effective.
  • littlestymaar 5y ago
    > I do believe there is value in 'Decentralation' and some other blockchain ideas but all implementations of it thus far as proven not very effective. The blockchain concept is a very bad fit for almost every kind of decentralization you'd want, because it's basically a linked list with a central clock[1] limiting the number of blocks you can happen (and this is necessary to allow the consensus to converge). [1] even though it's implemented in a distributed manner, there's still one and only one clock per chain and everyone must take its turn to use of of the precious clock slots.
• MattGaiser 5y ago
  Taking the premise of this at face value then these people are just going to get scammed on something else. There is a fairly sizable segment of the population that is unable to be anything but poor as they invest in get rich quick garbage. And they always will. Maybe it is crypto, or maybe it is LuLaRoe or Beanie Babies. There is no saving them.
• jimbob45 5y ago
  I think this is just the price you pay when talking about things people have vested financial interests in. I imagine there was a great deal of spin on BBS' around 2000 about dotcoms. Unless you're going to ban talk around topics where spin and sway can directly make people money, you're just going to see this kind of thing. The best you can do is to engage honestly and openly with others and do your best to understand their viewpoints. Hopefully they do the same with you.
• mattwilsonn888 5y ago
  Boooo
• treelovinhippie 5y ago
• mike741 5y ago
  This reminds me of the stories about Edison electrocuting elephants as a means of demonstrating the "danger" of alternating current. Bad Application =/= Bad Technology Most telephone calls are scam calls, it doesn't mean telephones were a bad idea. All scammers are humans, but not all humans are scammers. If there is a scam then call it out directly rather than wasting energy on the general platform.
• kokizzu2 5y ago
  - mostly scammer (pump and dump) - mostly nftheft - bad at energy usage '__') good reason to against that, but let's wait and see if the reputation still can recover after those bans
• Trias11 5y ago
  You should print this on a big poster and walk on the street carrying ringing bell in your arm, trying to attract attention.
• husamia 5y ago
  Edit the title: We have a responsibility to challenge the narratives
• husamia 5y ago
  there is a difference between speaking out against technology and speaking out against how it's used
• husamia 5y ago
  I want to see this everyday. The experimentation is not over. The technology is not to blame.
• husamia 5y ago
  As far as I know the promised next version of the web aka "Web3" doesn't exist. Or does it?
• tekknik 5y ago
  Why is this flagged?
• kerryoco 5y ago
  The problem is blockchain enables scams, but is not itself fundamentally "a scam". The culture is not the technology. "Line Goes Up" understably conflates the two, because right now 99% of what we see is the (generally terrible) culture surrounding blockchain.
• Irongirl1 5y ago
  Do you also have a responsibility to speak out against redlining? Or Banking deserts? Or keeping Afghanis from starving due to sanctions both external and internal? How about 0% savings accounts? Or being denied a mortgage from the only game in town? How about being put in prison because you cannot come up with the egregious fees larded onto your account because "reasons"? Are you prepared to defend us from all of that? Or just this? The one thing that has come along in the last few decades that we can use to empower ourselves with no interference necessary "from those who know better." Every single payment method that has been invented has suffered from frauds, scams etc. People have found ways to remove mailed checks from mailboxes, wash the ink from them and make them out to new payees. Should we stop using checks now too? Should we go back to trading rocks and shells? Corda is already doing great work in the European insurance industry at lowering costs and increasing transparency. We won't be lucky enough to get it here, likewise moving the bond market to the ledger should do the same thing. No advancement is perfect, but going by what you have written here we should all go back to living in caves and running from sabertooths. I think I'll pass. And I'm not a techie....and I still feel like this post is nonsense.
• stefek99 5y ago
  Blockchain is the most impactful technology since the internet. It changes everything - foundation of trust. New economy. New incentives. “If you don't believe it or don't get it, I don't have the time to try to convince you, sorry.” I'm pretty sure some people were angry at the internet 30 years ago.
• RustyConsul 5y ago
  I don't know wheere the ponzi scheme is in Smart contracts, decentralized identities, arbitrary data communication across and decentralized network, ZK-rollups, SK-Snarks, Automatic liquidation, leverage, and minting using other assets as an algorithmic backing, liquid staking, no loss lottery's, loaned crowdloans, algorithmic stablecoins, arbitrage based enabled trading platforms, decentralized incentived storage networks and a million other things. Seems like we are going into another crypto winter :) Every-time this happens, i slowly invest in all the projects i think are promising, then the next bitcoin halving us crypto nerds have 5-10 things to add to the list of 'Interesting things crypto can do', no one understands them so they are easily dismissed and people say "Well i still can't buy an apple with my btc' so thus all crypto has failed.
• unkulunkulu 5y ago
  My brother is currently working in the field. It brings him good money. Now, really good money. His work is 100% clean per se (infrastructure for mining). I don't feel any moral grounds to say anything to him, he does it for engineering and fun and really actualizes himself. He is my older brother finally creating something meaningful for people and having rightful rewards. He is hidden in the moral waves, harvesting something he can, surfing in the sunshine. I don't know how to think about this.
  • zanzibar735 5y ago
    I have friends who have made millions from crypto. But every dollar they made is a dollar that someone else paid into the system, that that person is going to lose when the bubble bursts. Enabling that loss is not morally clean.
    • logicalmonster 5y ago
      Taking your logic to its conclusion, any stock or other kind of trading should be banned because it will enable some people to lose money at some point. To clarify, is that your position, and if not, why not?
    • betwixthewires 5y ago
      By that logic, anything with downside risk is not morally clean. If you buy anything with the plan, secondary or not, to sell it later for some profit of some kind, you're taking from a sucker. Housing, the used car market, commodities, the stock market, everything is a greater fool scam. But when you look at these things from the individual perspective, we all take a risk when buying things. The people that don't assess their risk when they buy lose, the ones that do don't lose.
    • alanfranz 5y ago
      But the question is: what is morally clean? Is housing not a bubble? Then, how could prices be that inflated in most places, even with a stable (or just slightly increasing) population? Is stock trading not a bubble, because "real companies exist and have a value"? But, their price is probably 20x their "real worth"? Is selling vegetables in grocery stores at 20x the price the farmer gets morally clean? Is it morally clean to keep putting CO2 into the air that everybody breaths? There are a freaking lot of "unclean" things in the world. I don't understand why a lot of people seem to focus on cryptocurrencies and blockchains.
• aqaq 5y ago
• Comevius 5y ago
  https://www.profgalloway.com/web3/ https://www.profgalloway.com/web3/ Another valuable insight into the dubious, duplicit world of crypto.
