Comment by mattwilsonn888 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mattwilsonn888 | Hacker News Reader

Commentators on crypto will simply have to get used to this - because it isn't an argument.

> For that same reason, I think people can genuinely believe they're obsessed with web3 because of its inherent interestingness when in fact it’s because web3 has made them a lot of money very quickly.

The nature of crypto-currencies means that you are free to invest in protocols you believe will make money - either by providing value or some other less rational reason for others to purchase. It seems like bloggers writing on the subject haven't yet conceded that being confused about this fact is not an argument for or against any protocol - a healthy review will ignore the fact so sensationally stated in many writings: "people shill their investments."

Would I review a Ford Motor Vehicle by closely examining how the CEO or marketing team behave, boldly discovering they don't have an incentive to be completely honest, and then assuming they are lying? No. I would ignore all of that and evaluate the vehicle itself.

Denouncing crypto-currencies or distributed-ledger technologies has always been the cool, contrarian thing to do on HackerNews (stay poor lmao) - and there is certainly plenty to criticize which is usually missed, because blog posts like this focus on the most surface level aspects of a topic. I'm sure plenty of people really want to learn about Web3, so imagine a curious, neutral reader's disappointment when they go to learn about what many present as a technological, general protocol through the lens of what licensed NFT's the NBA is shilling.

Every valuable new movement is going to have grifters. New movements without value will have grifters. There is one good reason HackerNews doesn't have anything positive to say about crytpo, and that is that with endorsement comes advertisement and shills - I only hope this place learns to talk in generalities about technology, protocols and economics rather than only doing the opposite of what attracts grifters (which is useful).

> Would I review a Ford Motor Vehicle by closely examining how the CEO or marketing team behave, boldly discovering they don't have an incentive to be completely honest, and then assuming they are lying? No. I would ignore all of that and evaluate the vehicle itself.

But that's not the case we're running into here. The crypto case is that you're reading reviews from people on the car, but turns out that a lot of people own Ford stock and therefore will probably have a positive bias (conscious or unconscious) for that car. It's not a reason against the technology, but it's a reason to be extra skeptical of the use cases and motivations of people who speak positively about it.

> I only hope this place learns to talk in generalities about technology, protocols and economics

There's quite a lot of talk about the technology, protocols and economics of crypto tech in HN. The issue is that when you poke around, people haven't actually thought about the use cases they present. Even the simple question "could this be done before and, if so, why isn't it done already?" already takes down a lot of crypto use cases and discussions I see around here. Game resales, multi-game items, digital art, defi loans, federated networks, global identity, consumer-backed media... A lot of people will say crypto can solve those problems without noticing that the problem wasn't the tech.

In the end, crypto just adds "distributed and trustless" to databases. Unless the problem being attacked is about centralization and trust (and for most big consumer markets, it almost never is) crypto can't change the situation.

> cool, contrarian thing to do on HackerNews (stay poor lmao)

See, this is the problem we're having. We can't really trust we're going to have a productive technical discussion with someone that sees crypto as a vessel to "get rich quick" and says things like that.

> (stay poor lmao)

This told me everything I need to know.

This is the technobabble that just drives me insane about this space.

I think with any weird new technology, fundamentally no knows if it’s going to work.

People who can’t see or imagine use cases become sceptics.

But others who piece together enough observations to tell themselves stories of why it will work become believers.

But neither can explain why the tech will or won’t work, so we end up with technobabblers and angry sceptics.

Probably both sides can convince themselves the tech does or doesn't totally obviously beyond a doubt work (to differing definitions of "work"). But predicting public adoption and widespread use (which makes most things more inherently useful too) isn't easy for anyone.

I have come to appreciate hacker news because of its (broadly) critical stance on crypto. Nobody can accuse this demographic as "not understanding" the math, which is a common bullying tactic in the crypto universe. Nobody can accuse this demographic as not interested in earning a living in technology either.

But the kind of digital universe we shape, the kind of behaviors being rewarded by the systems put in place, this seems to matter to a lot of smart people and that is quite promising.

I'm wondering how big your bias is since you are making money (I'm assuming) and how negative you will become about it when you and if you join those who lost money?

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