by cpa on 2/7/23, 11:37 AM with 384 comments
by nic_wilson on 2/7/23, 2:19 PM
https://twitter.com/dystopiabreaker/status/14701269278180679...
by valdiorn on 2/7/23, 1:13 PM
That's because the value these things provide is money-laundering, bypassing of international financial regulations and tax fraud.
Yeah that's a superb value proposition right there, and definitely something we want to keep free and available /s
The current system is flawed in many, many ways, but none of it happened arbitrarily; the restrictions we have are the because malicious actors abused the system.
by jillesvangurp on 2/7/23, 1:30 PM
The fallacy in this argument is that there's something special in crypto that makes this more likely to happen. There isn't. In fact, you could argue that the enormous activity of scammers in this space actually points to some inherent qualities that might be useful beyond just running ponzi schemes and other scams.
One of these qualities is that scammers are unusually aware and mindful that they might get robbed by people equally untrustworthy on the same platforms that they use. So, the notion that that isn't happening on popular blockchain platforms is useful to them, and others. Tamper proof ledgers are useful for all sorts of things. The history of money is basically increasingly elaborate measures to prevent theft, forgeries, and other abuse. People trying to abuse the system are a constant.
Blockchains and other cryptographic tools are just that: tools. I expect banks to gradually incorporate these tools into what they do. That's already happening. E.g. China rolled out the the e-yuan currency last year. Not a decentralized blockchain but it obviously incorporates some of the technology. Other countries are doing similar things.
by ShowalkKama on 2/7/23, 1:07 PM
As far as I know there is no alternative with the same level of convinience that crypto provide (KYC-less and fast payments to anyone in the world with just one secret). Remember that next time you suggest something among the lines of "crypto should be made illegal".
by nebulous1 on 2/7/23, 1:39 PM
Crypto is awash in scams. On top of the scams you have people who are not intentionally scamming but are misguided and will end up doing harm to others and/or themselves. On top of that there is crypto that could genuinely work under certain circumstances (ie have a use-case that provides value to its users without significantly adversely affecting others).
by birracerveza on 2/7/23, 1:30 PM
What's the point of making yet another article blasting it with the same old tired arguments that have been continuously repeated ad nauseam for the last 12 years or so? I'm honestly surprised the article does not link to the Line Goes Up youtube video...
by capableweb on 2/7/23, 1:08 PM
This fits many projects in the cryptocurrency space. But what about the first successful cryptocurrency Bitcoin? Was it dishonest? What about Ethereum, is it also dishonest?
Seems like yes, there are lots of scams in cryptocurrency. But there is also projects that are not, so in the end, the title ends up being clickbait, which I (just like you) fell for...
by djha-skin on 2/7/23, 1:23 PM
- Like indulgences, crypto made value out of thin air
- Indulgences were a scam so crypto is a scam
- Crypto doesn't fit with Keynesian economics and is therefore false
I am not Catholic, but his tone implying that anyone who is religious is a fool feels more like an ad hominem attack than anything.
As to the veracity of Keynesian economics, I am less than convinced he got everything right.
That said, I am personally suspicious of crypto but I don't think it has no use just because it has no intrinsic value. We do not use paper dollars because of their material or their craftsmanship.
by atdrummond on 2/7/23, 2:17 PM
by jqpabc123 on 2/7/23, 1:12 PM
There is no product being sold. People are being convinced to surrender working currency in exchange for a public database entry that records the fact they were duped.
by nyolfen on 2/7/23, 1:14 PM
by leeroyjenkins11 on 2/7/23, 1:12 PM
by mdrzn on 2/7/23, 11:51 AM
Yet he still write daily about Crypto. Very weird. Whoever wanted to be convinced that is a scam should be convinced by now, everyone else just want to hold some coins.
by gloosx on 2/7/23, 2:38 PM
by qwerty456127 on 2/7/23, 1:41 PM
by patchtopic on 2/7/23, 1:07 PM
it's as bad as the "cryptobros" stuff
by medo-bear on 2/7/23, 1:11 PM
https://alphahistory.com/weimarrepublic/wp-content/uploads/2...
by josh2600 on 2/7/23, 2:03 PM
All innovation, all technology can be wielded for good or for evil.
With fire anyone can burn a building or cook a steak.
I like to find the people who are using technology to help others.
Let's make stuff to amplify them.
by baryphonic on 2/7/23, 2:11 PM
What a bizarre argument. Keynes wrote in the 1920s and 30s, so according to Diehl, did economics and finance not exist prior to Keynes? Was it all just a simulacrum until Keynes showed up and whipped out his General Theory? The map is not the territory.
This isn't even factually true. Crypto is in fact used in the real economy of places that have such bad monetary systems that crypto is much more stable. Look at Venezuela or even Ukraine and how much crypto is used there because the formal financial system is shambolic.
Crypto scams may be more common in the developed world where formal institutions are decent enough that the marginal cost of using crypto in the real economy is just too high compared to the legacy financial system.
by unity1001 on 2/7/23, 2:21 PM
In 'normal' life this kind of organization, investment, company creation and management et al are all gated behind legal complications and requirements of minimum capital and many others. Even when a major movement succeeds in setting up a foundation, the running of it is complicated, non-transparent and anti-democratic.
