[HN Gopher] The Edited Latecomer's Guide to Crypto ___________________________________________________________________ The Edited Latecomer's Guide to Crypto Author : colesantiago Score : 181 points Date : 2022-03-25 17:32 UTC (5 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.mollywhite.net) (TXT) w3m dump (www.mollywhite.net) | btown wrote: | If you're getting frustrated at how thin the commentary column | is, make your screen width less than 1800px wide; there's a bug | in their CSS for wider breakpoints! | molly0x57 wrote: | I've pushed a fix for that, apologies for wasting all your | screen real estate! | Karawebnetwork wrote: | These days, I mostly browse the web at 150 to 200% zoom. This | offsets a lot of such glitches for large screens. | paxys wrote: | While I agree with it overall, endlessly nitpicking every line of | an article, even unimportant throwaway ones, means people aren't | going to stick around long enough to read your real arguments. | trhaynes wrote: | Does anyone know if there is a tool or platform that makes it | easy to make/publish this type of "leave footnotes on an | article"? The UX here is nice and simple, and I think there is | utility in sharing feedback this way (vs. blockquotes in email, | or Google Docs comments, etc). | carmen_sandiego wrote: | Maybe https://hypothes.is/? | danShumway wrote: | Hypothesis is a really interesting platform, but in my mind | it's kind of too community-focused. Hypothesis's restricted | groups (https://web.hypothes.is/help/annotating-with-groups/) | are _closer_ to what I think people would want, but to get | them you 'll have to self-host. | | Not trying to throw shade at them, but I feel like their push | for annotations is hampered a little bit by how much their | specific implementation of accounts and permissions feels | like yet another social network, with all of the negatives | that entails. There are other issues as well, but that's the | big one that kept me using the platform. | | That being said, there is also an Open standard for this | stuff that I remember at the time it came out being pretty | excited about. But I haven't seen much if any adoption of it, | so it again makes me wonder if there's something wrong with | it or if it's just that nobody has made anything super- | attractive yet to take advantage of it. | carmen_sandiego wrote: | Which standard is that? ePubs, for example, use canonical | fragment identifiers, which could also work on HTML. I | think hypothes.is uses them too but adds fuzzy matching | fields so that they can match up after document changes. At | least from what I remember | | I'm working on an annotation project myself, though not | really related to what the parent commenter is looking for. | A generic solution to the highlight/annotation problem is | quite difficult, especially if you allow for document | changes. | danShumway wrote: | https://www.w3.org/annotation/ | | I read through the docs when they first came out but I | don't remember all of the details anymore. Fragment | identifiers are part of it though. I've gone back and | forth on how much I like them, allowing for document | changes is always going to make stuff really complicated, | fuzzy/fragment matching is about the best you can do I | think without the cooperation of the source you're | annotating. | | It feels like annotations probably should be tied to | specific document versions, but I also get the reasoning | why they're not in this proposal. Unless you're self- | hosting everything or forcing everything to go through | the Internet Archive... it's just kind of difficult. | | I've been curious about trying to get annotations to work | before using something like Matrix to handle | accounts/groups, but not curious enough to actually try | to build a working example. | chipgap98 wrote: | Yeah I was thinking the same thing. This would be a cool | product. | vageli wrote: | I too would like to know. I mailed the author and if they | respond I will let you know as well. | daveed wrote: | fwiw she responded to a Q about this on twitter: | https://twitter.com/glyph/status/1507425853243756544 | molly0x57 wrote: | It's just plain ol' HTML and CSS, plus a little JS that will | highlight the corresponding annotation if someone clicks the | highlighted text. | | https://github.com/molly/website-v2/blob/master/src/pug/page. | .. https://github.com/molly/website-v2/blob/master/src/sass/r | ev... https://github.com/molly/website-v2/blob/master/src/js/ | revie... | | It's all open-source, so by all means feel free to reuse it | if you like! | dogman144 wrote: | > Bitcoin, which emerged out of the ashes of the 2008 financial | crisis, first caught on among libertarians and anti-establishment | activists who saw it as the cornerstone of a new, incorruptible | monetary system | | > you'll find a bottomless well of weird, interesting and | thought-provoking projects | | I hope comment-think pieces like this aren't a norm going | forward, as that was pretty brutal to read... "Molly White: so | brave." This comes off as Twitter-zens getting together to | criticize an insular, tribal world not too different from their | own. The worst part of online culture is the snark. For what it | is worth, much of the debate on crypto comes from people new to | the space, and the long standing critics. For a lot of folks in | it for longer, they've given up on the debate as the same | arguments get recycled every several years. | | That aside, those two quotes "get it," and I was surprised to see | them. Crypto has turned into meme culture by and large. But, the | tech and design considerations behind btc comes out of one of the | most impactful techno-ideological groups out there - the | cypherpunks, with a strong helping of post-2008 anger included. | btc and notable other parts of crypto, and supporting technology | codifies that group's view of the world: permissionless, | trustless, private digital action. This is the area to understand | when studying crypto. | | They viewed it as critical to build three capabilities in digital | interactions: private browsing, private comms, private spending. | Well, they slowly built all three - Tor, PGP/consumer encryption, | and then BTC. Tor and consumer access to encryption has had a | tremendous effect, even beyond intense privacy circles. BTC is | newer, but what are the odds it won't do the same? Judging by | history and cypherpunk movement, it seems silly to ignore it. '08 | wasn't too long ago, and not much has changed in the practices | that caused the crash. BTC still remains a/the only warts-and-all | viable way out of that system. | | For what it's worth, here is how I place a value crypto[0] | | [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30439891#30441946 | 8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote: | Oh yeah, the same Kevin Roose who years ago claimed that early | stage startup CEOs made a million (maybe half a million?) a year | in cash or something absurd along those lines. | | I don't have anything against the guy, but he seems completely | disconnected from reality when it comes to his writing. It gets | clicks, but it also shows either no interest in doing real | research, or the desire the create a one-sided narrative. | k__ wrote: | _" And in Silicon Valley, engineers and executives are bolting | from cushy jobs in droves to join the crypto gold rush."