Hacker News Reader

Comment by andrewfromx | Hacker News Reader

this is great. I have similair idea to educate the public on crypto creation but I want to dumb it down even more. I wrote a how to understand crypto in 5 mins site live at https://higher.team that has the goal to explain it in 5 mins. But then walk through non-programmers how to make a very simple currency with signing the messages using an ez to break just write the string backwards or something simple like that.

View on HN

Overall, this looks great, but I would consider changing the following:

> if you are smart* you will get it. > *not everyone is smart

You've just insulted the intelligence of anyone who doesn't manage to understand your explanation. I don't think it's fair to assume a lack of understanding will always be because of a lack of intelligence.

Good point. I'll change.

Crypto is cryptography. You're not the first person that refers to cryptocurrencies as crypto and I'm not sure why.

it's because of this tweet: https://twitter.com/semil/status/892163113159544832

There's a typo on the web 3.0 page, "please go steel a different car", don't you mean 'steal'?

thanks, fixed

This is amazing. In terms of the ICOs that people on HN talk about. Is that a company creating a coin and then selling the first coin offering to create capital?

Anyone can create a coin. There will be millions of coins soon. Do you want your wealth in USD or a coin you control?

I appreciate your effort, as I fear that the greatest hindrance to the success of cryptocurrencies is a nontechnical and/or ignorant public.

yeah I got the idea after watching the Bernie Madoff movie and thinking, there is going to be a Madoff level ICO scandal at some point for sure. Only way to help is teach non programmers how blockchain works.

They will never be able to learn enough to not make a mistake. Instead they will learn barely just enough to think they understand, which is significantly more dangerous than not knowing at all.

I say this as an experienced programmer who has been learning this technology for a few months, and still don't fully understand the depth and the implications of the technology yet. This thing is really deep, trying to inform the general public how this thing works is as difficult as trying to teach the general public what they teach in medical school hoping they will be able to heal themselves when they're hurt.

The one valuable thing I've learned so far is that it's dangerous thinking that you understand how the entire ecosystem works just because you understand how each block in a blockchain is verified.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com