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Comment by PurpleRamen | Hacker News Reader

The problem is not the blockchain, but the cryptocurrency with it's harmful consent-mechanism, also all the scams happening with it. These are two different technologies. And only one of them is highly problematic.

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85% of email is spam[1], but the remaining 15% is really useful and helps run the world.

same in everything: probably 85% of songs i don't like, 10% i'll listen to, 5% is amazing.

85% of crypto is nonsense, 10% is interesting, 5% transformative.

i find it a useful mental model to not be annoyed at everything i encounter. if theres tons of people saying taylor swift is great theres probably one song im gonna like. apply it to crypto too.

[1] https://donotpay.com/learn/spam-accounts-for-approximately-p...

I think those are great examples of the Pareto Principle [1]. It says 80% of the results come from 20% of the causes. Your examples could be generalized to an extension principle: 30% of the consequences come from 15% of the causes, and 50% come from a separate 5% of the causes.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle

They are applying Sturgeon's law [1] ("ninety-percent of everything is crud"), not Pareto, common misconception.

Pareto would be that 80% of all crypto transactions are done by 20% of all the cryptocurrencies (given 10,953 active cryptos, that would be 2,190), which also doesn't stand since ~99% of all crypto transactions are done by the top 10 cryptos (BTC, ETH, etc.), textbook oligopoly [2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law

[2] https://coinmarketcap.com/charts https://www.statista.com/statistics/1269302/crypto-market-sh...

The thing about crypto is that 50% of crypto is outright scams, 30% is nonsense, 15% is interesting academically but completely useless, and 5% is transformative in a very narrow particular set of circumstances that very few people actually have.

And I'm being generous.

You are describing the google app store as well.

The Google app store has spam and not spam. Crypto only has spam.

A perfunctory search shows there are over 20,000* cryptocurrencies in 2022. Saying that 3,000 (15%) are interesting|transformative is a bit of a stretch, especially given that over 19,990 of cryptocurrencies are in complete obscurity for the general public: if a coin is interesting|transformative in a forest with no one to hodl it, how interesting/transformative is it really? Sturgeon's law should probably be amended with "90% percent of Sturgeon's law examples are crud".

* "As of July 2022, there are 20,268 cryptocurrencies in existence. However, not all cryptocurrencies are active or valuable. Discounting many “dead” cryptos leaves only around 10,953 active cryptocurrencies." [1] — 15% of active cryptocurrencies in 2022 would be ~1,643, the point still stands.

[1] https://explodingtopics.com/blog/number-of-cryptocurrencies

There's 20'000 cryptocurrencies, and zero actual use cases outside of crimes like tax evasion, money laundering, and buying illegal things. So your percentages are a bit off, and should be more like 0.

I wouldn't even classify buying illegal drugs on the internet, which is the most moral of all cryptocurrency use cases, as "transformative".

Crypto scams aren't a problem unique to crypto. There are plenty of fiat scams, too.

There is a big difference between nearly 100% scam, and something like 1% scam. And most of the scames happening with non-crypto are not exclusive to the currency, they would happen with crypto too, if it had wider usage.

The spam email and phone calls I get are nearly 100% scam.

Scams are everywhere, though. Millions are scammed through shitty toolbars, and personal data is brokered to the highest bidders. Cryptocurrency has issues, but generalizing it as the problem isn't necessarily constructive to society.

Then where are the legit cryptocurrency use cases? At the moment it seems, except people playing around for the sake of playing, every other usage is just scamming the fools or scamming the state. And while other cases were tested, they failed.

Managing (digital) assets/values in a permissionless, self-sovereign way.

There is no alternative as far as I know.

In a self-contained fantasy economy with no attachment points to the real world, this might be compelling. In practice, the rest of the economy, society, etc. doesn't operate in a self-sovereign way, and neither do you.

It's not much different than the problem of micronations[1]. Exciting as they are for D&Ders of a sort, they aren't real nations for the simple reason that they lack a defining feature of a nation (among others): that everyone else think they're a nation.

Cryptocurrency is perhaps not as extreme; a reasonably large number of people appear to be persuaded that units of cryptocurrency are a real asset, and some begrudging convertibility into other kinds of assets (a defining feature of a currency) does exist. Still, it suffers from a similar problem, in kind if not in degree.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micronation

> In practice

This is the difficult part for me with Cryptocurrency. Sure, the idea is cool, but I can't really use crypto with any of the services I use except for maybe my VPS provider or other technical services (which requires me to provide an email address anyway). I'd love to hear about mainstream services allowing financial transactions through cryptocurrency. Pornhub is the only mainstream/non-tech service I can think of.

The only practical use for me with cryptocurrency would be to convert it back into USD eventually.

I suppose crypto enthusiasts would argue that this is just a matter of not having reached the tipping point for mass adoption yet (as with electric vehicles, for instance). However, I've heard that since the late 2000s.

I paid my rent in BTC for about a year, and have bought food/alcohol with it directly.

I suspect those may have been edge cases though.

Whoa! That is awesome! I wish that was an option where I live in the US. Even if I didn't use it, that would be nice to just have other options.

Because there are still very rough edges to smooth out. So it works only for niches. Kinda like online shopping in the 90s

Same can be said about your local classroom, universities, and even companies. There's different types of currencies (whether it's your grades or performance reviews), cryptocurrency is no different than the value that is exchanged between two members of the community.

Let's not assume that it's going to be the end-all and be-all, because it's not. It's a medium of exchange between members of a community (BTC, ETH, Doge, or whatever).

The common misconception that "oh crypto is such a scam" type of group is that they assume this is designed to replace something else. It's not a replacement of any kind, it's a tool for a medium of exchange between communities.

Buzzwordy, what exactly do you mean. Management of digital assets via NFT is just fraud imho.

Transferring and holding. This only requires a private key. NFTs are not needed for this.

Smells like law-evasion, so scam the state. What assets/values do you need to manage? What does permissionless means in that case? And why is crypto superior to existing solutions? And no, self-sovereignity is not an acceptable answer here, unless you life in north-korea.

To put it bluntly: fuck the state.

Absolutely not. My country wants to know what assets (or waht they're worth to be more precise) I have end of Year, so I declare it. I have no problems with that. Good living conditions have a price so I happily pay my cut. If I don't like it, I'll leave.

Permissionless means that there is no central entity needed to observe or even approve my actions with my assets.

What existing solutions?

I strongly disagree, self-soverignty is a personal decision. It doesn't matter in what country you live.

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