_ | | Can't blame them. | | Crypto companies are overfunded right now and don't have that | traditional big corp gatekeeping going on. | | Also, many younger people never had that sweet dotcom experience. | | So, why not grab a swash of nice investor money in a still crazy | industry? | germanjoey wrote: | The article (or, rather, the commentary in the link above on the | article) talks about the fallacious notion of "market cap" in | regards to cryptocurrencies. That is to say, e.g., multiplying | the number of bitcoins in existence times the current market | price is a silly metric because the entire market would never be | able to cash-out at that maximum price. | | What I was wondering was: is there a better number? e.g., is | there a way to calculate the amount of USD put _into_ a | cryptocurrency across a timeframe? What I 'm imagining is a | metric like (sum of all bitcoins bought by USD purchase price) - | (sum of all bitcoins sold by USD sale price) = amount of USD that | has been put "into" bitcoin. That first glance, one might expect | this number to equal zero, but it should be greater than zero | because of the new coins created by mining. | kayamon wrote: | Presumably one could multiply the mining effort put in so far | by the energy prices at that time, to calculate total... uh... | watt-dollars or something. | ianai wrote: | Multiply the volume traded per day by the average strike price | (or last strike price). Compare that to the total market cap. | vmception wrote: | > What I was wondering was: is there a better number? e.g., is | there a way to calculate the amount of USD put into a | cryptocurrency across a timeframe? | | Velocity is a very important factor that critics of asset- | wealth ignore. | | When it comes to criticizing crypto-assets specifically, people | just turn their brain off or are completely ignorant to how | assets they respect work in order to hold crypto-assets up to a | fictional higher standard. but even when articulating their | standard its like "do they even know what they're talking | about?" | | for example, when comparing crypto assets to currencies, due to | the "cryptocurrency" misnomer and skeumorph in the name, the | illiquidity and relative few transactions in comparison to the | marketcap seems like an important area to focus on, to them, | while completely missing that currencies are broken down into 4 | segments for this exact same reason. M1 being that tiny sliver | used for transactions with M2 and beyond being illiquid | allocations of the currency, the similarity of behavior | ironically bolsters the currency aspect of crypto in what was | supposed to be a criticism. | | Many of these criticisms focus on the conversion to a fiat | currency, and neglect the ability and reality of acquiring | goods and services and investments directly with the crypto. | | I see something like this over and over again. | | These all factor into how one would go about valuing any | particular asset. If a replacement for marketcap was sought | after. But "dollars in over time" is not good enough, as it | misses how liquidity can change at any moment, and misses the | velocity of activity within any one crypto economy. | ludamad wrote: | I like e.g. '2% liquidity depth' measure along with market cap, | to show how steep the iceberg is if you start selling | bigtunacan wrote: | Overall, I enjoyed the analysis of the piece, but I disagree | with their take on market cap. | | Amy Castor - "Yeah, market cap is a meaningless number. It | assumes everyone bought at the current price and could cash out | at the current price." | | We could just as easily apply that basic logic to any security. | Amazon(AMZN) is ~3275 a share with a market cap of ~1.668T. | That also assumes everyone could cash out at ~3275, but the | reality is if selling pressure is higher than the buy side | demand that selling shares will drive the price down as buyers | would be able to continually bid lower. Eventually it would | reach ~0 share price and effectively a 0 market cap. | | So in that sense token market cap is a fair equivalency. What | makes a dollar worth a dollar? Crypto value at any given point | in time is just an exchange value against fiat currencies. This | isn't much different than an exchange value between USD and the | Ruble; it will fluctuate. | quickthrowman wrote: | AMZN had $8B of shares traded today. Just under $2B of BTC | traded hands across the major exchanges on Wednesday. | | AMZN is a _single ticker_ , there's several orders of | magnitude more liquidity in equities alone than all | cryptocurrency combined. $34B of SPY shares traded today, and | that's a single ETF. | | > That also assumes everyone could cash out at ~3275, but the | reality is if selling pressure is higher than the buy side | demand that selling shares will drive the price down as | buyers would be able to continually bid lower. Eventually it | would reach ~0 share price and effectively a 0 market cap. | | This is wildly inaccurate. | acdha wrote: | > Eventually it would reach ~0 share price and effectively a | 0 market cap. | | This is the misunderstanding breaking your argument: AMZN | shares are fractional ownership of a company with assets and | ongoing revenue. In the event of a business downturn, those | will go down but they're not going to zero in any plausible | scenario - even bankruptcies usually return some fraction of | value to shareholders. | | This is important to understand because cryptocurrencies are | the weakest form of a fiat currency: unlike those AMZN shares | they have no value except for social consensus and unlike a | sovereign currency they have no pressure creating demand -- | nobody must have them to pay taxes, there are no government | contracts or salaries, etc. and there's no inherent value to | a random number so there's nothing to keep that floor above | zero. | ipaddr wrote: | They represent the same value prop as any stock. Any | company could go to 0 and the floor of the exchange is | littered with delisted companies. | | Amazon is big and the chances it goes to 0 are less than a | company still making vcrs. The same can be applied to | bitcoin. | | Government and other contracts could be cancelled. The | value of assets can be lower the debt. Bitcoin has no debt | while a company like Amazon can have billions of dollars of | debt. | FabHK wrote: | > We could just as easily apply that basic logic to any | security. | | Not quite. An Amazon share is a claim on future residual cash | flows, whose net present value constitutes the (unknown) | "true value" of the share. If Amazon falls to 1/10th of its | current price because of some tweet by Elon or whatever other | (extraneous, fluke) reason, lots of people would be lining up | to buy it, because they get a stake in an actual business | that would repay them their investment within a few years. | So, no, it would not reach 0 share price. | | (So, while the argument in the article needs some refinement, | its broad thrust is true: market cap for a publicly traded | company is much more meaningful than market cap for a crypto | currency.) | nightski wrote: | In theory it sounds so logical! | | Is it though? Have you actually tried to apply this in | practice to a trading strategy? I think once you start | trying to predict prices based on NPV of future cash flows | this quickly falls apart, even with large behemoths like | Microsoft, Apple, etc... | FabHK wrote: | I am not suggesting that you or I can compute the NPV of | future cash flows and then value the share, certainly not | easily. But that was not the point. The point was to | distinguish shares (and other securities) from coins: the | price of the former is (softly) constrained to be within | the vicinity of their intrinsic value. Cryptos have zero | intrinsic value. | [deleted] | nightski wrote: | The distinction is meaningless to me. There were | companies in the dot com bubble which had extremely high | valuations which went bust as just one example among | many. These stocks were not softly constrained at all. It | was pure speculation and it happens all the time. | | I don't think it is right to call growth speculation | "intrinsic value". The only thing that is truly intrinsic | in my opinion is profits. But profits aren't a good way | to measure value of an asset. Because the asset (stock in | this case) is separate from the company itself. A company | could generate slim profits and not grow each year. That | has intrinsic value to the employees and customers. But | that does little for the stock. | mrb wrote: | Crypto have intrinsic value: they are payment networks | that work even where traditional systems fail. No denied | transactions. No limits. No "account" to open. Works for | the underbanked. Send money truly anytime anywhere. No | other system does this. That's the value. | anonporridge wrote: | This illustrates an important point to me. | | First of all, money or value is a purely memetic construct. | It's a grand illusion that only exists in our collective | network of consciousnesses and operates as an abstraction to | efficiently keep track of favors owed. | | Therefore, value or money doesn't _just_ transfer with | explicit trades, as in trading $40,000 for 1 bitcoin adds | $40,000 of value to bitcoin. Value also transfers memetically | and invisibly, as in many people suddenly start to believe | that asset B has 20% more value than asset A than it did | yesterday. No explicit trade took place to create that | transference of value. It 