Hacker News Reader

I agree really - though I appreciate the cynicism more than you do I think. A large portion of the crypto space is raving loony, so it is a bit refreshing.

Plus I think hackernews is a little light on the hackers and a bit more heavy on the tech lovers. And those tech lovers are usually devs who want to make money and work within the system rather than dismantle it - as a hacker might.

Every wave of innovation is filled with loonies at inception. How crazy do you think the Wright brothers seemed, at least to some, in the early days of aviation ?

Take a look at what is happening in defi space (yes, bitcoin is defi too). The innovation there is stupendous.

It is amazing that twelve years after it changed the world, people are still questioning bitcoin.

Perhaps I came on a little strong about the fanatics. I do think it is worth trying to cull a very large search space with some heuristic to prevent you from searching forever. I do follow defi and I do know the genius and the impetus is there, but it is hard to deny there are a growing number of hacks and frauds too.

It changed, and I can’t stress this enough, literally nothing. If it disappeared overnight a few criminals would be poor, and nobody else would even notice. Nobody uses it for anything other than speculation and fraud. 1% of transactions are spending 90% speculation, 9% misc, I have the breakdown somewhere.

It changed the world about as much as the introduction of an index futures market.

you seem really uninformed about what is happening in this space. Just to name a few, incredible fast settlement with lending and yielding; Automatic Market Maker; Decentralized Exchange guaranteed with no wash trade, insolvency and max transparency, etc. Those defi projects are pretty much all killer apps. Hard to believe you have been in financial industry to not recognize those solid use cases and how they eliminate the middle man and premium paid for trust.

Each time the issue of electronic voting comes up, I'm surprised at the number of electronic voting haters on a forum dedicated to hackers and tech lovers. Or, perhaps, all these cynics and experts actually have a point, given where they're coming from... shrug

These are all very bold claims, is there any evidence for it?

Or to be frank: do you own Bitcoin and are you trying to (maybe even unconsciously) drum up demand with evidence free posts like this?

What can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.

And please don’t point to biased sources with an interest in Crypto.

You want to find someone is believes in the technology but that does not want to go it get more adoption. You know that you are asking for an impossible argument, right?

If I tell you that thanks to Bitcoin I could move money between three different countries without paying conversion fees or that it was my work on Blockchain technology that has paid my bills for the past two years, would you start looking into it?

If I tell you that my current project can help, I don't know, people in Lebanon to escape their disastrous monetary policy and be in control of their own assets, would you give it a chance?

If I tell you that I switched my browser from Firefox to another that is using blockchain to build an alternative that can fight Surveillance Capitalism, would you take seriously only those who don't hold any of the token or would you prefer to listen to someone who has skin in the game?

By your standard, every source will be "biased". The question is then if there any point on the scales you see yourself that can actually make it tip over.

To answer your questions honestly, no to all of them.

Sending money across countries over the world for less cost is not worth the environmental cost to me.

I believe the problems in Lebanon can’t be solved with technology because I think trust / a culture can’t be solved with technology.

I believe your choice of browser does little in the context of the other 90% who is still on Facebook although I honestly have respect for your dedication and efforts.

I do want a sound justification for a new tech that is consuming the power of a small Europan country.

Another one with the fixed set mentality... let's go for another round.

> I do want a sound justification for a new tech that is consuming the power of a small Europan country.

The need to consume that much energy is not inherit to the tech. It is just an issue of the current implementation. No one is shrugging their shoulders and saying "it is what it is". What they are saying is "This is one of the many issues that we need to address and we are working towards a solution."

Do you know of any new technology that come into existence already free of issues and as efficient as physically possible? Me neither.

Also: should I assume that you don't fly anywhere? Don't buy anything from China? Only consumes local produce?

Is your concern with the environment guiding all your lifestyle choices or only those you don't care about?

> problems in Lebanon (...) can’t be solved with technology.

No, the tech does not solve anything by itself. The tech is just an instrument, and it is an instrument that can help people there to escape government measures that lead to mismanagement of resources and favoring bankers. The tech can allow smaller groups of people to be their own (their communities) banks and not having to rely on a centralized "too big to fail" system.

The instrument does not "solve" anything. But it allows people to change the scale of the problem. It's much easier to recover from many shocks spread around smaller entities than to recover from one Black Swan event that can wipe out everyone at once.

> I believe your choice of browser does little in the context of the other 90% who is still on Facebook although I honestly have respect for your dedication and efforts.

Again, the tech is not what is going to solve anything. Brave (the browser) and BAT are just instruments that we have at our disposal to affect the change that we want for our lives.

Quite frankly, are you the type of person that always waits everyone else to do something in order to think it is worthy doing? Must be horrible to live with such apathy.

> Do you know of any new technology that come into existence already free of issues and as efficient as physically possible? Me neither.

After 12 years of crypto and blockchain the tech has nothing to show for itself, but to facilitate crime and people chasing lambo money.

