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Comment by zelag | Hacker News Reader

The author has a huge conflict of interest whenever he writes about cryptocurrency, seeing as he's the founder of Adjoint, Inc, a company which digitizes cash and settlement processes for multinational corporates.

The site in question: http://www.adjoint.io/

this was originally brought up by robot_no_419 in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27121532 all props go to him.

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I don’t understand the use of “conflict of interest” here, the author is expressing an opinion, plainly explaining which “side” they are on, no other context required.

It’s not as if the author is trying to pass legislation or close a business deal without disclosing how they’ll benefit. Like my sibling says, that the author puts their money where their mouth is by placing bets against crypto only makes their opinion more credible.

Wouldn't a media interview or someone debating Diehl be even more credible?

The public can make their minds up when presented with both sides of the argument rather than one side on Twitter.

This is an opinion piece. Write a rebuttal and post it.

What rebuttal? I agree with the post?

I just want the common man to see crypto for what it really is with a balanced debate or interview, not just a blog post that only 'nerds' reads as Diehl states.

> It’s almost only nerds who read my blog...

After all, it would be more credible coming from him than me.

> I just want the common man to see crypto for what it really is with a balanced debate or interview, not just a blog post that only 'nerds' reads as Diehl states.

I've been following this space for a while and honestly I don't see how a counterpart would actually look like. We had blockchains/crypto for almost 13 years and the only thing that came out of it is a speculative semi-unregulated asset market. Still Forbes, NYT etc... always write articles like "Cryptocurrencies are volatile asset that is doomed to crash, but the underlying blockchain technology is here to say". Without offering any kind of proof for the second part of the statement.

Show me one blockchain application that has nothing to do with virtual assets that not only turns a profit but is provably more efficient than a database based solution.

Whenever I bring this up, the response is usually: "We're just at the beginning, this will take a while". For a space that is claiming the disruption of everything it's moving pretty slow.

Considering BTC's network uptime has been about 99.9% for over a decade, I'd say the "here to stay" articles may have been relatively accurate? (I don't care much for BTC, though I do feel a narrow scope of its usage will probably persist in some fashion for many more years.)

> Show me one blockchain application that has nothing to do with virtual assets that not only turns a profit but is provably more efficient than a database based solution.

The only thing ledger specifies is virtual state and virtual assets (ie: tokens). A simple example of an application that is easier with a smart contract than traditional financial services and a plain old database is an escrow agent for handling a significant sum across hundreds or thousands of global participants (and thus potentially currencies). In practice; a smart contract application built on this may look like a time-constrained Kickstarter campaign, but using a trustless/ownerless escrow contract to accept and manage payments.

A centralized database can handle the escrow too, and far more efficiently. The only reason decentralized crypto solutions have a head start is that people who work in crypto tend not to care about what is legal.

Yet there is a key difference in trust - that a centralized actor (say, Kickstarter) will not mutate their private database, will not go under, and will not fail to meet its promises in how the funds are managed.

There is also an ease of use (for developers building these applications), particularly in terms of finances: say, an escrow that holds $1M worth of value and may need to return those funds to 100K donors across the globe should the fundraiser not meet its goals before a set deadline.

Trust works because of legal frameworks. You have to have the same trust that Ethereum won't do another fork, and you have to trust that the smart contract isn't fraudulent. In exactly the same way, the law is what keeps the average person from being fleeced.

A central database has far better ease of use for developers than a distributed ledger.

To some users and developers, the chain/contract is easier, less expensive, and simpler to trust and build upon than the equivalent legal and traditional financial structures on a global scale.

Even if that’s true the argument “web3 is better for some users and developers” is very far from “web3 will disrupt the internet as we know it”

It is already disrupting the internet as we know it… NFTs, DAOs, trustless contracts, peer-to-peer payments w/o reliance on a central payment processors — these are all new concepts that the web hasn’t seen operating at a global scale, accessible with little more than a thin layer of JS and a browser extension.

Perhaps this disruption won’t last, or won’t succeed in replacing traditional systems, but obviously in 2021 it has succeeded in capturing a lot of interest & discussion (and a lot of $ value, too).

Seems like we have very different interpretations and standards for “disruption”.

I don’t consider “everyone is talking about it” disruption. I want to see real world implementation that goes beyond “virtual asset value goes to the moon” to be convinced.

As I said in an earlier comment: It’s been almost 13 years since the first block has been mined on the Bitcoin blockchain and the positive impact on society/economy is pretty disappointing.

Pretty much every time this comes up, I point to Hicetnunc, as I feel despite its small size and shaky organization, it is indicative of the kind of disruptions that may occur, and also how it may prove beneficial to many creators.

https://mattdesl.substack.com/p/hicetnunc-and-the-merits-of-...

Considering NFT/Web3 only really entered public discourse in 2021, and programmable smart contracts are still nascent, I wouldn’t be so quick to write it all off.

Hey Matt, I'm making my way through understanding this space and am struggling with the morality of it all, so I have a question for you: would you say that the trustless peer-to-peer world is a better future than today?

I'm asking given the realities of decentralized networks: it's currently slower, more expensive and harder to do transactions using peer to peer systems (and it's a bit tough to imagine it'll ever be as fast/simple/reliable as a centralized one because of the requirement to have consensus of nodes). And also given the realities of ETH contracts: they are agreements written in code (certainly mostly by people who don't have any background or formal education in writing laws or agreements, in comparison with lawyers)

That, like everything else in the space, breaks at the point where anything of non-virtual value needs to be returned to the buyers/investors/etc. That just happens to be impossible unless you allow for trusted people observing and certifying a part of reality. So they basically came up with a set of “crypto assets” to trade using the “crypto currencies”. Of course those are more or less the same concepts with different labels. Still, it feels so much more real to buy a virtual something with your virtual money than just exchanging it for other virtual money.

These contracts intentionally only deal with tokens and virtual data/assets. A “web3” Kickstarter alternative built on a common set of OSS and fee-less escrow contracts does not need to manage anything other than tokens - that is the currency being exchanged.

If you are concerned about price fluctuations in the cryptocurrency, you could set this contract to operate only on a stablecoin like DAI.

I dont know that convincing the public was the intention of the blog, the author seems resigned that they are preaching to their choir. Not everything has to be about winning people over, I enjoyed the piece as a rant that resonates with me, puts my vague impressions into prose.

People are free to post opposing arguments wherever they want, including this thread. So far, they have come up with a few ad hominems, three invocations of “socialism” none of which come close to the concept, and complaints that their side isn’t being given a chance to respond.

This makes him more qualified in my eyes to write about crypto currency. He's bearish on it. I'd be a fool not to listen to all sides of the argument.

I think you mean: "Has relevant industry knowledge

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