I don’t disagree with anything you’ve said but I do wonder whether the typical crypto “investor” does realize the risk. In many cases (like Tether, for example) I’m not sure the risk has been adequately disclosed prior to purchase.
Thank you for an honest answer. I've also observed that cryptocurrency enthusiasts have a orientation towards high-risk, which is a different mindset than most engineers who prefer reliability and predicability
Flip it. Why should they trust anything else? They don't, so crypto being untrustworthy doesn't particularly stand out from the stock market, where you can also easily fuck up and lose your shirt without ever quite understanding what you've gotten into. See: options.
When you know a better solution just name it. It's easy to criticice a decision when you don't need to find a better way.
Who's interested in some crypto bros and some idiots that lose their money when you don't have another working possibility?
I wouldn't say those risks are overlooked by most holders, rather that risk profile is exactly the reason why anyone would want to use cryptocurrency to begin with.
Perhaps some hype artists would claim otherwise, but they shouldn't be defining how you view the technology itself.
I agree. I think in general if you’re saying anything interesting there’s at least some risk that you’re wrong—if you only say things that everyone already knows are true, why bother talking?
Some crypto people may be wrong a bit more than baseline because their judgement is more clouded by the dollar signs in their eyes, compared to people talking about e.g. open-source distributed databases.
The volatility, in one direction, is a bread and butter argument for the crypto skeptic. Most people investing in crypto know the risks, that’s exactly what draws them in, because it comes with huge potential upsides. No one is better at pointing out scams and schemes than other people in crypto.
What the skeptics fail to realize is that they often occupy just as much, if not more of a ‘team mindset’ than those engaging in the space. Their skepticism becomes more like the failed D.A.R.E. program to reduce adolescent drug use by exaggerating the virtues of abstinence and the worst case scenarios. And ironically, they can’t even articulate the worst parts, because they never engaged enough to have a deep understanding.
If you really want to find the deep dark secrets of crypto, no group will do it better than devout followers or developers of competing projects. I have read far more useful takedowns and warnings from people heavily engaged with and passionate about crypto currencies than the cynics are even capable of.
I side with crypto all the time and I see plenty of other people do it too. I also see the same loud voices, with a lot of karma, repeat their tropes over and over again. If people believe that it is "dangerous", that is a sad way to control a narrative.
Here we are 10+ years later and crypto hasn't gone to zero. If anything, it is discussed more than ever. What HN requires is sane responses about crypto, and this is one of them.
Somehow crypto currencies have this strange effect on people who should know better: they see some random claim that sounds impossible and directly invest ridiculous amount of money they would _never_ spend that easily in a different context. I don't get what makes people trust such things but there is something deep at play here, somehow the FOMO makes people take crazy level of risks.
The illusion of knowledge about crypto is very dangerous. People get this stuff wrong all the time and introducing more examples with really bad mistakes will only make the situation work.
What you suggest is smart, but it's fundamentally financial friction and people who want to risk money will avoid that friction, usually because they don't understand why it is useful.
What would be much better is if more crypto skeptics had more nuance. Most of them treat crypto like the D.A.R.E program treated drugs - in reality there are a concentrated subset of categories of crypto which have an outsized probability of being extremely high risk, but when counter-shills tell everyone to avoid all crypto, those a bit more open minded are less equipped to make distinctions within crypto.
The good example is https://rekt.news/ which keeps track of every hack and exploit while at the same time acknowledging what is progressive about crypto.
This is a typical sort of projection I see from crypto-owners. They can't seem to contemplate the fact that there are people that think crypto is a bad idea _regardless_ of how much profit they might or might not have made by buying or selling at various points in history.
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