's just that lots of people | suddenly started believing that asset B was worth more favors | that asset A. Sometimes that value is fairly easy to define, | like by projected earnings of a company over the holding | period of a stock. More often it's a nebulous and | decentralized calculation of the market. | [deleted] | dorgo wrote: | >is a silly metric because the entire market would never be | able to cash-out at that maximum price. | | On the other hand, you can't buy all coins even if you pay the | market cap.. | mrb wrote: | The market cap metric may seem silly to you, but it's the same | metric used by publicly traded corporations. And there is | nothing silly about it. All shareholders would never be able to | cash out at the current share price, but this isn't a reason to | disregard the market cap metric. | acdha wrote: | There's a key difference: corporate shares have a value | anchored in the company's assets and revenue. The market cap | can still fluctuate, of course, because different people will | have different assessments of the future profitability but | the floor is going to be based on the company's assets, | contracts and sales predictions, obligations, etc. | | In contrast, cryptocurrencies have no floor because there's | no inherent value to a random number and nobody has a need to | pay for a specific token. If something falls out of favor, | there's no reason to expect to find a buyer at any price. | nightski wrote: | Value is anchored in the equilibrium between supply and | demand, that's it. | | Maybe the things you mention do drive that equilibrium. But | I'd bet you'd have a hard time developing a profitable | trading strategy based on those metrics alone. I know I | have tried with little success. | mrb wrote: | Corporations can still very much "fall out of flavor", | driving their revenues and assets to zero. This criticism | isn't only applicable to crypto. | | And cryptocurrencies' intrinsic value is this: they are | payment networks that work even where traditional systems | fail. No denied transactions. No limits. No "account" to | open. Works for the underbanked. Send money truly anytime | anywhere. No other system does this. That's the value. | | In the end, there is no fundamental difference between a | service provided by a corporation vs a service provided by | cryptocurrencies. Both services can and do have value. | acdha wrote: | > Corporations can still very much "fall out of flavor", | driving their revenues and assets to zero. This criticism | isn't only applicable to crypto. | | That's technically correct but missing the point: | cryptocurrencies are an extreme outlier in that they have | literally nothing other than social consensus backing | them. If you look at examples of failing companies you | will find a few cases of Theranos-level fraud but far | more cases where a company was mismanaged into the ground | but shareholders received _something_ and it's not common | for this to happen so quickly that nobody had time to | react. The more common trajectory is something like Sears | or RIM where the writing was on the wall for years while | the PE guys strip-mined the corpse or someone buys it to | go patent-trolling, where a savvy investor has plenty of | time to exit before the end and the people at the end | still receive a fractional payout. | | > And cryptocurrencies' intrinsic value is this: they are | payment networks that work even where traditional systems | fail. No denied transactions. No limits. No "account" to | open. Works for the underbanked. Send money truly anytime | anywhere. No other system does this. That's the value. | | This is a good example of the problem: those claims are | either completely untrue or significantly overstated but | you have a significant financial interest in repeating | them because being honest will imperil your ability to | find someone willing to pay more for your random numbers | than you paid originally. | [deleted] | ChrisClark wrote: | It's a good number to use if you are comparing different coins | by value though. You need to know the circulating supply if you | want to compare the price of each token. | jaggirs wrote: | For every btc bought there is one sold, the equation you gave | thus adds up to zero. | secabeen wrote: | I would extend this concept to all non-cash financial assets. | All of what you wrote above applies to Tesla shares, or | Ukrainian real estate, or anything that's not currency. It | would still be incredibly useful, but it's also based so much | on psychology, I don't know if there's a mathematical way to | calculate it, like there was Black-Sholes for futures. | | A concrete calculation for this would revolutionize finance. | neuroma wrote: | Agree, but, mind bender... this relationship also applies to | currencies. A useful statistic is the volume transactions | required to shift the price 2%, looking at an open order | book. It gives you a notion of the available liquidity. It is | liquidity that matters, as it allows influx and efflux | without causing inelastic price movements. | doogerdog wrote: | Molly provides a great service to skeptics like me. She concise, | easy to read, articulate and funny. | | I feel like I live in a world where a huge train wreck is getting | set up. I would like to follow along but it has gotten to the | point where I can't get myself to read many of these 'News' | stories about a new crypto adventure. I only have a little news | reading time in a day and the typical article about NFTs or | whatever leaves me feeling assaulted by a hype machine. But I can | peruse web3isgoinggreat and stay abreast of what is going on. | | Molly obviously has an opinion about the future of blockchain | money but her comments all seem factual and fair to me. I'm | pretty sure I would read her site even if I were on the other | side of the argument. | ewired wrote: | > I would read her site even if I were on the other side of the | argument | | It's been a great resource to confirm that I'm not falling for | the most obvious scams (like NFTs or BNB chain scams which | constitute a majority of web3isgoinggreat posts) nor investing | in easily exploited projects. She perhaps inadvertently helps | the cryptocurrency space by pointing out scam artists to avoid | working with. There is a world of good going on outside of the | typical bored ape garbage in the cryptocurrency space. You | would be getting a raw deal if relying solely on her for | cryptocurrency information. | d13 wrote: | It's a brilliant site, but definitely cherry-picked for | entertainment value. It's only a small part of the whole | picture and provides a very distorted view | Femtio wrote: | abetusk wrote: | Many of the points brought up are completely valid but they're | also heavily biased and often lack critical examination. Meaning, | they take a stance of skeptic to the article but don't use the | same bar for themselves. | | They purposefully take ungenerous interpretations of statements | to build straw man arguments then accuse the article of making | straw man arguments. They bring up studies and articles | contradicting claims in the piece then dismiss the studies | brought up in the piece as being ambiguous because they don't | have more rigor. Often, the comments are nothing more than snide | remarks deriding the claims without any citations while at the | same time writing "citation needed" for various other parts of | the article. | | As I said, there are many fair points in this criticism but this | critique, and other pieces like it, are, in my opinion, not | really trying to pursue the truth, they're written to cater to an | audience that wants to dismiss cryptocurrency outright. | rvz wrote: | Precisely. Most of the points about where it doesn't make sense | to use blockchains are valid (Social media, storing images on- | chain, etc) but the critics themselves like to filter, dismiss | and scream ALL of it as an entire scam, which is quite a | dangerous assumption for them in the long term, but we'll see. | | Who knows if the larger cryptocurrencies will still be around | in 10 years time due to those criticisms or will they just | adapt and fit in to better use cases? I also dislike the hype | around NFTs as them being a marketplace for JPEGs but not all | of them are like this. Perhaps 90% of NFTs will crumble with | only 10% of them still being around that have a use case. | | Due to a few of them having some utility, I certainly