• Reubend 5y ago
  You're wrong. New flavors of crypto, blockchain apps, etc are almost entirely scams. But Bitcoin itself is an incredible technology, and I don't think its beautiful design gets appreciated enough in the midst of all the speculative investments, derivative currencies, and marketing.
  • jokethrowaway 5y ago
    Proof of work is a nice way to bridge digital and physical world - but it's also using a ridiculous amount of energy. Bitcoin is a hack to get control back from government. It's a technical solution to a political problem. I wouldn't use it in production. I'd rather have a network of private banks (without governments and central banks printing money as much as they like - and bailing out their friends) and a currency based on the value of a basket of everyday items (wheat, wood, iron).
• tchock23 5y ago
  Careful using the term ‘ponzi’ - they’ll show up and argue with you on semantics of what to call the scam while ignoring your other (valid) arguments.
  • mattwilsonn888 5y ago
    Its almost like tossing a million shallow arguments at the wall and asking your opponent to spend time debunking each individual one is a duplicitous strategy in itself.
  • tim333 5y ago
    Calling it a Ponzi shows a rather poor understanding of the area as if you say look at the Wikipedia article on them say, or similar sources it is apparent that Bitcoin isn't one. A passage from Wikipedia for example >The scheme leads victims to believe that profits are coming from legitimate business activity (e.g., product sales or successful investments), and they remain unaware that other investors are the source of funds. Bit like anti vaxxers saying the vaccine isn't a vaccine because it doesn't have 100% sterilizing immunity. It just goes to show the argurers are not very well informed on what vaccines and or Ponzis are by the usual dictionary definitions.
• windows2020 5y ago
  When it comes up, I explain my position and move on. Sometimes, you need to learn for yourself. But with a good lesson comes a fresh perspective. Perhaps the general public will become more skeptical of 'technology' and make a greater effort to understand it themselves.
• nus07 5y ago
  I mean I graduated top 5% of my class and make early 6 figures. My friend who graduated bottom 5% is now a crypto millionaire living in Dubai. Meanwhile I can write complex Scala code but I have no idea what blockchain , NFT , crypto is all about apart from the fact that it made my friend rich and made early adopters rich . How , why , when I don’t know . What’s the gain, purpose of it - I don’t know . Then again I don’t know what’s the purpose of data processing for ad-tech ML models and how it helps humanity either . The world is a Ponzi scheme . Can I go back to 1995?
  • adam_arthur 5y ago
    If you make money, it means you were right
  • rozularen 5y ago
    survivorship bias?
    • kriops 5y ago
      None of the people I know involved with crypto, including miners, daytraders, and HODLers, have not crushed the market in the last nine years. Also, if mainstream crypto is a Ponzi scheme, how is fiat currency not?
      • arcticbull 5y ago
        > None of the people I know involved with crypto, including miners, daytraders, and HODLers, have not crushed the market in the last nine years. This is what we call survivorship bias. > Also, if mainstream crypto is a Ponzi scheme, how is fiat currency not? This is utter nonsense. Fractional reserve lending means that money enters the supply on loan. It has to be returned to the issuer, and once its returned, it blinks out of existence. The demand for repayment of the loan is what backs every dollar out there. Each dollar is fully backed by the demand to repay the loan that issued it and the social and institutional mechanisms that enforce this including the courts. The attributes of a Ponzi scheme are: 1. People invest into it because they expect substantial profits, and ... 2. ... that expectation is sustained by such profits being paid to those who choose to cash out. And... 3. ... there is no external source of revenue for those payoffs. Instead... 4. ... the payoffs come entirely from new investment money, while ... 5. ... the operators take away a large portion of this money. Go ahead and explain how that maps to the world's reserve currency. After all category (1) is patently invalidated because nobody holds USD expecting a return in USD. They expect to lose 2% on average to inflation.
• smoldesu 5y ago
  The blockchain is fine though. That's like trying to tell people to stop using linked lists or object-orientation; you're trying to disseminate a technical detail for an audience that doesn't understand nor care. The modern crypto market is a disaster because cryptocurrency is a fiat, not a security or trading asset. People insist on it being the new gold though, so it's weaknesses are exploited and people get scammed left right and center. It's not surprising that when you abuse technology, bad things happen; it's put us in a situation where we're desperately trying to make these platforms safe for purposes they were never intended to fill. Of course there are going to be problems. Even though I think NFTs are gaudy wastes of time, and Bitcoin is an inside joke for long-running IRC chats, I don't really care that much if the concept of a blockchain lives or dies. If anything, I'm glad that the recent publicity has gotten people to care about actually interesting and meaningful technology like IPFS and hashing algos. Regardless of what any of us say, do or express, the blockchain is explicitly designed to keep on trucking. There's nothing you can do now, the only "ethical" way out is to ignore it and hope that your silence on the topic encourages other people to stop using it too. In the meantime, new technology is going to continue to be new, and gulliable individuals will continue to be scammed anywhere they choose to put their wallet on the line. There really is nothing new under the sun; not Bitcoin, not the blockchain, and certainly not scamming people online.
• jonwalch 5y ago
  I find it strange that people keep promoting that YouTube documentary. Ignoring tone issues, there is a lot of cherry picking and other logical fallacies. For example, he talks about how terrible Tether is and then completely ignores USDC. He also claims that none of the popular blockchains can scale, but Solana is frequently in the top 5 most popular cryptocurrencies. It seems to me that people that do an hour of research are polarized hard. Either love it or hate it. The more time you spend understanding the space the more nuanced it becomes. Many are using the technology to facilitate scams and overpromising, but that doesn't make the technology fundamentally useless or bad.
  • kethinov 5y ago
    At this point the enthusiasts need to start getting very specific about how blockchains or cryptocurrency is making the world a better place if they want people to stop calling for it to be banned globally, because the explicit harms caused by it are piling up really fast.
    • PretzelPirate 5y ago
      The issue is with what it means to “make the world a better place”. Many people think blockchains are working towards that while others don’t see value in what is offered. As long as we transition to Proof of Stake networks, people who aren’t interested in blockchains should just ignore them and governments can go after anyone who uses blockchain (or any other technology) to scam people.
      • cuteboy19 5y ago
        Bitcoin has made it very clear that proof of waste is a hill they will die on
  • AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
    > Many are using the technology to facilitate scams and overpromising, but that doesn't make the technology fundamentally useless or bad. True enough, but since I have yet to see a use for the technology that isn't pretty much just a means to scam people, I'm totally fine calling the entire space a giant scam.
• unemphysbro 5y ago
  why? i think it's the coolest thing ever. anyone can write a contract to automate taking out a loan, investing it, and pulling out the money, develop exotic securities, and bespoke arbitration. anyone can do it regardless of credentials or connections; just a month of learning. pretty darn cool to have unbridled access to a distributed computer.
