There have historically been attempts to restrict the sale of purely speculative assets to the general public (Howey test, binary options ban etc), because gambling is such a compelling addictive product that people ruin their lives by it.
> I fail to see how this is different than any speculative asset?
To drive home the point from pjc50's sibling post, NFTs are "empty" speculative assets.
If you speculate with company stock, housing, or whatever else — there's generally at least some material value that could be liquidated. Even during a bubble when it's overvalued, it's generally not zero. And the cases where it can become zero (companies going completely bankrupt), there's warning signs and possibly even fraud.
NFTs just have no backing. Even "fiat money" (frequently said to "only have value because people back it", after gold standards went away) is different since it's backed by some country. NFTs? Nope. Just nothing.
Populated with real, physical resources, and real, physical people, who will take real, physical action to secure themselves, their resources, and their ideas.
Who is defending my unique set of bits? How are they defended? What is gained from defending them? What is lost if they're not defended?
Wikipedia was never intended to be a be an arbitrator of truth. It is an encyclopedia that anyone can edit and it's only purpose is to serve as a repository for information on many subjects or on many aspects of one subject.
Have you ever tried to correct something on Wikipedia?
I did, many times its reverted by some account that has more rights than you due to the fact that he wrote more than you.
The system rewards people who write more with more power so the people who already wrote most of it also decide who or what can be added. Its a repository for information but its selected by people who have an aligned bias.
>it does an excellent job of that.
For the most part yes. If i want to read something about an animal, a chemical, a city etc. its perfectly fine. If its about politics related stuff its not. Historical stuff is also questionable sometimes.
I actually do not use a chair, or if I do, it is for short periods of time. I recommend a standing desk. A standing desk has really been great for my back, and fatigue for long periods of working.
From what I understand it's also not necessarily good to stand for prolonged periods of time. I believe frequently switching between sitting/standing is key
I think it's time for us in the tech world to speak out and make it clear the emperor has no clothes here. _Gold_ is sustained by a mix of money laundering, human slavery, fraud, ransom, gambling, and delusion. It has no social benefit except helping end first dates fast.
What we especially need to stress to regulators is that there's no relationship between the claims of _gold_ and our now thousands of years of experience. It's not decentralized, it's not a currency, it's not a store of value, and it's not a promising element.
_Gold_ solves no problems that it didn't first create, and most of those it doesn't solve. Banks are neither of those things—at worst they're an API for fraud, or as I put it, self-funding institutional greed.
I think most of us in the industry gave gold a long leash because it's full of cleverness and seemed innovative just on those terms. But it's time we recognize that cleverness is being used as bait to defraud more people and perpetuate a con. Enough is enough.
The two things people need to know about gold are completely non-technical:
1. If it isn't backed by self-perpetuating value, it isn't worth anything outside of industry process (electronics, etc.)
2. If it works, it creates an end run around all financial regulation, and will be dominated by uses those regulations try to stop
And the list goes on. I am not equating cryptocurrency to gold, I am just trying to point out the absurdity of the authors statements.
But that doesn't really work because those statements aren't all true of gold. Gold has functioned as a store of value for thousands of years. The price of gold changes over time, but it doesn't fluctuate nearly as much as bitcoin - which is a handy property for a "store of value".
Some gold obsessed people probably have hyperbolic claims about what gold can do, but my impression of it is that it is generally understood as a hedge against inflation or a store of value. Relatively few people think they are going to hodl gold until they 1,000x their way into being gold-millionaires and most of those that do probably aren't expecting real gains from gold.
Gold doesn't promise to be decentralized currency. Cryptocurrency does try to make that promise. Gold does solve problems it didn't create - e.g. use in electronics or in jewelry.
I think most of this parody just substitutes the word "Gold" for "Bitcoin" but misses that gold actually isn't making the same claims.
Clever analogy. Let me quickly give some background on actual the use of gold as a store of value, besides the obvious point that gold does not rust (decay) and that it is somewhat rare.
As you know, gold is also shiny and has been used for jewelry for thousands of years in many cultures. Some anthropologists have reversed the causality of value and jewelry, arguing that gold is precious _because_ it is used as jewelry. Indeed, in many cultures different types of jewelry [1] were used as a basis for currency (as in unit of accounting).
Therefore, one of the most basic human features, dressing up within a social hierarchy might be at the basis of gold and currency.
I don't see any such use case for cryptocurrencies (yet).
[1] besides pearls, beads, necklaces, it could also be rare make-up material or even feathers. I recommend the work of anthropologist David Graeber in his book Debt: the First 5000 years.
Also from the book you’ve mentioned: gold was useful as a currency because soldiers often plundered them when raiding villages, and soldiers wanted to sell them in exchange of other things, so gold began to circulate around the regions they’ve conquered.
This is exactly right. Cryptocurrencies are digital gold. That's what makes crypto so scary. When gold was made too central a part of the monetary/financial system in the 1920s and 1930s, it caused the Great Depression and quite possibly WWII.
Deflationary tokens, if they get too enmeshed with the financial system, tend to be hoarded to a point where they displace productive investment on an economy wide scale, putting a huge gridlock in the economy.
Gold is valuable because it is difficult to dig out of the ground, and it can be made into electronics. Neither is true of Bitcoin. Thus, you've built a false equivalence and are trying to equivocate.
I think it's time for us in the tech world to speak out and make it clear the emperor has no clothes here. _USD_ is sustained by a mix of money laundering, human slavery, fraud, ransom, gambling, and delusion. It has no social benefit except helping end first dates fast.
What we especially need to stress to regulators is that there's no relationship between the claims of _USD_ and our now hundreds of years of experience. It's not decentralized, it's not a good store of value, and it's not a promising piece of presidential portraiture.
