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Comment by OkayPhysicist | Hacker News Reader

> How is the bank's financial system any less "nonsense" than crypto?

When things go wrong in real money land, we have a whole legal framework with standing precedent and built up processes for resolving them. Nevermind the fact that I can just call up my local pizza place, give them a credit card number, and get a pizza. Over in the crypto-hellscape, ever since the fall of the big darknet markets, the only real use case for cryptocurrency is trying to convince other people that everybody's getting rich, so that you can sell them your cryptocurrency for real money. Or accepting a ransom for your malware attack. When the only three inhabited niches in your ecosystem are "speculator", "con artist", and "criminal", it's safe to write the entire thing off as "nonsense".

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Hmm, I use cryptocurrency on a daily basis, and my usage does not fall in any of those categories you listed.

It sounds like (correct me if I'm wrong), the "nonsense" that you see consists of two things: (1) a lack of integration with a legal framework, and (2) that your local pizza shop doesn't accept crypto.

Neither of those things are fundamental shortcomings of crypto though, as some pizza shops do accept cryptocurrency (just not as many), and custodial cryptocurrency is a thing if you're not into "being your own bank", which does give you some integration with the legal system (as long as your custodian is a law-abiding entity, like a well known company). As far as I'm aware, Brave's usage falls within that category.

If you're trusting the government to resolve your legal issues, you have a root of trust, invalidating the entire need for cryptocurrency. At that point you could just have an SQL DB operated by the Central Reserve. The use of money to affect the real world necessitates a level of trust that completely invalidates the point of a decentralized, trust-less monetary system.

The Silk Road was the last time anybody used cryptocurrency for anything useful, and beyond the criminality of it, crypto wasn't even particularly well-suited for that task. If I ever get asked for cryptocurrency at a pizza place, I suspect they'll have greeted me by inquiring about a fellow named Galt. At this point, nobody in the space is actually exchanging their "currency" for goods and services. They're treating it as a speculative asset. Meanwhile, the entire ecosystem is saturated with criminals, and not even of the kinda fun Silk Road kind. Just con artists, grifters, and the occasional ransomware connoisseur.

I get it, you have a vested interest in people not realizing this and letting the whole "economy" collapse. But as long as the only legal utility in having cryptocurrency is hoping that someone else will be stupid enough to buy it for more than you did, the whole thing is nonsense.

> Just con artists, grifters, and the occasional ransomware connoisseur. I get it, you have a vested interest in people not realizing this and letting the whole "economy" collapse.

I beg your pardon?

I am very aware of all of the fraudsters and rug pullers in cryptocurrency. Do you think I like them? Just as with the fraudsters in FED-world, I hope they all get sent to jail for the crimes they pull. There are criminals, frausters, and grifters, in any economic system of a meaningful size. It's just reality, and acting shocked about this doesn't make any sense.

As for "letting the whole 'economy' collapse", what on Earth are you talking about? I do not want the cryptocurrency economy to collapse, I want to see it grow. I think it's doing many incredibly important valuable things, like freeing humanity from digital slavery, and securing the Internet's broken X.509 system.

As for using a SQL DB - it sounds to me like you do not understand what cryptocurrencies are, why they exist, and why they are designed the way that they are. There are plenty of high-quality, free explainers out there, so I won't bore you with one here.

> As for using a SQL DB - it sounds to me like you do not understand what cryptocurrencies are, why they exist, and why they are designed the way that they are. There are plenty of high-quality, free explainers out there, so I won't bore you with one here.

"Do not cite the old magic at me, Witch". I am acutely acquainted with the concept of how cryptocurrencies work, which I must assume you aren't by your failure to engage in my very well suited analogy. The blockchain is a database. It's a kinda shitty one, in that there are higher performance, distributed, append-only databases, except for it's unique feature of being trust-less. Cryptocurrency builds on this technology by shoving transaction details in this database.

So, the only thing cryptocurrency has going for it over a well-sharded PostegreSQL DB is that lack of trust. If everybody has to trust one or more parties anyway, then there is no need for a blockchain.

To quickly address your other attempts to refute what I said: I'm not offended that there are fraudsters in the cryptocurrency space. I'm concerned with the fact that there are only fraudsters in the cryptocurrency space. If no one is using cryptocurrency for anything but speculation and crime, then the entire thing is a net harm to society. It's a somewhat-legal pyramid scheme (speculation) containing a multitude of illegal pyramid schemes, in addition to an assortment of other scams.

And I said you, you personally, have a vested interest in cryptocurrency continuing to exist. I'm presuming from your defense of the system that you are, like many others, engaged in the speculation on cryptocurrency. I said I get it: It is in your best interest to disagree with me. Because without those defenses, the market won't be able to attract new ~~suckers~~ sorry, "investors", and the speculation bubble will pop, leaving you holding the bag. I don't wish that upon you, but the longer a pyramid scheme runs, the more innocent people will be hurt when it inevitably collapses under its own weight.

> If everybody has to trust one or more parties anyway, then there is no need for a blockchain.

You sound very confused. Everyone does not need to trust one party. The system as a whole is trusted, or should I say, more trustworthy, because of its trustless nature. If you do not trust yourself to be the custodian of your own cryptocurrency, you are free to trust someone else instead.

> I'm concerned with the fact that there are only fraudsters in the cryptocurrency space.

That's just a lie and you know it. It doesn't sound like you are interested in a good-faith discussion, but are interested primarily in hating on cryptocurrencies. Anyway, you will be a user of cryptocurrencies in short time (as I mentioned above: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37163640 and here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37168477), so this conversation is somewhat silly.

> Because without those defenses, the market won't be able to attract new ~~suckers~~ sorry, "investors", and the speculation bubble will pop, leaving you holding the bag.

This again reveals your ignorance of cryptocurrencies. You are angry at something you do not understand. Do you display this sort of anger towards commodities too? If not, why not? They are no different from many cryptocurrencies. What about dollar bills? Do you start cursing at them?

Please tell me how you are using crypto on a DAILY basis. I get maybe using it once it a while for specific transactions but I can't imagine a scenario where I could use it every day.

Well between paying contractors, paying for goods/services, playing with defi (there are non-speculative uses for defi believe it or not), using group income, and paying the random person back for a meal I owe, it comes out to either daily or almost daily.

Don't worry as I mentioned you'll be using it daily soon too, except (unless I'm mistaken), it sounds like you might choose to use a cryptocurrency built from the ground up to surveil and control you, rather than one that's built from the ground up to enable permissionless transactions. To each their own.

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