I think toxicity from the anti-crypto crowd is basically inevitable at this point. It has been a decade of dumb claims and ridiculous assertions from the pro-crypto crowd. None of their claims have materially panned out. There's some promise in some places - mainly in the most nerdy corners of ETH, but it's still only promises.
Meanwhile, this long protracted failure has been accompanied by a massive increase in stupid, toxic, illegal, scammy behaviour in the crypto community. Even if you're curious about hearing how the latest project is justifying itself, you can't have a conversation about it because the entire conversation is dominated by memes and spam about other scam projects. At some point the reasonable thing to do is to say "No, actually this whole thing is just bad, and shouldn't be treated seriously". There's only so many times that you can humor the same lie. Web3, NFTs, DAOs, Altcoins, Smart Contracts, Stable coins. It's just the same grift repeated every 6 months. For every claim of how this tech could help someone there are thousands of people who have been harmed by scams using this tech.
>It has been a decade of dumb claims and ridiculous assertions from the pro-crypto crowd.
Agreed. For me it was the NFT'ing of a fart that was the jumping the shark moment that drove me from being merely a crypto skeptic to being vociferously anti-crypto and advocating against it at every turn.
"How can we create a more equitable financial system, where everyone has access to banking services?
How can we reduce the power that a small few currently hold over the web?
How can we improve data privacy and ensure that people have control over their personal information?
How can we create reasonable privacy in the financial system?
How can we make information more available to everyone?
How can we fix a society where so many people are in untenable financial situations?
How can we reduce the enormous wealth disparity in today’s society—both in the existing distribution of wealth but also in access to new opportunities to earn it?
How can we enable creatives to make a fair living from their art?
How can we address inequities on a global scale?
How can we create self-governing communities around shared interests or goals?"
Cryptocurrencies as a tech are not the answer for any of those questions, they could be a tool to support some of those things but as of now are not the most efficient way to improve those. Maybe the "movement" / hype behind cryptos could help but you have to an absolute uncynical person to think that given the types that are most loudely hyping it up, society won't be worse off in the end.
Bootstrapping a new cryptocurrency where 90% of the coins go to relatively few early adopters is the worst possible way to fix financial inequality.
The crypto holders would love if the world switched to using the cryptocurrency they’re invested in because it would make them extraordinarily wealthy relative to the average person buying in late.
I don’t understand how anyone can honestly suggest that a gradual changeover to a specific cryptocurrency would be anything other than disastrous for financial inequality.
Those are all political problems. Technology does not solve political problems. Politics solves political problems.
All cryptocurrency does is obfuscate the politics behind its monetary system. As flawed as our monetary system is, the politics behind it are visible and under control of a government. In my country, my government is elected, and I'm an active and informed voter.
Thus, I think the best way to solve those problems is to be an informed voter, vote, and encourage other countries to adopt democracies.
I think the article has a strange reasoning about crypto trying to "save the world".
For me it's pretty clear: individuals can now store and transfer value on the internet using a consensus algorithm. Plenty of you claim that it's enough to have a democracy that controls a central bank. That way you also have some kind of consensus on your value storing and trading. Problem is that this democracy/central bank is not stable in every country. So crypto provides real "internet money", with all benefits and drawbacks.
Whether that improves or worsens society, is purely a political question. But it's clear that cryptocurrencies try to live outside of governmental control, which is of course where most of the benefit comes from.
> How can we create a more equitable financial system, where everyone has access to banking services?
In the EU - easy - get rid of PSD2 which requires banks to add OTP before actions, account number and password are not good enough anymore.
Information and transaction providers now exist because of that but they require an application and a certificate that costs money.
If in the EU we get rid of those and go back to old "home banking computer interface" everyone can access their own account in an automated way.
Instead we now have to pay an external service which pays the state for certs each year to be able to automate our bank accounts.
This is essentially legal theft or a protection racket.
Image you have to pay a 3rd party for every sale you made. That is PSD2 in a nutshell.
Also easy - provide free bank accounts. Banks make enough money as is and are bailed out with citizens cash if they crash.
All crypto(currency) does is contribute to the pollution of the planet and provide no real value (progress). I'm not talking about all the scams that are going on in terms of value and I'm aware people got filthy rich by gaming the market, which isn't a market to be honest. It's a manipulative scheme, unregulated and I repeat myself, bad for the environment.
None of which is relevant to the core thesis of the post.
Ms. White's point, here, is that there shouldn't be so much toxicity directed at individuals taken in by the crypto hype in the desperate hope of getting ahead. That level of discourse should be directed at the influence peddlers and grifters who are drawing folks in in the first place.
The paragraph you quoted is intended to help set the stage for why folks who don't know any better might look at crypto as the answer to their financial fears and anxieties. Later she points out that "I don’t think they are a feasible solution, and in fact I think they will worsen many of the problems they ostensibly aim to solve, but they are certainly being sold as the solution, and a solution that people desperately need."
