Crypto Is Not Here to Stay | Hacker News Reader

Crypto Is Not Here to Stay

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39 pointscolesantiago56 comments

Reminder that should be pinned to every time Stephen Diehl is linked. Diehl is the CTO and cofounder of an "enterprise blockchain" company, that directly competes with public chains like Ethereum.

All of which is fine, he's entitled to his own opinion. But what's extremely is that he doesn't disclose this conflict of interest, and in fact goes to great lengths to hide it whenever acting as a public crypto critic.

> But what's extremely is that he doesn't disclose this conflict of interest, and in fact goes to great lengths to hide it whenever acting as a public crypto critic.

Yeah. If anyone mentions that, they will get blocked by him. Not even those who support cryptocurrencies are allowed in this 'Crypto Policy Symposium'.

He's doing this because of his failed blockchain company that was killed by public smart contract blockchains like Ethereum and especially Cardano, which resembles everything that he wanted to build, but as a private blockchain with formal proofs. Now he has attached his whole identity to hating all of crypto by writing tons of absolutist articles, grifting and farming for more followers, book sales, and one-sided interviews.

As you know, Stephen Diehl (and his other co-founder Darren Tseng) will never disclose that. Just listen to what he has to say about his blockchain startup before he knew Cardano ruined his business. [0]

[0] https://youtu.be/uc5qv5qabfI?t=21

His company owes millions to creditors according to the public balance sheet.

He should be more transparent about Adjoint. Silence and hiding evidence just comes off looking shady.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32304395

This post makes a call to action and a lot of claims while providing no evidence. Seems like click farming to me.

Someone else here posted "Amway" and that's actually a pretty good response for one word.

Amway is pretty much the poster child for shitty MLM companies. Anyone with a modicum of sense knows to stay away from that bullshit. Sure, it may be popular "now", but it's not here to stay. Sooner or later, the final rug will be pulled.

Except it's been in business since 1959 and shows no sign of going out of business.

So even if all of cryptocurrency was some form of scam. If every single coin was a ploy by people to simply extract money from others through less than honorable means, that does not mean it will ever go away.

Because there would be unscrupulous people who will want to leverage it to take money from others. Those who think they're smarter than a system designed to screw them over. And those who simply don't recognize its faults even when they're pointed out.

And that's not to say cryptocurrency is a scam overall. Just that even if it were, that would not stop it from being used. Or from being popular.

Amway is an interesting example because it has connections at the highest levels of government. Richard DeVos was a top GOP donor and co-founder of Amway and could get policies and regulations changed in its favor.

lots of amway influence at the local levels too

I was hoping for an argument outlining what seemed to be the thesis "Crypto has no future for a simple and irrefutable reason; it is based on logically incoherent ideas and serves no legal purpose." But instead the article takes those assertions as given.

Bits like this remind me of "all rumors are not true until denied."

This extreme level of cope strongly tells us that crypto really is here to stay, like it or not.

Spoiler: "Please stop repeating the phrase “crypto is here to stay”. I have a book to sell you because my blockchain startup was killed by Cardano, which is why I want all of it to 'die in a fire' and to 'destroy all of it'. So please buy my book."

Trying to destroy all of crypto is very unrealistic and being on the absolutist side of hating crypto and believing that all of it will be stopped and absolutely destroyed is no better or just as delusional than the crypto maximalists who also believe that crypto will take over the entire financial system.

Neither are realistic in their utopian goals and are most likely doing this to boost or promote their own grift, whether if it is a book, newsletter, Patreon, more followers, etc, its common to see both extreme anti-crypto and pro-crypto camps doing the same thing.

But what I can tell you is this: 'Some' cryptocurrencies, projects and technologies are here to stay. Not all of them will survive incoming regulations.

> killed by Cardano

Wow. That's a claim. Going to have to look into that!

It would be interesting to see how the sentiment about crypto changed over time on HN. I'm sure there was time when people saw a lot of potential in crypto technologies. Subjectively, the sentiment has shifted completely towards negativity in the last 1-2 years.

For what it's worth, my sentiment is that crypto[currencies]/blockchain tech. is essential for the same reasons that I believe Tor and end to end encryption are essential.

