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Comment by louwrentius | Hacker News Reader

More people gambling money, right. It’s 2017-2018 all over again.

Still, the energy waste because of mining is mind boggling. And what do our societies get back for it?

I can’t tell.

People have vague stories about ‘decentralized’ and boohoo government. Most of those stories are just excuses to gamble for lambo money.

Bitcoin does not add any value to society. It subtracts only, as far as I can tell.

It made Silk Road possible, but that doesn’t make a good case now, does it?

I’m sorry for all the people who are going to lose money in this thing again.

https://louwrentius.com/cryptocurrencies-are-detrimental-to-...

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You really don't think permissionless, programmable money has any utility? And while Bitcoin may have some flaws, there are subsequent coins that solve most of its issues.

Well, I don't even know what "permissionless, programmable money" means.

I can't imagine what kind of value that provides to our society.

Think of any story where PayPal froze someone's assets because they didn't like the type of business or because they mistakenly thought it was suspicious activity.

Think of a system where you can invest your money in a share of land, a fraction of a house or a share in a fleet of a car-riding service without paying 10-20% of fees to realtors/brokers or other middlemen.

Think of ebay, but where you only pay for the product if the whole supply chain can provably demonstrate that no child labor was used. Bonus: no counterfeits.

Think of a community that can run its own credit cooperative without depending on any bank.

Think of the idea of being able to provide micro-credit for people in developing countries without worrying that your funds might end up in the hands of some corrupt tribal leader or siphoned out by some corrupt NGO board member.

That's what "permissionless, programmable money" is.

Trust can’t be solved by tech.

https://www.wired.com/story/theres-no-good-reason-to-trust-b...

Nice strawman you have there.

"Trustless" is not about solving anything. It's about enabling new interactions that do not require a central coordinator - aka, trusted party. That is it.

Of course you can have "trustless" systems that are malicious or potentially abused. No honest advocate would claim otherwise.

Why I made a straw man is unclear to me, I think Bruce’s article exposes exactly the issue with this new tech.

The issue is that it is an illusion to think that trustless systems can exist at all.

To me, trustless is an oxymoron. There is always a step of trust. There is always vulnerability.

Programmable money sounds the worst. Because it’s final, irrevocable and written in software. Not a day goes by without a smart contract losing all the money in it. Most of the entire worlds Ethereum was lost in the DAO (remember that?) — it was so bad they had to make a whole new Ethereum and start over. I guess transactions are final for Grandma’s life savings but if it affects Vitalik, different rules apply. Just 3 days ago stablecoin OUSD lost all its money, $7M, and was reduced to begging scammers to please give it back. Same with hospitals getting hit with ransomware.

Permissionless just means it’s a haven for criminals and terrorists. North Korea has built up a sizeable stockpile of permissionless crypto. [1] this is the definition of the reason currency has permissions. So it doesn’t get used by hermit kingdoms to finance their nuclear weapons programs.

[1] https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.technologyreview.com/2020/0...

You drastically underestimates peoples desire to own.

I have similar feelings in a way. It's crazy to me how ethically dubious bitcoin still seems.

I'm always very sceptical of any news articles about Bitcoin because they are probably fed by companies who need to drum up demand for it.

Unfortunately, ycombinator has a stake in coinbase, if I'm not mistaken.

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