  • arcticbull 5y ago
    The answer is pretty straight-forward. Every time we tried this before it collapsed into a giant ball of flame. Nothing crypto is producing is new. We've had stablecoins before in the form of wildcat banks. [1] They were backed at some point by barrels of nails with a few flakes of gold on top, and what little gold there was, was spirited around from bank to bank in front of the inspectors. That ended predictably. We've had "ICOs" in the form of blue sky securities. [2] Companies that did nothing sold on the premise that you could simply sell the shares to someone else for more money. That ended predictably. We've had "high yield investment platforms" in the form of actual honest-to-goodness Ponzi schemes before. That ended predictably. We've had free reign access to leverage to buy more securities before - it led to the Great Depression. We had rhypothecation of securities and totally baseless collateral generation before - it led to the Great Recession. Crypto hasn't created anything new fundamentally, it's just re-hashing all the stuff we outlawed before because it was an objective breeding ground of fraud and crime and grift. The only thing new about the crypto economy is that the pitches are structured as "${previously_failed_idea} except on the Internet." [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wildcat_banking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wildcat_banking [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_sky_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_sky_law
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    • momojo 5y ago
      > Crypto hasn't created anything new fundamentally Orchids and Baseball cards and Beanie-Babies. We don't need a decentralized immutable, distributed ledger to verify something's value. We're already good at prescribing disproportionate value to arbitrary things. I don't think we ever cared that it was centralized or not.
• gtsop 5y ago
  I really don't follow. Can anyone enlighten me? I used to go with the casual notion 'tech isn't evil' / 'even a chair can be used as a weapon'. What have I missed here for blockchain?
  • johnday 5y ago
    The position of web3 is that we should be using "chairs" to run websites. The infrastructure of crypto is blatantly inappropriate for the domains people are trying to apply it to. Which leaves open the question, why are they pushing for it? The answer should be clear to anyone with a passing knowledge of the crypto scene.
    • gtsop 5y ago
      Is this the position of crypto or the position of people driving crypto? I am trying to understand here if there something inherently wrong with the technology or just with the people running it.
  • awild 5y ago
    A chair's proof of concept doesn't burn the energy of a small industrialized nation?
    • gtsop 5y ago
      Nuclear energy vs nuclear bombs? How you use it makes a difference?
      • deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    • mike741 5y ago
      Computers as a whole burn the energy of many small industrialized nations. Is that to say computers shouldn't be used? Or is it simply a statement of how widely used computers are?
• anotheraccount9 5y ago
  "promoting fraud"? In a way, we could say that money too is promoting fraud. It's how we use technology that defines the moral issue, not the technology itself. Or am I missing the obvious?
• whocares1 5y ago
• 2pEXgD0fZ5cF 5y ago
  I'd say the goal shouldn't be to convince the crypto fanatics. It should be building awareness towards what cryptocurrencies and technologies based on the blockchain actually are and why they can't at all achieve what people invested in crypto promise. For the people that are vulnerable, politicians and organizations, in short: people being manipulated by outright false promises and deliberately vague "arguments" (like there always being that one coin nobody uses which of course solves all the problems of the topic at hand). Crypto doesn't offer much in terms of decentralization, but one thing it does decentralize incredibly well is advertisement and evangelism because every single cryptocurrency holder has a true financial incentive to spread overhyped and false information around anything remotely connected to blockchain technologies in order to drive up the price.
• ohazi 5y ago
  Like many people back then, I also found the whole proof-of-work / blockchain concept to be interesting from a theoretical computer science / distributed systems perspective. But these days, I can't help but think that we've inadvertently created a paperclip maximizer without even bothering to create an AGI first. Humans are the AGI, and we're going to happily use more and more energy to play this stupid game for as long as it looks like there's a profit to be made, even if the global outcome is to our own detriment. If we want this mess to go away, we need to find a way to change the incentives globally.
  • epolanski 5y ago
    > If we want this mess to go away, we need to find a way to change the incentives globally. I think there should be more political pressure behind banning crypto currencies and companies that deal with them should be cut out from banking system. I would be even okay with just doing it for proof of work coins, if people want to keep doing their libertarian experiment it's okay for me, but at least remove this insane incentive to use more and more resources.
  • tekknik 5y ago
    You need to define AGI. https://www.acronymfinder.com/AGI.html https://www.acronymfinder.com/AGI.html
  • stefek99 5y ago
    > "we need to find a way to change the incentives globally" Shameless plug: basex.com > BaseX measures "triple bottom line" - People Planet Prosperity - new definition of value - accounting for environmental impact and wellbeing. It's is all about incentives.
  • reincarnate0x14 5y ago
    The leviathan is loose and it's never going back in a pen until the whole thing collapses under the weight of the fraud. Even legal restrictions on it will only help a little bit as enough moneyed interests are invested in keeping the hype train rolling. I've consulted for several companies trying to do blockchain based non-money things and can't emphasize to them enough that no one outside computer science and math fields will ever associate them with anything but cryptocurrency (and thus scams) for the rest of our lifetimes.
• arcticbull 5y ago
  This isn't even just a question of individual responsibility. Yes, suckers will get fleeced and we will have to cope with that as a society. Yes, we should minimize that harm to the extent possible. However, there is a much broader systemic risk involved. In 1997, Albania was transitioning from a communist state to a market economy. This created a power vacuum and a distrust in the institutions of government and finance. This allowed MLMs/pyramid schemes to blink into existence and multiply out of all proportion. At its peak, almost half of the entire GDP of Albania was locked up in them. "When the schemes collapsed, there was uncontained rioting, the government fell, and the country descended into anarchy and a near civil war in which some 2,000 people were killed." [1] This isn't all fun and games and innocent gambling. This is a cancerous symptom of the failing of the state. [1] https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2000/03/jarvis.htm https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2000/03/jarvis.ht...
  • maest 5y ago
    Romania had something similar going on: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caritas_(Ponzi_scheme) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caritas_(Ponzi_scheme) > An estimate of Romanian newspaper România Liberă gives the amount of money involved as 1.4 trillion lei or about 20% of the 1993 expenditures of the Romanian government of 6.6 trillion. The New York Times estimated the scheme attracted between $1 billion and $5 billion Anecdotally, people got involved in it fully knowing it was a Ponzi scheme, but hoping they could get their money out before the music stopped playing. And some of them did! In fact, my first computer was bought by my parents with Caritas money.
