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Comment by rewtraw | Hacker News Reader

I'm consistently surprised by HN's lack of vision in this area. The idea of a Network State / Internet-native economy is a cyberpunk dream, and crypto enables that. The constant doubt, rejection, and preference for SV-startup solutions is the opposite of what I would expect from a "Hacker Community" but I suppose HN is literally full of VCs (particularly FinTech) that don't want the competition from open crypto solutions.

Meanwhile, devs in crypto are able to build without limits and are having an absolute blast larping as anime cats on Twitter while cranking on bleeding edge ZK tech and other exciting projects.

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> I'm consistently surprised by HN's lack of vision in this area. The idea of a Network State / Internet-native economy is a cyberpunk dream, and crypto enables that.

How so? Isn't the "cyberpunk dream" a dystopia?

Not for me. This issue in particular seems to polarize our community.

> Not for me. This issue in particular seems to polarize our community.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberpunk:

> Cyberpunk is a subgenre of science fiction in a dystopian futuristic setting that tends to focus on a "combination of lowlife and high tech",[1] featuring futuristic technological and scientific achievements, such as artificial intelligence and cybernetics, juxtaposed with societal collapse or decay.

It's the kind of world that's better to look at than actually inhabit.

"our community" is one that wouldn't know how to get to the bowling lanes if Uber went down. Hell, half of us probably wouldn't know how to get work done if Slack or Github has an afternoon outage. There's not a person on this site that would last in a cyberpunk distopia, putting the average HN user in the middle of an unmoderated forum would be like the end of Logan's Run. We'd all be standing around, stupefied by a world we don't understand.

I'm being facetious, but it's true. The average person is a weenie, and we rely on a great deal of well-maintained, centralized infrastructure to keep us going. There's a reason why people here fight to keep Fortnite off their iPhone and tries to bite the hand of anyone peddling crypto: deep down, we're all scared! We need corporations to coddle and exploit us, just like they need our money. HN, and the world at large, wouldn't want crypto even if it was "the right thing" to do.

> The average person is a weenie, and we rely on a great deal of well-maintained, centralized infrastructure to keep us going.

All these crypto bros are the same. They would't survive a day if their vision of the future actually came to be.

Also see all the "crypto bros flock to centralised trusted courts to try and get their money back after yet another crypto scam":

- https://web3isgoinggreat.com/?id=coinflex-sues-roger-ver-to-...

- https://web3isgoinggreat.com/?id=hypernet-labs-shuts-down-sh...

- https://web3isgoinggreat.com/?id=former-asset-manager-for-ce...

etc.

Cyberpunk is meant to be about a dystopia. Like meritocracy is a satirical take on how such a thing isn’t possible.

Do you not understand that regulations are a byproduct of real and actual problems? That "building without limits" is actually harmful to consumers?

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