OK? So what? 'Young people do dumb shit' since time immemorial.

I stand by what I said, cryptocurrencies just like other technologies are new, whether or not young people do stupid shit with it, is irrelevant.

Again, it isn't going away any time soon, and will get regulated in due time with energy efficient cryptocurrencies already on the horizon.

Looks like you're gonna have to get used to it.

Crypto allows for decentralized money that one can self-custody and send/receive without going through any centralized government/bank authority or middleman. If you can't even admit this most basic use case of crypto, then either (1) you know nothing about the thing you are criticizing (2) you have an agenda.

> not an indicator of HN losing quality.

You are case in point to HN losing quality.

How about instead of commenting on stuff you know absolutely nothing about, take a second to actually do some research and learn about what you're criticizing. You're at best wasting other peoples' time, at worst spreading misinformation.

So here you are on HN, where most people love complaining about crypto since 2009 -- but they still have a dayjob they sure love to bitch about (even in FANGs!), while those of us who worked on crypto without any specific feelings are early retirees.

> I like this guy.

Me too, but I try to leave aside opinions and focus on interesting content.

This is pretty bad when it comes to crypto topics. A lot of the crypto ecosystem is toxic and gross. Schemes, scams, marketing fluff, and meme bro attitudes galore. BUT, if you can bear to pay attention and cut through the noise, there are some pretty incredible innovations occurring in crypto, gaming, and defi. HN is very dismissive on these topics. It feels to me this community dates itself when crypto topics come up, reminding me more of my grandma at thanksgiving than young innovative technophiles.

I am annoyed by such arguments because crypto has now existed for quite a long time, and the positives are very limited if existent at the moment. Would you mind sharing positive events occurring thanks to crypto?

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.

Can you be specific about the narratives you're seeing on here that you are laughing at?

No, most reasonable adults have a problem with crypto.

Maybe because people here are more likely to understand it?

Edit: added a missing quote

What's the point of starting your comment by unnecessarily painting this entire community with such a broad brush and dismissing the nuanced opinions on cryptocurrencies found here? What does it add? It just makes me more skeptical of whatever you're about to say, to the point where I barely feel like it's worth reading.

I'm responding to the way the op phrased their initial statements. They implied that just because they did not have a deep understanding of something, it must be bad.

Crypto is something for them that they don't understand, just like the stock market is something that many people also don't understand.

Actually, as someone who was very interested in Bitcoin in the early days of 2011-2012, I disagree. If anything, the hate on HN was even greater back then, way before Bitcoin became hyped. So many people were convinced it was a pyramid scheme. It was clear to anyone familiar with the Bitcoin community back then that there were a lot of highly technical, talented people, and very few scammers. But most of HN reflexively despised Bitcoin.

In fact, Bitcoin on HN is actually a lot less hated now, which tells me it has little to do with the hype, and that something else was going on.

Bear in mind that I disassociated myself from Bitcoin once the scammers, con-men, and get-rich-quick types infiltrated the community around 2013 and 2014. But even back in 2011, there was a very high number of HNers who seemed personally affronted by the very idea that money was a social agreement. They seemed to believe that money was some kind of official, government activity, end of story. And that anyone who believed otherwise was an evil heretic, to be ridiculed.

> I have very little sympathy for people who profited from the hype, delivered approximately nothing of use to the rest of the world, and now have a sad that there are consequences.

This I agree with 100%.

Your expectations aren't likely to be met if you spend time on fallacies instead of just writing one line asking for more evidence as to why crypto people are gross.

Go ahead then, I would genuinely like to hear your critical evaluation since you just shit all over the Bitcoin whitepaper without any actual critique in your post.

I don't understand the extreme polarization of Bitcoin on HN. It's a very interesting tech and it's still early in the adoption phase and the space is still evolving.

Why do you feel the need for this type of attack?

No. I never said that. When did I say that. I never said that? I get very bored by people that try to put words in my mouth. Hackernews (this isn't my first account here) is like this. It is horrifically boring.

> Please come up with better rebuttals. Here is a freebie:

It is a perfectly fine rebuttal. At the moment the only reason anyone is buying crypto is because they think it is going to be worth more in the future. Most aren't buying it for transactions at the moment. If you can somehow so that is false, please do so otherwise don't be an asshat.

God I hate this site. It is little better than reddit these days.

Yeah, I'm probably one of the people that you are describing.

Crypto-money does not work. I would love if it worked, I also would love if somebody learned how to reverse entropy growth or got time travel working in some way. Yet, none of those work. (And yes, crypto-money isn't on the same level of those two, maybe some day somebody will manage to make it work, if so, great!)

Be sure that your label of "anti crypto" is much more a tag over you than the large HN crowd.

A variety of reasons. Some think that crypto is a socially pernicious bubble that’ll get people hurt. Others still have to deal with the ransomware attacks that are only viable with crypto. Most of us are pissed off that crypto comes along and keeps ruining the price of hardware we want to buy. The environmentally minded are angry about the energy usage. A lot of us are sick and tired of the naked scamming and the dumb ideas that get floated on the subject.

> I feel that if most HNers would just build a crypto business (DeFi, arbitrage, NFTs, tokenomics, etc.), they'd basically be overnight millionaires.

Obviously not. That’s just not how anything around money works. If it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is. Just because someone got rich off a thing doesn’t mean everyone will; after all some people got rich in pyramid schemes too, doesn’t make it a good idea.

Even when there is legitimately easy money to be made, the rush of people trying to exploit the opportunity usually drives the per person profits down to $0. If someone claims that there are easy, guaranteed millions to be made, your alarm bells should be going off.

Furthermore, even this tiny whiff of “you’re just jealous you didn’t make millions flipping NFTs” is an ugly look.

When we take a closer look at crypto it appears to be as corrupt or even more as the institutions it was trying to replace. Tether, of course, is the poster child of crypto corruption.