Hacker News Reader

Comment by seibelj | Hacker News Reader

This is the worst forum of all to ask a question like this. HN is full of people who think they are smarter than everyone else, and a vocal group here has been saying “bitcoin is a scam” since bitcoin was $1 and missed out on the rise. So now they are actively rooting for it and all cryptos to fail, and ignore the benefits of the blockchain. Additionally a lot of YC-type people benefit by the current VC system and funding via ICO’s or similar mechanisms is anethema to what they have constructed.

I know many wealthy cryptos and they don’t have time for the noise here. Bitcoin could fall to $1000 and they are still rich, they don’t care about bubble talk.

View on HN

This is an exceptionally facile analysis.

YC-type people don't benefit from the VC system; YC is a subversion of the VC system, an effort to organize promise founders against the interests of VCs. Ceteris paribus, every YC founder would rather raise 5MM in an ICO than to raise them in capped notes or (even worse) directly from a VC.

If ICOs actually mainstream, YC itself gets more valuable, not less, as they control essentially the only noteworthy credentialing system for startups. Not to mention, they'll be the locus of all the selling-picks-to-prospectors activity that will follow.

Meanwhile: "congratulations" if you made money by buying and "hodling" back when 1 BTC was $1. People made money on Pets.com, too. So did the banksters who made money reselling bogus AAA MBS's. Nobody doubts that you can win large sums of money gambling on the actions of the greater fool.

But: it looks to me like most of the concerns raised by Bitcoin critics have played out as expected. Decentralized? No. Bitcoin is controlled by a small, self-interested group of big-time players. Currency? No. Bitcoin is a speculative asset. Seamless way to transfer funds? What are transaction fees for Bitcoin now? Here's approximately the trajectory of Bitcoin: in 2012, you could buy a pizza with it in 1-2 cities. In 2017, you can't.

And, as predicted, tens of other organizations have come up with their own competing cryptocurrencies. Many of them are objectively more sound than Bitcoin. But we're all meant to pretend that somehow, 1 BTC is worth $15,000 because it really is worth that, and not because Bitcoin is a distributed pump-and-dump scam.

>And, as predicted, tens of other organizations have come up with their own competing cryptocurrencies. Many of them are objectively more sound than Bitcoin. But we're all meant to pretend that somehow, 1 BTC is worth $15,000 because it really is worth that, and not because Bitcoin is a distributed pump-and-dump scam.

I am by no means an economics or marketing expert, but I think it's worth considering Bitcoin's "brand" impact and its history. Humans are irrational and do a lot of questionable things even with ample evidence of better alternatives to our choices.

Tuur Demeester makes a comparison in this podcast (https://www.theinvestorspodcast.com/episodes/bitcoin-masterm...) to Bitcoin/altcoins vs Coca-Cola and its competitors, starting around 1:05:20. He says that Coke had countless competitors trying to overthrow it as the #1 cola brand, but it stuck around as a result of familiarity and being of quality (my takeaway, not his exact words). He goes on to say that if Bitcoin survives with the same core developers trying to make it better and better, the brand attacks become less and less of a threat.

I fundamentaly disagree that YC is a subversion of the current system. They are basically the same thing but everyone drank their own koolaid and thinks it’s something new. YC is a system that is really good for putting stamps of approval on selected groups, and Airbnb is great.

Plenty of crypto currencies exist other than bitcoin. This is only the beginning, and scaling is one of many issues that will be figured out. Even if you don’t buy coins, paying attention to the tech coming out can be beneficial and interesting.

You're gonna get downvoted, but there is truth in your comment. I wouldn't have made money with Bitcoin if I had paid attention to all the negative comments on HN.

I know I know, just because I profited on Bitcoin doesn't rule it out as a Ponzi scheme or whatever HN calls Bitcoin nowadays. I and many others genuinely believe that Bitcoin provides great value through its underlying technology and also has the potential to become something greater.

So you haven't explicitly stated this, but I'm reading into your comment that the early bitcoin investors made a lot of money ergo it is a good investment. That argument isn't sensible, and if you are making it I caution you to stop.

We can all point to examples where:

1) something was valued low,

2) then it was valued high, made the people who bought it low rich

3) crashed and lost the people who bought it high a lot of money

Mine is Isaac Newton's bankruptcy because he has some name recognition.