I believe that it's also highly likely that like end-to-end encryption, most people will use some form of this technology (or things built on it) very regularly in future.

But it may turn out to be that like Tor, most people don't. That wouldn't make it any less important that it exists.

The first time Bitcoin was posted it received no comments and barely any votes. The second time it received mixed feedback. It took about a year for it to get a decent sized thread.

The third link, I think, is worth revisiting.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=463793

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=599852

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1532670

I agree, saying "crypto is here to stay" is not much more than wishful thinking.

But when enough people repeat the same thing, it can give the illusion that this line was backed by solidly architected reasoning at some point in the past, and that we reached consensus on the long-term viability.

But AFAIK, we're still far from a consensus in this field.

Darknet markets will always exist, and therefore will cryptocurrencies.

That alone proves that crypto is indeed here to stay.

Crypto as currency is basically worthless if you cannot find someone to take some and convert it to things with normal values.

Are you implying that drugs don't have normal values? Or that you cannot sell drugs for cash?

I thought bitcoin was incredible un that it allowed anonymous transactions. That turned out to be false. Well it is anonymous, but you still need on and off ramps for crypto to fiat and fiat to crypto which is basically impossible to get because somewhere you need a bank account to transfer the money that has your name on it. Not enough vendors accept bitcoin where you can survive within the ecosystem without converting back to cash, and typically losing a large percentage of your money in the process. I think there are a few tokens that at least have anonymized transactions, like Tornado, but again you can’t get money out still, and it might be illegal to use those cryptos. Basically the use case is dead in my eyes. Sure darknet is still a thing because they are doing illegal things already and don’t care about the on and off ramps being legal either, so it works, but if the potential to go mainstream disappears then bitcoins price could drop to practically nothing again as well.

Your take is false because lots of people use darknet market regularly.

They also use Monero which offer much better privacy than Bitcoin, and they continue to do so even when Monero is difficult to buy as most onramps don't offer it.

I have yet to buy a single thing, let alone a single useful thing, with a cryptocurrency.

I also don't understand how a cryptocoin is supposed to be a rapidly accumulating asset for investment, while also being stable enough to function as a currency.

As long as these two things remain true, I remain skeptical.

> I have yet to buy a single thing, let alone a single useful thing, with a cryptocurrency.

Literally million in Turkey, Nigeria, Argentina and other middle income, without access to traditional dollarized banking, use stablecoins to protect their savings from being decimated by rampant local inflation.

I don't possibly see how anyone could argue that isn't a "useful product" uniquely powered by crypto.

This is the first time I've heard compelling use of cryoto-coins, and it's actually a _great_ one.

So many life-savings have been completely lost due to political effups, it makes me happy to see some way for people to safe-guard against inept governments.

One question I have though (I don't know much about crypto stuff), is how stable these "stablecoins" are, and how? Is it easy to trade back to real money?

It depends which stablecoin. USDT and USDC are both billion dollar coins backed by enough real assets that they survived the collapse and "run on the bank" of the failed stablecoin Terra.

It's super easy to trade either of them for dollars.

But doesn’t every other asset perform that same function? Precious metals or any other foreign currency, for instance?

hm last time i checked, in Turkey you can trivially buy dollars and any other currency your heart desires. Are you sure about that country having no access to traditional dollarized banking?

also, even if that was true for all of those presumably unbanked countries, how is allowing universal access to stable stablecoins any easier? still need some physical place to cash out, so what's the difference between that and a bank? unless you envision completely tearing down local currencies and going fully digital wallet to wallet?

Almost all major cities in middle income countries have currency brokers who are more than happy to earn spreads by making a market between on-chain dollar-based stablecoins and the local currency. It's not really any different than traditional forex brokers. If anything, slightly easier because each physical location doesn't have to manage an individual cash vault.

Access to banking is limited by the countries governments. If the governments want to make buying US dollars illegal they can make buying stable coins backed by dollars illegal too. Sure it’s a quick way to do forex currency trading, but that is available on the internet already and these coins require access to the internet to be bought and sold as well. They take the same risk that their “dollars” or rather these tokens that represent dollars could be taken from them by their government’s enforcement.

