bendtheblock

I am the author... long time HN reader (2009).... Eager to get other founder's feedback and thoughts experiences building an AI-first company today.

Molly White, David Gerard and a few other academics and researchers did a 'correction' of a recent NY Times fluff piece from March 2022 here.

https://www.mollywhite.net/annotations/latecomers-guide-to-c...

It seems as if NYT have a couple of relatively pro-crypto (or just naive) writers.

That was price fixing - nothing to do with the bank's ledger. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/libor-scandal.asp

That wasn't a change in the ledger - it was the misselling and fraudulent opening of accounts. And it was remediated, there was a change in the leadership and settlements to the victims. You're proving my point, as a system we do a decent job of enforcing good behaviour.

A better title would be Ledgers in historical perspective. The hypothetical he ends with (what if ledgers could be decentralised) is a classic example of blockchains looking for a problem. In recent history have there been examples of banks changing their own ledgers? As a civilisation we have already solved the problem of trust in a much more efficient way.

what's wrong with this comment?! that it's anti-crypto? currency needs to be a medium of exchange, unit of account, and store of value. Given its volatility, Bitcoin could only ever realistically be useful for the latter, and only then as a risky speculation.

but what's the benefit of these?

- decentralised: why is this good?

- trustless: I trust the companies I use, it works

- censure resistance: OK, fringe case for most

- pseudonymous: why do I want anyone to be able to see my transaction history?

Due to blockchain's architectural shortcomings, you need to do the transactions off chain. Fine...

But crypto-"currencies" are actually highly speculative assets (as South Africa declared today [1]). No bro will spend them - the ideology is to HODL for 100k remember [2]? Earnest patron saints like Laszlo Hanyecz bought two papa john’s pizzas in 2010 for what would be worth today roughly $200,000,000 [3]. They wanted a new currency, but today the purpose is speculation. The whole point is not to be the greater fool.

Bitcoin was never meant to be gold, it was meant to be spent. But that hasn't happened.

[1] https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-not-a-currency-south-...

[2] https://www.wealthsimple.com/en-ca/magazine/laser-eyes-crypt...

[3] https://www.the-sun.com/news/2935660/bitcoin-pizza-laszlo-ha...

The centralized nature of these oligopolies is a property of capitalism, i.e. capital consolidates power. You are saying that search, storage etc are centralised because of the tech? Why are they any more centralised than the other (pre-internet) examples I mentioned?

I think you're right about online fraud being much reduced with public private key tech, but if it's such a good idea why has no one been able to do it?

it does imply that the value doesn't stick - in fact that's exactly what I'm saying. there is no value beyond the expectation that another greater fool will buy it from you in future.

all money is political. good starting point: https://washingtonspectator.org/paranoia-on-parade/

What about JP Morgan and the Railroad Trusts? The big 4 accounting firms? Big pharma? The Magic Circle of Law Firms? I could keep going.

My question to you is: what's the problem? On the few times I've lost money to online fraud, the bank returned it to me.

Why does having a huge public web of transactions on the slowest ledger ever created help? What happens to your "sovereignty" when everyone can see your purchases patterns? What happens when grandma loses her wallet key?

re: Greece, worth hearing Yanis Varoufakis on crypto: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bS0W-Whl0T0

Flowers are used for decoration, dies, teas, scents. Sometimes they may be overvalued.

Crypto doesn't have any underlying value. It's just greater fool investing, there is no underlying cashflow, asset or company. Future cash flow comes from greater fools buying in.

When you say "the internet" I think you mean the wave of web1 companies? Same as flowers above, there are real uses and value creation, which can be priced in many ways.

not cryptographically no (and would be nice to see, but crypto is not the answer). But as a consumer when I shop online I never worry - if I am defrauded the (centralised) bank will give me the money back, that's the solution and it works for everyone

this is a pithy phrase with about as much logic as "Live, Laugh, Love"

nice rebuttal - but the "profitable and stable flower industry" is the trade of an underlying commodity with utility value i.e. the flowers. there is no such underlying asset with crypto. the part that is parallel is the rife speculation that left many bust.

the history of this type of speculation and others like it, that leaves many bust, was documented in Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds published in 1841 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_Popular_Delusion...

I don't follow the automatic assumption that giving the info to centralised entity like a bank is bad? What is that you are fearing? And why is that more likely than Crypto sinking or going to zero, you losing your wallet key or someone hacking your wallet? Code is law - so you're left with nothing.

agreed, but consolidation in this way is a property of _capitalism_, not of tech

but why? what advantage is there to using the slowest ledger ever created?

your last point isn't true - EMV cards with a chip (modern credit cards) use public key cryptography and don't reveal more than they need to to the merchant. Typing in the card numbers (or swiping it) will slowly stop in the US, as it has in most other developed countries by now.

I disagree with the rest also - mainly on the grounds that for a normal person, there isn't any benefit and as the OP says, the status quo is preferable

For anything to work efficiently in crypto it always needs to be centralised e.g. OpenSea, Coinbase. Both of which hilariously are backed by a16z. As Scott G says... "meet the new boss... it's your old boss"

More examples: Metamask, Moralis, Blockchain.com, Kraken, Binance

Ok - the non crypto bit of fintech. Basically anything else but this

Me again - lom this is the experiment you’re talking about: https://moxie.org/2022/01/07/web3-first-impressions.html

Regulation can’t come soon enough. These are risky assets at best. People are getting hurt.

Just think how much real tech talent has been wasted on this pointless experiment. This could have gone into fintech, greentech, healthtech, proptech etc anything else really that creates real value.

So true. Yes there are a minority making huge sums of money in crypto but most are young or naive people putting in savings they need and HODLing this trash until it sinks.

There is a moral imperative to stop crypto/NFTs/etc, especially from those most vulnerable to it, the young.

We are putting the planet in peril already without the existence of this pointless technology, which represents the first net-negative invention of Computer Science. As a discipline we must evolve to apply an ethical lens to what we do, just as other sciences have had to do with time.

I write about this position at webtwoboomer.com, flagged thread here about it here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31330281

author here - I am an exited founder looking for next thing - I dug so deep to find the value. This was my conclusion too.