There, can you stop being so obtuse now? You are wrong. My point is that the author is calling for a ban and that nobody was putting words in his mouth, as you suggested.
>a complete rejection of the entirety of all crypto is the only intellectually defensible position.
Oh wow I bet this is going to be an excellent, well reasoned explanation based on a deep understanding that the author has of the underlying technology, applications, and motivations:
>Except for this time they want to wrestle control of money from the state and distribute it to private enterprises.
>we would then have to go to the likes of plutocrats like Jeff Bezos and crypto exchange CEOs to make the final call about foreign policy.
This article is absolute nonsense written by somebody who either has absolutely no understanding of this technology or its application, or is just willfully lying about it.
This account is talking about how many things in Crypto are non-credible but at the same time they also just "blab" their opinion on Twitter without any factual backing.
Unfortunately Michael Saylor is the rule rather than the exception. Crypto marketing is extremely coercive, with slogans like "have fun staying poor!", intended to maximize shame and peer pressure to encourage the vulnerable and ignorant to become "believers". This is explicitly bullying behaviour.
> Are you actually comparing a billionaire CEO who's very obviously trying to use Twitter to pump and dump his investment, to a writer selling a book at a normal price for books?
There is no comparison. Both are totally extreme in their rhetoric and using that as engagement farming for their grift. Either publicly promoting a cryptocurrency or rushing a badly written book without disclosing a conflict of interest after the author's failed blockchain company shutdown which he has been hiding from everyone since the company was killed by blockchains like Ethereum, and Cardano.
> There's no reason to try to "both sides" this.
There is no point in you trying to be absolutist on any extreme side. Either way, both sides will compromise on their delusional ideas; both crypto maxis and skeptics. Only some blockchains are here to stay and the others won't be around.
> There's zero possibilities there. None. This isn't a new thing I'm saying either. We already tried the "print your own money" idea during the free banking era in the 1800s, we've known for that long it's a terrible idea that doesn't work.
The whole of crypto would already have been 100% and totally banned, everywhere a long time ago and the regulators already know that it is unrealistic and extremely difficult to ban and stop all of it. China has tried it, yet crypto is still there despite the 'ban'.
Crypto isn't going anywhere and you know it but refuse to admit it. Not all of them will survive and even the author of that book once admitted that.
> After years of studying it, I believe that cryptocurrency is an inherently right-wing, hyper-capitalistic technology
?
> It doesn't align with my politics or belief system, and I don't have the energy to try and discuss that with those unwilling to engage in a grounded conversation.
Like himself. Given what he just said about cryptocurrency being 'inherently right-wing' which that is completely baseless.
Obviously it is heavily manipulated and it is not exclusive to cryptocurrencies, just like forex and the stock market but the main difference is that it is highly unregulated. I expect more exchanges to use more than just KYC, AML checks and the rise of implementing CBDCs to drive cryptocurrencies past the wild west stage that it is today.
Good luck trying to ignore it because it is here to stay. (Even if you are the creator of a meme coin)
> Fine. However, there's a general anti-crypto stance here largely based on outdated mainstream narratives that if you truly would be literate about crypto, could only laugh at.
Can you be specific about the narratives you're seeing on here that you are laughing at?
> some nerds playing around with cryptography to try and create a new trustless financial system
Okay, this is really not what's at play here. I would highly encourage you to read The Politics of Bitcoin by David Golumbia, and will not participate further in this discussion with someone who has personal investments at stakes and who can therefore not be neutral and is already using fallacious arguments (no one said "broken link = broken platform", you're the one making this up) and ad hominem accusations.
It’s really not. I’m so tired of people being surprised by articles like this. Scams like this and ransomware would simply not exist without cryptocurrency, and that’s enough for me to eschew their use entirely.
There is literally no legitimate excuse for cryptocurrency, and I don’t think there ever was.
>Cryptocurrency has a few people like that but also a ton of get-rich-quick types
There are literally hundreds of millions of people who're into cryptocurrencies...and you clearly don't have a clue what kind of people are into it and to what degree. I'd suggest not to make up statements like this if you want your opinion to be taken seriously. FYI bypassing capital controls with cryptos does not necessarily mean "breaking the law". Learn a thing or two if you're going to spout nonsense.
> This is the very definition of a shallow dismissal
Short and succinct is not the same as shallow.
> You are trying to insinuate that people who believe crypto is bad technology and bad for society, are doing the equivalent of arguing that the web is bad technology and bad for society.
I’m not insinuating anything, I’m explicitly saying that is the case.
> 1) the arguments against crypto are specific to crypto
“Crypto” is so broad, there’s no such thing as an argument specific to crypto. Are you saying all crypto-related data structures, protocols, and algorithms are de-facto bad for society (and thereby anything that stems from them)?
If so, that argument sounds blatantly absurd to me. And if not, then your argument is so non-specific it’s meaningless.
The argument on crypto has happened on HN countless times - no point in rehashing it. Obviously I hold a negative opinion. My point is that young people do stupid shit.
Is he saying that, or is he simply expressing a disdain for what he sees as anti-regulation crypto investors? He's overgeneralizing to suggest all crypto investors hate regulation, which no one believes is true. It's not even clear the majority oppose regulation in the crypto space.
>The author being a founder a company for which cryptocurrencies are competitors makes this doubly true.
I totally missed this. That makes it worse. The company's tagline is "[company name] digitises cash and settlement processes for multinational corporates [sic?]", which is a pretty clear overlap. I don't necessarily see any evidence he's doing anything in bad faith, though - I just think he's extremely biased and narrowly agenda-driven.
My main issue is just how much he seems to viscerally hate cryptocurrencies. It makes it harder to take it seriously. Like how incredibly snarky and spiteful he comes across in his most recent ostensibly-about-programming blog post: https://www.stephendiehl.com/posts/fpt.html
It's all starting to feel so political and a little bit religious. I sense a lot of parallels between staunchly pro- and anti-cryptocurrency people and the US political divide and culture wars. I know it's an annoying trope (https://xkcd.com/774/), but in the case of both politics and cryptocurrency, each side seems insufferable. I feel "accidentally moderate" (http://www.paulgraham.com/mod.html) on both topics.
edit: Side note, just to counter-balance the criticism. I knew his name seemed familiar; he wrote one of the most useful and formative tutorials for me when I started programming about a decade ago: https://sdiehl.github.io/gevent-tutorial/. (Although it's a bit gauche now, I still use gevent for new projects to this day.) It's more due to serendipity than anything else since there's not anything too special about it, but in my case it's actually possible I never would've become a developer if not for his tutorial - I used it to build my first programming project at a time when I was kind of struggling with many concepts and unsure if I wanted to go through with it. It goes to show that there isn't necessarily much correlation between (one's perception of) people's technical and non-technical attributes.
There, can you stop being so obtuse now? You are wrong. My point is that the author is calling for a ban and that nobody was putting words in his mouth, as you suggested.
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