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Comment by MattPalmer1086 | Hacker News Reader

He says why he cares are the end. That it could be a viable payment system, if you solve the scaling and energy and regulation and a few other things.

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It does not sound plausible that all of this engineering, required to make these systems even viable in the real world (and, we hope, preventing it from eventually demanding approximately as much energy as Eastern Europe, despite the weak incentives to actually accomplish that) is the best, fastest way to lower transaction fees for the working class.

No disagreement from me. He seems to think it could be viable.

I've seen a few high profile cryptographers get into the crypto space recently. I can't really blame them, it's exciting to see new cryptography put into practice. Who knows, maybe they will solve it all, but I doubt it personally.

I'm not disputing the claims the article makes, I'm just saying: it's not an especially persuasive reason to support cryptocurrency; if the problem is simply "bring transaction costs down for the working poor", there are much simpler ways to do that. Meanwhile: the cryptocurrencies we have today are causing ongoing harm.

What harm?

Harms like: the aforementioned energy usage equivalent to Eastern Europe, scams wiping out billions on the regular (e.g. the absurd Luna pyramid scheme which collapsed the other week), facilitating vast drug dealing and consumption at huge detriment to poor countries and many users, etc.

none of those are harm, you just want to control others. Esp drugs, I will not stand by and let you attack the good name of drugs.

I was addicted to heroin, I’m intimately acquainted with the harms of drugs. Whether I or anyone else wants to control others is entirely separate from the question of whether it does harm. And, incidentally, however inarticulably agonising is heroin withdrawal, I suffered far less than those at - or near - the other end of the production chain. Don’t give me this shit about how drug production harms no one just because you like taking them. Tell it to the Colombian fishermen who get a bullet in the head after unwittingly ferrying a package. Tell it to the people strung up off bridges. Tell it to the countless dead.

(I don’t think drugs should be banned or controlled, for what it’s worth. I believe in pragmatic policies of harm reduction. I’m just not going to deny reality, and the harms this system causes.)

Don't forget the preferred payment system for ransomware, among cryptocurrencies many technological achievements.

Sometimes incentives can be negative. Let your fear of ransomware guide your backup strategy. In the face of an adversarial condition, one should build contingencies as opposed to arguing that the technology is wrong.

By using as much energy as Argentina.

But does comparative advantage apply? Perhaps the best way to solve problems isn't for everyone to work directly on what the single most important problem in the world is. What if it's actually often better for people to work on tasks they find the most suited to their interests and abilities?

I'm fine with that. I just don't think we should give any deference to cryptocurrency projects because they're purportedly solving an important social problem. They should be held to the same standards everyone else is. Finance is intensely regulated (many will say not enough; I take no position on that). Crypto should be as well.

It already does lower transaction fees for the working class. Maybe not Bitcoin specifically, but the cryptocurrency industry has spent more than a decade vastly improving on the concept.

The legacy financial system - even just the electronic parts - are meanwhile the product of many decades of development, and it still ain't viable for large swaths of the working class worldwide.

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