won't | dismiss the whole thing or the technologies behind them. | Otherwise we will see yet another HN crypto post with the same | comments and dismissals attached to them. | | I expect for them to easily ignore it since they are convinced | it will _completely_ collapse in the future. I 'm not sure why | they find it very difficult to do this but even I also think | the majority of the hype will collapse too due to regulations, | but the technologies (including blockchain) will still live on. | woodruffw wrote: | Excellent editing. I'm an otherwise fervent defender of the NYT | (even through its many mistakes), but the lack of _basic_ | critical analysis and _obvious_ conflicts of interest in this | piece were a bridge too far for even me. | ilamont wrote: | The stat that suggests 20% of adults own crypto was a stunning | inclusion, considering there was nothing on the methodology | used in the survey, other than the sample size ("2,200 | people"). | | If it was online, how we even know it was that many people? | eatonphil wrote: | I agree this piece was embarrassingly lazy. But what were the | conflicts of interest? Just a quick check and I can't exactly | find him having ties to any crypto company. | woodruffw wrote: | From one of the footnotes: it sounds like Roose used his | position at the NYT to boost an otherwise obscure NFT. He's | also publicly advocated[1] for a loosening of the rules that | newspapers have typically imposed for financial reporting (no | ownership in/positions against the companies/assets being | reported on.) | | Re-reading my original comment, I think I was too forward in | _asserting_ that there 's a conflict of interest. But I find | his public positions around becoming an interested party | concerning and a potential risk to his objectivity. | | [1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20220219172535/https://twitt | er.c... | danso wrote: | Yeah I'm generally open-minded to NYT articles (I'm still a | subscriber, but at the please-dont-cancel-your-subscription-yet | discount rate). When I read their "Crypto 101" guide last week, | I only made it about halfway before quitting. I know a few | things about crypto, but I just could not imagine how the NYT's | explainer would clarify things for absolute beginners. Glad I | wasn't totally off when thinking it felt a bit too upbeat and | abstract. | di4na wrote: | Worth adding | | >>> And in Silicon Valley, engineers and executives are bolting | from cushy jobs in droves to join the crypto gold rush. | | No they do not. I am an engineer in a technology heavily used by | crypto projects and they have a really hard time recruiting. | | Engineers slam the door in their face the moment you tell them | the opening is for this industry. | [deleted] | dogman144 wrote: | What is seen most often is NYC or equivalent finance traders | and executives bolting into crypto. | | It seems hard for firms below the Coinbase/Kraken/heavy hitter | trading shop bar to pull serious resume hires out of SV, but | quite a few Managing Director+ level hires moved over into | crypto. | | My sense is the NYC finance realize a core aspect of crypto - | you might not think it's money, but enough people do, and | there's an active market for it, so there is quite a bit of | money to be made. | pavlov wrote: | There's an important nuance to this: enough unsophisticated | people think it's money, so there's lots of opportunity for | finance people to make money. | | Traditional finance is well-trodden, every arbitrage | opportunity has been tried decades ago. But crypto is full of | doe-eyed innocents who think they're reinventing finance. Of | course experienced traders want to take advantage of them. It | must be more fun than ye olde eurodollar bonds, or whatever. | twox2 wrote: | There are financial mechanics that exist only in the scope | of DeFi and not in traditional finance. It actually IS new | in a lot of ways and skilled folks are teaming up to make a | killing, not just experienced traders. Take a look at | what's happening in the "MEV" space. None of this existed | in traditional finance. | dogman144 wrote: | Ya this is more my point. Taking traditional algorithmic | trading skills into a place specifically designed for it | and with new market mechanisms. | | Whoever spends some time building DeFi/L1 protocols is | going to make a killing jumping over to Jump/Jane | Street/HRT in a few years with that knowledge. | dogman144 wrote: | > enough unsophisticated people | | Well, sophisticated people also think it's money, but they | entered '12-'17 and stopped talking about it. A more recent | example though is Neuberger Berman's entrance. | | The tragedy of the crypto moment is serious folks who | didn't come from crypto made up their minds about it and | did it a while ago, but articles like OP run interference | against "everyone else" doing the same. | | Some links: | | https://medium.com/john-pfeffer/an-institutional- | investors-t... | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wences_Casares > Casares was | the entrepreneur to convince Bill Gates, Reid Hoffman, and | other tech veterans in Silicon Valley to invest in bitcoin | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantera_Capital - scope out | Morehead's background. | NovemberWhiskey wrote: | There's money to be made in trading even when the asset | trades at prices that are fundamentally wrong; as long as | people are buying and selling, you will find market makers | taking the spread. There's also money to be made in asset | management for the same basic set of reasons. | jasonwatkinspdx wrote: | Working for a crypto startup can be a negative on your | resume/CV as well. | phone8675309 wrote: | I would not hire anybody with a crypto startup on their | resume. | trophycase wrote: | Former newspaper exec probably: "I would never hire someone | who started out writing a _blog_ " | twox2 wrote: | You might be surprised to learn that most of these people | have no interest in working for you either. | ditonal wrote: | In the Hacker News bubble, working for anywhere is a negative | on your CV. Amazon treats its warehouse employees badly, | Google creates a surveillance state and bows to | authoritarians, Facebook drives engagement with hate/dissent, | AirBnB is causing a housing crisis by turning long term | rentals into short term rentals, Apple has Chinese | sweatshops, Netflix and Spotify run controversial content, | Uber/Doordash/Lyft/Instacart exploit gig workers, etc. | | In reality, practically nobody cares and most employers are | more than happy to hire experienced engineers who happened to | work at some employers who did sketchy things. | | But, if we're going to drill down into the ethics of crypto | startups, I think they come out looking pretty good in | comparison. | | It's worth noting that the author of this post works at | Hubspot which literally had an entire book written about how | its workplace culture was highly discriminatory, particularly | against older workers.("Disrupted: My Misadventure in the | Start-Up Bubble ") | | Engineers in glass houses.... | detaro wrote: | The "hackernews bubble" is full of people literally working | at all these companies, so I very much doubt that's in any | way an accurate representation of the average communities | opinions. | twblalock wrote: | Most people who work at those companies don't read or | comment on HN. | detaro wrote: | And most people in the US also don't read or comment on | HN, nevertheless HN is full of people from the US. | KarlKemp wrote: | I'm basically a Stalinist relative to the community here, | but among those listed, only Uber and Facebook would fall | into don't-work-for-them-territory. | | The others are regularly criticised to varying degrees, but | that doesn't mean it's impossible to work there for people | somewhat conscious of their conscience. It comes down to | the question "can you honestly expect to have an impact on | the organisation, or is it more likely to hollow you out | and make you into another one of their cynical libertarian | defenders?" | | This happens to be exactly the same misunderstanding as | calling all criticism "cancel culture". | dvt wrote: | > No they do not. I am an engineer in a technology heavily used | by crypto projects and they have a really hard time recruiting. | | Absolutely not true and this is very typical HN bubble-speak. | Been helping with hiring engineers for a stealth