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Comment by louwrentius | Hacker News Reader

I think this is awful.

I think what we see is that investing has become very hard. So people are desperate for anything that may show growth.

But I believe this is a kind of short-term bet against our future. Because we know the detrimental effects of cryptocurrencies.

I think this is all very cynical. Undermining our climate, evading taxes, money laundering. Coin base doesn’t do these things I hope but by supporting cryptocurrencies, it does indirectly.

I’m happy staying poor if that is better for the world long-term but that is probably very dumb of me.

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I'd say the current banking system does an excellent job at money laundering and most major companies seem to play the tax system like a fiddle as to pay less taxes than a fast food employee.

So, what's left? Oh, the climate. Where to even begin here? Call me when hash function workers create smog in a small city. Until then, our industry seems quite capable of killing the planet by itself.

It's better for the world long term if people that care about it are not poor. So, do make money and improve the world in other ways. Clearly you can offset with good deeds whatever energy will be wasted.

Sad whataboutism.

Our current bankjng system isn’t perfect and criticism is OK.

But that doesn’t absolve Bitcoin frim their damaging impact.

And remember that Existing financial systems do a lot of good, they are a core part of our societies.

Bitcoin and other crypto doesn’t provide any legitimate benefit to our societies, it damages and undermines them.

It’s a privilege to get to say that the existing (fiat) financial system does a lot of good. Yes, it is a core part of our society but it is cruel. The government, ultimately, makes this worse. Perhaps we will see this change, only time will tell. Until then, cryptocurrency is an evolving force that has armed individuals with hope to get out of the pile of shit. I think it will change the world in a big way. You don’t agree and that is cool. But I encourage you to open your mind a bit. The USD has been an unstoppable force in supporting tax evasion, money laundering, climate warming, and straight up killing of others. It has been used to undermine and destroy societies outside of America. Why do you ignore this and focus on one archetype of a cryptocurrency investor? With your logic, anyone who owns a USD is responsible for all that destruction caused by it. Food for thought, maybe.

No.

This is what I call extreme whataboutism.

Trying to paint the other in a very bad light so you don’t have to account for your own ‘misdeeds’.

No need for some kind of political discussion.

Trying to have a conversation about economics/finance without bringing in politics is nearly impossible. But what you call whataboutism, many see as valid criticism of the USD. You haven't really made any good case against crypto except "fiat was here first, so it is a core part of society," which isn't a very convincing argument. There is no whataboutism, I just prefer to have my wealth stored in an asset thats supply can't increase by 25% in one year based on the whims of some rich politicians appointed to the Fed. I can trust crypto because I can predict what it will do in terms of affordances and supply. With USD I can't do that. My money isn't in my control and I don't like that at all.

If Coinbase went and handed out a trillion $ worth of BTC to the wealthiest corporations in America over the past year, I would have my wealth in a different asset. Coinbase didn't do that with BTC though, the Fed did it with USD. I worked hard to earn this cash, why should I let someone else devalue my work without consulting me first?

Oh the case against crypto is still what it always was:

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

> I can trust crypto because I can predict what it will do in terms of affordances and supply.

That sounds like a delusion. BTC is very volatile. When the music stops, there won't be enough chairs...

The Fed did hand out USD but that is for a very, very good reason: to keep society up and running, to keep it from total collapse.

I understand that keeping society operational is not very profitable for you, but I think it's rather nifty.

> in terms of affordances and supply

Seems like you misread this part of my statement and replaced it with "price."

> to keep society up and running, to keep it from total collapse

Inflating the global reserver currency won't have this effect, it will only prolong the inevitable outcome. The reason we're in this situation in the first place is because of the US govt's mismanagement of the USD over the past five decades. I want out and crypto is my ticket, who are you to tell me I shouldn't be allowed to make this decision? I'm not telling you to stop using USD. I just want you to stop arguing for a crypto ban.

I think you are getting close to an explanation. You "getting out" weakens the system. You must be kept in.

I think it won't be long until this tech will be used by banks because it seems to work rather well.

