Comment by latchkey
3 years ago
> Yes, all industries attract bad actors. But the cryptocurrency space seems to be largely run by bad actors. Not everyone, of course, but a disturbingly large percentage.
Source? Seriously. I mean, we have CEX going down with SBF and Molly White posting anti-web3 stuff. I'm sorry, but that isn't the core fundamental technology that we're talking about here.
> I don't actually see a lot of that happening here, though.
Again... media focuses on the failures and not on the successes.
ETH moving to proof-of-stake was a massive technological advancement that only happened after many years of development, and has gone off without a hitch.
While, at the same time literally decimating all of the GPU based proof-of-work mining in a single day. Not only that, but they were able to MVP release the code without even implementing withdraw! People have trusted the developers with 0.40T dollars worth of value [0]. It is not insignificant.
Next up is some really interesting work being done with zero-knowledge proofs, which will enable the scaling phase of blockchain to happen.
Please try to get past the HN trope of 'crypto has zero purpose other than number goes up or down and bitcoin mining is destroying the planet' and look at what is actually happening in the industry.
> Source?
No specific source, just how it looks to me based on what I hear pro-cryptocurrency people say (mostly here).
> media focuses on the failures and not on the successes.
By "here", I meant HN, not the larger mediasphere.
> Please try to get past the HN trope of 'crypto has zero purpose other than number goes up or down and bitcoin mining is destroying the planet' and look at what is actually happening in the industry.
This comment is mis-aimed. I'm not on that trope (I see one legitimate use), and I do loosely follow the industry. I don't follow it deeply because it's not a field that is technically interesting to me, but I am interested in the ramifications to society at large.
All I'm saying is that a rather large percentage of people I see advocating cryptocurrency are not making cryptocurrency look good.
This is the second time you've stated 'a large percentage', with no data to back it up. It is hand waving.
It's anecdata, not hand-waving. I was pretty clear that I'm talking about what I personally see, not any sort of research results or news reporting.
5 replies →
> People have trusted the developers with 0.40T dollars worth of value
And that's the thing that causes the most cognitive dissonance. If you're going to trust someone, why not trust entities that have had hundreds of years to work out the kinks?
> that's the thing that causes the most cognitive dissonance.
The road is literally being paved and is being done so iteratively. I'm ok with that as that is a standard way to develop things over time.
> why not trust entities that have had hundreds of years to work out the kinks?
Simple. Because they are not acting in your best interest. We've been sold on the idea that money is scary and we shouldn't touch it ourselves. We should put it into 401k's and forget about it until we retire. We should 'trust' people who know these complicated finance things better than us. It is a self fulfilling prophecy.
> We've been sold on the idea that money is scary and we shouldn't touch it ourselves. We should put it into 401k's and forget about it until we retire. We should 'trust' people who know these complicated finance things better than us.
For 95% of the population (including me) crypto is the same trust system. I can't audit a smart contract and the underlying virtual machine it runs on. I would have no clue whether my transactions can be front-ended by bots that take all of the gains I expected, and then some.
I do have a general idea what happens when I use a credit card to make a purchase, and what to expect. I also have a general idea that if I put money into an investment account what fees will be deducted, and what stocks and bonds are being bought and sold.
And if I make the horrible mistake of sending money or NFTs to the wrong account, I know it can at least theoretically be reversed in non-crypto systems (and that often the reversal costs will be eaten by the bank, not paid by me). Whereas with crypto I have no expectation that the validators care about me to do a MakerDAO reversal on my behalf.
3 replies →
> We've been sold on the idea that money is scary and we shouldn't touch it ourselves.
We have? I guess I was passed over when that sales job happened.
> > We should 'trust' people who know these complicated finance things better than us.
That's not how I look at it. How I see it is that when I'm operating in the established monetary system, I have some amount of protection and recourse available to me if/when things go wrong. With cryptocurrency, I have none.
To me, that's a really significant difference, and is in the top 3 reasons why I avoid cryptocurrency.
It has nothing to do with "trusting" financial institutions, or feeling like money is too complicated to understand.
8 replies →