Because this is the kind of story that cryptocurrency detractors love, and that aligns with the general sentiment towards cryptocurrencies on HN.
It's a thing to accept and be entertained by I guess. The stunning lack of self awareness over here is legendary though.
- Google: monopolistic tendencies, decline of their search engine, copyright troubles for youtubers, overall bad execution with their projects recently.
- iot: really bad security and privacy, otherwise it would be neat.
- modern websites: gauntlet of cookie banners and modals, ads and surveillance are criticized, page weight often silly, but the capabilities of modern websites are generally appreciated here.
- crypto: enables ransomware and other crime, insane energy use, bad track record of ponzi schemes and hacked services, speculation vehicle with few winners, not generally used/usable for real payments; blockchain-based services not feasible (oracle problem, if possible then killer apps would have appeared, a Hello World program requires mining and melts your CPU, etc.)
Did I sum up HN's sentiment correctly? Could you point out where the lack of self awareness lies?
Like I said, I see the humor in it. It's culture. Every forum has a culture. That's why you came to the defense, even in absence of an attack.
I know I won't change that, but I do want to explain my counter point by means of an example.
You have absolutely no idea how deeply I hate Google. I could write books full of it. Yet I will still not fall in the trap of an absolute closed mind or simplistic binary rejection.
Same for crypto and for anything large and impactful. It's a hard thing to do these days, to be a technologist for technology sake, and to cleanly separate it from the maker's reputation, personal politics, and so on. Very few things in life can be sorted into good or bad.
So when you have topics that are close to taboo, yes, I do think that's odd.
The onus is on crypto boosters (who are usually invested and would benefit from more hype) to present better arguments and demonstrate the general benefit/feasability of crypto.
Yes, there are self-serving crypto maximalists. But even if you add nuance, you get downvoted and standard replies debunked years ago. Doesn't matter what you say, the arguments aren't even heard.
That's absolute closed mindedness. And the quality of many of those replies shows how extremely little those people know about it at all.
A massive problem? No. But I'm just telling you it does exist.
The US has always had a binary culture: winner/loser. Democrats vs Republicans. Success or failure. No room for nuance or a gray zone.
Nothing new, but now brought to truly explosive levels of polarization. We all know why.
This mentality has now made its way into everything. As an example, a lot of people, in this example non-tech people, instinctively reject crypto purely based on the narrative presented to them by the media they follow (which fits their world view) and their Twitter friends.
These people haven't spent a minute even trying to understand what it is, yet blindly follow an ever-narrowing behavioral group consensus.
Don't get me wrong, you may very well come to the conclusion that crypto is garbage, but wouldn't you first want to learn about it before you flat out reject it?
Another example is web development, in particular the community on Twitter. It's basically a radical feminist community now. Recently, a high profile account blasted the life's work of some guy. The guy responds that this pile-on ruined his day. The response: an army of angry women complaining about his "white tech bro" behavior. He was close to losing its job (and reputation) for pointing out that he did not appreciate the out-of-the-blue mass pile-on.
Does any of this sound reasonable, healthy, constructive?
Dismissing vastly complex topics without knowing a thing about it? Basing good or bad on group think, and rejecting everything else? Basing who is right or wrong based on ethnicity, gender, the like?
How very limiting life must be to look at the world through this lens. It has like 90% of pixels blacked out.
That's what I mean with the lack of self awareness. US people don't even see this anymore. It's normalized. When you point out they have a closed mind and binary world view, they make effort to show they're on the right side of that binary, failing to see the irony.
No other discussions face such criticism, only crypto. Does everyone believe them with a burning passion? Or are people afraid of losing money?
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
Yes, indeed.
People come with their Argentina and Venezuela inflation and capital control stories and I fully agree with them but it feels like that is in no way justifying the hype around cryptocurrencies. Average people just want the MLM fueled number go up speculation and that is about it.