For anyone who reads the comments before the article, note that the article explicitly agrees with this point. What it's arguing is that many of the people attracted to crypto are there because they're desperate for answers to those questions or for help with their own situations, and that approaching them with hostility will drive them further into the grift instead of back out.
I mean, it’s great if crypto makes more people think about these questions, even if it’s not the answer. OTOH we’re also seeing it mess up problems for which perfectly valid solutions already exist. In Germany a couple “digital government” projects had a pretty bad start because they used blockchains where they likely didn’t have to.
I've done some, admittedly relatively shallow, thinking about the end results of "revolution" in various contexts, and the conclusion that I keep coming to is that revolutions only ever end up replacing the bums in the seats, whilst the position and structure of the seats remain.
I dabble in cryptocurrencies, but I can still see the inevitable inequality inherent in the rise to dominance of any one or small group of them.
I do have to say, however, that Vitalik Buterin says all the right things to appear as someone that does want to help the world be better. Separately to his creation which, if it dominated, would also not be a harbinger of equality for all.
How? By fostering balanced trade between nations. The Bancor was a good idea and that is why it wasn't adopted.
People should abandon the shared hallucination of believing money can have a physical manifestation. Money represents relationships between people. You can't own relationships without them becoming abusive.
People who maintain abusive relationships against the will of other people should be stopped and punished.
The way most cryptocurrencies are designed as if the people involved truly believe they can own someone else's time indefinitely.
Underlying all of our financial transactions is debt. Even an ACH transfer is a very temporary debt in a network of trust. That's why people with "bad credit" can't get accounts at traditional banks. This hurdle does not exist in crypto.
I'm not suggesting crypto is some panacea, but it does eliminate this very important problem for people on the bottom of the economic ladder.
Bitcoin in particular would be the absolute worst tool to use to fix any of these problems. It is 90% owned by a very small group of people. If it becomes more valuable, this will result in a significantly less equitable financial system.
> How can we create a more equitable financial system, where everyone has access to banking services?
Is a government mandate away. If you want it, got to the streets or call your representatives. In most countries, a simply executive decree is enough to get it.
Broadly, no political order functions in the absence of a moral society.
We've become rather fixated on the notion of systems that can somehow produce good outcomes no matter how vicious its members are. The problem here is that any political and social order is only as good as its members and governing bodies. There isn't some disembodied "system, out there" that can strap us all into externally imposed restraints and put us all in cages to constrain our bad actions. The quality of a society is absolutely dependent on its members respecting the common good which includes respecting good laws. (That's another point. Leaders are not free to impose any old law and claim it is legitimate. Laws can only determine the general good as proscribed by natural law, i.e., human nature.) Indeed, I wouldn't want to live in a society of savages in which a tyrant exercises such control. This is precisely the lesson to be learned from Hobbes' Leviathan: the more immoral a society becomes, the most governments clamp down to try to maintain order and the viability of that society.
That doesn't mean we can't discuss better or worse political orders. Indeed, political orders are determined by law and law by objective moral principle.
And a word on equality. So far, crypto seems to be a place for wild speculation and the amassing of (real or imagined) wealth by a relatively small number. That's probably a large part of the appeal, like the lottery. But more to the point: equality is not a virtue. Justice is. But who said we are all due the same? We're not. No two people are economically equally valuable (nor is economic value all there is). The problem is poverty, or the excess influence of money in politics and culture, or usury and left, or unjust pay, but not inequality. How is crypto a solution to these social problems, and in ways that surpass traditional currencies?
Cryptocurrencies might not answer to all of these questions. However there is one question where it gives an answer. It is how to create more efficient financial system. And part of this answer might lead to rebalancing some of distribution of the wealth, mostly by reducing operating costs and profit margins of the current Wall St and other local oligopolic financial institutions.
Blockchains do create fundamental value, not just speculative value. Tech people often dismiss this claim and do not want to analyse further. To demostrate this, I wrote a post where I am comparing stock and cryptocurrency trading venues and showing that a decentralised system is the most cost efficient choice at least with some data points and why it is so:
I don’t think there’s a bifurcation between “good” and “bad” people in crypto, the real world is a lot more grey, and how people behave doesn’t depend so much on their character, but on culture and incentives.
These days, we painfully observe the culture of crypto in every single online medium that isn’t very carefully moderated, for example Twitter.
And about incentives, I think it’s very hard not to become some kind of “evangelist” or “shill” when a significant fraction of your net worth is invested in a digital item whose sole value depends on enough other people also believing in the project. You need to spread the hype.
In my opinion, all of this would be fun and games if it weren’t for the massive negative externalities all of this cause in terms of environmental damage and accelerating the climate catastrophe. This is completely evident, which doesn’t stop some crypto holders from denying it with all kinds of illogical arguments. That’s understandable — see previous paragraph.
> In my opinion, all of this would be fun and games if it weren’t for the massive negative externalities all of this cause in terms of environmental damage and accelerating the climate catastrophe.
