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Comment by smokeyj | Hacker News Reader

You have to understand, HN hates cryptocurrency at the existential level. It doesn't matter about capabilities or features, it's about encroaching on their world views of how hierarchy and permission should exist. Do you think anyone who hates ETH is going to hear about a cool use case and change their mind? Absolutely not. Hating crypto is an identity, nothing more.

Edit: as further proof, we have articles from 2016 about how ETH is doomed (BUT ITS 2019 AND ETH IS STILL RUNNING). The article is about a bug in the DAO contract. If ETH is doomed why haven't we seen the same kind of hack again? It's almost as if the ecosystem has matured and will continue to do so.

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We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18913726.

I haven't hear of a single use case that makes me think those tools are necessary so far. Do you have a "oh shit of course" example to share with me that would make me understand why Ethereum brings something valuable to the table? No jargon, just a simple use case. Explain it like you would explain the usefulness of the diesel engine to an alien > It allows to move goods, people across long distances and can be used in land vehicles both commercial and personal, boats. It can also be used in earth moving machinery for construction purposes and as power generators.

Can you do that with ethereum?

You can send and receive dollar-denominated tokens through a p2p network using open source command-line tools without a bank account.

> You can send and receive dollar-denominated tokens through a p2p network using open source command-line tools without a bank account

So a TAM of money launderers and people without money. Do you see why these "use cases" are laughable?

You didn't replace the bank. You just created a worse version of it that works for a small segment of the population. A segment which happens to be highly uneconomical to service.

Alright, consider it useless then. I kind of like it.

> So a TAM of money launderers and people without money. Do you see why these "use cases" are laughable?

There are still many unbanked people in the world. I don’t think it’s a laughable use case to want to bring those that are too poor to participate in the banking system into the modern era. See Humaniq for an example of this.

> I don’t think it’s a laughable use case to want to bring those that are too poor to participate in the banking system into the modern era

I don't either. But something like M-PESA, which works (a) without a bank, (b) on cheap hardware and (c) without requiring great technical knowledge to avoid your coins getting stolen is a better fit for that problem.

That's a myth often repeated in an attempt to "sell" the network as a usecase - but where is this happening in the real world?

The regions with widespread poverty aren't going to be enthusiastic about the fees, and wild instability that comes with crypto database tokens, Ethereum and so on.

The real use case is obviously money laundering, but everyone wants to try to spin the marketing into unrealistic areas.

What if you made a mistake. Can someone help you? Is there an authority making sure noone is abusing the system? I don't believe there is real demand for your usecase. A couple of believers and anarchists are the only ones believing currently. Currently because the future might be different.

I like a lot of things that are hard to use and only used by a handful of weirdos.

You can make transactions that would normally be blocked by your country's legal system or zealous traditional payment processors.

This was actually something Coinbase pitched to investors - the ability for Bitcoin and other crypto currencies to bypass the American legal system, FINCEN etc [1]:

  Coinbase, which recently raised $75 million in seed 
  funding from prominent financial institutions such as the 
  New York Stock Exchange, said one of the four biggest 
  advantages of bitcoin is that it is "immune to country-
  specific sanctions," citing Russia as an example, in a 
  PowerPoint presentation put together for investors by the 
  company late last year.

[1] https://freebeacon.com/national-security/bitcoin-exchange-hi...

It's a fantastic use case. I could almost guarantee that anyone who disagrees hasn't lived under an oppressive government.

I could almost guarantee that anyone who thinks anarchocapitalism is an innovation has never been kidnapped, ransomed, subject to extortion, or lived under a corrupt regime supported though bribes and cronyism.

Crypto isn't anarchocapitalism and that is derailing the subject. All those social ills occur under countries with regulated fiat currency.

You just said, in paraphrase using cryptocurrency software "[to bypass the legal system is a] fantastic use case", which is anarchocapitalism in its purest form.

You can't pretend cryptocurrency is made to bypass only unjust laws and regulations.

Look up the definition of anarchocapitalism, please, and you'll see it doesn't match the definition of what we are dealing with. Distributed internet also evades the ability of most single nations to censor or regulate it. Does that also make the internet anarchocapitalism? Every technology is used illegally sometimes. That's not an argument in itself.

The exact terminology is beside the point. Cryptocurrency software is a large scale enabler for ransom, kidnapping, and money laundering, bribery, etc.

There's a reason ransomware was not feasible with cash at the scale it's happening today.

>Cryptocurrency software is a large scale enabler for ransom, kidnapping, and money laundering, bribery, etc

All of those were done before cryptocurrency even existed. It's not enabling those things if those things are clearly possible without cryptocurrency.

The difference is the ease and magnitude.

Where there even cases of demanding payments for ransomware before Bitcoin?

Ransomware and international money laundering are easier with Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Monereo.

It's arguably their only real world use case due to the high overhead cost, risk, and instability of transacting though those systems versus "traditional" fiat based transfer systems.

you can create a lending business, deploy a token on the Ethereum blockchain and force users to pay fees and collateral with your token and lend USD, "oh shit of course", the margins and profits will be better using this route instead of the traditional way

I haven't heard of a single use case that makes me think "diesel engines" are better than manual labor. Think about it, what can an "engine" really do - that a bunch of people couldn't also do? Also take into account the externalities of diesel pollution and the cancer people will get by using diesel. So no, I don't see the value of diesel.

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