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Comment by throwawayuydw | Hacker News Reader

I've been waiting since 2013 for crypto to have a facebook-level contribution but it's still just the same crap. Every 2-3 years, the world remembers crypto exists and they funnel money into it only to be fleeced. I've yet to see one piece of tech from the crypto craze that has substantially altered peoples' lives besides losing most people money.

If you're looking to get on the jump for a new piece of tech, it's probably too late for crypto anyways. My mom knows about it. lol

Facebook substantially altered lives: it is used for genocide, recruiting insurrections, and ruins mental health -- and nobody here is wringing their hands about working on the broader ecosystem. Engineers who worked to build out DTC brands aren't considered lepers.

It feels like a double standard and pulling the ladder up, so even if the next generation of startup programmers get work, they'll be "tainted" by starting in crypto. I am in a sophisticated niche of the industry just like many readers here are in their comfortable niche of their industries and reasonably distant from the most harmful practices.

Maybe I just need to accept that SV programmers don't like to look in the mirror and see that most of our work is ultimately as pointless/destructive as crypto but with a couple extra steps.

This comment is so confusing. You first seemed to take offense at the term "cryptocrap" but then here call crypto "pointless/destructive." Facebook is obviously mostly garbage these days (IMO) however I think it's hard to argue that it provides no utility to people. My family members are spread out across four different countries and mostly stay connected via Facebook. I'd argue that Facebook provides more utility to people than crypto at this point. That says a lot more about crypto than it does about Facebook.

I was careful when I didn't write any positive things about facebook, but it is used by the entire world which was my point.

Also, I'm nowhere near SF or in the SV sphere. I'm a plain, old .NET and Typescript developer. lol

I didn't say crypto was doing good or ill. I'm just saying it's done nothing that a critical mass of users has used besides speculation.

The tech industry is like the Wild West- you can do (almost) anything you want! It's big enough that there will always be opportunities in our lifetime for tech workers to make money positively contributing to society. On the other hand, there's plenty of funding for exploitative/harmful applications. It doesn't matter what other people are doing or have done, your choice and your integrity belong to you.

I think that's called whataboutism.

When picking a potential employer, programmers often think "what about Google?" or "what about Facebook?" or "What about the hottest a16z startup?". When those programmers then compare/contrast the behavior of the companies they're considering, it is not considered a logical fallacy, but "making a list of pros/cons."

If I am going to trade my time and energy for money, I think it's fair to compare my options, and not an act of irrationality.

You're completely missing the point of my comment. You say "crypto is not as bad as facebook" which is a textbook whataboutism. "crypto" isn't as bad as the Shoah, so what?

Cryptocurrencies are almost as old as the smartphone and yet not one actual application has emerged.

They aren't a good hedge against inflation, as their prices collapsed when inflation re-appeared. They aren't a good vehicle for transactions, which is why crypto transactions occupy less than 0.1% of the world's financial transactions. And scams and ripoffs are rife.

So what's the point?

> my chance at a growth industry

I think your view on of crypto might be skewed by this. I think working in coal or surveillance tech or fracking is bad, and that isn't changed by the fact that it is someone's best chance at getting rich from it.

Note that most programmers didn't get rich out of social media or the boom from the last decade: maybe 100,000 became millionaires out of 20 million programmers, most of whom had generally middle class salaries

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