The climate externalities are significant, but they're not the only problem. If the whole cryptocurrencies space shifted to Proof of Stake tomorrow, cryptocurrencies would still have a tremendously bad effect by increasing wealth inequality (because just as with Proof of Work, it's baked in to the code).
>I don’t think there’s a bifurcation between “good” and “bad” people in crypto
"The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either — but right through every human heart."
and
"If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being."
You have many cryptos with completely negligible environmental impact, thanks to smarter consensus mechanisms. It's a really new tech field, and as almost everything in tech, it improves over time.
Use the state to fix failures of the state? There's a weird cyclic optimism here that I don't think can really be supported by the facts. After all, those who write a law can just as easily add addendum to that law, or remove it all together. Even with equal banking laws, there's always going to be an individual who the state deems as less equal than others. That's just how it's always been.
Its bizarre that this is such an unpopular idea, when if posted in a thread about anything other than crypto, it'd likely not be scoffed at this hard.
The crypto world is full of serious, borderline genius innovation as well as scammers and lies. I don't know why people can't accept that both can be true at the same time.
What percentage of emails sent in the world are legitimate vs spam? I don't think in principle we care about the volume of BS, we only care about how easily we can filter it out from the genuine stuff. I think over time our ability to do that will get better.
Once crypto as a platform has more useful products, it'll be more obvious that it's worth it to put in the work to filter out the BS. For now, I can see why it's not so obvious. But don't be disappointed that you didn't get in early.
As a related information nugget, HashCash that popularised proof-of-work concept before Bitcoin, was originally designed a email spam prevention tool. Goes far back as 1997.
IMHO the problem with crypto is the very thing that its proponents cite as one of its key benefits, its decentralised nature.
We are told that crypto is supposedly a way to "stick it to the man", to fight those "evil banks/governments".
The trouble is that unlike fiat currency, there is no fundamental means of valuation. Crypto is worth what its worth on the day based largely or exclusively on entirely non-economic valuation, which is why its so incredibly volatile.
The trouble is that you cannot escape the truth that the world is based on trade. People make goods, people supply services and other people buy goods and buy services. People also buy and sell essential commodities. This happens both domestically and cross-border.
The value of fiat currency is ultimately tied to the economics of global, and therefore provides an objective means to value said currencies, both themselves and relative to other currencies.
You don't get that with crypto.
Well, you could argue that you do to a limited extent, but that limited extent would only make crypto comparible to emerging world fiat currency of some tiny country.... high-frequency boom and bust cycles, high volatility, potential for episodes of illiquidity etc.
The problem is that while these topics are interesting (and even crucial these days) they're often used in bad faith by people who are just in it because of the get-rich-quick scheme. You'll often see people push some cryptotoken using a thin veneer of political activism, saying that it's about taking control back or redistributing wealth etc... but it's rarely more than that.
In my experience if you attempt to push back and ask how exactly they propose to fix these problems they'll just resort to enumerating the failings of our current system (the 2008 crisis, wealth inequality, tax evasion by the wealthiest etc...) which is all fair, but how does cryptocurrency fix this? I'd argue that so far it's mostly demonstrated that it shares all these issues, only even more pronounced.
The pyramid scheme at the core of cryptocurrency poisons the well, that's the original issue with this entire thing. You can't have a good faith discussion when one side expects that they're going to be billionaires if things go their way. I acknowledge that there's definitely toxicity coming from us cryptoskeptics, but you have to acknowledge that these days easily 90% of any discussion involving cryptocurrencies is going to use shallow catchphrases pushed by people who don't understand the technology, don't understand basic economic principles and are just hoping that their $1000 in ShitCumShibaCoin is going to make them millionaires.
On top of that the cryptocurrency side has over a decade of unfulfilled promises to account for. As far as I'm concerned we've exhausted the discussion years ago. Any debate surrounding cryptocurrencies on HN from 2017 is equally as relevant today, there's no need to keep repeating the same arguments over and over again from both sides. So today I mostly dismiss anything cryptocurrency-related as a scam and move on. It works well, too.
I don't think I am ever going to get used to "crypto" meaning "cryptocurrency" and not "cryptography". Can't we just keep calling it "cryptocurrency"? I thought this article would be about the various misguided governments' attempts to outlaw cryptography.
In my view it is quite difficult to find insightful and civilized long-form discussion on the topic of crypto, compared to most other "controversial" topics I'm personally intersted in (e.g. geopolitics or economics). I might be mistaken – but it is my impression that the blockchain-space is fast growing and attracts a ton of intelligent people. Surely there must be a lot to talk about?
On reddit, the crypto-themed subreddits (that I know of) are almost entirely comprised of doom-and-gloom-sentiment and astroturfing, while subreddits outside of this bubble are reminiscent of HN, where specific crypto projects almost never reach the frontpage and if they do, the discussion is seldomly about specifics.
