Comment by RustyConsul | Hacker News Reader

Comment by RustyConsul | Hacker News Reader

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I miss the old crypto.

When it was this fringe, nerdy digital coin i could transfer to my friends to pay my bar tab. Yeah - Venmo/paypal/ a billion other systems that did the same thing, but to my friends btc and eventually eth was cooler.

I could stake coins, provide liquidity, mine random coins from my laptop - It was fun. The concept of a global computer was awesome, interesting and nerdy. I've never used an exchange, but i could watch my coins go up and use them to play a couple random Play-To-Earn games, which was also fun.

Now we got all these 'Scam' Coins. But they aren't scams because they literally come out and say they are scams but still achieve billions of dollars in market cap because everyone is just trying to make a quick buck/ have constrained liquidity.

I think the SEC needs to come in and regulate this space, it would be a very welcome change to what crypto has become. Make stablecoins have 24/7 auditability of their investments and have some vetting mechanism to trade on exchanges. That would make it nerdy and cool again.

SEC regulation would make the space nerdy and cool again?

I agree that there are many ill-informed people are buying into scams in "crypto" because they think they're "getting in early on the next bitcoin".

e.g. I have a close friend who is quite non-technical who is taking a naive approach by putting a significant portion of his funds into a "cryptocurrency" (not even a utility token) with a very cultish following and pyramid/ponzi scheme mechanics. I've looked into it, and the only buzz seems to be coming from the project core team patting themselves on the back with paid PR releases that overstate their "significant partnerships", bots, and people who want to retire off its "holder incentives". There is notably no buzz from actual developers or similarly credible people.

While I think it makes sense to try to protect people like that from making big mistakes and likely losing significant portions of their net worth, I worry that heavy-handed regulation of the space could block the natural emergence of new use cases and projects that could have very worthwhile public benefits. Or worse, could make people who still believe in the potential of things like web3 and defi– and choose to continue working on projects that violate new and likely unfit regulations –"criminals".

We should be wary of discouraging talented people with good intentions from contributing to the exploration and development of projects around web3 and defi (which depends on exploring different types of application and governance tokens, since these are what allow a decentralized project to economically incentivize its participants to act in a way that serves the project, and in a coordinated manner).

I think at the pace that talented developers are flocking to web3, we should start to see applications with mainstream appeal that provide viable, decentralized but well-coordinated, disintermediated alternatives to applications that have overpowered gatekeeper problems, e.g. those in social media, ecommerce, and many other spaces.

> I've looked into it, and the only buzz seems to be coming from the project core team patting themselves on the back with paid PR releases that overstate their "significant partnerships", bots, and people who want to retire off its "holder incentives". There is notably no buzz from actual developers or similarly credible people.

If I had to take a guess, Cardano?

The only thing i can truly say about that is there's a reason biden tapped gary. I have faith in Gary. But there needs to be a light hand here, cause it's getting weird.

Old fringe crypto was the cringiest thing ever.

I miss nothing about that.

Every single crypto was and is called a scam in every single chat and thread about it. Pivoting to that as your rationale for whats different is very inaccurate.

It was soooo cringy and I think that's why i liked it.

Going to the old BTC or crypto meetups was like going to a warhammer turny. No one showered, everyone smelled like shit and you always had those wannabe prophets preaching about a 'New World Order'. Everyone laughed along and never took it too seriously. Same thing now but people act like those prophets have something interesting to say because they are in a $10k suit and screaming "Fuck Elon" on stages haha.

Haha, I agree that the behavior of those people is a major turnoff.

Communities in the space should be wary of encouraging cult-like behavior. Those who that are cult-like will probably have a hard time attracting talented people who can make valuable contributions, since they're usually attracted by the prospect of making new things possible for the first time, rather than some weird cult with a manifest destiny ("to-the-moon") narrative.

Oh just ignore the people at conferences lol

It's the same story with PDAs, apps, and the web, just way shorter.

What irks me most is how it's useless for day to day transactions. Ethereum has an average fee right now of over $6.50. Nobody is going to use these things seriously as a currency with fees this high.

> Make stablecoins have 24/7 auditability of their investments

This is the only regulation I would welcome. I'd rather have a wild west when it comes to the rest of the cryptocurrency space.

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