• ajkdhcb2 5y ago
  I disagree with your assumptions. There are many conflicting views, and to me it is an objective fact that barely anyone really understands the technology and what its ramifications will be. Morality and development is a very tricky thing. As an analogy, all of AI tech to me is leading toward a horrific future, but I don't see how anyone can stop that and Chinese autonomous military drones, mass surveillance etc; there was no way that early developers can predict how their tech will be used
  • ctvo 5y ago
    > There are many conflicting views, and to me it is an objective fact that barely anyone really understands the technology and what its ramifications will be. This isn't a new paper on quantum computing. Many of us understand the technology quite well.
    • lostmsu 5y ago
      Technology maybe, but what about ramifications?
      • rapind 5y ago
        How can anyone answer such a massive question honestly. What are the ramifications of any socially entwined technology?
• pabe 5y ago
  DLTs are not the problem. The problem is idiocracy. Most people don't think anymore. Some people even buy NFTs thinking ownership right come with those - not even asking legal questions... DLTs can indeed be incredibly useful, e.g. when multiple parties use the tech as a trusted pseudonymous data log, e.g. drug tracking from production to pharmacies. Or decentralized certificate wallets which allow you to actually own certificates you earned and prove that those are valid. Those are just not the stories media can sell as good as "some stupid link to an ape / rock picture has been sold for x gazillion USD".
  • shepherdjerred 5y ago
    > Most people don't think anymore. Do you really believe that making mistakes is somehow on the rise, or that as a race we are getting less intelligent? This doesn't seem like a genuine argument other than a generic "people are dumb and getting dumber" statement.
    • pabe 5y ago
      You're right, I didn't provide a single source. Sorry for that! Here is one: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2020/04/29/technology-is-on-the-rise-while-iq-is-on-the-decline/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2020/04/29/te...
  • riskneutral 5y ago
    > DLTs can indeed be incredibly useful, e.g. when multiple parties use the tech as a trusted pseudonymous data log, e.g. drug tracking from production to pharmacies. Why can't they just use a database? Tracking information isn't a new problem.
    • pabe 5y ago
      * Because traditional databases are owned by a specific party. You have to trust that party. * Because most traditional databases are not designed to be decentralized. * Because administrators by default can change data in databases. Of course you can work your way around that and get an audit for your solution. But it is a native feature of blockchains. Let's say it is law pharmacies have to ensure each drug they sell was produced by a trusted vendor and rules regarding logistics (e.g. temperature) were respected. Nobody must be able to manipulate that data and it has to be available offline for all pharmacies in case the network goes down. It'd be almost trivial to set something like this up using a blockchain. In an early prototype, you'd just give each party one or more wallets (private keys), allow the pharma to mint a token for each package and track how those are sent between wallets, each representing a different state in the supply chain. Pharmacies run a full node to have data available in case anything goes down. I made it a bit easier here than it likely would be in reality, but I hope I can transport the beauty of the approach.
• mwattsun 5y ago
  I think the best we can do is give our opinion when asked questions like "Hey you know about these things. Is web3 the next evolution of the internet and should I buy in?" "No and no" "You're just mad because you missed out" "Here's a collection of material I've been saving that says I'm right. You might want to take a look before you invest" "You sound negative" "Ok, consider me the 10th man then. Ignore me if you want" And just leave it at that. You can lead a horse to water... https://themindcollection.com/the-tenth-man-rule-devils-advocacy https://themindcollection.com/the-tenth-man-rule-devils-advo...
• anselm 5y ago
  Humans more than any other life form seem to constantly be playing with social, economic and political self-organization. How energy is distributed and what is fair. We’re a highly social almost hive-like species that is constantly trying out new hive patterns and arguing about them. Crypto is useful because it lets people play with their own schemes and nobody can stop them. It seems like most uses of crypto are for some form of token gated community. While token gates are a valuable concept, it is true that many communities themselves are not worth joining and are inflating their perceived value. I do think that the recent spate of critiques are fairly poor also. Critiquing antiques like bitcoin or lolling about say early DAOs falling over due to bugs doesn’t really make a compelling argument.
• cblconfederate 5y ago
  Like how they spoke up about surveillance, misinformation, manipulation, tracking, walled gardens, monopolies, dark patterns, demonetization, censorship, encryption? Technologists don't rely on voice and speaking up, code is louder
• Kharvok 5y ago
  This is hyperbole. We know private permissioned blockchain solves real world problems.
  • malermeister 5y ago
    Could you give us an example?
    • exdsq 5y ago
      Interbank trading
• jzellis 5y ago
  Of course you're right. It's also a massive energy sink, in an era when the question of how that energy is produced matters more than almost anything else on the planet, for the very future of that planet. And do you think anybody in the tech industry gives a shit? It makes easy money, and that's literally the only thing that matters to most people in our industry. The tech industry's general attitude is that all tech is morally and ethically neutral, and that we have no responsibility as to how people use or misuse it. If that's your initial position, what on Earth is going to make you care that most of the people in the blockchain world are sketchy and that it serves no practical purpose other than feeding into bullshit ancap ideology and making it easier to buy coke online? HN is built off a VC incubator, which means that most of the people here buy thoroughly into free market capitalism and entrepreneurship as the heroic model thereof. So who's going to speak out about something they can pimp to Main Street as the new hotness and make a quick turnaround on? I'm with you, man, but I doubt many other people are. But don't stop trying, by all means. Just from reading this, I know you have infinitely more faith in people, and people in tech especially, than I do, after 25 years in the industry. Vaya con Dios, dude. Good luck.
• tomiplaz 5y ago
  I don't think you understand what Bitcoin has brought to the table. Consider its fundamentals and its network effect. Other blockchain tech, most prominently permissioned blockchains, should be reprobated, since they don't require blockchain tech and could be better implemented using tech that relies on standard database systems.
  • Victerius 5y ago
    What Bitcoin has brought to the table: - More convenient ways for malicious individuals to conduct ransomware attacks - Fraudulent exchanges - Persistent and global GPU shortages - Anonymity to criminals - Staggering consumption of real-life energy supplies, produced mostly with fossil fuels What Bitcoin has not brought to the table: - A store of value - A trusted unit of account - A widespread medium of exchange
    • mike741 5y ago
      All of those problems existed before Bitcoin, so Bitcoin evidently did not "bring them to the table" And if Bitcoin is not a store of value, why are the Bitcoin I own seemingly maintaining (and increasing) their original value?
    • tomiplaz 5y ago
      Please try to expand your lists. Also, please try to create the same kind of expanded lists for other such related tech you're comparing Bitcoin with.
    • mattwilsonn888 5y ago
      Classic. Bitcoin is not a store of value or trusted unit of account despite its massive market cap. The primary objective measure of value is invalidated because you disagree with it and believe everyone else is wrong. You are a Kafka character.
      • beaconstudios 5y ago
        something being used for massive financial speculation doesn't make it a store of value or a trusted unit of account.