It's unfortunate that Bitcoin has become so mired in partisan politics.
For me its purpose is simple.
If my money is a representation of my time and effort, why should I accept the central banks' inflation "target" of even 2%, due to money printing? I don't see why anyone should be okay with that, particularly given that central banks rarely meet that target for long and more often than not overshoot by a significant amount.
It's insane to me that anyone should expect the purchasing power of their money to reduce, debasing their own time and effort. Why is that acceptable to people?
Crypto offers nothing but highly volatile securities trading. That can never accomplish any of the positive goals listed in the article. Simple realistic analysis is all that is necessary to reject crypto as currently offered as an agent of positive change. Having noble ideas or goals is no excuse for doing damage with inherently unstable technologies.
> If you feel the urge to “cyberbully” someone in crypto, direct it at the powerful players behind crypto projects that are actively taking advantage of the vulnerable.
Phrased like that, sure, how can anyone disagree?
But what about urging folks to not loose their shirts in a scam? Situations like going to a wedding, meeting up with relatives/family-friends, and finding out they're about to get involved in Amway, bizarre religions, Tony Robbins or other self-help guru's, or nutritional supplement scams? Does it ever work to intervene? Probably not often, but there's value in speaking to them about it. Same thing with crypto.
One useful thing you can do is to direct folks to the "Line Goes Up" video from Dan Olson (https://youtu.be/YQ_xWvX1n9g). It's an epic, 2 hour long take-down that's perhaps the most comprehensive and air-tight argument against crypto thus far. Does it convince people? I hope so. It should?
It pains me to see even smart progressive orgs like Popula (https://popula.com/) get themselves involved in crypto. And I don't want the most vulnerable people to be left "holding the bag" when this stuff inevitably pops.
Nowadays, I don't really discuss Bitcoin anymore with anyone.
The people who need it the most will ask questions like: "How can I send money from the EU to the Dominican Republic without paying 25% 'banking commissions'?" or "How can I help my mother in Jakarta to get money quickly?" and totally organically, we come to the conclusion that Bitcoin is the answer...
We in the West tend to be blind from the problems and solutions that the rest of humanity has found by using bitcoin...
You cannot solve contract/legal problems and wrong transactions through decentralization. You can't also make a democratic system act on every conflict. You assign a central authority to act on them and you select that authority through a democratic process, which is what we already have.
- I want to have a beer!
- ok, scan this QR, and accept the transaction
- there you go!
- thank you, here are your 5 beers
- oh, did I just pay for 5? I wanted 1! can you refund me and take these back?
- no can do! pretty sure you said 5!
You can convince the 51% to cancel the transaction or you can call the police. What would you do?
Bitcoin may fix some friction issues if it's integrated into the current financial system, but it'd then just be a very small cog in a giant machine.
You may not agree, it may also be that you do not want to agree, and it's ok.
Now if you start calling people toxic because they state what's obvious for them, you can never get a proper discussion. It's also a little red flag that should make you question if you are in a cult.
You can't get rich with bitcoin any more. That's a good thing and also separates the people who believe in better money, from the "get rich quick with crypto" types.
If you believe that Bitcoin is better money, then you also realize that we need just one Bitcoin. In this world view, every copy-cat project doesn't serve any purpose, other than making their founders and early investors rich.
Bitcoin toxicity stems from this mindset. Bitcoiners are anti-crypto. There has been so many broken promises, and so much lost money from newbies, that it's better to just defend toxically against every crypto project, rather trying to go through their arguments and trying to rationally invalidate them. You can safely assume that everything in crypto is a scam.
What level of economic activity in crypto is unrelated to speculative gain.
If you want to stop angry responses to claims for the value to economic process you need to be honest about the extent to which crypto is a game for massive speculative gain, pump and dump, washing and money laundering.
Use of public signed ledger to audit value flow and provide certainty to low doc activity like cash in Africa, payments to farmers worldwide, ending the game of 90 day credit and discounting for prompt payment, reducing rent seeking. All laudible.
But please instead of just listing them, give us some numbers.
It took me quite a while to understand what Bitcoin is about. Of course, decentralised systems are exciting tech, but what's really interesting is that Bitcoin focuses attention onto fundamental questions of society:
- How can we transport value through space at the speed of light?
- How can we transport value through time?
- How can we protect our life savings from inflation?
- How can we develop a free market of currencies which solves the issues of centrally controlled currencies?
- How can we align incentives such that we stop consuming low quality products that produce lots of waste and start valuing high quality products that last for decades?
- In general: How can we, as a society, enjoy the benefits of a low time preference?
Such questions are the reason why I believe Bitcoin is one of the most disruptive technologies of our century.
I just want to say that I really appreciate the writing style in this article. I consider crypto a highly-politicized subject, but there are ways of talking about such things without getting political. Specifically:
But I also think that these proposed solutions are enormously attractive to people who see them as a tangible option in a world where these problems are not being solved—where we are being failed by our political establishments in so, so many ways.