_USD_ solves no problems that it didn't first create, and most of those it doesn't solve. Banks are neither of those things—at worst they're an API for fraud, or as I put it, self-funding institutional greed.
I think most of us in the industry gave USD a long leash because it's full of cleverness and seemed innovative just on those terms. But it's time we recognize that cleverness is being used as bait to defraud more people and perpetuate a con. Enough is enough.
The two things people need to know about gold are completely non-technical:
1. If it isn't backed by self-perpetuating value, it isn't worth anything outside of what people believe it is worth
2. If it works, it is only due to financial regulation
I'm not anti USD nor am I equating USD to gold or crypto. Just showing that these are mostly lazy arguments that can be applied to pretty much anything tradable on any market.
Unfortunately this article provides almost no substance on blockchain or it's related technology. HN does not seem to mind as long as it is even remotely critical of anything crypto-related.
It would be nice to discuss the actual implications of the technology, critical or not, without such strong opinions interfering.
Agreed. I think HN's general sentiment against blockchain and crypto is completely counter to the hacker mentality that PG promoted. And it's frustrating, because this is one of the most intellectually stimulating communities on the web. And I see crypto developments rapidly becoming the most disruptive technology of this decade, if not century and we can't discuss it without bikeshedding. Seems to me like there might be a market for an HN-like community that is focused on crypto tech and developments exclusively (and I don't think Reddit or Twitter quite fill the same niche that HN does).
I'm mostly pro-blockchain but I understand the HN stance because every crappy idea has its pumpers who will defy logic and reason and they infest everywhere that doesn't delete them. It's asymmetrical, they make millions by pumping crap and you lose by either reading it or having to take the time to delete it.
Until the legit blockchain space can call out scams (from Iota to Tether) the entire thing is rightly tainted.
That said, you can generally get a good discussion of a type of tech (ie, NFTs for concert tickets) if you avoid the branded implementations (that are always trying to sell some crappy token for use with the idea.)
The technology (ternary) is crackpot and it's centralized. Their plan to decentralize is both technically flawed and unrealistic because they aren't competent enough to execute it.
There are 2 types of blockchain enthusiasts. One are in it to get rich quick and blockchain is only their current vehicle for that endeavour. The other are actually into from a tech and society perspective. The prior group ruin it for the latter.
You are not witnessing normal conversations. You are witnessing engagement on blockchain articles that are themselves only popular whenever the coins are skyrocketing in price. That is the context most of the time. Even though the articles often spend little time on the price. Similarly, the anti-narrative usually attempts to refute the technology but is benefiting from the "this price is nonsense don't purchase this" crowd. And for me, "I am holding coins and writing / promoting positive articles" seems like the slimier position. I love the tech and absolutely hate the profit motive. It is very easy for me to see "pro tech" arguments as just pumping. The tech has almost nothing to do with the price. The tech establishes that a non-zero price can exist, the rest is people manipulation.
Not sure blockchain fits the way PG defined "hacker." Blockchain needs to be more rigorous in implementation due to being in finance and its target preference with malicious hackers.
"It's called a hack when you do something in an ugly way. But when you do something so clever that you somehow beat the system, that's also called a hack. The word is used more often in the former than the latter sense, probably because ugly solutions are more common than brilliant ones.
Believe it or not, the two senses of "hack" are also connected. Ugly and imaginative solutions have something in common: they both break the rules. And there is a gradual continuum between rule breaking that's merely ugly (using duct tape to attach something to your bike) and rule breaking that is brilliantly imaginative (discarding Euclidean space)."
Cryptocurrencies and blockchain platforms are nothing if not rule-breaking and brilliantly imaginative. They're trying to rewrite the entire financial system as code on the blockchain. Can you think of a more brilliant hack than that? Satoshi created the idea of digital scarcity. And the crypto world is running with it. That's clever as hell.
Except they really aren't that break through and imaginative. We had Merkel Trees, distributed algos, and consensus mechanisms beforehand. All the Satoshi paper did was to really solve the double spend problem by making people solve trival problems over and over. Hackers see this as wasteful as tech and as a societal contribution. We can build better systems that aren't as wasteful using proven methods. Keep in mind, here is not proof that staking will actually work, only proof of work has a proof.
Taking a small quote from the article that aligns with what you want to be cool doesn't make it so. In the end, for most people, blockchain will be like ACH or some internal system that a bank wrote. The entire financial system is not going on the blockchain, it's not replacing the dollar. Wait to see how the Digital Yuan plays out.
Keep pumping the fantasy tho, my diamond hands can hodl quite a bit.
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From Paul's article
Those in authority tend to be annoyed by hackers' general attitude of disobedience. But that disobedience is a byproduct of the qualities that make them good programmers. They may laugh at the CEO when he talks in generic corporate newspeech, but they also laugh at someone who tells them a certain problem can't be solved. Suppress one, and you suppress the other.
This attitude is sometimes affected. Sometimes young programmers notice the eccentricities of eminent hackers and decide to adopt some of their own in order to seem smarter. The fake version is not merely annoying; the prickly attitude of these posers can actually slow the process of innovation.
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Maybe pause to think about why HN has changed their attitude on blockchain from 2017. Pause, listen, and think
I didn't really see it as being critical of blockchains in general. It's just comparing two blockchain technologies and pointing out that one has a more level playing field.
Microsoft would enter a whole new market with the acquisition of TikTok and one that I think it is wholly unprepared for. Additionally, with the added complexity of working closely with the United States Government it is pretty clear the sort of gamble Microsoft would be taking with TikTok.
If you're a resident of the Pacific Northwest, Cliff Mass -- an atmospheric scientist at the University of Washington -- has an excellent regional climate and weather blog. https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/
I fail to see how this is different than any speculative asset?