crypto startup | for the past 6 months, and getting some of the best applicants | I've ever seen, most coming from FAANG. To add to this | anecdote, one of my friends (FB product manager) was telling me | ~Oct last year that a lot of engineers are leaving her team or | churning for either TikTok or crypto startups. | frankbreetz wrote: | Are thr salaries much higher? You group yourself with TikTok | and think the engineers are leaving for something other then | money? | dvt wrote: | Token offers (which a lot of crypto companies give), often | have more upside than RSUs (especially if you're bullish on | crypto as a whole), and _definitely_ have more upside than | early "traditional" startup equity (which is basically | worthless). | forbiddenvoid wrote: | In both crypto tokens and startup equity, you are | literally gambling that there will be a liquid market for | your asset. | | Tokens _are_ worthless if no one wants to buy them, and | pretending that is somehow different than startup equity | is ignorant at best and downright predatory in the worst | cases. | | Crypto growth overall does not mean _your_ token is going | to gain value anymore than the general growth of the | economy means that startup equity is going to grow in | value. | dvt wrote: | > Tokens _are_ worthless if no one wants to buy them, and | pretending that is somehow different than startup equity | is ignorant at best and downright predatory in the worst | cases. | | Fundamentally not true. Unlike traditional markets, | crypto exchanges work by leveraging AMM liquidity pools. | Obviously, a token can go up/down based on supply and | demand, but if there's liquidity you can literally | _always_ sell. Confusing early-stage startup equity is | _by far_ more predatory than giving someone some shitcoin | with a vesting schedule. Any argument to the contrary is | either disingenuous or misinformed. | | With traditional equity offerings, you need to worry | about: what class of stock did you get, what's the | vesting preference, will you get diluted, what if you get | fired, etc. I'm hardly a crypto bro, but imo startup | equity is one of the biggest scams around that often | takes advantage of young and inexperienced engineers that | don't quite understand its financial underpinnings. | NovemberWhiskey wrote: | The definition of liquidity is something like "the ease | with which buyers and sellers can transact at | transparent, stable prices". | | If no-one wants to buy a thing at any price, it is - by | definition - illiquid. The notion that something for | which there is no demand can be liquid is strange. | dvt wrote: | Actually, AMMs (automated market makers) work by ensuring | that there's always a buyer (hence, "automated") as long | as there's liquidity -- by automatically adjusting prices | based on supply/demand. | NovemberWhiskey wrote: | Help me out here. I'm going to issue a hundred trillion | MostExtraordinaryShitCoin (MESC). What's the bid for MESC | from these AMM pools? | dvt wrote: | (Sorry for late reply, HN time-limits nested comment | replies.) Basically, if you were to issue N tokens into | an AMM, you would also need to provide the counter-party | liquidity. So let's say you're sending 100 MESC to a | pool, and the initial price is 0.01 USD (to keep it | simple), you would also have to seed the pool with 1 USD. | Once that's done, people start trading -- some other | people might even provide liquidity (and buy LP -- | liquidity pool -- tokens) which they can earn interest | on. | NovemberWhiskey wrote: | This whole discussion starts from your response to a | comment that "[t]okens _are_ worthless if no one wants to | buy them", asserting that this was "[f]undamentally not | true". | | But it seems very much that it is true. Did you mean to | make a different point? | dvt wrote: | I'm not sure if we disagree, my point was a technical | one: traditional markets are "order book" markets where | for every buyer, there's a seller. Crypto exchanges use | AMMs, where there does not need to be a buyer for every | seller, as the AMM handles that automatically. | | If your point is that tokens without liquidity are | worthless, then that's true (that's why initial | decentralized exchange offerings always involve seeding | liquidity pools, as mentioned). If your point is that | tokens can get arbitrarily close to zero if everyone | sells, that's also true. | | But if you get a token that's being actively traded on | exchanges and has healthy liquidity pools and a healthy | market cap, that certainly is a better deal than some | percentage "equity" an early-stage startup dangles in | front of you. | Karrot_Kream wrote: | Indeed. It's the old quip about monopoly money. | Personally, I would not be willing to accept tokens as a | large part of my compensation full stop. I haven't dug | into crypto offers though so I'm not sure how true that | is. That said, unlike options, tokens almost always have | liquidity immediately, so an engineer could (probably) | trade their tokens for fiat value if needed where an | individual with options would be tied down through the | exercise process. | vmception wrote: | there are some very important differences that we can | focus on, while you can stick with the similarities: | | 1 - token vesting contracts are often much quicker than | startup grants, and public company RSUs. A few months to | a year, compared to 4 years. | | 2 - tokens achieve liquidity much faster and more | reliably, in comparison to startup companies of a similar | age. this allows new organizations to compete in hiring | against FAANGs, where employees also are receiving liquid | things to sell. | | 3 - token grants can be _alongside_ startup equity. so | its an additional part of the compensation package. As | such there is no compromise to rant about. | | and just to _acknowledge_ the "issue" you care about, | correct a market may never occur or form for the tokens, | no different than the equity, there you go, a tiny | disclaimer on page 34. I agree that every employee should | be objective about that, this is the same standard with | every kind of organization aiming to compensate partially | in non-cash, which puts us right back at square one: pick | the one thats both interesting and compensates well. | insulfrable wrote: | That says a lot more about Facebook and the type of people it | attracts than it does about the crypto industry. | Karrot_Kream wrote: | Facebook is a huge employer, it makes it hard to believe | that if they're losing folks to crypto companies that it's | somehow localized to Facebook. What does this have to do | with Facebook and the "type of people it attracts"? Are you | arguing somehow that Facebook hires a very particular type | of engineer despite common knowledge that the folks that | work at one FAANG will usually be willing to work on other | FAANG companies? Or do you deny that FAANG companies have | the number of people to make the original statement true? | insulfrable wrote: | Facebook is a company with shady ethic that attracted | people willing to look the other way because the money is | too good. | | But they just lost 37% on the "too good" money. | | So where do you think these people are going next? | Karrot_Kream wrote: | Yes and? The original statement was that crypto is having | a hard time hiring, the GP rebutted that saying they're | seeing FAANG engineers leave. You then try to make an | ethical argument. So? What does that have to do with the | reality that FAANG, who employes lots of engineers, is | losing engineers to crypto? Or do we need to move the | goalposts and scope this discussion to "ethically- | approved" (TM) companies? | throwaway423342 wrote: | You work for FB or something? | espadrine wrote: | Facebook literally made a cryptocurrency, a crypto | wallet, and a number of associated products. | | Following regulatory response, they have been downsizing | it to a tiny speck of its former size. | | Them losing folks to crypto companies is the most obvious | result of the past five years, but it has more to do with | their strategy struggles than the overall mindset of the | engineering population. | Karrot_Kream wrote: | This hasn't been my experience at all. I feel like this is just | pandering to group sentiment. My work (household name so we | work with a lot of companies) has been seeing increased spend | from crypto companies and so we've talked with a few folks from | these companies and they've been