Why blockchains are useful, in a nutshell | Hacker News Reader

Why blockchains are useful, in a nutshell

cryptologie.net

5 pointsbaby4 comments

Interesting to see that this and even Stripe's announcement of crypto payouts did not get enough attention here [0] but only the same old one sided [1][2] typical outrage that jumps to the top of this site, and attracts the typical boring 'crypto is scam' comments.

This post 'Why blockchains are useful, in a nutshell' and 'Crypto, the Left and Technofeudalism' were posted in the same timeframe and the latter somehow got the most attention; alongside this Ask HN [2] post, confirming the unfortunate bias and lack of curiosity in the uses of the technology.

They seem to even admit to not bothering to reading the articles I linked in [3]. I asked a simple question about why Stripe announced Crypto payouts and look where that went [3].

I can only conclude that regulations are going to separate which cryptocurrency projects are going to survive or not. The fact that Stripe waited for regulatory clarity to get back in tells us that not only they see some value in it but it is also not going away anytime soon.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31121177

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31133393

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31132610

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31132996

You have to understand that tech people possess no qualifications to see the abstract value crypto brings. “Bitcoin is just public key cryptography and hashing, it’s not that clever!”

Crypto is a technology, but the innovation innate in it is economic in nature, not technical. This misconception leads to a whole cohort of tech people who knew about Bitcoin, never bought, and now have to rationalize as those less technically literate than them are more and more starting to believe and starting to profit.

They should not have this expectation to understand crypto, anymore than an economist should be expected to understand what makes online banking secure, but everyone (including themselves) puts that expectation on them, causing them to rationalize by claiming that crypto is all a scam and completely useless. The more they try and understand it technically, the less they see what’s important.

If I replace "blockchain" with "Paxos" in this post, I get almost the same message. Blockchains may have uses, but it certainly isn't this.

Paxos is not byzantine fault tolerant

Reply on news.ycombinator.com