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I have BitCoins, so this only is of benefit to me; but I have the feeling that stories about BitCoins are being promoted on HN, not only for the community's interest in BitCoin, but in an effort to pump the exposure to increase awareness and value of their stock.

I don't mind the effect too much, as I personally find the Bitcoin phenomenon to be endlessly interesting, but I feel compelled to point out what might be a small elephant in this room.

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The relentless promotion campaign that is conducted here and similar places makes it very hard to not interpret the whole phenomenon as a type of penny stock style pump and dump scheme, regardless of the technical merits at the core of the system. One would think that anyone who thought of themselves as not of part of a speculative frenzy would realize that promoting such a bubble, and not caring about giving people the impression that they are, would be bad for its mid to long term success.

It's certainly over-the-top. I tried to flag this post down, as it has nothing to do anymore with Bitcoin as open source project and thus hacking. But there's just too much incentive to get it on the front page, I guess...

I like the idea of cryptocurrencies very much but can we stop the overhyping? Nothing good can come of it.

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