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Comment by deeptote | Hacker News Reader

CRYPTO IS A FUCKING SCAM

There are so many proper applications of blockchain that could improve humanity and provide value to customers and instead these shitheads create NFTs.

"But the US dollar is fiat" they will say, "what's the difference?!"

Gee, I dunno, the fact that the US Government backs it? All central banks use it? It's the reserve currency of the world? Any currency that isn't backed by a government or was widely used before there was a government (gold, for example) is a goddamn scam and I'm sick of it.

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The US Dollar is tightly coupled with assets, and tangible goods and services that provide a substantial portion of its stability. Bitcoin, however, is based on burning through terawatts of electrical power in order to "prove work" and actually produce nothing but waste heat.

The irony is there's use cases for that waste heat.

- Utilities could use the extra boost of heat in winter

- producing potable water

The coin produced from these processes could then be used as tradable units. "Heat Coin" or "Fresh Water Coin" would ease the transaction of these resources.

Hence, we get to the root of the problem of any "Coin": it is inherently worthless without any real asset or unit of production to back it's value.

there are clearly not many “proper applications of blockchain that could improve humanity” people have been trying very hard to find them.

I think of crypto as a class of stock, instead of currency. Speculative valuation based on investor confidence.

Yes, it’s not backed by a real asset, so crypto is truly a sister to Monopoly money, but I don’t see an issue with investing as long as you recognize what crypto is and what it isn’t.

You are not describing investing but speculating. Yes there is a difference.

Arguably retail investors aren't actually investors either, but savers, speculating on whatever assets they buy having value when they need their dollar value.

See the second sentence.

> There are so many proper applications of blockchain that could improve humanity and provide value to customers and instead these shitheads create NFTs.

I wholeheartedly agree. I can’t wait until “web3” moves past the whole fintech thing and people start realizing the true value of Web3 technologies: the fact that you no longer need a third party to mediate interactions between individual users on the internet.

> the fact that you no longer need a third party to mediate interactions between individual users on the internet.

Could you explain this more?

Like how you no longer need your ISP, or the blockchain systems run by third parties?

It seems to me like just playing semantic games if the third party is supposedly no longer a third party if it's distributed.

Maybe I missed something concrete about "web3"'s promises?

You’re thinking of blockchains, but I’m thinking more broadly of p2p systems. But even blockchains have the potential to satisfy the ideal that I have in mind. For example, I’ve often thought web2 SSO (sign in with Google/Facebook/etc) to be ripe for disruption by some open standard for wallet based authentication. I think I’ve even seen a few projects that come close to this.

At any rate, this is the part I find interesting. The money games are a huge distraction IMHO.

I have quite a few disorganized thoughts on the subject… maybe I should write an essay…

More broadly that sounds more like web1, not web3.

For sign in there are distributed ways. SQRL by Steve Gibson is one, that is just first and second party. No third party needed, distributed or not.

But really, any public key system, like gpg web of trust would do it.

You could even do mTLS, with self-signed certs. Or build an identity tree with signed certs.

Like all things Blockchain there's always the open question to any solution of "but why not just do it without the Blockchain, and it'll be better faster stronger?".

Indeed i see many stories of solutions where they ended up just removing the Blockchain in the end, with no loss of functionality.

If you write up your thoughts then please look at non-blockchain alternatives.

Like why is a gpg key not identity, or not good enough, but a Blockchain solution would be?

web3 is nothing but intermediaries. Everyone from the developers to the miners to the exchanges are intermediaries looking to get their cut

You’re talking about crypto. I’m talking about p2p.

There’s some overlap, but it’s very much the latter that I find interesting and worthwhile.

How much did you lose investing in Bitcoin?

Exactly zero, because I don't gamble.

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