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Comment by barnabee | Hacker News Reader

It’s more important to have an unstoppable digital store of value than to stop people getting scammed.

Sure would be nice to have fewer scammers, and we should try. I, too, detest many of the actors in the space, the whole number-go-up get-rich-quick culture, and much more.

But it’s a sideshow. The reality is I’m not giving up digital assets I completely control (preferably private ones) any more than I’m giving up strong encryption, e2e encrypted comms, or the right to run whatever software I like on my computers. I’m not the only one.

It’s really irrelevant if you or anyone else considers it irredeemable. What does that even mean? There’s not even a single coherent “it” to be irredeemable.

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What makes you think that the kids of tomorrow are going to give a damn about today's notions of what's valuable? Using an unstoppable ledger doesn't make the underlying values any more legitimate than they were before.

I do think that creating a censorship resistant place for data is more important than preventing people from being scammed, but when I think about what ought to go there, I come up with nothing so status-quo-preserving as abstractions that ensure the continuity of asset ownership. It's like you hate banks so much that you went and built one just to show-em.

> What makes you think that the kids of tomorrow are going to give a damn about today's notions of what's valuable?

I mean, on a long enough time scale, they won't :) Same with USD, other currencies, or any given stock or bond. There are no guarantees. That applies doubly to crypto assets.

> What makes you think that the kids of tomorrow are going to give a damn about today's notions of what's valuable?

Why would this change my assertions?

In any case there are a myriad socio-political views and values represented in blockchain/“crypto” projects. It’s not all hypercapitalist libertarians…

By "it" I mean the scam ridden shell of what was once cryptocurrency. The parasite has consumed the host.

Not really, you just have to look a bit harder.

Perhaps a greater percentage of the people, projects, and attention are part of the “parasite” as you put it, but that was my point: while it is bad, and something we should work to minimise, it’s may be a price we have to pay for something that at its core is very important.

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