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Comment by arcticbull | Hacker News Reader

Generally I agree but this is crypto. Crypto is 100% zero-sum or negative-sum. The whole space is predicated on trying to take money from other participants rather than actually creating value. Creating at best the illusion of value is the goal. This guy nailed it.

It's not like he took $100M from an orphanage or something.

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This guy was a part of creating that negative sum game in the first place. He shouldn’t be celebrated.

The only people who should be upset are the those who provided the cash that is going into this person's pockets. Otherwise, I don't have a care in the world about this departure compensation. It impacts me in no way.

One is allowed to be upset. Woke

Woke? In what way?

People are allowed to be upset. I’m old. And sarcastic.

Genuinely curious:

Are people angry at coinbase (and generally crypto exchanges) because they believe that exchanges allow vast amounts of people to speculate on the price of crypto and treat it as an investment vehicle when it was supposed to be a currency? And therefore nobody working for coinbase is capable of creating value.

Or are people angry at crypto overall because it's a wasteful cesspool and so because this guy took a product role in the crypto industry he's not capable of creating any value whatsoever so fuck him and fuck everyone that paid him?

Or are people angry with this guy because he's a bad or underwhelming product leader and the salary does not reflect the value he did bring to coinbase (perhaps you hold coinbase shares)? And therefore you feel he was somehow dishonest about his value and conned coinbase for millions and this reflects poorly on the startup/tech/vc industry?

If Alex makes $100M selling middle eastern despots tech to track and dismember journalists, Bob makes $100M with his new tech to inject adverts into our dreams, Charlie makes $100M by selling the taxpayer fighter jets that don't work and charging to fix them, Doris makes $100M by offering high-interest payday loans to desperate financially illiterate people, Eric makes $100M getting people addicted to his prescription opioids, Freya makes $100M by buying up property then paying politicians to block new construction, Grace makes $100M by getting a bailout from the government and spending it on exec bonuses, Harry makes $100M by running a for-profit prison that makes sure every inmate re-offends, Iris makes $100M by getting some chump venture capitalists to pay her that, and James makes $100M by persuading rich fools to pay that much for ape NFTs, why shouldn't we celebrate the fact James and Iris's actions are relatively less destructive than the others?

No, because that's what, 10 people? And there are millions of people who actually create value and enact good in the world. We should celebrate them.

I agree that crypto is 100% negative-sum in my experience. (Especially the ones that are proof of work which literally destroys our one biosphere through wasting electricity.)

Most recently, I got a "legitimate" (doxxed, "real") job offer via HN, got hired and scammed, wasted hours of my time. Crypto is scamsville.

I'd like to hear more about this.

Someone reached out via my Hacker News "who wants to be hired" comment offering a job. We did interviews, I got hired, onboarded and introduced to the team. They missed meetings and then disappeared before the first discussed paydate, ghosting me. They were set up in every way to do this. It seemed to be their standard M.O.

How do they profit from this?

I don't know if "profit" is the right word as it implies customers, but I guess they rip off devs and crypto investors they enter into contracts with then run away from, misappropriating investors' money and not delivering any value. The devs just help make it seem legitimate. There is no actual value creation involved.

Not quite orphanages, but it's definitely poor people:

* Locked out of traditional financial industry, more people of color are turning to cryptocurrency [0]

* Why the crypto crash hit black Americans hard [1]

[0] https://archive.is/slVPj

[1] https://archive.is/KhbuI

Can't anything just be intrinsically bad anymore, for practically everyone? Crypto scams and ubiquitous surveillance would be on my list, for example.

A lot (most?) of the public would say that child exploitative imagery is just such a 1-bit issue: we should always come down on it as hard as possible with whatever powers necessary. But a lot of the more libertarian/free-speech type thinkers that are highly represented on HN think that it is not by any means a black and white/1-bit issue, that it’s actually really nuanced.

On the other hand blockchain and Internet ads and seemingly little else routinely get the 1-bit treatment on HN all the time: GP is going grey at the time of writing for saying roughly that crypto hurts orphans.

I don’t understand this, and since my theories about why tend to be pretty polarizing I’ll leave it at: I’m against 1-bit thinking on HN. I’m guilty of it sometimes, but I try not to be.

Edit: Misread GP with apologies. I think the larger point stands.

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