• jonathan-adly 5y ago
• logicalmonster 5y ago
  > what a nightmarish step backwards it is for developers concerned with cost, speed, privacy, safety, and ease. 1) There's a lot of research and development into blockchain technology by very smart people. The systems are improving. What technology we'll have 5, 10, or 25 years from now is going to be much different than what exists now. It's a lack of imagination to think that because crypto is "slow" now (and not all of it is by the way), that it will always be the case. The equivalent is looking at a 5.25" floppy disk in the early 80s and thinking that all physical media is forever going to be too small and too slow to be usable. 2) Low cost, speed, privacy, safety, and usability are great attributes to have: and in many cases are currently superior on established centralized systems. But don't other important attributes exist? * What about resistance to censorship? A centralized system can ban you because of what you say or even because of who you are. Maybe a purely decentralized system cannot. I guess that's one reason why a lot of people fear it. * And what about trust? Many people do not trust a lot of centralized systems from powerful groups: such as how many shares of stock are even in existence given the practice of naked shorting. Check out this story. https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/rsaevv/in_march_of_2005_this_guy_bought_100_of_shares/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/rsaevv/in_march... > In March of 2005 this guy bought 100% of shares (1.1M shares) in a traded company to prove the corruption. The next two days that same stock traded 50 million times and dropping the price 99% in two hours. All this with LITERALLY NO SHARES AVAILABLE TO BORROW OR SHORT. Isn't it possible that the drawbacks of blockchains might be worth it if they can prove perfectly transparent and reduce or eliminate corruption? Imagine a stock market that ran on some next generation blockchain tech that was perfectly transparent without any doubt about the number of shares in existence. No more dirty tricks or fraud possible. Are the upsides of this not worth any discussion?
  • 2pEXgD0fZ5cF 5y ago
    > A centralized system can ban you because of what you say or even because of who you are. So can anyone who builds a service on top of blockchain technology™ which is something a user ultimately has to interface with. Just because you have some unremovable flags set on your magical decentralized database that doesn't mean a service can't choose to ignore it. > eliminate corruption > Imagine a stock market that ran on some next generation blockchain tech that was perfectly transparent without any doubt about the number of shares in existence. No more dirty tricks or fraud possible. Please elaborate, how does any of what you vaguely describe "eliminate corruption". How would it prevent dirty tricks and fraud?
• phkahler 5y ago
  I dunno. If big investors want to dump money into something that has ZERO real-world value and is just FOMO and GFT investing so be it. When people ask me about it I just say it's all a scam and they seem to accept that at face value since they couldn't really figure out what it's all about anyway. Keep your friends retirement funds out of it and let the rest play their game I say. I wish I could make money on the ability to predict "that won't pan out" but I haven't figured out how to do that yet. Example: Fully autonomous self driving cars - level 5 stuff. People are finally realizing A) how hard that is in practice - it really takes AGI and B) the huge liability that comes with it. But hey, a lot of people have been employed for 10 years now and have some impressive lane followers and sign readers while some have actually learned a lot about AI (google). Still, I had no way to bet against it 5-10 years ago.
  • wvlia5 5y ago
    you can easily short-sell bitcoin if you believe it "won't pan out"
• mihvoi 5y ago
  This crypto madness kept way too long. I say it from 2017: https://meaningofstuff.blogspot.com/2017/12/why-bitcoin-will-fail.html https://meaningofstuff.blogspot.com/2017/12/why-bitcoin-will...
  • tim333 5y ago
    That's probably amongst the 444 Bitcoin Obituaries on https://99bitcoins.com/bitcoin-obituaries/ https://99bitcoins.com/bitcoin-obituaries/ but I couldn't find it as all the terms - will fail - ponzi - etc are a bit generic.
• _bfhp 5y ago
  Do what Dan Olson is doing but directly at your local representatives who can't understand any of it. Condense the info into to a letter or a flyer and get it into their hands. If the issue is not already on your local representatives' plates tell them how it will become so in the future.
• ars 5y ago
  I don't think you realize just how much these technologies benefit people in countries with poor currencies. You need to address this before painting with such a broad brush.
  • dimgl 5y ago
    I love seeing this argument. You should really visit these countries. Crypto does not help these countries whatsoever.
    • wvlia5 5y ago
      It does help me, living in Argentina
    • pollen23 5y ago
      It does. Source: me, living in one of these countries.
• tlogan 5y ago
  I do not know what to tell you. This is like Albania pyramid scheme in late 90s. When I see Matt Damon, Tom Brady, Elon Musk, etc promoting NFTs it reminds so much of that. Now I see ads on YouTube telling people to take their 401k and invest in NFTs.. The only way we fix this with some laws - but even Elizabeth Warren is silent. We are fucked and I’m very pessimistic about the outcome.
• exdsq 5y ago
  Oh f** off. You know what’s even more damaging? Social networks impact on democracy in Western countries. Data mining from big tech and the impact on an individuals right to privacy. Making systems deliberately addictive which is highly likely to be related to the rise in mental health issues. Bad crypto projects will die out. Maybe the tech will work for some use cases, like Visas work in the space, maybe it won’t. Crusading against a technology that you probably don’t understand entirely is frustrating to read, flame-war inducing, and repetitive on HN. Everyone understands that it’s like marmite, you either really like it or really hate it, but there are far more important things to take a moral stance against than blockchain tech. I wish we’d all just move on and talk about other things.
• JaimeThompson 5y ago
  You aren't going to change the minds of the new middle men who want to take a cut of every transaction they can in the "cryptosphere":
• dvt 5y ago
  Yawn. Controversial topic? Check. Inflamatory language ("fraud," "nightmarish," "Ponzi scheme")? Check. Brand new account? Check. Flagging.
• orasis 5y ago
  THANK YOU! I agree wholeheartedly! Downvote this comment into oblivion for providing little substance other than enthusiastic solidarity!
