The Cruelty of Crypto | Hacker News Reader

The Cruelty of Crypto

aeon.co

26 pointspseudolus24 comments

In early 2017, due to some fortuitous circumstances, I got involved in investing in a cryptocurrency mining pool. Thanks to the crazy surge in cryptocurrency values that year, I made some money and still hold onto some BTC.

Because of this, in 2018, I once considered dedicating all my energy to the blockchain industry. However, after nearly half a year of in-depth research, I felt that it was really hard for the technology to generate practical value. By the way, I am a computer engineer with over ten years of work experience, having worked at some of the world's largest internet companies. So, blockchain technology was not magical to me.

I mean, the designs of BTC and ETH have their clever and interesting aspects, but at that time, I really couldn't see their practical application value. Therefore, I later diverted my time and career elsewhere. But I still worry that I made the wrong decision, so I kept a significant amount of BTC.

Why was this flagged? Oh wait. HN has an extreme hatred against crypto despite the article being about speculation in general.

This is no different to trading SPACs and doing options trading with stocks or crowdfunding with private companies that VCs are attempting to dump on retail either via secondary share sales in crowdfunding sites or on the public markets and they will never disclose their ownership until they have unloaded their shares on retail.

Can someone explain to me why, despite Coinbase and Kraken being headquartered in the Bay Area, HN hates cryptocurrency so much? It is literally just a neutral technology.

I'll explain it in a convoluted way. There is a saying that "knives don't kill people, other people do", which is statistically correct. Meaning that a vast majority of knives are utilized for benign purposes. And it is quite hard in multiple aspects to kill a person with a knife. Same saying can be used for guns, and suddenly not all agree with it. Because guns facilitate easier killing than a knife and simultaneously have smaller amount of benign purposes. And we can also use this saying for example for anthrax. Sure "anthrax" doesn't kill people, other people do. Despite that we don't allow people to buy anthrax freely, because there are no benign uses for it and killing ability is off the charts.

Tokens-as-a-currency is an example of this saying. Sure, they theoretically can be used for some benign legal uses, but technology and implementation is so bad that in practice it is never used as such (I repeat - for completely legal purposes). Most of the people using it are breaking some regulation or laws. Some people break laws in absurd amounts, stealing real money from the governments and funneling illicit gains into offshores.

So while most people can't formulate their aversion to the tokens, I think this is the subconscious reason for it - we are observing an unregulated anthrax in the financial world. The world which is corrupt and dysfunctional as is, but tokens destabilize and corrupt it even more now, making live of people shittier on average globally. And of course environmental aspect too.

> It is literally just a neutral technology.

It's not. It's a technology with big societal costs and few benefits.

But it is not, if it gets used mainly for one thing: scams and eluding taxes. It's like claiming social networks are a neutral technology. It's the lie that gets sold, but technologies are not neutral in themselves. They have underlying mechanics that lend themselves to particularly good or in some case bad use cases. If you could go back and flip a switch and Facebook never happens, would you do it? would you rather have the minimal good that came from it, or avoid that people get slaughtered in Myanmar because of social media amplification of fake news? Same for crypto.

How is the location relevant? I think the subtitle of the article presents the thesis clearly: Selling itself as the new American dream, crypto exposes the vulnerable to fraud and scams, and loads risk onto the poor

Except most of the article is not about crypto, but speculation in general. And the location is relevant because y combinator is about launching startups like Coinbase and Kraken, which have been extremely successful.

Hating a tech is a variation on the them of immaturity that powers The Subject Article itself.

I have over $60,000 worth of NFTs right now. Isn't that weird? I thought NFTs were dead?

Because you own NFTs, you are now incentivized to talk up NFTs, which have zero fundamental value.

They're fun. Only got any real value over the past few months.

That’s the kind of odd construction I frequently see from people shilling crypto.

Sure, think what you want

Is that $60,000 measured by what you paid for them, or what you can get for them?

Floor price of my most liquid NFTs. I paid less than $1000 for them over the past couple of years.

Neat. Floor as in the lowest you could liquidate for right now?

Yes

I would say... get back to us when you turn that into $60,000 worth of some actual currency. A lot of people thought they had millions in NFT's, until they tried to sell them.

I got a ~$19k airdrop of tokens for a new chain called Dymension for holding these NFTs. I cashed out $9300

Have fun staying rich :)

I asked bard to summarize:

> The article argues that cryptocurrency exploits the vulnerable and exposes them to scams, and that it reinforces existing inequalities. It claims that cryptocurrency does not level the playing field.

and then asked for 5 items:

> Cryptocurrency is often associated with the American Dream, but it is a cruel promise that exploits the vulnerable.

> Cryptocurrency is a volatile and risky investment, and many people have lost money investing in it.

> Cryptocurrency is often used for illegal activities, such as money laundering and drug trafficking.

> Cryptocurrency mining uses a lot of energy, which is harmful to the environment.

> Cryptocurrency is not a regulated industry, so there is no protection for investors if something goes wrong.

I don't think there's anything novel with this train of thought, if anything it's not surprising that the US has embraced crypto considering you could replace Cryptocurrency with Capitalism and the previous sentences would still sorta work.

As someone who's deep into the crypto field, what I find sad is that most modern cryptocurrencies do not use mining, but the main old one (Bitcoin) still does. The high amount of scam is really sad as well, but the upside is that crypto is quite transparent and so we can detect and even catch a lot of these guys (whereas the banking scams are much more opaque and most of them don't ever see the light of day)

> you could replace Cryptocurrency with Capitalism

Because cryptocurrency and markets for it are a little alien, it's easier to recognize their essential characteristics while assuming what I'm accustomed to is normal and natural and inherently correct and good.

But crypto is a mirror that helps me understand the essential characteristics of the money and markets that appear so normal.

Yes, cryptocurrency is not backed by anything, it's just a collective social delusion. Yes, free markets in cryptocurrency are rife with scams, they don't do a great job of discounting all available information, and they extract wealth from the many and deliver it efficiently to the few.

Cryptocurrency has the same structure, mechanics and inevitable outcomes as the dollars, euros, and markets that we all know, it only differs in degree.

> There are no more dreams of the good life.

Speak for yourself, O'Dwyer. There are copious get-rich-slow schemes that provide copious joy. My cup runneth over. Put on the big people pants and find a suitable community of faith.

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