As for a benefit, if you consider crypto as a mode of protest alone it has value.

People are allowed to smoke and destroy their health (and of those nearby), people are allowed to gamble, people are allowed to buy to biggest truck that pollutes to no end. How is that legitimate and how does that benefit more to society?

It's a weak system one that works only when it has no competition.

> But I believe this is a kind of short-term bet against our future. Because we know the detrimental effects of cryptocurrencies.

I'll list a few:

1. Owning your own money

2. Hedging against hyperinflation and endless money printing

3. Earning more than 0.1% given by your savings account

4. Instant value transfer across borders instead of filling out 5 forms and waiting 3 days for wires

5. Fractionalizing, decentralizing and democratizing ownership of assets

6. Disrupting legacy institutions such as banks

7. Offering citizens of autocratic nations a hedge against censorship and crackdowns

Awful, I know

Most people don’t benefit from any of this.

This is also misleading.

Only one question is relevant:

Where do the Bitcoin profits come from?

Anwer: other people. It’s a Ponzi and we all know it.

Crypto != Bitcoin

You were meant to slay dinosaurs, not become one

Banks used your money and bought risky assets that crashed the entire market in 2008. Did you benefit from it? Did most people?

Banks deploying risky tactics to maximize profits and crash economies every 10-15 is somehow fine. Heck, you jump fences to hand them your money.

But if you own your own money and decide to take on the risks, it's...a ponzi?

Thanks for the ad-hominem.

No thanks for the misplaced whataboutism.

And yes, all cryptocurrencies are ponzis. Because they don't create value. They just extract it from other people.

Please stop putting all cryptoassets together. Bitcoin is not equal to, say, Filecoin or Avalanche in many ways. For some cryptos, the tokens have an intrinsic value based on the service offered by the network. Filecoins will actually get you data storage, which has value, as a service. When running smart contracts on other people's computer with Avalanche, they compute stuff for you, as a service. This cost some fees in exchange, which are paid in tokens.

The fact that you believe that ALL crypto has no value created talks of lack of knowledge of many projects out there. Although I do agree that Bitcoin shouldn't be used as it is rn.

I understand where you are coming from, I can imagine if you read the media or browse twitter it can seem like a greedy and mean place. And that can be very off putting. People dont like the idea that money is being valued above all else. But to me it speaks more to the desperation that people are living under, that the thrill of maybe not being broke and in debt can be a great incentive for change in the world.

The people I know working (not trading, coding) in the space are some of the most committed and passionate and politically motivated people trying to develop new tools for coordination, to help people unionise, to create funding for public goods without coercive taxation, to represent peoples votes as a worldwide body rather than dividing along lines in the ground. It is a game of "can we organise ourselves better than those we compete with", the answer seems to be leaning towards yes. It is like the rochdale co-op movement spreading across mills in the industrial revolution, developing into workers unions, and left wing political parties challenging the aristocracy. It is a co-op, community ownership movement for internet workers.

I grew up going to protests, making my voice heard, voting for parties that never got voted in (cough in voting systems designed to never allow the thing that created them be replaced cough). For once i have found a way to collaborate and coordinate with others in an effective manner. Maybe it is a niche thing, maybe it cant scale, maybe it's just a video game, but maybe it is incredibly revolutionary, inclusive, and an actual force to bring around a change of power. Maybe it is only just getting started.

I look at the money in my wallet on my desk, pieces of paper with pictures of an old lady on them with a printed signature of the head officer of the bank. It looks medieval, it doffs the cap to inherited wealth, it is secured by violence, it says authority is legitimacy and everything else is false.

How anyone thinks crypto is a scam and the future is in the old ways seems as delusional to me as they think i am...

Forget it man. I've tried doing this on every HN thread. This place has lost its hacker spirit. It's happy toeing the status quo now.

You're 100% right. Crypto enables the worst actors and the worst humans around. It's a cancer.

Ignorants will start yapping about "money printing" not realizing they're regurgitating talking points from a tiny group of people who are using their lack of intelligence to become obscenely wealthy.