• chairmanmow 5y ago
  No you don't have any responsibility to speak out against blockchain technologies, that's for luddites. You can speak out against cryptocurrency, NFTs, false promises and poor implementations of the technology, but to speak out against technology as if you're a point of authority on technology when you're really concerned with economics and society, is insincere to present if you've given consideration to it purely from that tech lens - it's an appeal to authority logical fallacy. There are plenty of opportunities for people to "lose their shirt" in the current environment, but that's not technology's fault, it is the result of illogical human behavior falling to a scam artist selling something for more than its worth and someone falling for it because they are not informed. It can happen with any pseudo-commodity. If we go back to the popular "Tulip bulb bubble" analogy, if you were a horticulturalist would it be your duty to point out how Tulip bulbs need to be banned for everyone's safety, or would you be stepping outside your domain into that of an economist? Nothing changed functionally about tulip bulbs, except the price and that's not up to the average horticulturist. By all means, remain skeptical when investing and do your own research, set expectations based on reason. You don't have to hate 100% things about crypto-currency when you really only hate 99% of it, you may find the 1% you do like has to do with purely technical things (technology) vs investor speculation (people). I hate a lot of things about the blockchain space, but technology is certainly not the reason, it's people's relationship/understanding of it and insanity/PR around low value/highly priced things that aren't innovative or useful - the noise + hype if you will is a bit nonsensical at times, not the tech itself, imho. PS [edit] : And as far as a lot of the problems people have on the blockchain as far as trustworthiness can be solved by blockchain tech itself, it just hasn't happened. It is the "killer dapp" and I've given it some thought, but I won't give it all away unless someone wants to help me build it :)
• scrubs 5y ago
  I most certainly agree with the general goal. Whether on HN or in person I have spent tens and tens and tens of hours taking Bitcoin/crypto as recently as this week and last. People who know me know I don't like it, and why. If I had funding, my preferred approach would be a consumer reports modality both in written form and on TV as consumer protection. There is a palpable difference between seeing criticism as mere jealously or whining --- what 'Pubs and Dems talking heads do to each other on TV or headless voices on AM/FM do which by now is largely tuned out or wholly bought into the determinant of the country either way --- and education. I do not think people who care about this are whiners; certainly not. But in the context of Trump, Covid, Jan-6, etc. there is a general climate of people posing as victims so they can take offense "righteously" which is an immediate turn off. Education undercuts all that BS. It's empowering in the good way. If the goal is invest what'd be better? Who better to work with? How better to contextualize investment and money management? And how does that redound to the betterment of you and your loved ones? That's the game we wanna be in.
• shepherdjerred 5y ago
  I was hesitant yet excited about web 3.0. Decentralization sounds really cool, and it could solve it a lot of problems. Then I read this article and realized that nothing is decentralized and it's not any better than the status quo: https://moxie.org/2022/01/07/web3-first-impressions.html https://moxie.org/2022/01/07/web3-first-impressions.html
• jmacd 5y ago
  This comment on Reddit today shook me a bit: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheRaceTo10Million/comments/sem15u/ive_hit_the_10m_target_last_year_and_not_much_has/hulk9iz/ https://www.reddit.com/r/TheRaceTo10Million/comments/sem15u/... The chutzpah has gone so far that anything proto-crypto is the solution to anything else. This person is dealing with cancer and bankruptcy and some putz comes along and tells him to create some NFTs. I wanted to scream.
• systemvoltage 5y ago
  It is actually fun to look at old pre-2019 threads about Bitcoin. Not much has changed in the fundamentals but the politics and ideological warfare is on full-steam today.
• thisisbrians 5y ago
  Your assessment of affairs is drenched in obvious bias. The downsides of these new technologies get plenty of airtime (your post included), but completely fail to acknowledge the genuine and useful innovations that are now possible (yes, there are many). Why was there no similar outcry from the technology community over the invention and proliferation of machine learning? It can be used for good or evil (there are plenty of cases of the latter that I'm sure the crowd can think of). It's extremely early days for groundbreaking technologies that have a lot of potential beyond the obvious scams we can all point to. We shouldn't banish a technology merely because it has the potential to harm (almost all technology does). What we should do is educate folks so they can decide whether they want to participate for themselves, rather than telling them how to think.
  • thrwn_frthr_awy 5y ago
    > the genuine and useful innovations that are now possible (yes, there are many) Not trying to troll, but can you explain some of them? Not in the abstract, but in end-user/product terms.
    • cuteboy19 5y ago
      As a crypto critic, monero is basically the only useful innovation to come out of crypto. Unfortunately, most people buy crypto on exchanges so the idea of decentralised, uncensorable etc are really oversold
      • riskneutral 5y ago
        > As a crypto critic, monero is basically the only useful innovation to come out of crypto. I sort of agree with this assessment. I think it depends on what you mean by useful. Unfortunately, the only real-world, practical use of Monero is money laundering. I wouldn't want to trade a currency or work on a technology whose best use case is helping violent drug cartels conduct their financial transactions.
      • thrwn_frthr_awy 5y ago
        Can you explain that more? I'm not familiar with Monero. What apps couldn't be made without it?
• dns_snek 5y ago
  Labeling the entire sector as dangerous and fraudulent is incredibly short-sighted, dismissive, and at the end of the day, a lie. I don't buy into the crypto craze of Web 3.0 and NFTs (in terms of digital art), but I do think the technology already has applications that are useful to many, and many that still remain to be discovered. I agree that we should inform people about the risks and scams that are currently common in the crypto space, but you're advocating for a lot more than that. You can speak for yourself, but you shouldn't pretend that your opinion is shared by, or that you speak for, the majority of people working in IT.
  • spacechild1 5y ago
    > but I do think the technology already has applications that are useful to many For example?
    • dns_snek 5y ago
      Many top cryptocurrencies serve as a way to transfer funds internationally at incredibly low cost, Monero serves as fungible digital cash, Ethereum has smart contracts that can be used to build e.g. decentralized exchanges.
    • pedalpete 5y ago
      How about international money transfer for a start? I can and have moved money internationally in minutes for less than it would cost through the SWIFT system which would take days. This is all fine and good for me, as I live in a developed country, so I "could" just use SWIFT ,but what about remittance payments? For people who have a mobile phone, but no bank (a large number of people in the developing world), a relative in the US used to send money via Western Union, the receiver would travel to the nearest Western Union branch, of course WU would take a chunk of that money, and then you're walking around with your cash. With crypto, it gets sent to a wallet, and they can use that. This isn't some pie in the sky idea, it's happening today, but will increase as crypto gains mass adoption.
      • riskneutral 5y ago
• tom-_- 5y ago
  Blaming the technology for its misuses is always a dubious position to take. The promoters of said technology (and it's misuses) will always argue that you could say the same about <actually useful technology> which allows <some bad guys> to do this <bad thing> and are you saying this means we should ban this <useful technology> ??! They would argue this and they would have a point. Also, in an open democratic/non-surveillance state, you can't really ban a technology like this. Instead you focus on regulating the marketing of its misuses or launching information campaigns (I guess that's what you're doing). Like cigarettes, pink-sheet stocks, multi-level marketing and gambling or any other large revenue sources that are either zero-sum or have net negative social impact, you're better off convincing the public of its dangers than pointing the finger at the underlying technology.
  • timeon 5y ago
    In proof of waste case: uses and misuses goes hand in hand.