hiring headcount like crazy. | We've had lots of our own engineers churn to crypto companies | also. Yeah they won't get the anti-crypto-bubble engineer or | Stephen Diehl (who's been astroturfing crypto because he works | on his own blockchain company), but there's no need to project | your personal biases into the entire industry. It is a gold | rush though, so there's a high likelihood it will all go bust | soon. Let them fail if you hate them but stop spreading | inaccurate statements. | pavlov wrote: | _> Stephen Diehl (who 's been astroturfing crypto because he | works on his own blockchain company)_ | | If you criticise crypto based on general software engineering | experience, the cryptobros say: "You don't know what you're | talking about!" | | If you criticise crypto based on experience trying to | actually use it, the cryptobros say: "You're astroturfing!" | | Thus the only people allowed to discuss crypto are seemingly | those with a financial interest in token prices going up. | Funny how that works. | Karrot_Kream wrote: | > Thus the only people allowed to discuss crypto are | seemingly those with a financial interest in token prices | going up. Funny how that works. | | > Funny how that works. | | This rhetorical device is tiring and divisive, please stop. | I have no interest in crypto other than some coins I bought | years ago that constitute a negligible portion of my | portfolio and a passing interest in IPFS. I think the space | is full of fraud and it would take a full-time enthusiast | to find what's not. But there's no need to spread FUD like | the person I responded to, nor is there any reason to say | silly things like "funny how that works" and wink | derisively at some cryptobro conspiracy. If crypto fails it | will fail, and then you can laugh at it all day like | everyone does to Theranos and WeWork. Until then stick to | factual statements. The GP claims that nobody wants to work | on crypto. I have no idea how your "funny how that works" | sneer has anything to do with the original claim. Stop | moving the goalposts to score internet points in an anti- | crypto echo chamber. | pavlov wrote: | You're the one implying that Diehl's criticism isn't | valid because he has worked for a blockchain company. | | That's a genuinely bizarre line of argument that I've | only ever heard in crypto circles. | jjtheblunt wrote: | Astroturfing means what? | detaro wrote: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing | | > _Astroturfing is the practice of masking the sponsors | of a message or organization (e.g., political, | advertising, religious or public relations) to make it | appear as though it originates from and is supported by | grassroots participants. It is a practice intended to | give the statements or organizations credibility by | withholding information about the source 's financial | connection._ | jjtheblunt wrote: | thank you | throw0101a wrote: | The source (etymology) of the phrase is a play on words: | | * "grass roots" support is an 'authentic' community | response on an issue | | * AstroTurf(r) is an artificial playing surface used in | some sports facilities (especially indoor ones), instead | of a one made from real grass | | So "astroturfing" is the creation of an 'artificial | community response'. | fizzyfizz wrote: | I was surprised by the claim about Stephen Diehl so I did a | little googling. I don't think it's correct to say he "works | on his own blockchain company". However, relatively recently | he was working on smart contracts with a company called | Adjoint. | | https://web.archive.org/web/20180220171955/https://www.steph. | .. | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFlu61wJe2Y | | He seems to have been interested in smart contracts but found | the current implementations appalling. He wanted to use | functional programming, particularly Haskell, to create | something like a smart contract with better guarantees. But | he is also careful to say that a smart contract doesn't imply | a blockchain; he's talking more generally about code that | executes over distributed databases. | | This stuff is scrubbed from his website, and Adjoint doesn't | even appear on his LinkedIn profile. But I can easily see why | that might be the case if he's decided the whole field is | rubbish and left the industry, or if his work is being | misconstrued. | | That said, having examined blockchains in depth gives him | more credibility, not less. And it would be a rather bizarre | business model to continually decry blockchains if he was | actually working on one. | | --- | | EDIT: Found an interview where he distinguishes cryptocoins | from other technologies sometimes labelled web3, like IPFS. | https://www.coywolf.news/podcast/episode-12-stephen-diehl- | in... | | I think it's fair to say the guy is not an indiscriminate | hater. On the other hand, I also personally was already | convinced that crypto "currencies" are terrible but IPFS and | decentralized organizations might be cool, so I guess I like | him more now. | Karrot_Kream wrote: | I appreciate your reply. You dug into a claim I made and | lay out your criticisms dispassionately, thanks. This is | the kind of discourse I'd like to see more of. | | > This stuff is scrubbed from his website, and Adjoint | doesn't even appear on his LinkedIn profile. But I can | easily see why that might be the case if he's decided the | whole field is rubbish and left the industry, or if his | work is being misconstrued. | | Gives his passionate publishing against Blockchains I'd | prefer he not hide this aspect of his past and actually | talk about it. I guess I didn't know that he had moved on | from Adjoint so that does add more credibility to his | beliefs. But removing it from his website, removing it from | LI, and neglecting to talk about it in public can certainly | cast some doubt. I'm sympathetic to your view as well | though. | fizzyfizz wrote: | Thank you for a response in the spirit of good discourse. | | Anyway, I don't even know if he _has_ moved on from | Adjoint. | | I agree there's something odd about this, but I've also | seen how people who are vocal critics on the internet | have to be less public about their associations. Not sure | what to think about it. | Karrot_Kream wrote: | You added more data to my view and definitely made me | think. Thanks for that! | clpm4j wrote: | How is OP spreading inaccurate statements? He/she shared | their perspective, just as you have shared yours. And my | personal experience as a tech employee in SF mirrors the OP - | a lot of my friends and colleagues have been job hopping over | the past couple of years, but very few to crypto. None of us | can make broad generalizations based on our own rather | limited points of view. | | Maybe you have a better view, but I don't understand what you | mean here: _" My work (household name so we work with a lot | of companies) has been seeing increased spend from crypto | companies and so we've talked with a few folks from these | companies and they've been hiring headcount like crazy."_ | [deleted] | jonathan-adly wrote: | Opposite anecdote, I would be happy to take a 30% paycut to | work on (some) crypto projects and actually do 60+ hours of | work (I do like 10 hours in my cushy job now). Unfortunately, I | am not in SV and don't have a padded a resume, and they are | flooded with better applicants - so I can't even compete. | woah wrote: | Please apply: https://informal.systems/careers/ | celticninja wrote: | Interestingly this isn't just for engineers. I know someone who | was looking at a role offered by a crypto exchange for a | company secretary but they were having a hard time attracting | people from the traditional finance industry into the realm of | crypto. | twox2 wrote: | What? So many of my peers are moving to crypto companies in | droves or moonlighting as devs on crypto projects. The money is | really good too. | AlexCoventry wrote: | I'm not directly connected to Chainlink's recruiting, but as | far as I can tell as an employee, many engineers are | enthusiastic about working here. | | https://careers.chain.link/ | cageface wrote: | Yeah when I was job hunting recently I didn't even consider any | crypto jobs even though there were a lot of listed openings | using Rust and I would like to have a chance to work on a real | Rust codebase. | catsarebetter wrote: | Yup that statement is factually incorrect, many silicon valley | engineers are