Hacker News Reader

Comment by helen___keller | Hacker News Reader

I thought it was a good comment except for the inflammatory zinger at the end:

> a neat intellectual toy and speculative asset for the Silicon Valley / Wall Street set.

For those in silicon valley or wall street this is probably a downvote. And for those who are fans of bitcoin it is definitely a downvote.

View on HN

While I understand that you don't like the way that's phrased, those are definitely two of the main groups currently involved in cryptocurrency. The only other group I can think of that has seen significant uptake of cryptocurrencies (and the only group actually using it as a currency) are people engaged in criminal activities (whether that's evading capital controls, money laundering, drug dealing, or ransomware).

To be clear: I upvoted the post for the rest of the content, and I actually agree with sentiment, but I believe a large number of readers would have a gut reaction to immediately downvote when using that sort of inflammatory phrasing. That's the reason HN guidelines say to eschew flamebait: when you use dismissive or charged language, it incites an emotional reaction that is not related to the content of the post, which often results in mass downvoting or derailed discussions

I can agree with that.

What I probably should have said: "maybe it will be fine, resolving itself with more clean energy and more electric grid capacity in mining-heavy areas, or more clever crypto tech. Or maybe we have a persistent incentives problem where the group that reaps the benefit (Silicon Valley inventors, Wall Street speculators) are distinct from the groups that bear the costs (including people near the welfare line in mining-heavy areas). A persistent incentive problem that isn't solved in relatively short order by general material abundance would be a case for regulation.

... better?

The Silicon Valley / Wall Street part is highly inaccurate, and I'd dare to say plain wrong as it comes to the specific crypto we're talking about: Bitcoin.

Bitcoin's invention and surrounding culture comes from cyberpunks. Whom are anti-government, anti-regulation, encourage civil disobedience, and so on. Unsurprisingly, culturally Bitcoin is highly popular with libertarians, which in the US you could qualify as a sub culture of the right wing. As such, it's an almost opposite of SC culture, which is liberal all the way to left wing (largely in name only).

As for Wallstreet, they only got in late 2020, and barely so, so it's quite a stretch to state that Bitcoin is a toy for Wallstreet.

In reality, these supposed hard lines uniquely found in US politics are soft as butter. Bitcoin isn't made for any group in particular, it is for everyone. It can be used by a greedy hyper capitalist day trader as well as a refugee looking to protect the little they have from inflation or confiscation. Bitcoin doesn't care.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com