There was a computer parts company that had an accidentally very good deal on a part. I ordered one using BTC through coinbase. Eventually the company realized their mistake and canceled everyone's orders. I got refunded through coinbase and forgot about it.

Turns out the company forgot about it too because several years later I get a letter from them saying "our records show we still owe you this refund, here's a check".

I'd say my money got doubled but that would not be true. When I ordered the part was within a day or so of a major BTC downturn and by the time the BTC came back through coinbase it had devalued substantially. Buying the part was my attempt at getting out while the market was high.

Still, ended up ahead in the end.

Neither am I. We'll all be dead in 100 years max. Meanwhile old man shakes fist at $1T market cap cloud (.jpg).

hysterical title! And if that is true, then it is equally true for all of finance and economics.

Well funny because one of the consequences of the text2img and img2img revolution we've seen the past weeks will certainly be that real artists / illustrators will have to use NFTs. For the timestamps. To fight in court essentially.

I dont think cryptos are going anywhere just because of that (I could be wrong).

If that happen, that would be a transitory state.

The real value of graphic artists is not there, and it is likely to evolve with the collection of new tools that are being discovered.

In my opinion, and from my experience, anything that increase the productivity of individuals, and make the work "easier" is also something that make it more valuable.

Wow are you still working on int13h? Amazing, you were there 20 years ago.

The real value of graphic artists is not there

I disagree. Take Samwise for example, this guy defined the style of half the video games the past 15 years. There is tremendous value there for an indidual.

Hey, int13, the studio I co-founded 14 years ago has been "dormant" for some time now.

I am working for int13 Labs now, kind of a spin-off company.

What I am saying about graphic artists, is that their value is what they add to the creation process, not in claiming copyrights.

I was thinking about a french int13 that was there in 2004. Im probably confusing. Good luck in your new venture anyway!

Yeah that was us. int13 production was a non-profit in 2004-2006 before we started a real studio in 2008.

> real artists / illustrators will have to use NFTs. For the timestamps. To fight in court essentially.

Cryptographic timestamp services are older than even Bitcoin. RFC 3161 is from 2001.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb has the most direct analysis of this. In his paper he explains that crypto coins are inherently unstable securities which over time converge to zero value.

That's not really what he says.

He says that Bitcoin, as a store of value but not a medium of exchange, converge to zero.

True to form, he's only talking about Bitcoin and not other cryptocurrencies (he makes it a point to not discuss things he's not familiar with or hasn't traded himself) I don't know what he's mentioned publicly in writing, but he did like a tweet I made suggesting that what analysis applies to BTC may not apply to other cryptos, and yes I did fanboy out quite a bit after that happened ;)

I don't care if crypto is here to stay or not. All I care about is that I'm never forced to use it personally.

Why would anyone be forced to use Crypto? If the government forces you to use it, then at that point it's no longer crypto, it's fiat.

If enough businesses and services start requiring it, then I'd be forced to in order to participate in society.

I'm thinking of the analogy to Facebook and related companies. I'm not "forced" to use Facebook, and choose not to, but in doing so, I'm already locked out of a nontrivial portion of society. If this sort of thing happens with money, opting out could become entirely untenable.

Hard to imagine that happening for a while if at all. At that point it just becomes part of finance though. Like, it's already very difficult if not impossible to opt out of credit cards for example.

True, credit cards are an even better example of the future that I fear.

Ransomware forced a friend to use crypto.

> Crypto is the financial equivalent of astrology mixed with homeopathy

And that is one the main implicit reasons why people like and why it will stay.

It's also the technological equivalent of astrology or homeopathy. Confidence in a blockchain system depends upon it's underlying governance structure, which requires trusting a distributed web of actors. The only actual requirement for the transaction medium is to be verifiable, primarily to avoid the double spending problem, which can be achieved much cheaper. There are fintech innovations like UPI that are actually doing a lot for financial inclusion, instead of talking about it in a future tense while pumping and dumping. Now obviously cryptocurrencies are an asset class, but the pretense still exist that one day they will become usable as currencies. That day will never come.

Boo

Amway.

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