jumping to web2 tech companies bc the pay is so | damn high right now, very few engineers in crypto at the | moment. | xmprt wrote: | Not to mention that anytime I see extremely high pay in | crypto companies I think the salary is overinflated because | they are paying a large portion in tokens. | lekevicius wrote: | This format of critique is so snarky and tribalistic. I enjoy it | sometimes, particularly John Gruber's "translations from | corporate bullshit" articles, but there's no point in denying | that this format works best for preaching to the choir, not | nuanced analysis. Original NYT article was very biased; so is | this one. | lowbloodsugar wrote: | Also a puff piece. | ludamad wrote: | Quoting a 2017 book about how thinly traded bitcoin is? I | appreciate the concept but it doesn't always feel like it rounds | out the takes. (FTR, I appreciate it's thin enough to make market | cap misleading, but up-to-date liquidity figures would be helpful | if we're trying to criticize market cap) | jonathan-adly wrote: | Bitcoin liquidity is about the same as the typical FAANG stock | - which is pretty good. This a commentary by skeptics for | skeptics - It is as factual as a reddit post on r/bitcoin. | | If people actually want facts, then that's the wrong place to | look. | jacinabox wrote: | Most bitcoin have never been sold. Bitcoin is a commodity that | is intended to serve as a store of value, and other commodities | like gold and silver do their work as a store of value without | an appreciable fraction of them ever being sold. So using the | term market cap is not a misleading measure in relation to | bitcoin; it is simply used by analogy to how it would be used | for a company; it's not literally implying that all bitcoin is | the equivalent of shareholder value. | acdha wrote: | Bitcoin is a failed currency - see the original paper. After | around a decade of failing to find demand the big holders | started to market it as a commodity but since there's no | inherent value to it unless it's actively traded it doesn't | really fit the usual meaning of that term. | randomhodler84 wrote: | Oh please do explain why it is failed? | | The only thing that has evolved over time, that is peoples | time preference. There will _always_ be demand for BTC. The | software works as it was designed, and grows stronger every | year. Gresham's law might be the key to understanding this. | randomhodler84 wrote: | Hmm that's not quite right to say never been sold. | https://stats.buybitcoinworldwide.com/unspent-outputs/ | | Today, there is 1.7M unspent coinbase tx out of a emitted 19M | coins. Once moved from a coinbase-tx, 4.3M are older than 5y, | with 2.4M at >10y. | | Most Bitcoin have been sold many times in their life, but | they do typically sleep for a long time, given the switch of | time preference. MtGox alone would have cycled a majority of | the coins in its short lifetime. | vasco wrote: | This format is interesting at first but when it starts getting to | 5 paragraphs of dissecting each phrase, it gets too much. Reminds | me of the someone-is-wrong-on-the-internet, point-by-point- | repliers in internet forums circa 2006. | [deleted] | alex_sf wrote: | > This format is interesting at first | | I agree. | | > but when it starts getting to 5 paragraphs of dissecting each | phrase, it gets too much. | | Yeah, that's true. | | > Reminds me of the someone-is-wrong-on-the-internet | | Isn't there usually? | | > point-by-point-repliers in internet forums | | I still think it's a good format. | | > circa 2006 | | What's wrong with 2006? | librish wrote: | Until someone has built a crypto product that creates values (for | the purpose of this discussion it can be a good or a service | would be willing to spend USD on even if it wasn't a crypto) | crypto is a negative-sum game. Any USD taken out of the system | someone else has to have put in, plus whatever the miners take | out. Fortunes aren't created, they are redistributed. | anonporridge wrote: | That's like saying the USD is a negative sum game because "any | CNY taken out of the system someone else has to have put in, | plus whatever the government takes out. Fortunes aren't | created, they are redistributed." | | The transference, redistribution, and storage of wealth is | itself the value of monetary networks. The more circular trade | that doesn't need to exit the network happens, the more | valuable the network becomes. | | The ultimate point of projects like bitcoin isn't to build a | system that makes everyone rich. That would obviously an absurd | ponzi like scheme. The point is to build an open monetary | system for the whole planet that emerges out of distributed | consensus rather than dictated to us by a global superpower, | and is therefore not fragile and subject to failure when the | superpower declines. Early investors of the network will get | rich if it succeeds, just like early investors of any tech | giant did. That mechanism of rewarding those who take a risk | with their money when the future is uncertain is a huge part of | what's driving its continued growth and success. If you didn't | have that to bootstrap the network, bitcoin would likely be a | forgotten oddity of a cypherpunk project that nobody ever cared | about. But now, it's a global money that nation states are | adopting. | | I do agree that most crypto projects will fail and end up | looking like nothing more than pump and dumps to scalp investor | money, whether from dumb VCs or retail. | omegaworks wrote: | >The point is to build an open monetary system | | A structurally impossible goal when it is deflationary in | nature. | anonporridge wrote: | Why's that? | quickthrowman wrote: | A rational actor would never spend a deflationary | currency since it would gain value as deflation happens. | If everyone was rational, no money would ever change | hands. You can't have a functional monetary system | without liquidity or exchanging of currency. | | Bitcoin is a deflationary currency (for now) | seibelj wrote: | I find a lot of DeFi projects to be very useful, but you have a | logical fallacy - | | If I buy 1% of Apple stock at $100, and later it's worth $1000 | based on the last trading price, money didn't change hands to | make me have more USD, it's my paper wealth. | | If Bitcoin goes from $1 to $50k, and I never sell, I didn't | take any money - the wealth simply grew. | ipnon wrote: | Applying this argument to the US dollar when it was gaining | value relative to many other currencies before the current | inflationary spat is illustrative. Probably all of us held | USD during that time, but that act in itself wasn't | productive. The increase in value came from the underlying | institution of the US Treasury being perceived as more | trustworthy than other similar international institutions. | The distinction to make is between the minor deflation of USD | and the absolutely massive deflation of BTC over the same | time period. I think everyone would agree there is _some_ | value to a decentralized proof of work transaction ledger, | but $50k USD is clearly the result of some mania (rational or | otherwise). That "some value" should therefore be reflected | in a positive price, even if that number is orders of | magnitude less than the current astronomical price. | Ygg2 wrote: | If you hold something with that much volatility it's not a | currency. | NovemberWhiskey wrote: | The point is that holding Apple stock is a claim of ownership | of the assets of Apple as well as the future income of Apple, | either in the form of dividends or stock buybacks. | | The activity of Apple is economically meaningful; and the | price of Apple stock reflects that. | trophycase wrote: | The activity on Ethereum is economically meaningful, | whether you believe it is or not. And let's be honest, | Netflix or Facebook could disappear off the face of the | earth tomorrow and productivity would arguably increase, so | is that a negative sum game? | NovemberWhiskey wrote: | OK but I'm responding to a claim about BTC. | librish wrote: | The activity on Ethereum has the potential to be | economically meaningful (there's a separate discussion on | whether or not it's the best way to do it) but I don't | think it currently is. | | What is people extracting from the Ethereum ecosystem | that isn't USD? | drexlspivey wrote: | Why are you comparing a currency with a stock? What is the | claim of ownership for USD for example? | foobiekr