I may disagree with the author about where to place blame, but I think saying "political establishments" is more authentic than "the government". At least in the US, it's We the People. We're the government. So when I hear anti-government sentiments, I generally start to discount whatever it is that the person is saying. Especially in this era, when the main problem is concentrated wealth in private institutions and corporations, who unlike the government, operate outside of election oversight. Meaning we can't throw them out of office when they do wrong.
And that's been my main concern with stuff like crypto. I feel the sentiment that the political establishment often lets us all down. But rather than creating an anarchist playground in crypto to get mathematically free of regulation, maybe it might have been good to put some energy into getting involved politically and solving the actual problems. Vote, raise money for non-establishment candidates, run for office, all that stuff.
The long game for crypto looks like any other unregulated game: winner takes all. Perfect wealth inequality. Whatever edge I think I may have to skim a little capital out of that pool, would only end up being used to exacerbate inequality as I take from someone else. Which is why I feel that the original goal of crypto to empower people (by bypassing the rules of the system) is only going to backfire and make things worse. Just like with trickle-down economics, the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act or any other policy that claimed it would enrich all but only enriched some.
We don't fix the evils of the system by feeding from it. We fix them by paying into the good, getting involved and doing the work.
[+] [-] Traster|3 years ago|reply
Meanwhile, this long protracted failure has been accompanied by a massive increase in stupid, toxic, illegal, scammy behaviour in the crypto community. Even if you're curious about hearing how the latest project is justifying itself, you can't have a conversation about it because the entire conversation is dominated by memes and spam about other scam projects. At some point the reasonable thing to do is to say "No, actually this whole thing is just bad, and shouldn't be treated seriously". There's only so many times that you can humor the same lie. Web3, NFTs, DAOs, Altcoins, Smart Contracts, Stable coins. It's just the same grift repeated every 6 months. For every claim of how this tech could help someone there are thousands of people who have been harmed by scams using this tech.
[+] [-] DebtDeflation|3 years ago|reply
Agreed. For me it was the NFT'ing of a fart that was the jumping the shark moment that drove me from being merely a crypto skeptic to being vociferously anti-crypto and advocating against it at every turn.
[+] [-] malthaus|3 years ago|reply
"How can we create a more equitable financial system, where everyone has access to banking services? How can we reduce the power that a small few currently hold over the web? How can we improve data privacy and ensure that people have control over their personal information? How can we create reasonable privacy in the financial system? How can we make information more available to everyone? How can we fix a society where so many people are in untenable financial situations? How can we reduce the enormous wealth disparity in today’s society—both in the existing distribution of wealth but also in access to new opportunities to earn it? How can we enable creatives to make a fair living from their art? How can we address inequities on a global scale? How can we create self-governing communities around shared interests or goals?"
Cryptocurrencies as a tech are not the answer for any of those questions, they could be a tool to support some of those things but as of now are not the most efficient way to improve those. Maybe the "movement" / hype behind cryptos could help but you have to an absolute uncynical person to think that given the types that are most loudely hyping it up, society won't be worse off in the end.
[+] [-] PragmaticPulp|3 years ago|reply
The crypto holders would love if the world switched to using the cryptocurrency they’re invested in because it would make them extraordinarily wealthy relative to the average person buying in late.
I don’t understand how anyone can honestly suggest that a gradual changeover to a specific cryptocurrency would be anything other than disastrous for financial inequality.
[+] [-] gwbas1c|3 years ago|reply
Those are all political problems. Technology does not solve political problems. Politics solves political problems.
All cryptocurrency does is obfuscate the politics behind its monetary system. As flawed as our monetary system is, the politics behind it are visible and under control of a government. In my country, my government is elected, and I'm an active and informed voter.
Thus, I think the best way to solve those problems is to be an informed voter, vote, and encourage other countries to adopt democracies.
[+] [-] koonsolo|3 years ago|reply
That is most definitely a political question.
I think the article has a strange reasoning about crypto trying to "save the world".
For me it's pretty clear: individuals can now store and transfer value on the internet using a consensus algorithm. Plenty of you claim that it's enough to have a democracy that controls a central bank. That way you also have some kind of consensus on your value storing and trading. Problem is that this democracy/central bank is not stable in every country. So crypto provides real "internet money", with all benefits and drawbacks.
Whether that improves or worsens society, is purely a political question. But it's clear that cryptocurrencies try to live outside of governmental control, which is of course where most of the benefit comes from.
[+] [-] adalu|3 years ago|reply
In the EU - easy - get rid of PSD2 which requires banks to add OTP before actions, account number and password are not good enough anymore. Information and transaction providers now exist because of that but they require an application and a certificate that costs money.
If in the EU we get rid of those and go back to old "home banking computer interface" everyone can access their own account in an automated way.
Instead we now have to pay an external service which pays the state for certs each year to be able to automate our bank accounts.
