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Comment by markkat | Hacker News Reader

TBH part of what makes me so bullish on Ethereum is how much of an emotional reaction it produces, both for and against the technology, all the while it continues to gain mindshare and utility.

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I've had a couple friends try to enroll me into their ponzi schemes. They were really emotional both during the sale and after I remained in "no". I think emotions are just the communication of the base animal part of people. No need to imbue it with prescience or exceptional intelligence.

Ponzi schemes are terrible. Many ICOs aren't much more. However, blockchain enables digital scarcity. That's an interesting piece of technology right there. Using it as a state-machine is a very interesting application of it. IMHO many negative emotional responses come from scamming applications, many positive ones from new possibilities created by the technology, some of both are just due to the transformative nature of its application.

> However, blockchain enables digital scarcity.

Eh? Scarcity? Ever looked at all the forks of bitcoin?

Blockchain absolutely does not enable scarcity. This has been proven time and time again...

You say that as if Bitcoin forks are unquestionable proof of increasing supply, which many people will disagrewle with. I consider them to be completely separate products, seeing as the forks are not backed by Bitcoin's hashpower.

It doesn't matter what someone "sees" them as, the fact remains that forks are possible because the scarcity is an artificial illusion.

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