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Ask HN: What is the HN of Cryptocurrency?

43 points| GGfpc | 4 years ago | reply

Hackernews is what I would consider a website with solid discussion about technology. However it's extremely skeptical when it comes to cryptocurrency.

I'd like know if there is a similar technically minded community for crypto.

I sometimes read /r/CryptoCurrency but its mostly shilling and asking about prices, so it doesn't really interest me.

78 comments

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[+] namdnay|4 years ago|reply
HN is extremely skeptical about everything, because being skeptical about unproven things is a pretty important part of being an engineer
[+] astoor|4 years ago|reply
HNers are often skeptical of all new unproven technology, but have a begrudging acceptance of established and proven technology. The thing with cryptocurrency is that it has now been around for over a decade, and not delivered on any of its ever evolving promises in that time. As a result, most knowledgeable and impartial observers would say it has fundamental flaws that it will prevent it from ever being able to do so.

Speaking personally, I know I was really interested in some of the Bitcoin technology in the early days, and super excited about the idea of a "world computer" that could never be shut down with Ethereum. But the more I dug into the technology, the more I realised the gap between what was promised and what was possible was pretty much insurmountable. However, the more time I spent in tech meetups etc. and understood the human nature angle to it, the more I realised that the gap wasn't actually important - most cryptocurrency people weren't particularly interested in delivering a genuine functioning new financial system (albeit one lacking the basic consumer protections of the existing financial system) they were just interested in convincing enough people that it was possible for long enough to get rich quickly.

[+] luka-birsa|4 years ago|reply
I've had a lot of interesting debates in the comment section and I fully agree with the OP. He's calling it skeptical, but I'd say HN is an order of magnitude more skeptical about blockchain than any other topic. I'd pick a much harsher word.

As a blockchain / crypto enthusiast I'm actually unable to have a meaningful discussion on HN. It's gotten to the point where I can't even bother to share my views in the comments as it's not worth it. People are so dismissive and set that blockchain is a scam, that every debate becomes so heated with people reiterating the same position over and over.

So I fully agree with OP - a HN-like community, where people can discuss the non-price aspect of crypto and BC would be nice. I hate reddit and twitter as most of discussions seem price driven.

[+] cle|4 years ago|reply
This is something I struggle with personally, because over the years I've trained my brain to look for weaknesses and reasons to say "no". It drives my wife nuts, because she sees it as being pessimistic about everything. To some extent it is, because I can very easily rattle off lists of "why that won't work" or "what's wrong with that", but it's a challenge for me to come up with lists of "why that would work".

So unsuprisingly, she's CEO of a growing and successful startup, while I still nitpick design and code reviews all day!

Personally, I try to be mindful of my kneejerk "pessimism" and skepticism, and try to balance it with optimism and acknowledging that it's a lot harder for me to identify opportunities than weaknesses.

[+] enumjorge|4 years ago|reply
To be fair, I remember HN being initially pretty positive on Bitcoin and blockchains. That’s when crypto discussions were mostly centered around the potential of the tech. But once Bitcoin became a speculative trading darling, the distance between the hype (remember when everyone wanted to use blockchain for everything?) and the reality of what the tech could do grew bigger and bigger. I think that’s when opinions soured and you started seeing more skepticism on HN.

So yes, the HN crowd as a group aren’t cheerleaders for crypto, but IMHO it’s for good reason.

[+] ceilingcorner|4 years ago|reply
Sorry but no. While every community that portrays itself as “rational” would like to think that it is unbiased and skeptical toward everything, the same basic human social dynamics still apply. HN is aggressively anti-crypto to the point where I don’t even bother reading comments on related links. It’s become a Pavlovian 2 minutes hate, every. Single. Time.
[+] jstummbillig|4 years ago|reply
Is it though? Being a skeptic is fairly easy and not that valuable when it comes to doing stuff.
[+] ourcat|4 years ago|reply
I agree. I see HN as a kind of "peer review" of submitted links and information.
[+] uberswe|4 years ago|reply
I always like to look back at the "Show HN: Dropbox" thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863) and look at the comments like "For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account" :)

I think most engineers try to think more critically than the general population.

[+] doomroot|4 years ago|reply
https://stacker.news/ Is really fun if you’re interested in primarily bitcoin.

You can authenticate yourself with a tiny tiny bitcoin payment over the lightning network.

[+] k00b|4 years ago|reply
Hey, I'm the founder on SN. Thanks for the mention! You generated some extra traffic today.

There actually isn't a cost to using Lightning Login (lnurl-auth). It operates without really touching the Lightning Network, i.e. a channel. It just uses your Lightning wallet's key pair to authenticate you.

More on login: through the QR code (or lnurl string), I effectively send your wallet a randomly generated string, a challenge, it signs it using a deterministically derived key pair using my domain and your wallet key pair, then hits an endpoint on my server with the signature which authenticates you.