Even with companies it is the same - for the ordinary person creating or participating in a company is difficult and it requires understanding legal implications and responsibilities. Even if you do, there are various legal and economic barriers to investing and participating in such large companies.
With DAOs, everything is in broad daylight - depending on how the DAO is set up of course. But any properly set up DAO gives the power to the people in taking up the culture that we created in Open Source Software movement up a notch - by enabling organized economic movements.
That DAO which tried to buy the US constition failed. There was no way a new, emergent, new way of doing things could gather enough money in enough time to overcome the already aggregated private capital that it competed with.
But it proved something - for the first time in history, such things are possible. Economic organization for the masses.
Those who criticize crypto seem to have scarce awareness, leave aside understanding of what DAOs represent, and what is happening in DAO space. Of course, its hard to blame people - some understanding of at least Early Modern human history, economic systems and organization patterns and the development of democracy would be required to understand how big a change DAOs are. And that requires an ample interest in history itself.
by shagymoe on 2/7/23, 2:40 PM
Bitcoin is not crypto.
In any case, you could make similar arguments about banks and the "Federal" Reserve being scams. In fact, quite a few well regarded politicians of old made exactly those arguments. The implicit agreement in this particular argument is that the scam we've accepted is somehow better.
by Geee on 2/7/23, 5:09 PM
In history books they tell that people used salt, animal furs, shells etc. as money. What's forgotten is that there was always a 'bro' who shilled these new forms of money to other people. This bro had found a way to produce these cheaply and could get rich.
Eventually people realized this scam and moved onto rare metals which can't be produced from thin air, without work. However, these were minted into standard coinage, and eventually they were clipped or mixed with cheaper metals. Again, someone found a way to scam.
Next, we moved onto gold-backed paper money and then to fiat currency, and yet again the scamming continues, even easier than before. They've even made the scamming official, by mandating the 2% inflation target.
by Laurenz1337 on 2/8/23, 10:28 AM
by davidguetta on 2/7/23, 2:40 PM
However when many people agree of a price at a given time, anything, including a scam, can in turn become money.
by reverseCowGrill on 2/7/23, 1:14 PM
by ur-whale on 2/7/23, 2:10 PM
Diehl is not rational and utterly biased (he's party to a startup that will fail if any blockhain type tech. becomes popular).
by linuxftw on 2/7/23, 1:21 PM
Does anyone know if companies are actually using blockchain for production, revenue generating business (real companies, not crypto companies)?
by LatteLazy on 2/7/23, 12:37 PM
It must be nice to be able to just state something is thoroughly debunked and not have to give any evidence, despite billions of people not knowing, and be magically right...
by friend_and_foe on 2/7/23, 7:46 PM
Which is fine, but call it what it is.
Also, he says most counterarguments are in bad faith. Foes that mean some aren't? Wouldn't refusal to address these good faith claims mean you're arguing in bad faith as well?
by pfoof on 2/7/23, 9:12 PM
by ant1oz on 2/7/23, 1:46 PM
Listen, have you ever observed a troll writing a book?
Really? Currency is a scam. You get paid in paper, pay taxes on it, which gets stolen( sorry in edged) in corrupted corps, with a debt system where you are just a slave of your mortgage - unless you're a clever troll, and you bought 10btc 10 years ago, write a book to put the price down, while at the same time, being the most biased possible to trigger HN readers in the hope of getting a Google page rank.... Pathetic.
by revskill on 2/7/23, 1:09 PM
By your definition, all business needs to be scammy in some scene to make money, for survival.
Proof is simple: Non of any existing business will tell you anything on why it's bad, nor why you should not use it. And by proof of contradition (Nothing is perfect), you got the proof.
Meta won't tell you why it's bad for your psy health, no warning at all.
Google won't tell you why it's bad for your privacy, or why its search result is so bad for you, because Ad result is shit.
...
by bayesian_horse on 2/7/23, 2:37 PM
Cryptocurrencies do have some non-scam value because they fulfill the technical end of such a belief based value store. Don't get me wrong. Plenty of scams in that business...
by strictlymomo on 2/7/23, 2:44 PM
by viktorcode on 2/7/23, 1:49 PM
by detrites on 2/7/23, 2:01 PM
https://go.chainalysis.com/rs/503-FAP-074/images/2022-Geogra...
For those not aware, the company that produced this report, Chainalysis, actively aids prosecution of illegality in the crypto space, acting as primary advisors to the FBI, IRS etc. They may just know what they're talking about:
by righttoolforjob on 2/7/23, 5:15 PM
by nivenkos on 2/7/23, 12:47 PM
So no-one can offer free/demo tier CPU access anymore e.g. on low-end box VMs, ISP shell servers, etc.
Likewise any sort of interaction with strangers get absolutely bombarded with fake accounts pushing crypto scams - second-hand sales, dating apps, meetups, pen pals, language exchanges, property listings, job boards, etc., there was always spam before but it was harder to directly monetise.
I hope it all gets banned soon. If we can ban Russia from SWIFT, we can do the same to all accounts that ever have transactions with known cryptocurrency exchanges, and refer their owners to the local tax authorities for auditing, etc.
