Comment by smoldesu | Hacker News Reader

Comment by smoldesu | Hacker News Reader

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Some people are just like that. The same thing happens on the other side of the fence alarmingly often, where someone will claim Bitcoin is the second coming of Christ and sell their home before knowing basic technical details about the network. Or people who fully understand the system, and deliberately lie about a coin's functionality for petty gain. On either side there are people promoting altruistic regulation and acceleration, but at a larger scale we're mostly describing greedy businesses (on either side) and... put politely, "government dissidents".

So, as is the case with any meaningful investment, you have to ask "cui bono?" with cryptocurrency. Very plainly, you're risking normal money on a venture that doesn't promote anything other than greed and black market transactions. The hackers on this site will oppose it in favor of information freedom and a less money-influenced internet, and the greedy bastards will oppose it because they'd prefer one party owns everything from the start. It's a nuanced situation with lots of different people, good-faith or not, who will oppose or support cryptocurrency for the wrong or right reasons. It's straightforward and non-predatory to say that most people are better off keeping their pay-stub out of the alternative currency market.

I don't believe for a second that Bitcoin or any other DLT will be the world's reserve currency.

But the amount of hubris and preoccupation about this here on HN is really something else. I've long learned not to try to engage in any kind of serious discussion about possible interesting aspects.

I've been around cryptocurrency since around 2014, and I don't think the problem is hubris and preoccupation. People genuinely don't want cryptocurrency in their internet. The opportunity to spend more money online is not attractive to anyone. Conceptually Bitcoin and a lot of other networks can be nerd porn, but socially they are an unmitigated disaster. Self-custody wallets are like banks where individuals control their own money; a great idea until the scammers come by. By using managed-custody, you're not even owning P2P currency anymore and still exposing yourself to risk from a centralized institution. The broken "ownership" model caused thousands of people to lose their NFTs and tokens when exchanges went under or social engineers found their phone number.

Additionally, there are a lot of companies on HN that will try to sell you a terminal in an Electron webview for $9.99/month. Users on HN have to be diligent, so a lot of people will lash out against benign technology. Some of them probably also correctly identified scams and ran their owner out of town on a rail. That might be hubris, but I more think that both the investors and the inventors on HN are tired of reading "Yet Another Money Solution" after 10+ years of watching the old one collapse.

HN had a hate boner for crypto back in 2015 when I read about Ethereum here. Nothing has changed, it's a simple lack of curiosity and old men yelling at changes in the world.

It's not just crypto though, the same saturated dullness is shining through in other discussions as well.

> Very plainly, you're risking normal money on a venture that doesn't promote anything other than greed and black market transactions.

You could quite say the same about any privacy or encryption or really anything that protects you from a centralized entity taking your rights/property. It’s a bit absurd that people are really that blind that they think this is all there is to crypto. Your same logic would apply to dollars in that case as well.

I could say the same about privacy or encryption. It's probably why the average person doesn't care about either of those things when pressed.

Ideologically I'm not opposed to Bitcoin or the idea of it existing for the base it serves. It's too volatile to suggest for serious investment though, and it's reached an uncomfortable echelon of "nerd joke gone too far" for my taste. Real people do not need to waste life-hours learning about this when their local government invests in a clear and immediately fungible form of currency for them already. Investors should not be wasting life-hours learning about a perpetually-irrational investment when other industries are both safer investments and arguably more innovative.

> Your same logic would apply to dollars in that case as well.

It would, mostly. Most people who oppose the online adoption of crypto probably object to the same level of microtransaction in any currency.

How do bitcoins protect you from centralization when they are mostly used via coinbase and the likes?

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