And further we can all point to examples where people did something stupid, got lucky and benefited from it. Hacker News is a reasonable place to ask, because it is a good crowd to assess bitcoin's technical aspects.

I was here when everybody on HN was really shitting on Bitcoin back in 2011 and 2012. Albeit under another username.

I know full well what HN thinks of crypto currencies and technology in general, which is exactly why I asked the question here.

I think that's about what I would expect from HN considering that Bitcoin was largely known for its speculative value rather than its technology. In a way, the success of Bitcoin is its biggest enemy in communities like this one.

That's speculative market value, though. You can't actually go to your local coffee shop with 10k in Bitcoin and buyout the stock. They may treat it like $2. I'm not one of the people crying "scam", but I think most people here recognize how risky it is. If someone wants to take that risk, that's their deal.

It might be risky but HN is generally full of nerds that love new technology. When it comes to crypto currency suddenly everyone here is fucking Warren Buffett.

We are literally living in a Neil Stephenson novel and HN as a group is collectively sticking their fingers in their ears. It’s amazing the visceral reaction crypto gets here, the people who don’t like it can’t simply ignore the posts, they write 5000 word screeds and vote with hive mind to stop alternate opinions.

It might be more constructive to answer the criticisms rather than attacking those raising them.

You seem to be placing a lot of your own emotional baggage onto other people's concerns. Most people talking about Bitcoin and similar just aren't that vested into it (either literally or figuratively). For example this:

> since bitcoin was $1 and missed out on the rise. So now they are actively rooting for it and all cryptos to fail, and ignore the benefits of the blockchain.

The fact you perceive anyone critical of Bitcoin and similar blockchain currencies as jealous is very much deflecting your own baggage.

What I see is a phenomenal technology that is excessively ignored and shat on for no obvious reason. For example, the Red programming language decided to focus on blockchain tech, and the most popular comment was “time to ignore Red because they are doing blockchain now”. It’s an opinion that is quite popular here.

I feel the need to write so strongly to counteract the vibe. I guarantee there will be 20 popular comments above mine (which will likely go negative) that all say variations of the same thing, so it’s good to get a different opinion out there.

What exactly is the phenomenal technology?

Most people on HN understand the Blockchain can be described as a p2p distributed database. It has great use cases, like asset registries, but im still waiting for the killer applications.

Personally, I've only used cryptocurrency for buying drugs on darknet matkets. We were the people actually using btc. Until the transaction fees got crazy and people moved toward better coins.

More precisely, everyone here is highly skeptical, so this is nothing unusual. Everyone here should be quite well aware of all the trouble that has cycled around Bitcoin, such as DD4BC, etc. That's common with something new, but it's not unmerited either. It's an easy trap, and it's best to understand the risks before moving in.

That's not to say Bitcoin doesn't have some usefulness on the fringes of the economy. It's like untraceable gambling. We already have that everywhere and society continues to function.

Can I purchase that Neal Stephenson novel with bitcoin?

>You can't actually go to your local coffee shop with 10k in Bitcoin and buyout the stock. They may treat it like $2.

My father taught me a great lesson along those lines growing up.

I used to collect baseball cards, and was thrilled when I realized that one of them was "worth $20" in some baseball card collecting book that I had.

I ran to my father and exclaimed with great joy that "I have a baseball card and it's worth $20!" (which was a lot of money for an 8 year old at the time...)

To which he said, "Not to me it's not. I wouldn't give you anything for it. Because I don't collect baseball cards."

That blew my 8 year old mind.

It said it was worth $20 in the book, but my dad wouldn't pay a penny for it.

(He probably should have! It's worth $100 today!)

But the lesson was sound and has stuck with me ever since.

I still collect the odd thing these days, but I don't pay too much attention to what some book says they're worth.

"it's not a bubble because the people at the top are doing very well and some people missed out"

Fantastic argument!

My point is that HN will say it’s a ponzi / bubble / scam no matter what the value. First it was “it will go to zero”. Now the argument is “all the smart people already made money so don’t bother” but HN was saying that at $1k, $5k, $10k, etc.

Maybe crypto is simply a better way to transact for many use cases. If we all agree it has value, then it does, and it’s really as simple as that.

> Additionally a lot of YC-type people benefit by the current VC system and funding via ICO’s or similar mechanisms is anethema to what they have constructed.

Aren’t REQ and QSP supported by YC.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com