Comment by PragmaticPulp | Hacker News Reader

Comment by PragmaticPulp | Hacker News Reader

This whole thinkpiece feels like a cryptocurrency advocate pretending to write as if they were a skeptic:

> I regret to inform you that it's totally legit and crypto/blockchain networks really might be technologically, economically, and politically transformative. Ugh

The author seems more interested in convincing the reader that they should ignore their doubts because the doubters are probably just jealous they’re not getting insufferably wealthy like the crypto bros (that is, you only hate crypto because you’re not rich like all the crypto bros, right?):

> The urge to rationalize tuning out is surely amplified by the fact that laser-eyed online crypto bros are insufferable dicks. But it’s not simply that they’re insufferable. It’s also that a bunch of them are getting ridiculously rich

There’s very little actual argument to be found in this piece, other than a lot of appeals to the idea that decentralization will inherently solve a lot of social problems.

It's another example of someone imagining a use case / future for blockchain that appeals to them. That's crypto's power, it's easy to read about it, imagine some particular utopian future it brings that deals with whatever problem you have with the current state of the world (usually that you are not rich) and solves it.

Ultimately these tools/tokens are competitors to the standard way of doing business with firms, and that alone is a good thing to have exist especially if the standard way of doing business is a problem for you (e.g. you are doing something illegal or need to change your money into something more reliable due to local currency issues). I don't know if that means crypto is going to be truly transformative beyond providing a competitor for these people who need one but that alone might be something big in good ways (you can protect your household's savings) and bad (ransomware is never going away).

When you can’t tell the difference between something that “feels like a cryptocurrency advocate pretending to write as if they were a skeptic” and something that’s maybe actually got a point, maybe rather than just dismiss it outright how about heeding the advice in the article?

Afterall, isn’t the point of the article about setting aside knee-jerk reactions and consider that there maybe something going on here? (Hint: There really is. There’s a lot of bullshit too but what’s the saying “don’t throw the baby out with the bath water”).

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