This is essentially legal theft or a protection racket.
Image you have to pay a 3rd party for every sale you made. That is PSD2 in a nutshell.
Also easy - provide free bank accounts. Banks make enough money as is and are bailed out with citizens cash if they crash.
All crypto(currency) does is contribute to the pollution of the planet and provide no real value (progress). I'm not talking about all the scams that are going on in terms of value and I'm aware people got filthy rich by gaming the market, which isn't a market to be honest. It's a manipulative scheme, unregulated and I repeat myself, bad for the environment.
[+] [-] BaseballPhysics|3 years ago|reply
Ms. White's point, here, is that there shouldn't be so much toxicity directed at individuals taken in by the crypto hype in the desperate hope of getting ahead. That level of discourse should be directed at the influence peddlers and grifters who are drawing folks in in the first place.
The paragraph you quoted is intended to help set the stage for why folks who don't know any better might look at crypto as the answer to their financial fears and anxieties. Later she points out that "I don’t think they are a feasible solution, and in fact I think they will worsen many of the problems they ostensibly aim to solve, but they are certainly being sold as the solution, and a solution that people desperately need."
[+] [-] JackC|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pgorczak|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] duxup|3 years ago|reply
There are some nice ideas there, but in practice everyone seems out to "get theirs".
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] BLKNSLVR|3 years ago|reply
I dabble in cryptocurrencies, but I can still see the inevitable inequality inherent in the rise to dominance of any one or small group of them.
I do have to say, however, that Vitalik Buterin says all the right things to appear as someone that does want to help the world be better. Separately to his creation which, if it dominated, would also not be a harbinger of equality for all.
[+] [-] User23|3 years ago|reply
More to the point, how can we create a more equitable financial system, where everyone has access to a banking license?
[+] [-] imtringued|3 years ago|reply
People should abandon the shared hallucination of believing money can have a physical manifestation. Money represents relationships between people. You can't own relationships without them becoming abusive.
People who maintain abusive relationships against the will of other people should be stopped and punished.
The way most cryptocurrencies are designed as if the people involved truly believe they can own someone else's time indefinitely.
[+] [-] Consultant32452|3 years ago|reply
I'm not suggesting crypto is some panacea, but it does eliminate this very important problem for people on the bottom of the economic ladder.
[+] [-] crypot|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mr_spothawk|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marcosdumay|3 years ago|reply
> How can we create a more equitable financial system, where everyone has access to banking services?
Is a government mandate away. If you want it, got to the streets or call your representatives. In most countries, a simply executive decree is enough to get it.
[+] [-] bobthechef|3 years ago|reply
We've become rather fixated on the notion of systems that can somehow produce good outcomes no matter how vicious its members are. The problem here is that any political and social order is only as good as its members and governing bodies. There isn't some disembodied "system, out there" that can strap us all into externally imposed restraints and put us all in cages to constrain our bad actions. The quality of a society is absolutely dependent on its members respecting the common good which includes respecting good laws. (That's another point. Leaders are not free to impose any old law and claim it is legitimate. Laws can only determine the general good as proscribed by natural law, i.e., human nature.) Indeed, I wouldn't want to live in a society of savages in which a tyrant exercises such control. This is precisely the lesson to be learned from Hobbes' Leviathan: the more immoral a society becomes, the most governments clamp down to try to maintain order and the viability of that society.
That doesn't mean we can't discuss better or worse political orders. Indeed, political orders are determined by law and law by objective moral principle.
And a word on equality. So far, crypto seems to be a place for wild speculation and the amassing of (real or imagined) wealth by a relatively small number. That's probably a large part of the appeal, like the lottery. But more to the point: equality is not a virtue. Justice is. But who said we are all due the same? We're not. No two people are economically equally valuable (nor is economic value all there is). The problem is poverty, or the excess influence of money in politics and culture, or usury and left, or unjust pay, but not inequality. How is crypto a solution to these social problems, and in ways that surpass traditional currencies?
[+] [-] c0mptonFP|3 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] miohtama|3 years ago|reply
Blockchains do create fundamental value, not just speculative value. Tech people often dismiss this claim and do not want to analyse further. To demostrate this, I wrote a post where I am comparing stock and cryptocurrency trading venues and showing that a decentralised system is the most cost efficient choice at least with some data points and why it is so:
https://tradingstrategy.ai/blog/most-efficient-market-is-on-...
[+] [-] codeflo|3 years ago|reply
These days, we painfully observe the culture of crypto in every single online medium that isn’t very carefully moderated, for example Twitter.
And about incentives, I think it’s very hard not to become some kind of “evangelist” or “shill” when a significant fraction of your net worth is invested in a digital item whose sole value depends on enough other people also believing in the project. You need to spread the hype.
In my opinion, all of this would be fun and games if it weren’t for the massive negative externalities all of this cause in terms of environmental damage and accelerating the climate catastrophe. This is completely evident, which doesn’t stop some crypto holders from denying it with all kinds of illogical arguments. That’s understandable — see previous paragraph.