[+] bubersson|4 years ago|reply
Stacker News has some solid content and features. Yeah, check it out!
[+] deevolution|4 years ago|reply
HN is full of disgruntled haters. There are lots of DAOs that discuss crypto. I recently joined the FWB DAO https://www.fwb.help/ which has a pretty vibrant community. The one caveat is that you need to prove you own 75 FWB tokens to gain access (subject to change based on a seasonal community vote). The benefit is that it keeps spammers out. Generally the discussions and community members have been pretty high quality.
[+] wayoutthere|4 years ago|reply
The profit incentive in crypto created a real incentive to creating and exploiting asymmetric / proprietary information that mirrors existing finance markets. The sad truth is that this causes basically every crypto community to devolve into shilling and pricing discussions. It’s the same thing you see with stocks; anyone willing to give you insight into the market is likely playing the other side.

Even technical discussions devolve into arguments about how things will be priced; but this is all because everyone is trying to make their altcoin a meme and become rich. When success equals a huge payday and the risk to shilling is so low, it infiltrates all discussion around a topic.

[+] mckmk|4 years ago|reply
I'm not 100% clear if you're looking for a pro crypto currency community that has thoughtful technical discussions OR a community that is more focused about being skeptical of crypto currency. I don't know of anywhere good for the former but if it's skepticism - https://www.reddit.com/r/Buttcoin/ is the only place I know of that is focused on criticism and mocking of crypto currency and the related community.
[+] ArtWomb|4 years ago|reply
Rekt.news. Where else can you find this elite level of forensic analysis combined with wild speculation. Exploits will prove far more interesting historically than funding rounds in these still nascent days of early BTC adoption ;)

https://rekt.news/polynetwork-rekt/

[+] planb|4 years ago|reply
Searching for a bubble that reinforces your existing views is probably not the best way to learn more about any given topic.
[+] mhluongo|4 years ago|reply
Maybe, but I'm not learning about STARKs or other interesting proof tech on HN, nor am I seeing anything around protocol design or incentive systems... All interesting topics related to cryptocurrency.

The bias HN has here is fine if that's what the community wants, but don't pretend there aren't valuable discussions that aren't better had elsewhere.

[+] navd|4 years ago|reply
Pretty much Twitter at this point for me. There's too much pessimism on HN when it comes to crypto. I appreciate criticism but Twitter has all the deep thinkers
[+] bidirectional|4 years ago|reply
Yes. Twitter is honestly much better for most topics, as long as you do a good job of curating who you follow.

Practially any deep topic on HN is 90% just people with no expertise making pronouncements or asking for it to be explained to them. It's still worth reading for the occasional insight from the minority, though.

[+] oauea|4 years ago|reply
Ah yes those 280 character tweets lend themselves extremely well to deep thought.
[+] Zealotux|4 years ago|reply
I'm new to Twitter, always have been a Luddite when it comes to it but I'm curious to try, any advice on how to find quality accounts to follow?
[+] brontoski|4 years ago|reply
The Daily Ape by Darren Lau (t.me/thedailyape) The Bankless podcast/newsletter

These are some solid news sources, if you don't have time to follow everyone on twitter

[+] tedk-42|4 years ago|reply
a) I hand my friend a $1 coin/note.

b) I socialise the transaction and have everyone try be the first to crack an algorithm that proves I've given my friend a cryptocoin worth $1

There's a community out there claiming one solves a bunch of problems the other had. You tell me...

[+] throw149102|4 years ago|reply
You might have more success looking for a HN of cryptography, rather than cryptocurrency. That is, if you want an understanding of the mathematics and solid discussions about the technology. If you look for discussions on the economics/finance, well it's no surprise you're only going to find pump-and-dump schemes and scams and shilling and BS.
[+] ceilingcorner|4 years ago|reply
If you can deal with the finance-speak and excessive hustlerism, Bowtied Bull on Substack has some interesting commentary. Their old blog (Wall Street Playboys) was equally as interesting as it was offputting.
[+] ir2eis5k|4 years ago|reply
Perhaps check out 1729.com, Balaji Srinivasan's newsletter/community building effort. The project is pretty optimistic re: using cryptocurrency's properties for positive goals.
[+] joaovitor|4 years ago|reply
# Multireddit

I created a multireddit to this and I use it to read information on the topic. https://www.reddit.com/user/jvlg/m/cryptocurrencies/

@GGfpc I think that this is a good way of tracking a topic in depth.

# Create a youtube channel to track a topic

You can create a youtube channel per topic of interest and use it to subscribe to channels related to the topic and even publish some content on it later.

[+] andrewtbham|4 years ago|reply
Follow the right people on twitter. I would start by following different crypto projects or topics on twitter. And then people that have interesting tweets.. look at their feed and follow.

Here is a bitcoin topic I follow https://twitter.com/i/topics/1007360414114435072

[+] tarokun-io|4 years ago|reply
I did that for 3 years, then stopped.

The signal-to-noise ratio is depressing.

[+] k00b|4 years ago|reply
You can join us on https://stacker.news if you're into Bitcoin. I'm the maker.

It appears even this question was heavily downvoted based on its rank and timing relative to older, fewer upvoted Ask posts.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

[+] freebuju|4 years ago|reply
You are on your own here. Every one you'll ever meet on crypto forums is 99% of the time trying to get you to buy whatever shiny butt coin it is that they are holding. There are no exceptions to this rule.