unrelated comment: it's crazy how anti crypto and anti blockchain HN is for being a tech community
I think most HN folks are against it for political reasons to a certain extent. Even if they say they aren't, they are getting their information from and socializing in a bubble with a political bias.
There are some news topics on HN that i will never read the comments of because of how motivated and biased the reasoning is behind them. Bitcoin comments I will still read though, since it's fun to see everyone's tone and reasoning evolve as Bitcoin slowly gets more traction and rises in price over time.
Dabbling in other cryptocurrencies with comparable POW's and blockchains to Bitcoin is basically speculation and gambling. I don't think they have very compelling use cases that Bitcoin+LN doesn't solve already. I assume non-BTC cryptocurrencies will survive in the long run, but who knows which ones, and eventually the LN will make swapping and conversion of currencies trivial and/or automatic.
What the technology actually is capable of, and is doing today, these are different things.
I dunno.
A recent development is that of NFT's for example. And the smart contracts thing is just understandable for us tech nerds, but if all our customers and entrepeneurs get wind of it.. brace yourself.
Perhaps because it doesn't, and can't produce any "new tech"?
> And the smart contracts thing is just understandable for us tech nerds, but if all our customers and entrepeneurs get wind of it.. brace yourself.
No one will brace themselves. Smart contracts have innumerable problems that cannot be solved, and are inherent in the fact that it's just a piece of technology, and technology by itself can't do anything.
1. They are digital only. And can only govern things that can be programatically checked. So, anything that can't be checked (for example, delivery of physical goods) is out of the question. If you say "but yes, those things can be provided by people", you're back to being no better than regular contracts (which also have a bunch of laws and regulations around them protecting all the parties in the contract).
2. They require all involved parties to understand, vet and audit programs written in any number of esotheric programming languages. Yeah, good luck with getting customers and entrepreneurs getting wind of it.
Perhaps a tech savvy community is more aware of the flaws of BTC, and therefore more bearish on it's prospects.