> Also: should I assume that you don't fly anywhere? Don't buy anything from China? Only consumes local produce?

Oh so predictable. I should warn people up front not to come up with whataboutism that just deflect valid criticism.

You can’t get away with theft by pointing at somebody else and cry “but but (s)he stole too!”.

> The instrument does not "solve" anything. But it allows people to change the scale of the problem.

It all reads like after the fact reasoning to me by people just chasing lambo money. Your story was never why all those firestarters bought mining rigs to consume 3KW 24/7.

But back to those poor countries: I would like to see (hypothetically) actual independent evidence of a positive impact of crypto for those people, but I am very skeptical

> Quite frankly, are you the type of person that always waits everyone else to do something in order to think it is worthy doing? Must be horrible to live with such apathy.

What remains is a weak ad hominem, I think I’m done now.

Anyway, I do wish you good luck, if I am proven wrong, that would be a good thing.

Twelve years of work is nothing if you put it in the right perspective. We are still in the 14-bis stage of human flight. To dismiss it entirely as something that "facilitates crime and people chasing lambo money", you are showing either ignorance or malice. It's no different than looking at early-stage internet and thinking "oh, it's only for porn and nerd who can't go out and talk to people in real life".

Re: PoW. It's not valid criticism if it's already acknowledged as a crucial point that needs and is getting work and continued attention. You insisting on this point is as much whataboutism as as the one I mirrored there.

> Your story was never why all those firestarters bought mining rigs to consume 3KW 24/7

Because that is a non-story. People will act on their self-interest and they had an opportunity to profit.

If you want to be upset/find fault about this story, perhaps you should look at the government that allows subsidized energy production and does not care about the externalities of it all. Then perhaps you will also understand the parallels with what I was talking about Lebanon. (Hint: tech that helps with decentralization and neutralizing the power of control held by big central entities)

> If I am proven wrong, that would be a good thing.

That's the funny part. No one cares about proving anything to you or any of the skeptics. People will continue to build and work on it and keep improving it. And then one day you will be using tech based on blockchain systems without even realizing and you still will be skeptical. And those working on still won't care about you.

Just more ad hominems and false equivalence.

We all immediately understood the benefits of the early internet. I was dying to get on it as soon as possible.

I know that early internet story is such a trope, I’ve seen it many times before, it’s telling that you fall for it.

Your story about the government is just another case of whataboutism, deflecting the critical gaze to other things.

And that last paragraph reads almost like a religious argument. You don’t have any actual evidence for yourself that this crypto stuff means anything, I read a lot of bias, wishful thinking and emotional investment.

I wrote the things that make it more than meaningful to work on it or to want to have it these tools available to myself and others. You dismissed those on the grounds on not being important to you.

You come with the comment of "Blockchain does not solve trust" like you're the only one who has figured that out. Not only it is a laughable notion [0], you make it sound like people should abandon everything and lose all hope. What do you want people to say: "Oh, Mr. Louwrentius said that all this work is kind of foolish and not important, so let's pack our stuff and go work at Big Co?" or "Yeah, tech itself is not going to solve social problems, but those societies that want to operate in certain ways will need to have specific technology to support them?"[1]

You point out a known and largely acknowledged issue with the current implementation, to which I respond "Yes, it is known and a lot of people are working on solutions to overcome that, and if you want you can take a look at how the progress at Proof-of-Stake is going." Your only answer is "Oh, 12 years and they haven't delivered anything of value yet." Do you see how non-sensical it is?

Bias, "emotional investment"? Yes, of course there is! Anyone working on something based on some form of idealism will keep their biases and will be emotionally invested on their work. But as long as this work is not violating any moral or ethical values, what is the problem? I'd rather have more people working on things they are also invested in, where they have more skin in the game than anyone else and that they can actually defend what they do for their work. The alternative is to spend your professional life as a corporate drone and perhaps (if they feel guilty about it) try to make it up by the occasional virtue-signaling hobby.

Trying to discredit people working on blockchain due to "bias" or "emotional investment" is a terrible mistake.

First because you think that the "emotional investment" is all there is to it. It's not. You would be fully right to argue if it was "a lot of wishful thinking" if the people were only talking about it and never implementing anything, or if the people never stopped to learn the lessons of failed projects, or if you saw those leading projects making promises but never delivering. It's easy to dismiss things when you are only pointing to the scammers and the crackpots, but if you actually bothered to listen to the people that are working on it, perhaps you'd find people way more grounded in reality than you are.

Second, it's a mistake to discredit their work because you are not giving any alternative. When you say "none of these issues you pointed out are really worthy", you are displaying your bias for the status quo.

[0]: https://twitter.com/rlullis/status/1307420668372430848

[1]: https://hub20.io and https://hub20.io/architecture/

I can perfectly discredit work and not provide any alternative, I don’t think this reasoning makes sense.

The sad truth is - to me - that blockchain and crypto currencies don’t matter because they don’t solve a real problem people have.

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