Comment by nimbius | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nimbius | Hacker News Reader

I hate crypto because it had all the hallmarks of the fantasy futurism we read about in so many countless spellbound novels of sci-fi and wonder, but turned out to be an exhausting dichotomy of ponzi-scheme money laundering or regulatory shuck-and-jive bureaucratic hell.

Its all-singing, all-dancing soulless cavalcade begat such horrorshows as the crypto.com sports arena, the FTX arena, and the desperate attempt by local government to disjoin itself from the nightmare of toxic branding or brace white-knuckled for a slow motion collapse to sweep their hastily cashed branding rights cheque into the dustbin of decisions that make the entire state look worse for existing.

It also spawned things like the absolutely enigmatic "bitcoin ATM" found at only the seediest smoke shops and derelict drug stores. does it vend Bitcoin? is that giant coin with a B on it festooned in bright advertisement on the side a bitcoin? Why does it look like the lovechild of an 80s ATM and an airport check-in kiosk? The only thing this machine reliably did was ensure the freezer next to it was harder to open if you wanted to get a choco-taco.

Dont get me started on the near dystopian comedy of KYC and so many hours spent snapping photos of yourself with a hand-written paper sign for Kraken to verify, or fiat conversions that for some reason cant involve your bank unless you will it to some third party swedish fintech nobody has heard of but will probably never remember once their founders yacht is found smouldering off the caymans.

And the bros...so many crypto bros. Is crypto an investment? sure. is it good smart financial sense? of course! can it deworm the dog and start my old Ford? buddy, its crypto and these nonsense peddling talking heads are about to waste your entire lunch reminding you that no matter how volatile the coin, no matter how hair-brained the leadership, and no matter how laughable the mascot, we'll all be rich by the end of the year and you have $wondercoin to thank for it. just dont ask them how blockchain actually works...it works and it aughta be used for everything

>And the bros...so many crypto bros. Is crypto an investment? sure. is it good smart financial sense? of course! can it deworm the dog and start my old Ford? buddy, its crypto and these nonsense peddling talking heads are about to waste your entire lunch reminding you that no matter how volatile the coin, no matter how hair-brained the leadership, and no matter how laughable the mascot, we'll all be rich by the end of the year and you have $wondercoin to thank for it. just dont ask them how blockchain actually works...it works and it aughta be used for everything

It's a solution for everything!

That's how you know little thought actually went into understanding any of the problems it purports to solve, or any of the people who have real problems that need to be addressed.

I love how crypto-bros keep referring to the "early days" of the internet to excuse crypto's lack of practical application. I'm like, dude, even ARPANET had an easy-to-understand use case: share data and compute resources across various laboratories. It knew who and what it was for. Who is crypto for, exactly?

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/why-im-less-than-infin...

Reliable money transfer in nations with under-developed banking systems is a clear use case for crypto.

Try buying bullion online in US in a way where payment clears in under an hour without crypto. The main other option is debit/credit and bullion vendors usually charge much higher premiums for those methods.

Clearly this is just waiting for somebody to combine gold and crypto! Oh wait, they already tried that:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-gold

Was that a crypto play? Or just a variation on paypal?

I only ever remember really seedy operations using e-gold as a payment. Online drugs (street drugs) and things like that.

It was the first major digital currency play, but it was not blockchain-based and thus technically not a cryptocurrency. It was, however, a useful sneak preview of most everything we've seen play out since in the crypto space: money laundering, hacks, criminal prosecutions etc.

The fact that goldbugs charge each other premiums for not paying in gold (or what they perceive to be digital gold) is not to my estimation a strong argument for cryptocurrencies.

Perhaps not. The advantage is not likely philosophical here though as large more cold and calculated bullion companies like APMEX offer this discount versus credit/debit.

I think a real upside of crypto is in dealing with entities that you view as very low risk (APMEX and other trusted bullion vendors) who view you (random guy buying) as potentially high risk. Crypto allows you to provide irreversible payment, which seriously lowers the risk to the vendor that you can somehow claw the money back (as you may be able to with a chargeback, fraud protection, even possibly the bank somehow reverse the ACH transaction etc).

When you send crypto to the bullion vendor they certainly have risk the value of the crypto itself can go down, but basically zero risk you'll able to claw it back. I think this plays a big part in making it the cheapest quick clearing way to pay for online bullion. Credit/debit buyers are paying premiums that account for the risk associated with reversible nature of most of the fast clearing options.

Ideally there'd be a basically instantaneous wire transfer that is impossible to claw back for any reason if you wanted the lowest premium.

How does this work? Are people trading actual gold bars in person? How do you know you're not just being sold gold plated lead?

Which is an entirely fair use case, and the total market value of this use case is between 1B and 10B USD and will be decreasing over time as these nations develop banking systems. That is not what was being sold though, what was being sold was that the future was every transaction, from real estate to video game virtual currency, would be on chain, that luxury cars and yachts and art would lose value to luxury 1 of 1 NFT pfps and that code is law and what matters is what the chain says. It turns out that law is law, nfts are not any of those things, and I will be transacting in fiat for pretty much all of my purchase.

yes, valuations have gotten ahead of reality. that seems like it happens a lot with technology products and companies. the hope is that the law will eventually catch up, tech improves, market matures, and more people will find cryptocurrencies a decent substitute for fiat. if these things don't happen, crypto might die out, and haters will be right. but with most innovation, there needs to be optimism and some "true believers" or visionaries who will work and build stuff that pushes forward the industry. there seem to be plenty in web3. let's see what happens!

Would a nation with an under-developed banking system have an adequate internet-access system to allow crypto participation?

I hate that it's ruined social events.

I routinely get tracked down because "you're in tech, so you must be into this", and lose a relaxing evening to trying to get rid of some guy who wants to help me understand that Global Warming was invented to make crypto look bad, how having a credit card in your wallet makes you a corporate bootlicker, and some sort of anti-Semitic argument about who controls banking. It's exhausting, I'd rather go to a restaurant on my own.

Perhaps you need some help on how to discourage them. Maybe ask a model how they get rid of unwanted attention?

So, someone expects you to be techy: start a monologue on the Byzantine General's problem and how it relates to database design choices. Create your own geeky obsession on the topic of the mating habits of spiders (which is actually extremely interesting, so use with care).

Make it a fun game for yourself and your friends, to find the most effective one-sentence blockers?!

"Would you be interested in a business opportunity in Amway? (in excited tones)"

Use the opportunity to learn the soft art of getting people to leave you alone. Unwanted attention can come from any direction in your future too.

I've been a crypto skeptic for most of the past decade. I especially hate the industry, the overhyped blockchain-magic ideology, and the ubiquitous scams.

But I remember when I was a CS student and Bitcoin was a new thing. I thought it was a cool concept and I love the romantic idea of underground digital pirate math money. It's still a neat technology (though blockchains are still wrong for 99.9% of DB use cases). But now it's just one of the worst parts of the mainstream financial establishment.

> exhausting dichotomy of ponzi-scheme money laundering or regulatory shuck-and-jive bureaucratic hell.

Read up on how banks are creating money these days. Suddenly something like Bitcoin begins to seem like a completely reasonable way to do money. And all other crypto still seem like they are just chasing the creativity of normal banks.

Because some banks are laundering risk you propose that we instead use a system that requires as much energy as medium sized countries to achieve 7 transactions per second?

And in the midst of an energy crisis?

There's nothing stopping exchanges from operating a fractional reserve system, and all of the ones that have collapsed pretty much did so.

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