It's an absurd take. Plenty of folks who work in tech can make money doing hackery dark magic, but guess what? It's not their day job that keeps them from doing so.
Peter Lynch had a pretty interesting talk where he said that on average the stock market has a sizable dip every few 2-3 years, meaning it's lower at the end of that year than it was at the beginning. Generally though, it goes up over time.
I think even back then a Rolex would run you at least 1-2 months salary. Granted money went further back then... but if you consider the median tech salary, a lot of Rolexes are still 1-2 months salary away.
HN does not have a nuanced view of this space. There's a lingering assumption that everyone involved in crypto naively wants the "old way" gone in favor of bitcoin, which is completely absurd, or that the rest are scammers.
Why would there be insane electricity costs? It doesn't have to be a POS blockchain. Also, it's not completely vaporware since the proposal includes backing the coin by $1B to kick it off.
They are except when they're not. Plenty of NFTs are on-chain. Also, if nothing else, they've provided a lot of creatives an opportunity to get compensated for their work. The "art" NFT eco-system is very much akin to a patreon of sorts. I don't see how that's a bad thing.
I don't doubt that the mechanics of how it's done are embellished to make a fun narrative, but the theme of tricking small nations into debt to secure a foothold is very believable to me.
I think these days security testing is just glorified QA. The secret sauce is developing your own methodology, which at the end of the days is a mega comprehensive checklist.
I think it's apples/oranges. Beanie babies had your average joe mobbing the stores black friday style. Even grandma was in on it. With NFTs, everyone is talking about them, but few folks have gone so far as to buy one relatively speaking.