[+] [-] NoGravitas|3 years ago|reply
The climate externalities are significant, but they're not the only problem. If the whole cryptocurrencies space shifted to Proof of Stake tomorrow, cryptocurrencies would still have a tremendously bad effect by increasing wealth inequality (because just as with Proof of Work, it's baked in to the code).
[+] [-] HideousKojima|3 years ago|reply
"The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either — but right through every human heart."
and
"If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being."
-Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
[+] [-] asterix_pano|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nix0n|3 years ago|reply
Right, there's only bad people.
The bifurcation is between money laundering people and Ponzi scheme people.
[+] [-] keskival|3 years ago|reply
The same as national health insurance. You make a law that everyone must be served by the banks. Easy.
[+] [-] trutannus|3 years ago|reply
Its bizarre that this is such an unpopular idea, when if posted in a thread about anything other than crypto, it'd likely not be scoffed at this hard.
[+] [-] throwaway2037|3 years ago|reply
See: https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/financial-pr...
[+] [-] obelos|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] ea550ff70a|3 years ago|reply
LMAO. we wish bud.
[+] [-] garbanz0|3 years ago|reply
What percentage of emails sent in the world are legitimate vs spam? I don't think in principle we care about the volume of BS, we only care about how easily we can filter it out from the genuine stuff. I think over time our ability to do that will get better.
Once crypto as a platform has more useful products, it'll be more obvious that it's worth it to put in the work to filter out the BS. For now, I can see why it's not so obvious. But don't be disappointed that you didn't get in early.
[+] [-] miohtama|3 years ago|reply
http://www.hashcash.org/
[+] [-] traceroute66|3 years ago|reply
We are told that crypto is supposedly a way to "stick it to the man", to fight those "evil banks/governments".
The trouble is that unlike fiat currency, there is no fundamental means of valuation. Crypto is worth what its worth on the day based largely or exclusively on entirely non-economic valuation, which is why its so incredibly volatile.
The trouble is that you cannot escape the truth that the world is based on trade. People make goods, people supply services and other people buy goods and buy services. People also buy and sell essential commodities. This happens both domestically and cross-border.
The value of fiat currency is ultimately tied to the economics of global, and therefore provides an objective means to value said currencies, both themselves and relative to other currencies.
You don't get that with crypto.
Well, you could argue that you do to a limited extent, but that limited extent would only make crypto comparible to emerging world fiat currency of some tiny country.... high-frequency boom and bust cycles, high volatility, potential for episodes of illiquidity etc.
[+] [-] simias|3 years ago|reply
In my experience if you attempt to push back and ask how exactly they propose to fix these problems they'll just resort to enumerating the failings of our current system (the 2008 crisis, wealth inequality, tax evasion by the wealthiest etc...) which is all fair, but how does cryptocurrency fix this? I'd argue that so far it's mostly demonstrated that it shares all these issues, only even more pronounced.
The pyramid scheme at the core of cryptocurrency poisons the well, that's the original issue with this entire thing. You can't have a good faith discussion when one side expects that they're going to be billionaires if things go their way. I acknowledge that there's definitely toxicity coming from us cryptoskeptics, but you have to acknowledge that these days easily 90% of any discussion involving cryptocurrencies is going to use shallow catchphrases pushed by people who don't understand the technology, don't understand basic economic principles and are just hoping that their $1000 in ShitCumShibaCoin is going to make them millionaires.
On top of that the cryptocurrency side has over a decade of unfulfilled promises to account for. As far as I'm concerned we've exhausted the discussion years ago. Any debate surrounding cryptocurrencies on HN from 2017 is equally as relevant today, there's no need to keep repeating the same arguments over and over again from both sides. So today I mostly dismiss anything cryptocurrency-related as a scam and move on. It works well, too.
[+] [-] mnw21cam|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] S6eUL|3 years ago|reply
On reddit, the crypto-themed subreddits (that I know of) are almost entirely comprised of doom-and-gloom-sentiment and astroturfing, while subreddits outside of this bubble are reminiscent of HN, where specific crypto projects almost never reach the frontpage and if they do, the discussion is seldomly about specifics.
[+] [-] Quindecillion|3 years ago|reply
For me its purpose is simple.
If my money is a representation of my time and effort, why should I accept the central banks' inflation "target" of even 2%, due to money printing? I don't see why anyone should be okay with that, particularly given that central banks rarely meet that target for long and more often than not overshoot by a significant amount.
It's insane to me that anyone should expect the purchasing power of their money to reduce, debasing their own time and effort. Why is that acceptable to people?
[+] [-] m0llusk|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] crispyambulance|3 years ago|reply
Phrased like that, sure, how can anyone disagree?
