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Comment by qeternity | Hacker News Reader

I’ll take issue with your last point. Many in crypto are evangelical about it, but follow up everything with a “DYOR” as if that absolves whatever their statement was.

Michael Saylor, the most visible corporate Bitcoin warrior, advised people to mortgage their homes and borrow as much as they could to buy Bitcoin at the literal top of the market (to the day).

The number of people in crypto who believe in a libertarian, anarcho-capitalist world are on the order of 0.01% - the millions of retail traders punting Dogecoin around are just trying to get rich and don’t give a damn about the tech or some greater cause. And that’s because that is how crypto is actually marketed to the masses.

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Michael Saylor did say that, it's true. I am posting this, which is the original video, since I see the other comments link to a reddit post which has a modified, sensationalized version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgqC5_eugJI&t=4470s

I take issue with him telling individuals to accrue debt to acquire Bitcoin (companies I have less of an issue taking debt on). That's also the least reasonable part of the interview though. I think overall he makes a lot of good points as to why Bitcoin makes sense in the majority of the interview. However, I'm not one of those crypto people that only looks at one side of this. Yes, sometimes ridiculous things are suggested, but there is some good to this technology, too.

> advised people to mortgage their homes and borrow as much as they could to buy Bitcoin at the literal top of the market (to the day).

Do you have a source for that? Because it's a pretty serious accusation to make.

https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/oj0dj4/michael_saylor_...

Of course there will be people who try to scam others into it. But how is this different from anything else in life? The world of investment is susceptible to scammers who prey on people's emotions. This is not crypto or capitalism, this just human nature and we've learned to spot it unless we're blinded by something else, and if not, then shit happens, life is not fair.

> The number of people in crypto who believe in a libertarian, anarcho-capitalist world are on the order of 0.01%

Where do you get your numbers?

> And that’s because that is how crypto is actually marketed to the masses.

Again, I don't see anyone "marketing" for it. People should understand what they're working with before selling their houses and "investing it" in bitcoin ffs. If they do that then they're dumb!

> how is this different from anything else in life?

There is a high concentration of scamming around cryptos. There are the obvious thefts and frauds. But a good fraction of crypto businesses make their money pushing tokens in a manner remarkably similar to pump and dumps.

That said, for the reasons described here (crypto being a wealth transfer to the wealthy), I think it is here to stay.

> Of course there will be people who try to scam others into it. But how is this different from anything else in life?

Because unlike everything else, crypto has been designed from the ground up such that society is unable to rectify the bad elements.

> Again, I don't see anyone "marketing" for it. People should understand what they're working with before selling their houses and "investing it" in bitcoin ffs. If they do that then they're dumb!

Aaaand there it is. A slightly longer form of “DYOR”. If you go around evangelizing something that turns out to be damaging, you’re not absolved of all responsibility simply because you add “not investment advice”. If people who promote crypto really didn’t intend it as investment advice, they wouldn’t say anything. The whole point is that maybe other people will pump your bags. And if it all goes sideways, then you can always point at “not investment advice” because the vast majority of promoters and traders don’t understand the first thing about what a blockchain is, much less “tokenomics” or smart contract code (and exploits).

You may be an expert, and not in it to get rich quick. But you’re naive if you can’t see that the huge majority around you are in it for very different reasons.

> But how is this different from anything else in life?

In other things in life, there are things like consumer protection. You can tell your credit card agency to refund you, you can use the judicial system to sue scammers. If you lose login secrets to your bank account, you can call the bank, they know who you are, the problem can be solved.

Crypto currency is designed from the ground up with the goal of eliminating all such centralized power and protection mechanisms. Anything that goes wrong is your fault and you have no recourse, and that is not a flaw that will be fixed, that is the most central thing in its design.

Society has protections for the weak, crypto is designed to remove those protections.

> Crypto currency is designed from the ground up with the goal of eliminating all such centralized power and protection mechanisms. Anything that goes wrong is your fault and you have no recourse, and that is not a flaw that will be fixed, that is the most central thing in its design.

This is hyperbolic. There are many insured custody services for cryptocurrencies, similar to fiat banks. Secure storage is a big topic in the crypto space, and it is certainly not a goal of cyptocurrencies to weaken protection mechanisms (centralized or otherwise).

Block size was a huge multi-year argument that split the BTC community. The current largest cryptocurrency is completely incapable of addressing small problems without enormous drama, let alone actually large problems. I have absolutely zero faith that the people in charge (unelected maintainers and miners) will be able to make appropriate policy changes over time.

Protection mechanisms do not need to be "layer 1" (on-chain) solutions, though. There are many possible forms these could take. For example, a multisig wallet gives you very secure cold storage of your BTC/whatever.

Just add yet another element to the ridiculous Rube Goldberg machine that is cryptocurrency.

How about all the elements/layers added to the traditional financial system that probably a lot of folks here don't understand to a deep degree? We're not comparing apples to apples. Cryptocurrency is a new technology. We are a decade in. Maybe we should let it mature a bit and see what it turns into?

By design, it seems, Bitcoin was completely stillborn and unable to change. The entire thing incentives status quo.

Or Bitcoin was fine to start with and hasn't had a good enough reason to change yet. People can disagree, some did, forked the code, and went on their way.

Block size is a nuanced discussion and it was maybe a larger problem then you realize.

Argument for big blocks: Faster and cheaper transactions (lower fee), as well as more transactions per second. Can use more like cash, i.e. Bitcoin Cash. Everything should be done on-chain. They also argue that small blocks are a money grab from Blockstream so that the network is forced to adopt layer 2 solutions that Blockstream develops.

Argument for keeping block size the same ("small blocks"): Larger blocks means more hard drive space and bandwidth are required, and mining becomes more centralized based on those increased requirements. Big blocks are a money grab from the miners, since they make more money on bigger blocks. An additional concern is if the availability of hard drive space will increase in line with the growth of the network. They suggest to use the Bitcoin Core network more as a settlement layer and a store of value, and not everything needs to be on-chain. They suggest layer 2 solutions like the Lightning Network to use Bitcoin more like cash and enable fast transactions, as well as increase the number of transactions per second. I understand the Lightning Network has some caveats, but from what I've heard from institutions like NYDIG and Strike, that are already using it, it is already working as is.

All I'm saying is maybe it's not just a small problem. The decisions affect a global network and some of the decisions were said to potentially cause major problems.

It was a nuanced discussion. It isn't a trivial problem. I'm keenly aware of the details. There are clear pros and cons, as you described.

The point is that there are much bigger problems in a worldwide currency than block size. In comparison, block size is small potatoes. And the block size problem split the community into two that hate each other. They don't just disagree, but consider the other side to be actively sabotaging the system.

Yeah, I don't like the tribalism either. I see this with Democrats and Republicans in the US, too. One side thinks they are right. That seems to be a human thing. I do hope that progress can still be made.

You are right though, it is a bit ridiculous. What would you have them working on instead, just wondering? Fixing the environmental issues? Adoption? What else?

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