• freitasm 5y ago
  Case in point: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30120762 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30120762
• EL_Loco 5y ago
  I might be saying something wrong or outright stupid, but it seems you're not looking at all the areas this new tech is being used. I mean, I have looked at what The Coupon Bureau is doing with DLT tech, and I know it is /not/ proof of work, and it is very energy efficient, and it seems to be legitimately useful tech, regarding transparency, speed and security. Again, this is far from my area of expertise, so I may sound really ignorant and dumb, and I would really like to know more about why they're wrong. I only chose Coupon Bureau and the DLT company they partner with as an example because it's one of the more interesting use cases that I've seen from the research I did in this area. I don't mind if it is really a bad or irrelevant use of DLT/crypto, but I wish I could know why is that so, and how is it not a legitimate use case (from someone smarter and more knowledgeable in the area than myself).
• axegon_ 5y ago
  Well... Here we are then... I completely agree. I've never been subtle about how stupid and useless I find blockchain technologies. Let's not fool ourselves, they are a quick way to make a buck off the back of someone naive. I've been saying this from the start, and so was a guy I used to work with in the past who had taken part in building one of the largest crypto mining operations. He also holds crypto but for the exact same reason - piggyback on someone naive when the time is right. To be clear, the fact that it takes effort to compute a hash does not add any value to the said hash. It's equally hard to compute pi, count the atoms in the universe or something like that. If anything, atoms and pi have a lot more value than 0x3df421daf43c if you ask me. Everything around crypto is purely mythical and Utopian - it's not anonymous, and it's not really a currency. It can be regulated extremely easily should governments desire to do so. Fact of the matter is that you can't buy your groceries with bitcoin in 99.999999999999999999999999999999999% of shops. And that is not going to change either. So whether you have 1 or a billion bitcoins, you need to exchange that for actual money. All a government needs to do is block the exchanges from operating and issuing transactions and you are done. Not to mention the inevitable and unquestionable existence of hash collisions which have the potential to take down any blockchain by rendering it useless. It's unlikely to find such but "Unlikely" != "Impossible" and in that sense it's a question of "when", not "if". Several years ago I had built a system, thinking that uuid4's would be a sufficient mechanism to prevent collisions. 2 years down the line with 5000 requests/second later, there I had it: 2 people on the opposite ends of the planet ended up with the exact same identifier, and me and 5 other people spent a week trying to work out how. The other problem is the actual value and what the concept around blockchain implies: people buy crypto with the idea that it's value will exponentially grow so they can sell it, for, you guessed it, actual money. They sell it to their neighbors, who are also waiting for it's price to grow exponentially and make a profit. All while the world operates with a somewhat finite amount of cash. For example: someone buys a bitcoin for 1 dollar, sells 10 shares to 10 people for 10 dollars, he makes a 9 dollar profit. 9 people each wait for the price to rise, they sell each of their shares to another set of 100 people for a dollar, giving them each a 9 dollar profit. I'm scaling down the numbers for the sake of simplicity but that's not the point. Take a step back and tell me how this doesn't have every characteristic of a pyramid? Something which is outlawed in most countries and for a very good reason. I've been saying this from the very beginning: there are billions of ways to utilize this computational power for something meaningful and constructive but no, "{some}chain to the moon". /End of rant.
• _8j50 5y ago
  You should also speak out against the internet. So much crime, scams and heinous acts happen there. I don't get your point, is the technology a scam or are the people using it to perpetuate scams? In the latter case you have a people and legal problem not a tech problem. I don't see a problem with NFTs being used in in-game credits and ownership tracking. I also see nothing wrong with blockchain being used to replace certificate authorities. Every technology gets abused. You have laws to regulate technology for this reason. Instead of speaking out against the tech, maybe call your lawmakers and tell them about how the tech is being abused and how it can be regulated.
• gremlinsinc 5y ago
  The only blockchain I'll ever accept is one with a guaranteed 1:1 identity/wallet as in you can only ever have one bank account. That has mechanisms for reversals in case of fraud, like the system collects insurance fees and maybe if there's verified fraud accepted by an elected board then you get like 50% paid back... or something at least not a total loss. Furthermore your account can never hold more than 10 million dollars (or 50, ...but something reasonable) ... if this became the default currency it would basically outlaw billionaires from the start. It'd also stop money laundering since you can't have fake accounts, etc. Finally it'd need to have progressive taxes baked in, or simply you pay a transaction fee which is determined by your average daily holdings / avg monthly transactions or something...(needs tweaked) but someone hodling hordes of cash would essentially pay monthly hodling taxes (storage fees), and larger transaction fees, of which this gets divied back to those who maybe never have more than 10k in their account and spend most of their money each month.. The currency would also have some UBI worked into it. Essentially it'd make it so people could get the bear minimums, are rewarded for utilizing the currency as a normal currency, and penalized for using just as a store of value, and it ensures whales don't control everything, in fact I think the more you hodl the weaker your vote should be.
• betwixthewires 5y ago
  You're already doomed to work with them. I think you're right though. It is your responsibility as a skeptic to speak your mind, engage in discussion, offer compelling points, discuss technical details and social consequences and whatever else is important to you, and it is my responsibility as someone who understands and believes in (some of) this stuff to speak as well. And through it all, it is both of our responsibility to ourselves and those around us to be willing to learn from one another.
• morelandjs 5y ago
  You have to admit it’s amusing how public sentiment of block chain mirrors the price trajectory.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
• quinnjh 5y ago
  I read a paper called "the internet bond" discussing "smart contracts" (cringey name) and how they can be used to lay out and agree to conditions for workers to be paid. I think this is interesting when /r/antiwork has blown up and gen z is brainwashed against their bosses "opressive" leadership extracting their labor. Orgs running on good will are crumbling, corps with iron fist rules are doing okay - what if the future is in getting gen z to write out what their preferred labor -> compensation function is, and commit it to the cloud instead of scapegoating your evil bougie boss for why you hate your contract?
• magicjosh 5y ago
  To this, I say "hell yes"! I don't agree with the "entire scope of crypto is scams" concept but I respect you and am curious to learn more. HN is full of anti-crypto complainers. Such comments are snarky and repetitive. And most damning they're boring. This at least is a call to arms. Go get it! Disclosure: own crypto
• blunte 5y ago
  > the entire scope of these technologies is promoting fraud, scams, and Greater Fool schemes With this statement the author shows bias and a lack of serious interest in discussion. Indeed most cryptocurrency projects are frankly illegitimate, but certainly not all.
  • slater 5y ago
    Which are which?
    • blunte 5y ago
      Therein lies the challenge. As far as blockchains themselves, I feel that Algorand is a very legitimate serious project. There are others, like Harmony, but with both projects you can have scam coins built on top of them.