But what about urging folks to not loose their shirts in a scam? Situations like going to a wedding, meeting up with relatives/family-friends, and finding out they're about to get involved in Amway, bizarre religions, Tony Robbins or other self-help guru's, or nutritional supplement scams? Does it ever work to intervene? Probably not often, but there's value in speaking to them about it. Same thing with crypto.
One useful thing you can do is to direct folks to the "Line Goes Up" video from Dan Olson (https://youtu.be/YQ_xWvX1n9g). It's an epic, 2 hour long take-down that's perhaps the most comprehensive and air-tight argument against crypto thus far. Does it convince people? I hope so. It should?
It pains me to see even smart progressive orgs like Popula (https://popula.com/) get themselves involved in crypto. And I don't want the most vulnerable people to be left "holding the bag" when this stuff inevitably pops.
[+] [-] janandonly|3 years ago|reply
The people who need it the most will ask questions like: "How can I send money from the EU to the Dominican Republic without paying 25% 'banking commissions'?" or "How can I help my mother in Jakarta to get money quickly?" and totally organically, we come to the conclusion that Bitcoin is the answer...
We in the West tend to be blind from the problems and solutions that the rest of humanity has found by using bitcoin...
See also: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/check-your-financial-pri...
[+] [-] tarkin2|3 years ago|reply
It starts your argument with: "Those who disagree with me are poison".
[+] [-] egeozcan|3 years ago|reply
- I want to have a beer!
- ok, scan this QR, and accept the transaction
- there you go!
- thank you, here are your 5 beers
- oh, did I just pay for 5? I wanted 1! can you refund me and take these back?
- no can do! pretty sure you said 5!
You can convince the 51% to cancel the transaction or you can call the police. What would you do?
Bitcoin may fix some friction issues if it's integrated into the current financial system, but it'd then just be a very small cog in a giant machine.
You may not agree, it may also be that you do not want to agree, and it's ok.
Now if you start calling people toxic because they state what's obvious for them, you can never get a proper discussion. It's also a little red flag that should make you question if you are in a cult.
[+] [-] Geee|3 years ago|reply
If you believe that Bitcoin is better money, then you also realize that we need just one Bitcoin. In this world view, every copy-cat project doesn't serve any purpose, other than making their founders and early investors rich.
Bitcoin toxicity stems from this mindset. Bitcoiners are anti-crypto. There has been so many broken promises, and so much lost money from newbies, that it's better to just defend toxically against every crypto project, rather trying to go through their arguments and trying to rationally invalidate them. You can safely assume that everything in crypto is a scam.
[+] [-] whywhywhywhy|3 years ago|reply
I don't think Crypto is a "more equitable financial system" but it is a more equal one.
[+] [-] ggm|3 years ago|reply
If you want to stop angry responses to claims for the value to economic process you need to be honest about the extent to which crypto is a game for massive speculative gain, pump and dump, washing and money laundering.
Use of public signed ledger to audit value flow and provide certainty to low doc activity like cash in Africa, payments to farmers worldwide, ending the game of 90 day credit and discounting for prompt payment, reducing rent seeking. All laudible.
But please instead of just listing them, give us some numbers.
[+] [-] Capira|3 years ago|reply
- How can we transport value through space at the speed of light?
- How can we transport value through time?
- How can we protect our life savings from inflation?
- How can we develop a free market of currencies which solves the issues of centrally controlled currencies?
- How can we align incentives such that we stop consuming low quality products that produce lots of waste and start valuing high quality products that last for decades?
- In general: How can we, as a society, enjoy the benefits of a low time preference?
Such questions are the reason why I believe Bitcoin is one of the most disruptive technologies of our century.
[+] [-] zackmorris|3 years ago|reply
But I also think that these proposed solutions are enormously attractive to people who see them as a tangible option in a world where these problems are not being solved—where we are being failed by our political establishments in so, so many ways.
I may disagree with the author about where to place blame, but I think saying "political establishments" is more authentic than "the government". At least in the US, it's We the People. We're the government. So when I hear anti-government sentiments, I generally start to discount whatever it is that the person is saying. Especially in this era, when the main problem is concentrated wealth in private institutions and corporations, who unlike the government, operate outside of election oversight. Meaning we can't throw them out of office when they do wrong.
And that's been my main concern with stuff like crypto. I feel the sentiment that the political establishment often lets us all down. But rather than creating an anarchist playground in crypto to get mathematically free of regulation, maybe it might have been good to put some energy into getting involved politically and solving the actual problems. Vote, raise money for non-establishment candidates, run for office, all that stuff.
The long game for crypto looks like any other unregulated game: winner takes all. Perfect wealth inequality. Whatever edge I think I may have to skim a little capital out of that pool, would only end up being used to exacerbate inequality as I take from someone else. Which is why I feel that the original goal of crypto to empower people (by bypassing the rules of the system) is only going to backfire and make things worse. Just like with trickle-down economics, the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act or any other policy that claimed it would enrich all but only enriched some.
We don't fix the evils of the system by feeding from it. We fix them by paying into the good, getting involved and doing the work.