wrote: | The ability to pay taxes. | [deleted] | [deleted] | nightski wrote: | While partly true, that is true of any asset (dollars | in/dollars out). However your statement that fortunes are not | created, they are redistributed is incorrect. The value is not | a 1 to 1 relationship with inflows. The value is based on | supply/demand. If demand outstrips supply, value goes up | regardless of how much $ is flowing in or out. You can see | large price swings even on days with low volume. | lhorie wrote: | I'm curious if this comment is a usual fare of shallow | dismissal or if you are aware of current applications of crypto | in the wild and consider them to be useless nonetheless. | | One example that comes to mind is that Docusign offers a | product that uses Ethereum for storing evidence of contracts in | a decentralized medium. That seems like a fairly legitimate | application for the technology. Another example (albeit | possibly more dubious) is BitTorrent tokens as a "currency" for | "buying" download speed by incentivizing people to keep nodes | running within its P2P network. | | Do you consider these types of applications to be negative | sums? If so, why? Not trying to be antagonistic here, I'm | actually curious. | paxys wrote: | Every large company (including my own) jumped on the crypto | bandwagon when the tech started gaining mainstream | popularity, but it was mostly to give their salespeople more | content for their pitch decks instead of building features | people would actually utilize. | | For the case you mentioned, is anyone actually using this | tech for their contracts? No Docusign (or any other) document | I have ever signed was written to any blockchain. Have any | real legal disputes ever been resolved by looking up a public | ledger? | librish wrote: | Those applications are not negative sum. My impression is | that the total revenue for services like that is minuscule, I | would be very interested if you have data showing something | else. | twox2 wrote: | How is it negative sum, and not just zero sum? | FabHK wrote: | Miners are paid some $40m/day, through 1) creating more BTC | (called "coinbase" here, "Seigniorage" more generally, | leading to inflation) and 2) fees. | | For now, the $100 miners siphon off per transaction are | predominantly from 1), so those costs are not very visible. | | And then of course the exchanges charging 20 to 120 bp (or | more) for a roundtrip against money you can actually use. | Coinbase (the exchange) alone takes around 0.4% of the entire | crypto market cap per annum into its pockets. | paxys wrote: | There are middlemen extracting fees at every step | dragontamer wrote: | A lot of miners have access to free electricity, often | through corrupt officials on some unsavory countries... or | even US Army folk who are abusing their home's utility bills | (Uncle Sam pays for that electricity). | | Under these conditions, the utility company has to pay for | say $100 in electricity to make $80 of cryptocoin. But since | the miner has "free electricity" and doesn't see these costs, | they only see the $80 of cryptocoin that they sold off. | jshen wrote: | Carbon footprint, and convincing people that a JPEG is an | asset that will go up. | loup-vaillant wrote: | The real stuff is the waste of resources. Not just the | carbon footprint, the staggering amount of silicon wasted | on those. Though that sure makes GPU prices go up... | loph wrote: | "Crypto" to me is about cryptography, not cryptocurrencies. | | re: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_naming_controversy | | and (of course) this: https://www.iacr.org/meetings/crypto/ | | I wish that lazy people did not overload this term. | scottiebarnes wrote: | Language is fluid and evolves over time, get over it. | [deleted] | pixelpoet wrote: | > I wish that lazy people did not overload this term. | | You mean like how you just used the programming definition of | "overload" that you won't find in the dictionary? | alligator1728 wrote: | eropple wrote: | _> Does it not make sense that a reporter on web3 /crypto | should be entitled to practice owning an ENS domain, in order | to better write about the experience from a first hand | perspective? It would be like banning a reporter from | purchasing their own personal domain name, out of fear it may | skew their bias on how they write about HTTP and web | protocols._ | | It absolutely does not. This is what a research budget is for | from an organization--and you can shred it/render it | nonfunctional afterwards to avoid a personally biasing stake. | | As for "personal identities": I know of about half of the folks | cited in those articles and all of them, even crypto's scariest | nemesis (one David Gerard), have plenty of other things that | they do and that they are interested in. Perhaps what you read | as a "personal vendetta" is a deep understanding of what a | rotgut industry they criticize, and that morality is not fully | dead. | alligator1728 wrote: | I feel a journalist should be entitled to own their own | personal ENS domain just like they might secure their own | .com domain with their own personal funds. Seems wild to | suggest that Kevin should sell his ENS domain to avoid any | potential bias, considering it means he will have to later | buy it back at a premium either when/if he retires (or | changes jobs), or when/if the NYT changes their policy. (I am | assuming (1) he actually wants to keep the ENS domain, and | (2) he bought it with his own funds, rather than company | dime.) | | I am sure they all have fulfilling lives outside of what they | project online; but the single-track attitude and constant | crypto snark is as tiring as the laser eyed BTC bros. | | Edit: just to add, if the ENS were solely to practice buying | "nytdomaintest1234.eth" and using it, then sure I agree with | you. I am asking this question in the context of Kevin owning | a personal domain linked to his real life name and identity. | flaque wrote: | The issue with crypto is that reasonable use cases are early, and | don't attract attention except for niche communities. | | There's a few big ones, for example, filecoin right now has | created a commodity market for storage that is currently 10,000 | cheaper than S3 in some instances. (See file.app for stats) | | But realistically, the interesting projects are very small and | hard to find. | | However, scams and ponzi schemes, by their nature are very | public, easy to find, and have lots of people talking about them | (often for financial gain). | | Everyone building anything sane is so tired of having to explain | that their thing isn't a ponzi, isn't an nft thing, and isn't | shilling proof of work, that they don't post to hacker news, and | so they exist outside of your bubble. | | Crypto is like the story of the blind scientists studying an | elephant. The first one touches its trunk and says "it's a | snake!", the next one touches its tusk and says "it's a spear!", | the next one touches its side and says "it's a wall!". None have | the correct answer, because no single party has a full view. | | The crypto skeptics are as irrational as the crypto optimists: | firm believers in their own view, based on an incomplete | information. | Aunche wrote: | >There's a few big ones, for example, filecoin right now has | created a commodity market for storage that is currently 10,000 | cheaper than S3 in some instances. (See file.app for stats) | | First of all, 63 PB is nothing in terms of cloud storage, so I | wouldn't exactly call it a commodity market. Also, I doubt that | Amazon is making 99.9% profit margins, so it's more likely that | miners are just subsidizing the cost of storage to speculate. | matheusmoreira wrote: | Yeah, it sucks. Monero for example is an actual privacy coin | that's usable as currency but nobody seems to care. Very | demoralizing. | | Bitcoin is obsolete technology at this point. It's continued | existence does more harm than good to the cryptocurrency space | because everyone gravitates towards it instead of better | projects. | eoo wrote: | Bitcoin is as obsolete as POSIX. It's ossified, and not | changing is a feature. | randomhodler84 wrote: | version_five wrote: | > precoiners | | This made the post | mcbuilder wrote: | If you want someone to understand crypto, have them mine a little | and then have them purchase something physical. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-03-25 23:00 UTC)