Crypto craziness craps out – and about time too | Hacker News Reader

Crypto craziness craps out – and about time too

theregister.com

24 pointsrntn14 comments

BTC value is up: internet consensus "Crypto is the future, if you disagree it's because you don't understand"

BTC value is down: internet consensus "Crypto is a silly toy and usually fraud"

I'm more on the internet consensus when BTC is down side, but it's cringy to watch how seemingly everyone changes their opinion based on the current BTC price. I know it's probably not true and more of an issue of which opinion is published and who feels encouraged to speak, but still.

I don't think there is any "internet consensus" on crypto, and never has been. Have you seen any of the HN threads on it? It's been a very contentious issue for a long time.

Including this one. The two top comments besides the one we are replying to are polar opposites

While the truth is not always in the middle ground, this is one of those cases where it almost certainly is. Cryptocurrency is not some magic silver bullet that'll fix all the world's problems. It is also not (in and of itself) a "Ponzi scheme" designed to defraud people of their money. It's a tool, with proper and improper uses, with benefits and drawbacks, with strengths and weaknesses.

Oddly, I find myself more inclined to think that crypto is a ponzi scheme when the price rallies. Perhaps it's the cynic in me. I don't get FOMO, I just feel sorry for people like my cousin who bought into BTC near the highs (while berating me for telling him that it was a loss-maker). I don't see those peaks as proof of validity. I just see gamblers gambling and fraudsters defrauding.

> Inflation may be bad, but it's not a "drop in value of almost 75 percent" bad.

That may be true in the author’s home country. However:

https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2022/12/22/turkey-hikes-minimum-wag...

Also, this is amusing:

> At the conference, the financial grownups were diving into topics like data interoperability between platforms and applications and how to encourage bank executives to let developers contribute to open source projects.

> It was all about how open source and the cloud are revolutionizing how banks, finance companies, and stock markets are working with money…

I didn’t doubt these conferences tackled topics more valuable than crypto, but if these two sentences were the best author could muster about the “grownups’” contribution to the world of finance and tech, perhaps I was wrong about that.

And nothing of value was lost

Who cares crypto is a waste of time

If I see an HN topic I don't care about or consider a time waste, I just don't click on it, let alone comment about what a time waste it is.

Old man yells at cloud. There isn't a single original thought in this article, just the same old sour grapes.

If I had a nickel for every time one of these articles incorrectly predicted the demise of cryptocurrency, I'd be able to afford a whole Bitcoin.

another hit piece on crypto with 0 substance. it's going to die anytime now!!!! how can you be so vemently opposed to programmable money?

It’s not obvious to me that money is something where programmability (whatever that means) is beneficial.

How can we be opposed to tulip bulbs? They're even better! They're growable money!

We don't necessarily have a problem with "programmable". It's the "money" part we have serious doubts about. The huge swings in value do not persuade us that it's very good at being "money".

The other issue is that it's designed to be able to avoid all government control, which means all regulation. Events from Mt. Gox up to FTX show that the regulations serve a useful (or at least necessary) purpose. Avoiding them - making them impossible - leads to a financial world where many people lose their shirts.

Those criticisms have substance. They are anchored in events that actually happened.

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