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Comment by leppr | Hacker News Reader

I was agreeing with them until the very last bit where they conclude that this means blockchains achieve nothing. Then I read their nickname and remembered they troll almost every crypto/blockchain-themed thread with vaguely-related shallow quick takes. I hate to go so fast into ad-hominem, but the intention doesn't seem honest.

At least their argumentation is evolving and becoming a bit more convincing, even if today's argument reduces to a false dilemma fallacy (moreover, the guarantees of a nakamoto-consensus blockchain about its internal state are not even absolutely strong).

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Well, I do apologize if I've taken it too far towards the tail end.

My argument has evolved to the extent that I've been able to pin down what my gut misgivings have been. I don't know that my position has changed so much as I continue to drive towards clarity.

Thing is, I hate being wrong -- and my goal is to be wrong as little as possible. This means constantly challenging my own positions so that I can discover their limitations ASAP and change them early!

You are right, I'm not a fan of cryptocurrency of course, however, I'm always open to changing my mind.

I see the froth in the market, I see smart folks trying to staple blockchain to anything that moves for thirteen years (!!) and I see no solutions that achieve anything in the real world more efficiently than classical solutions. Folks will say it's fine, that it has other intangible benefits like "censorship resistance" and "decentralization" and "trustlessness" and my explorations have focused on 'given that it's slower, less efficient, etc, do it's intangible benefits make up for that.'

And thus far, my conclusion is no - and I can speak to that. I learned an awful lot about the space, about cryptocurrencies, about blockchain and thus far I've found a pretty naked emperor. And a lot of really fun technical challenges! I can see why tech folks love it.

Thus far what I've seen is a sea of the same old scams that traditional finance law seeks to eliminate given free reign to take advantage of the least well off. And several new kinds of crime invented along the way - like ransomware. I see an entire country of electricity wasted on hashing random numbers while the ice caps melt. I see 100g of e-waste per transaction thrown into a pile, then buried because e-waste isn't actually recyclable. And a pile of cargo-culted trivially disprovable arguments about voodoo economics.

Either way, have a good day ^_^

If you're really primarily worried about the sea of scams, I think the focus on crypto is misdirected. My opinion is this tsunami of money flowing into ponzis is way bigger than crypto, and looking at crypto in isolation is missing the forest for the trees.

The astronomical rise in ponzis and scams corresponds with the rise in quantitative easing in the world's central banks. Effectively creating a tax on not owning assets. There's been a large scale, mostly proportional, transfer of wealth from poor to rich going on, and people are now tripping over themselves trying to play catch up.

From reading about the history of periods of hyperinflation/asset bubbles, it's clear to me that people will find any way to get rid of their money when they think it's going to lose buying power, no blockchain is needed for that.

Stopping blockchains themselves would have very little effect on the number of scams. Hell, most of those scams don't even use blockchains and decentralized technology at all. They run on centralized copycats and are centralized themselves. Not much to do with crypto except hijacking the aura of innovation. Nobody can shut down Bitcoin, but they can certainly shut down Binance/BSC.

Now, wonder why aren't governments doing more to stop their people from investing in scams? You had the whole WSB GME saga. You have the Miami governor hyping Bitcoin after his rich neighbors convinced him to buy in. And now you have literal children buying Dogecoin. Whether people lose their savings on GME, million-dollar shacks, NFTs or tulips makes little difference. The alternative to people trying to out-trade their neighors is people blaming the ones responsible for the situation in the first place. So why would they try to stop it?

Thing is though you’re focusing on one aspect rather than the picture. The picture is there are high school students younger than Bitcoin. No killer feature, no killer use case, massive inefficiencies and the intangible benefits really just mean that scammers can enact transactions illegal for a good reason. That’s not progress.

It’s wasteful. It’s slow. And all it really manages to do is hurt people in both old but updated ways; and new and exciting ones!

We ban things which serve only to cause harm like dumping chemicals in the lake. I’d say with that in mind why even allow it in the first place? Regulators were sleep at the wheel because it sounds complex.

[edit] the tangible difference between Gme and crypto is that everyone is trading on the exact same information. True, correct and regularly reported. The last tether transparency report was a damning settlement with the NYAG.

One aspect? This is the full picture. We wouldn't be talking about how polluting Bitcoin is if not for the all-assets bubble, as miners wouldn't be incentivized to spend much energy mining it.

Nobody talks about ransomware or the Silk Road anymore. Crypto is all about central bank policies now.

> Regulators were sleep at the wheel because it sounds complex.

Regulators aren't asleep at the wheel, they are on average in the upper classes in terms of wealth, which means they profit from the situation.

> the tangible difference between Gme and crypto is that everyone is trading on the exact same information. True, correct and regularly reported.

Nice fairy tale. Blockchains are auditable in real time by everyone, the stock market is not, as the Robinhood fallout demonstrated.

> One aspect? This is the full picture. We wouldn't be talking about how polluting Bitcoin is if not for the all-assets bubble, as miners wouldn't be incentivized to spend much energy mining it.

We wouldn't be talking about it nobody was using it, and therefore it wasn't polluting. But it is. What's your point? If wishes were fishes and whatnot.

> Nobody talks about ransomware or the Silk Road anymore.

Ransomware is all people talk about if you listen. [0] It's hitting hospitals, schools, children, the elderly, it's an utter disaster.

> Crypto is all about central bank policies now.

No, lol, it's not.

> Nice fairy tale. Blockchains are auditable in real time by everyone, the stock market is not, as the Robinhood fallout demonstrated.

So if you followed my point above, the issue is the point at which the blockchain interacts with the real world. The value of a bitcoin in the real world isn't wholly encapsulated by the blockchain so is not subject to any of blockchain's gauarantees. No information is available for you to make a fair and accurate investing decision. It's utterly uninvestable.

Consider: 95% of all crypto trading volume is fake. [1] This is the volume that determines the price. That's why there's no ETF.

How much leverage exists in the system? Do you know? Where's the data?

Is Tether, the thing that accounts for 80% or more of trading volume [2] is a massive scam of unprecedented proportions?

Just because you refuse to believe it doesn't mean it's a fairy tale lol. Just ask the NYAG. Our boi Paolo signed off on this list of financial atroicities: [3].

All the blockchain says is 1 BTC = 1 BTC and which keys own which coins. Everything else is trustful, centralized and permissioned -- and this is where it all falls down. This is the point I'm making.

You know what's on the blockchain? Tether. QED, honestly.

> ...the stock market is not...

I'm sorry lol, it's regularly audited and the financials are published for your perusal by regulators. Shit happens sometimes, which is why we have laws and law enforcement.

[0] https://www.sophos.com/en-us/medialibrary/Gated-Assets/white...

[1] https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitwise-calls-out-to-sec-95-o...

[2] https://coinlib.io/coin/BTC/Bitcoin

[3] https://ag.ny.gov/sites/default/files/2021.02.17_-_settlemen...

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