Comment by olalonde | Hacker News Reader

Comment by olalonde | Hacker News Reader

Great article but let's get real, a great deal of the cryptocurrency criticism is rationalization. HN recently revealed the true motivation behind much of it[0]:

> It's less that I'm glad the market is crashing, and more that I'm glad that the insufferable crypto bros are finally getting a punch to the mouth. Seriously, these people are the worst. Your average "crypto investor" has no skills, no mathematical foundations, nothing. Except for pure stupid luck, and the ability to spew inane crypto babble 24/7. And yes, they think they are much smarter than you, because they achieved better financial results than you did while only doing 1/1000 of the work to get there. I truly hate the fact that these people are so rich. It makes me want to move to Alaska and just try to ignore society for the rest of my days.

> This came off as pretty bitter. I apologize, but I am bitter, and I'm having a shit couple weeks.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31356857

I'm in this rationalization camp since I actually did make insane returns from cryptocurrency. Even then, I can't bring myself to defend this space because of the sheer a) amount of scams, and b) lack of utility.

The scams wouldn't even be a problem - every fledgling platform has them - but the fact that the crypto community embraces scams and even encourages them. Scammers can rug a project for millions and turn around and launch another project within a week and everyone will still buy it because of greed.

And this is the crypto dilemma: the crypto community has utterly failed at self-regulation. Ergo, it has to be regulated by the government. However, a cryptocurrency that's beholden to government rules is antithetical to the core crypto ideas of self-ownership, privacy, and freedom.

There are plenty of existing laws for dealing with scammers and fraudsters, why not use them? Also, are victims really victims when they knowingly buy into scams "because of greed"? At the very least, they don't seem to be the ones calling for a cryptocurrency ban.

I disagree that there is a monolithic "crypto community" that encourages scams. For example, a great deal of the Bitcoin community is fervently anti altcoin and many even consider Ethereum as a "shitcoin".

Regarding utility, everyone is entitled to their opinion. I disagree. There was a time in my life when I was "unbanked" and Bitcoin was the only way I could transact online. In the end, utility is subjective and it is not the government's job to decide whether something has utility or not.

> There was a time in my life when I was "unbanked" and Bitcoin was the only way I could transact online.

This really needs said louder. Writing off the entirety of cryptocurrency as "useless" betrays either stunning ignorance or immense privilege (or possibly even both). Even in the "developed" world (let alone "developing") there are countless people whom the legacy financial system does not serve yet is happy to exploit; cryptocurrency ain't some silver bullet, but it does address quite a few of the legacy system's injustices.

Don't disagree with that, but does banking the unbanked require hundreds of billions of dollars in funding? Do the unbanked need algostables, five-figure APY yield farming, sophisticated options protocols like Ribbon, and memecoins valued at $20B?

The core ideas behind crypto remain solid. Unfortunately that has been hijacked completely by speculators.

Lots of things get hijacked by speculators all the time. That doesn't mean the rest of us need to care; none of that has much bearing on the fact that anyone anywhere in the world of any socioeconomic standing can send money to or receive money from anyone else anywhere in the world of any socioeconomic standing.

Yeah. It used to be Google RSUs, then it was all high-paying software jobs doing LeetCode interviews, now it’s cyber money.

People on here just fucking hate other people making money.

That’s not to say that Google is necessarily ethical, or LeetCode interviews are necessarily good, or that cyber money is necessarily going to work out. Maybe, maybe not on all above.

But that’s not why people scream on here about these things.

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