While I agree that many bad actors have been enticed by crypto, I'm sure that was true of other technologies/systems in their introduction (I imagine muggings increased massively as Fiat cash was adopted). The tech itself is clearly useful in some applications, and it has spurred on a lot of conversation and thought on wider topics such as decentralised identity, trustless networking, etc etc.

A few people being bamboozled into poor investment decisions or getting scammed by people under the name of "crypto" doesn't take away for that imo.

> The tech itself is clearly useful in some applications

There have been 0 real world applications for this tech in 8 years outside financial crime, fraud, and speculation. A lot of the same conversations in 2013 ended with "yes but it's so early give it 5 years" and here we are still waiting for a decentralized app that's more useful to anyone than a plain old db.

Also disagree that fiat had any effect on mugging frequency. People with gold/silver coins likely got mugged at the same rate.

Even if this is true in your POV this does not mean this is true for anyone. I saved thousands of dollars in banking fees by using crypto as means for transactions and speculation. The main food delivery as well as the main amazon competitor in my country both accept Bitcoin, Monero, Ethereum, Tron ... i (and the seller) save transaction fees each time i pay with crypto.

Over eastern i run out of money because i forgot that the whole banking is literally shut down for 5 days. I mean what the fuck is this in 2021?

Whatever you argue the tech is worthless. It was about time to we have an international, kinda unregulated but transparent way to own and move money.

>There have been 0 real world applications for this tech in 8 years

Geez, I mean that's simply not true so I don't know what to say to you.

Granted, applications are not as wide-ranging as the moon-lambo squad might have you believe, but there are plenty of people using blockchain in production, and plenty more using related tech/concepts (like the ones I detailed).

>Also disagree that fiat had any effect on mugging frequency. People with gold/silver coins likely got mugged at the same rate.

well your implication then is that the gold/silver coin robbers kept focusing on those carrying gold/silver, and a whole new set of honest folk started stealing only fiat from people, which is likely untrue.

I'd suggest crypto is similar - present-criminals are probably still being criminal and perhaps a small number of people saw some opportunity to become a criminal, but I'd suggest that it doesn't `enable [...] the worst actors and the worst humans around.` any more than fiat currency, electricity, the internet, etc etc etc etc do

Don't blame "the people". The vast amount of money printing by central banks are the cause that holding onto cash and saving has become a high risk operation. The solution is going back to the gold standard.

The economist is owned by the same people that own your central bank. If they write about the "detrimental effects" of crypto, crypto must be really good.

The Economist is owned by 'The Economist Group', which seems to be controlled by the Agnelli family a wealthy Italian business dynasty.

What conspiracy do you subscribe to about Central Banks?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist_Group

> The solution is going back to the gold standard.

and that situation was what happened in the 1929 great depression. And being on the gold standard, there wasn't any way to print, and took a world-war to break out of the depression.

This is missing the root cause. Why did the great depression happen? It's because of the usurious financial system. Move away from usury (aka interest), and these things instantly become a non-issue overnight. This is why the government moved away from the gold standard, they want to have their cake and eat it too. They want to rely on the unfair, immoral and parasitic usurious system, yet they want to be able to bail out the market at anytime they feel when they go too far. And guess what, this will keep happening because the fundamentals are rotten. And people still cry about the wealth gap, which will keep happening because of the broken system.

Not being able to borrow money to create new wealth is worse than any immoral connotations from usury.

False dichotomy and straw man fallacies. There are moral alternatives to borrowing money with usury.

The government helped create both the 1929 crash and the Great Depression. The US suspended the gold standard to pay for the first World War. Commercial banks were flooded with money, and when inflation got out of hand the Fed tightened rates in 1928-29. Then after the crash, the government implemented all kinds of disastrous economic policies, including wage and price controls, and a massive trade war with Smoot-Hawley tariff act, destroying imports and exports. The Fed shrank the monetary base by 7% 1929-1930, one of the largest tightenings in 20th century. The Fed helped create the crash then applied disastrous monetary policy after the crash, none of which was a result of a gold standard.

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