Comment by taeric | Hacker News Reader

Comment by taeric | Hacker News Reader

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Right, I'm not really trying to get into an economics debate about currency. It is a far more nuanced topic than I care to discuss and is heavily "by definition" depending on when/where you are. (In particular, the easy "stupid" hypotheticals usually just boil down to strength of the one arguing.)

My point here was largely that I don't get where Stephenson was trying to argue. Even some of the points made in the slides are somewhat silly. If Jack's family could have sold their home to get enough money to build a new one and have food, they would have done so. But, of course, that wasn't the story. So trying to nitpick odd choices there are post-hoc justifications.

Are we just wanting to beat up on the silliness of scarcity in video game items? I mean, I'm all for that. It is silly. It is also silly that people are willing to pay money for the items. But that happens with or without market wide scarcity. (Just see the items in Candy Crush and its ilk.)

> It is also silly that people are willing to pay money for the items

That's his thesis. Crypto is useful, but not for game items, because there is nothing honorable worth buying with real money. Just like how no one should buy a certificate that says "I bought this certificate from someone who is really good at chess." Unless you are a patron of the art of playing the game, I guess, but that doesn't seem to be use case in practice.

Your certificate example reminds of people buying "prescriptions" for alcohol and such as collectibles. Or really, any collectible.

My counter argument was only to your comparison to paper money.

Ah, but that counter assumes that there isn't some transaction aid that crypto currency also brings.

I could easily imagine a world where I get "crypto currency" that I can use across games. If only so that trying a new game doesn't mean starting from zero for those that did build up a lot of stuff in another one.

> I could easily imagine a world where I get "crypto currency" that I can use across games.

Why would any company use a decentralized token to let you purchase things when they could simply make their own store currency/points and sell that instead? Look at all the F2P games that have in-game purchases, they all use points that are sold by the publisher that are bought with dollars because they make more money that way. There is no incentive to allow a decentralized currency you don’t control for in-game purchases.

Oh, agree that I don't imagine this world being likely. Just imagining that there is no reason these points have to be backed by US dollars. And if you gave people a way to transfer value from one game to another, they may take you up on it. Incentive would be to give a reason to jump worlds, as it were.

> I don't imagine this world being likely. Just imagining that there is no reason these points have to be backed by US dollars

There are so many hypotheticals and logical leaps here... This is not a useful argument anymore ... it's just you fantasizing.

I am out.

Apologies if I wasted time? I wasn't trying to push a useful argument for crypto in any way here. Just wanted to understand the argument of Stephenson.

If there is something there I should treat more seriously, I'm game.

>Ah, but that counter assumes that there isn't some transaction aid that crypto currency also brings.

Except it doesn't.

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