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Comment by briantakita | Hacker News Reader

Using the phrase "woo woo" along with various strawmen & many omissions of why crypto is being adopted was the extent of his criticism, hence low quality. He does not understand crypto & is trying to sell his competing product.

If he were to talk about decentralization/distribution vs centralization along with who controls the fiat money supply & who benefits & who does not benefit from the fiat central bank policies, then he would at least begin to broach the subject of why crypto currencies are being adopted.

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> If he were to talk about decentralization/distribution vs centralization along with who controls the fiat money supply & who benefits & who does not benefit from the fiat central bank policies, then he would at least begin to broach the subject of why crypto currencies are being adopted.

Is that why crypto is being adopted? Are you serious?

I bet nearly no one who buys crypto even knows what fiat money is nor have they have a clue as to the ideas of the Austrian school of economists. We live in an age of memes and discords.

Crypto and NFTs are primarily being adopted because they are speculative vehicles that generally go up and to the right. It is quite simple.

> I bet nearly no one who buys crypto even knows what fiat money is

You're uninformed.

GS, BofA, Barclays, Citi, CS, DB, JPM, MS, UBS, WF and countless funds.

The current hype cycle would be nothing without the institutional support.

But even before institutional investors started jumping in, traders and other employees of the above institutions have long been a key part of crypto markets.

These are investors and traders who want a return on their capital, they are seeking alpha by any means that makes sense: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_(finance)

Again, they do not care about fiat or the Austrian school of economics. Of course they know what those things are but they do not care about them at all.

> He does not understand crypto & is trying to sell his competing product.

This is the repeated refrain of crypto believers. "You just don't get it." And yet when I ask someone to explain it to me (not the technology, the economics) I get hand-waving, self-contradicting promises (e.g. universal identity + resistance to censorship), and appeals to greed ("you must like being poor").

When faced with this, I'm often reminded of Richard Feynman's oft-cited belief that "if you can't explain it to an undergrad student, you don't really understand it". So my conclusion is that either nobody understands cryptocurrency economics and thus no one has been able to sufficiently explain it or the explanations I've heard are complete and accurate - i.e. I do understand it, and it's an emperor with no clothes.

The resource / explanation that really sold me on crypto was this specific podcast episode: Welcome to Bankless 2021 edition. I'm curious to know what you think after listening to it.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/1SI7tFrzOXyeQ8NLVFgIRU?si=o...

what's wrong with "woo woo"? If they said "smoke and mirrors" or "hocus pocus" would you take the author more seriously?

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