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Comment by jiveturkey42 | Hacker News Reader

I've noticed that HN is typically hostile to crypto topics? Anyone care to explain why? I'm asking this question in genuine good-faith because I'm curious

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Actual cryptography is interesting. Cypherpunk topics are interesting. Distributed networks like Tor are interesting. 'Crypto' in the modern parlance is not interesting. Compute-intensive blockchain technology is not necessary for any iteration of DeFi that I have personally ever encountered, and at the same time, everybody in the scene acts like it's the killer app. The whole scene is a confederacy of dunces who are all trying to fuck each other as much as possible.

https://ambcrypto.com/7-7-billion-lost-to-crypto-scams-but-h...

Underneath the giant pile of scammers and spammers there is a small core of people quietly toiling away because they really believe that the technology can change the world. Those are the people and projects that make crypto interesting, I think.

I wonder what the hack-the-planet l0pht-era cypherpunks of the 90s would think of them, even the 'small core group of people quietly toiling away'. I bet they would think they were a bunch of moonboy sell-outs. Pardon the digression, but I just think it's such a shame that this hustle has co-oped a word that used to actually mean something to people.

edit: Partially containing my bile

I have four theories about it:

1. People are afraid of their current skills and knowledge becoming obsolete. This is similar to people being hostile to the cloud 10 years ago and serverless 5 years ago.

2. People are bitter because they see others profiting from the current crypto boom/bubble, and they didn't buy into it early enough or at all.

3. People are genuinely worried about the darker aspects (non-renewable energy usage, scams, illegal activities) and for some reason they blame the technology rather than the actors actually engaging in those activities.

4. People are problem/solution-oriented rather than vision-oriented. If they don't see an immedate relationship between an existing problem and a technical solution to it, they don't consider the new technology to have merit.

These are just some theoretical reasons I think might explain people feeling so hostile.

Thank you for an honest answer. I've also observed that cryptocurrency enthusiasts have a orientation towards high-risk, which is a different mindset than most engineers who prefer reliability and predicability

I identify strongly with 2,4 and weakly with 3. I actually don’t feel entirely hostile towards crypto (I dabble and keep up with the latest to see if/when things will get interesting) but I tend to write very negatively about current blockchain technologies and utopian vision about them

Also, you’re missing another reason: we’re entering an age of techno-pessimism. After the techno optimism of the 90s and aughts, a lot of people were let down by the consequences that this technology had on society. Tracking across the internet, widespread misinformation and post-truth, total dominance by a handful of corporate behemoths, etc. some people are inspired by the anti-corporate message of this article, other people just feel burned from the optimism of the last few decades and what it became

Another one: the fact that every crypto evangelist by definition tends to have a strong financial motivation to pump their preferred coin means the entire ecosystem has a feeling of fakery around it: is X coin actually useful or just another pump n dump??

Cryptocurrency has no real use case just massive wealth transfer from clueless people to crypto scammers promising new revolution in many areas and then escaping with the money

Only cryptocurrency and related items when these trigger people's bullshit detectors (which is most of the time and usually warranted). Cryptography related topics are generally well-received.

Even cool non-bs cryptocurrency topics just get derided by cRyPtO iS a ScAm comments sadly. It’s an easy way to get karma :)

care to provide an example?

HN karma doesn't really matter, because this site is well-moderated and people aren't in the business of selling high-karma accounts to bots like on Reddit.

Remove the empty promises, wishful thinking and buzzwords from this article and tell me what's left ? Not much

"Crypto" is a wantrepreneur magnet, most projects have no future (or present even). They sound like tobacco CEOs trying to convince you that smoking cigarettes actually is beneficial

Mostly SV bros still hell bent on VCs and that whole culture.

It smells a lot like a ponzi scheme.

Not always a Ponzi, but there is certainly a "greater fool" theory at work in venture capital. The rush to take loss-making companies public makes that clear, as does the handwaving away of poor financial metrics with platitudes like "tech stocks are different".

Now that SPACs have emerged, tech companies aren't even bothering to go through the regular route because SPACs let them do it with less financial disclosure.

Anyone care to explain why?

Did you read the article? It's utterly nonsensical, from the very first sentence. It isn't "hostile" to point this out.

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