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Comment by louwrentius | Hacker News Reader

> Up until the invention of Bitcoin, there was ZERO scalable way for me @joeblau to send you @louwrentius money the way I send an email. By that, I mean the only thing I need to rely on is a protocol (like SMTP) and you'll receive it.

Maybe because it's not a need most people have?

> The problem is that money (paper money/currency) is not the only thing that has value which human beings transfer among each other. We share music, art, poetry, equity in companies, ideas, code, etc. What Ethereum does is take the idea of "Digital trustless money transfer" and expands it to "Digital trustless value transfer"

This still means nothing to me. I can't relate to this.

> Let's say I own TSLA stock and I want to sell it to you. I can't, without going through a middle-person. (they take cuts and fees..)

So it's about not wanting to pay transaction fees for buying stock. Hmm, doesn't really sell it to me, quite frankly.

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It's fine to criticize a technology and saying that you don't understand what problem it solves, but responding to every comment, even those that make clearly valid points, with "means nothing to me" and "not a problem for me" without any counterarguments is quite rude. These people are taking the time to answer your questions.

For example, intermediaries such as brokerages and banks taking money from your investments and selling your data (and order flow in the case of trading) is clearly inefficient and unnecessary, even if you don't care about it personally.

They make a pretty common point. Nobody around e.g. me has an ability to have even a glimpse of understanding what eth/crypto is except for speculation and low-tech fraud, and then for me "sharing value like art and album via crypto as a futuristic mean to share digital values" is bird-gibberish nonsense. General population will never be too smart on average to benefit from this "whatever".

The same is true about the majority of the workings of the internet, or the electrical engineering that built their phones or dozens of other things people use everyday without understanding. How is that relevant in this case?

Because laypeople know what benefit the internet or their phones provide. No layperson knows what the benefit of cryptocurrency is.

> laypeople know what benefit the internet

Yes that's true now, but what about in 1997? That's what year it is in Ethereum now.

Well to be fair, transferring information instantly was pretty great even in 1997.

You'd think so but that wasn't a popular idea in 1997. Most people really didn't see much of a use for the internet.

Well to be fair, transferring money instantly would be pretty great for 2020.

I mean, the only way I can pay rent to my landlord in 2020 is by having my bank send them a physical check that takes 5d to arrive (during which time no-one gets any interest), or then use multiple Zelle payments since I have an artificial cap that is lower than my rent.

Hell laypeople until the mid 2000s still didn't grasp what the Internet could be other than it was a stock market bonanza. Sounds familiar...

But crypto proponents describe use cases, not inner workings. Use cases for telecom were obvious much earlier that the internet itself, thousands of years of lost messages and messengers.

So uh, this remote sound transmitter seems like it might find niche use in the classical music orchestra space, but we don't see the talk-to-friends use case working out. Who would want to talk to their friends that often?

  Maybe because it's not a need most people have?

Most may the the right word. This is really about a lot of small wins over the current system, not really one right answer that solves everything.

  This still means nothing to me. I can't relate to this.

This is fair, I don't know you personally so I don't know what lifestyle you're living.

  So it's about not wanting to pay transaction fees for buying stock. Hmm, doesn't really sell it to me, quite frankly

It's not really about that, it's more about zero counter party risk. This exists in lots of areas, but without knowing you, it's hard for me to come up with a concrete example of why this matters to you.

>Maybe because it's not a need most people have?

There was no internet before 1969, clearly that's because no one needed it.

>This still means nothing to me. I can't relate to this.

This is clearly a difficult subject but its ok, not everyone is smart enough to understand

>So it's about not wanting to pay transaction fees for buying stock. Hmm, doesn't really sell it to me, quite frankly.

Now you're just trolling.

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