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Comment by sbuttgereit | Hacker News Reader

Reading these things I see two dangers in crypto-currencies. 1) it's difficult to know all of the technical nuance that can have significant impact on value. I bet many merchants and bitcoin holders had no idea of any of this was in the offing. Even with research, non-technical people may not have been able to appreciate the risks from specs and tech discussions. And 2) this really doesn't feel decentralized. Sure there may be no formal organization, but with apparently so few people being able to be closely involved, in almost may as well be.

Of course, I'm a more casual observer on the sidelines, and maybe my take is wrong as others with closer observations may tell me. But I never heard some of these things being issues until just now... bitcoin is clearly not for casual users.

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I've had a few opportunities to see how terrible the finance world's code is. Whether it's banking or trading, as a rule, the code sucks. One place even had a team dedicated to fixing problems by manually editing the database to correct errors that customers call up and report.

And yet, all of that crazy, deranged infrastructure is orders of magnitude safer for consumers. It's unfortunate to watch reality bear this out.

Oh, come on, let's not pretend this is somehow different from the traditional money. I am not particularly ignorant nor reluctant to learn as far as an average person on the street goes and I have no friggin idea how the mechanisms that govern it really work and cannot appreciate the risks. (Nor really can the experts it seems.)

It's the basic reality of human existence that we have to get by without having pretty much any control of the complex world around us. Bitcoin may fail any time and as a casual user you cannot help it and cannot predict it. But you can go buy some drugs with it right now without having to roam shady streets and it's all that really matters.

Risk arising from technical implementation details are very different than risks arising from aspects of human nature. One could look at the housing market in 2006/2007 and know that something was very wrong without understanding all of the underlying details: home appreciation, the kinds of loans offered and who was getting them, etc. ... all without understanding details of credit default swaps and the like. One can also have a sense, without specialized knowledge, of how human nature may influence policies and financial decisions. That doesn't mean everyone has access, but a reasonably astute observer without specialized knowledge can at least see that "something is wrong" even if they can't tell you why or how exactly. This is not true with crypto-currencies. Why the transaction processing scaling problems? The decisions are much more abstract and the impacts can be removed in time and have to do with the way math works rather than a human decision.

> but with apparently so few people being able to be closely involved, in almost may as well be.

What is this based on? My own personal experience is quite opposite - the development community is very welcoming, has a diverse set of participants, and conducts its discussions and decision-making process out in the open.

Also see my other comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11229435

In general you are correct. However, when you get into developers capable of making convincing and secure cryptographic products, you get into a seriously reduced subset of the whole of all developers; regardless how welcoming a community is. Bitcoin Core developers sound, at least, like a seriously reduced subset of cryptographic developers since knowledge of blockchain dynamics and such is also complex.

Very good articulation. I thought I was in the know of how bad it was as a techie, but it sounds like a giant prank the way it's unraveling.

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