Ask HN: Why does HN “hate” Bitcoin? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why does HN “hate” Bitcoin?

3 pointskylebenzle6 comments

Disclaimer, I love Bitcoin and have since the day I first read the White Paper in 2013. I would think HN would be the perfect place to discuss this "new" currency and all its implications but I get a lot of amorphous push back whenever I bring it up here. Complaints seems to be along the lines of it being "not anonymous" or no better than credit cards, arguments I would expect from my 70 year old father but not from the young techies I assume to inhabit this forum.

Some day Bitcoin "failed to live up to its promise", another argument I can't grasp. My take is that Bitcoin just seems to rub you guys the wrong way and I would love to know more about why.

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A given piece of technology is a tool, not a cult. My biggest red flag for bitcoin is the obsessive behavior of the people who are into it. You said it yourself in your reply- you hear arguments against it but just “can’t grasp” them, and then try to denigrate the people saying them by comparing them to an elderly relative.

Here’s some reasons I’m not into bitcoin:

- environmental impact, as stated by another commentator.

- lack of anonymity. Every transaction is public, as demonstrated by some large transactions hitting the front page of hacker news

- wild speculation about value making it into a pyramid scheme. I have multiple friends who “got rich” because they got in early. That’s not how people think of normal currencies.

- difficulty of use. You can’t hand some bitcoin over to a snack seller on the street and get a snack. Most people use exchanges with fees, transactions take time to get verified, and the barrier to entry at all is high. Screw it up, maybe lose all your money.

- shadiness. How many exchanges have gone under? Enough.

- “put it on the blockchain.” Omfg there are so many companies just “putting it on the blockchain” for what, to look hotnenough to get funding? I don’t know. Medical records, voting, none of that should be public. But people have a shiny new hammer and now they only see nails.

I do think it’s a great experiment, and a lot of the concepts are super cool. I don’t think bitcoin in its current incarnation is interesting in and of itself.

Edit to add: old people can solid technologists and smart, too. Young people can be idiots. Not all techies are guys. I’d trust the opinion of someone who’s seen more things come and go.

I don't hate BTC or cryptocurrencies in the kneejerk way that some here appear to. However, high transaction costs make BTC impractical for actual usage. Lightning network still has issues after all of these years.

BTC maximalists have fallen back on the "store of value" and "digital gold" argument now that the use as a currency hasn't materialized. In my view this is pure speculation. Most discussions around cryptocurrencies revolve around speculation. Debates of the merits of each coin become tribalistic flame wars.

If you build a unique product or service that uses cryptocurrency where other means of payment are impractical, I think you will find people here receptive. Most people are not doing that. They're just promoting a speculative asset that has no use beyond further speculation.

Here's an browser based action RPG I put together a few years ago that utilizes feeless cryptocurrency microtransactions.

https://playerkillers.exchange/

I don't "hate" bitcoin and I'm certainly not going to down vote someone who wants to have a discussion.

For me, personally, I can't see a single transactional issue that the new "coins" solve that your 70 year old father's financial systems don't. Rather, in my opinion "coins" re-introduce problems that have been solved in banking and finance for more than a century. Transactionally, they seem like a hassle.

With respect to investing, they smell like a pyramid scheme. I think there is no coincidence that the "coin" landscape is littered with failed charlatans and corrupt exchanges. I view "coins" and "Tesla" stock as interesting day trader entertainment. As a way to test if I am smarter and faster than the system. I would never consider either as anything other than speculative entertainment and would never base a portfolio or retirement on them.

That is just my opinion though and if you think that "coins" are great then power to you.

It takes a lot of electricity to reconcile the state. When there are possible options to do it in an environmentally friendly way like proof of stake.

Hype. Useful technologies see widespread adoption because of their utility. If something is useful it will get used.

Bitcoin seems to have a number of advocates, but the number of use cases actually seen in the field are not growing as rapidly.

A significant cohort of people on HN are likely more interested in the practicality of a technology as it can be applied to problems they have an immediate need to solve.

Set aside the techie charm, and what's going on here?

When Steve comes up to you and wants to sell you his SteveBucks, how much would you pay? Steve tells you that SteveBucks are absolutely un-counterfeitable, which is great, but what are they good for?

The store doesn't accept SteveBucks. Even Steve won't buy SteveBucks; Steve is trying to sell SteveBucks.

Finally, Steve tells you that SteveBucks are a great investment: eventually, everybody is going to want SteveBucks so you should get them now. And somehow that argument gets traction, and everybody is buying SteveBucks... and not spending them, because SteveBucks are great investments.

Hearing that story, wouldn't you feel weird about SteveBucks? Would you want to get involved with them? Wouldn't you rather just introduce your own BobBucks, which are every bit as good (and every bit as useless) as SteveBucks?

BTC's main advantage over SteveBucks is memeage for techies. They're the first BTC miners because they have hardware just sitting around, so they got the first bitcoins free and really want them to be worth something. And bonus, BTC are independent of the government, which is great, because you're a rich techie libertarian and all the government does is get in your way (or a poor techie libertarian who will one day be a rich techie libertarian).

The crypto wizardry of blockchain is incredibly clever, but ultimately not really all that big an advantage over a simple transactional database. It's less centralized, to be sure, but at the end of the day it's a massive effort for a problem that doesn't really need to be solved. Most BTC transactions end up going through some wallet provider anyway.

It's a fiat currency without even a fiat, just the collective hallucination lacking even the dirt a nation stands on and its network of taxes and government spending that give fiat currencies their real value. Steve doesn't understand anything about economics, and it's grating to listen to him loudly declaiming on a topic he knows less than nothing about.

So perhaps what "rubs us guys the wrong way" is being baffled that some people are getting rich trading SteveBucks back and forth to each other without actually producing anything.

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