    • scrubs 5y ago
      Yah, which? And why? A needlessly open ended statement when multiplied by -1 yields the same nonsense just with a different sign. Right?
    • kayamon 5y ago
      Bitcoin is the only legit blockchain. You don't have to take my word for it; he proved it in the paper. The blockchain with the longest proof-of-work is always the real one, given multiple competing blockchains. All other cryptos are attempting (and failing) to do a 51% attack on Bitcoin's preexisting longer blockchain.
• emtel 5y ago
  I dislike this kind of consensus-building rhetoric and I don't like seeing it on the front page of HN. By all means present critiques of crypto/web3, but don't make false claims along the lines of "all right-thinking people agree that X is a scourge upon the earth". It's equivalent to starting a conversation off with a loaded question - a useful tactic if you're trying to score points, but not likely to lead to anyone learning anything.
  • epolanski 5y ago
    He's not talking to people that have to learn, but people that already made up their mind and share what he says.
    • dashwehacct 5y ago
      I think there’s something to be said about this sort of approach on communication and the site guidelines, but I’m sure someone else would word it better than I.
      • sergnio 5y ago
        Is blockchain inherently bad? Asking a tangential question, is a data store like Oracle DB, Postgres, or MongoDB inherently bad? If you answered yes to one and NOT the other, please rethink about how you view blockchain or any data store. Because perhaps your intention was to be extremely polarizing, which is fair, but I also think your wording is dishonest. > the entire scope of these technologies is promoting fraud, scams, and Greater Fool schemes I agree there are endless frauds, scams, and Greater Fool schemes every single day, but these types of generalizations are almost always strictly false, especially when talking about a global multi-trillion dollar industry. The stock market has had its fair share of scams since its inception, but that doesn't mean EVERYONE who traded in the stock market in the 1700/1800s was a scam, hack, ponzi-schemer. https://www.investopedia.com/articles/financial-theory/09/history-of-fraud.asp https://www.investopedia.com/articles/financial-theory/09/hi... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Stock_Exchange_Fraud_of_1814 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Stock_Exchange_Fraud_of_... https://www.npr.org/sections/npr-history-dept/2015/02/12/385310877/how-scams-worked-in-the-1800s https://www.npr.org/sections/npr-history-dept/2015/02/12/385... Yet here we are today with several stock markets. Do people get scammed in the stock market? every day. For millions of dollars? definitely. Is there a lot of GOOD regulation to help with that? 100% And guess what - that GOOD regulation that exists to help control scams doesn't exist in crypto, so it's like we're back in the 1700s where the stock market is brand new and people are figuring out what you can and can't do. But don't blame the technology, you're being completely dishonest with yourself by doing so and dishonest to those who read this.
• cjbgkagh 5y ago
  It'll all disappear the moment the Federal Reserve meaningfully raises interest rates. If it wasn't NFTs it would go into some other fraud addled speculative bubble.
• r00tanon 5y ago
  Blockchain: a replicating dataset that spreads like a virus and grows in size exponentially using energy to sustain itself. Sounds a little concerning.
• sennight 5y ago
  You made a critical mistake in your opening sentence: you conflated 3 very different things, not a promising start. "Blockchain technology" is just a consensus protocol, cryptocurrencies are currencies (well, one of them is at least), and NFTs are effectively pet rocks at the moment. I'm having a hard time seeing why that demands a marshalling of all true "technologists"... to do what, exactly? Refuse to work on projects involving those three things? Demand governments coordinate a global round up of those who are presently doing such work? Is this the final form for those that have repeatedly declared bitcoin dead - year after year, growing more and more furious as they calculate how much their terrible opinion has cost? Name one technology that was successfully eradicated by astroturfing and legislation, instead of genuine market forces. Now, if you somehow manage to do that - were the users of that technology compelled to act against their own interest in service to jetsetters gathered around Hillary Clinton in Davos Switzerland? Because that is exactly what you'll need to do in order to get your way.
• xtat 5y ago
  This post sounds kinda toxic and anti-innovation to me
• brian_cloutier 5y ago
  Apparently, all of these links point to people who are building nothing but "fraud, scams, and greater fool schemes": - https://weekinethereumnews.com/ https://weekinethereumnews.com/ - https://filecoin.io/blog/posts/filecoin-in-2021-looking-back-at-a-year-of-exponential-growth/ https://filecoin.io/blog/posts/filecoin-in-2021-looking-back... - https://zeroknowledge.fm/ https://zeroknowledge.fm/ - https://cbr.stanford.edu/sbc20/ https://cbr.stanford.edu/sbc20/ - https://www.arweave.org/build#inspiration https://www.arweave.org/build#inspiration I concede that if you have no previous exposure to crypto it will take more than an hour to find these links. I believe you that "a few hours" was not enough time for you to understand how things work. Were you really able to read and understand all of the Rust book in "a few hours"?
• Hakashiro 5y ago
  Absolutely not. I completely disagree with your claims. https://mobile.twitter.com/realsexycyborg/status/13807504757 https://mobile.twitter.com/realsexycyborg/status/13807504757... https://twitter.com/RealSexyCyborg/status/140404849753222758 https://twitter.com/RealSexyCyborg/status/140404849753222758... This kind of rhetoric can only be used by privileged (often white) western people with access to international financial markets, PayPal, stocks, and free (or cheap) cross-country transfers like and unified banking regions like USA or SEPA (EU). I will continue to strongly and energetically defend that cryptocurrencies and blockchains are just a tool. Tools aren't good or bad. A knife can kill people but can also feed a family. Sure, there are scams occasionally but it is nowhere as bad as some people seem to think it is. Blockchain and cryptocurrencies are two technologies that vastly improve distributed systems design as well as allow otherwise financially oppressed people to conduct their finances in a secure way and spend the money wherever they want. I will never shut up about it. But unfortunately, because of this ridiculous cancel culture, I also can't publicly defend cryptocurrencies under my real name, as I'm not privileged enough to not face consequences.
  • make_it_sure 5y ago
    You seem to have other problems to deal with...
  • timeon 5y ago
    > Tools aren't good or bad. Proof of waste is bad for environment. Anyway I was born in to occupied country. You should rather fight for your democracy.
• koonsolo 5y ago
  This anti-cryptocurrency rhetoric on HN made me realize that most people here are intellectual idiots. Bye.
• trizuz 5y ago
• birthday 5y ago
  It's getting seriously annoying how unintelligent posts like this make the front page. Has Hacker News had it's time? Possibly.
• bradnickel 5y ago
  Wow, what a load of anti-analytical sensationalist crap from someone that obviously hasn't spent any real time in the ecosystem to see what is actually happening. The fact that more people are paying attention to this is a statement of ignorance rather than actual thoughtful discussion.