Ask HN: Why is cryptocurrency so hated here?

hype and no dominant use cases as of yet.

Regularly asked question. The reasons are many and on the top of my head:

prove of work protocols are an energy sink, no matter what crypto proponents bs about it.

most use cases of a ledger could be done with a proper centralized service with a good database.

crypto money do not scale and lots of the regulations they don't apply have actual sense.

lots of crypto marketed stuff is actually pseudo distributed, pseudo crypto, and often just a scam.

You can have a distributed ledger without the proof of work, e.g. hypercore (https://hypercore-protocol.org/), scuttlebutt (https://scuttlebutt.nz/docs/protocol/).

I can't speak for others - but I don't hate the Block Chain. I think the technological underpinnings are pretty interesting. I'm also kinda fascinated to watch what will happen next - will crypto currencies get government regulated (or at least the exchange to and from real currencies)? Will they get banned?

When it comes to Crypto-Currency... I personally don't own any of that, because I'm old fashioned. (I don't play poker, I don't trade stocks, I don't "make" money at all, I rather earn it - that's just how I'm wired). But if you are into it - knock yourself out. I'm not going to proselytize.

The only thing I really dislike about Crypto, is those people in it, who believe that they can convert *me*, if they just push hard enough. And if I say "not interested" they think they just didn't proselytize/evangelize/preach enough... that sort of behavior can make quite angry. Does not mean I hate Crypto, though.

It's a question I've often wondered about, especially given how much crypto/web3 is talked about in the more mainstream media and how many developers seem to be interested in working in the field.

One thing I'd like to know is what is YCombinator's stance on crypto. Have they invested in crypto companies ? Do they have a policy against it ? Have Paul Graham or the other principals ever written about their views on the topic ? Because after all this is YCombinator's site and the views of those folks on most subjects have traditionally carried quite a bit of weight here.

I think we've known crypto is the future since before bitgold. Technology is about breaking monopolies. The internet broke the communication monopoly. Email took the postal monopoly. Skype the telephone. PGP broke the secure communications. Uber broke the taxi monopoly. 3d printing will break the manufacturing monopolies. Blockchains break the bank/contract law monopoly. It's just the current implementations are not very good and most of it has become ponzi schemes. Cryptocurrency is now all about artificial scarcity. Once the artificial is removed and crypto reaches it's actual stable true scarcity cost with hundreds/thousands/millions of cryptocurrencies competing for cheapest/fastest/stable price/anonymous i believe you will see mass adoption.

The "killer app" for cryptocurrency is ransomware and malware.

Ransomware creators used to ask for payments with gift card codes or sketchy Western Union-style transfers. Cryptocurrency makes it MUCH easier for ransomware gangs to get paid.

This has led to a boom in ransomware attacks and the commoditization of ransomware into an entire industry [1][2]. There are entities that specialize in getting a foothold via exploits, contacting the victims to force payment, taking payments and laundering them, and providing paying victims with decryption tools.

Cryptocurrency has made ransomware a big business for criminal gangs and financially-strapped nefarious state actors (North Korea for example) [3].

[1]: https://techmonitor.ai/technology/cybersecurity/ransomware-a...

[2]: https://www.titanhq.com/blog/the-correlation-between-cryptoc...

[3]: https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/International-relations/Nor...

Sure. The distributed ledger is kind of interesting. But Bitcoin isn't a good implementation of it, Ethereum is better but still not good, and the vast number of others are obvious scams picking up on the popularity of the first two.

The ledger is also old news. There's nothing to talk about. The only thing that makes news are the scams.

The blockchain tech and distributed ledger technology is interesting. The current uses of it appear like money grabs of some kind or another. A ledger itself has zero value, it's literally the same as a checkbook register, its a tool.

For example using the checkbook register as the ledger, let me describe my understanding as it relates to crypto:

* I offer up a limited set of pages of a checkbook register for trade and we track who trades what part of this register. We establish 1 transaction (tx) in the register is 1 unit

* We assign some value to each unit in the register. These values are associated with government backed currencies since we need some reference point as to their value in money.

* Accounts are created to track how many tx/partials you own. Trading platforms are built to buy/sell/trade units of this register. Apps are built with value displaying the govt currency

* If you run some complex mathematical proofs on your computer/GPU you can "find" a new unit and keep part of it.

* It is well known there are limited units of the register, this drives the "value" up on trading platforms.

* People (or companies, banks, etc.) are allowed to buy/sell their units and move the proceeds of that sale that into a supported government backed currency with some transfer fees.

Humans have associated monetary value with a ledger of transactions and those transactions are tracking trades of the ledger itself? It just doesn't make much sense when you think it through at that basic level like it was a checkbook register. In my example if the value of each unit on the register/ledger was associated to marbles instead of a government backed currency, this whole thing falls down.

What if blockchain/distributed ledger technology was used as a tool to track transactions but the ledger itself wasn't something that has monetary value?

There's a lot of no coiners that have had plenty of opportunity to understand the technology and have missed many opportunities to hold a small piece that would have gone big. There are also accounts here that are pro surveillance, pro china, pro lockdown, etc.

It's long but really good, I highly recommend Folding Ideas's video about NFT's (and bitcoin) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ_xWvX1n9g . He says it much better than I could the often vacuous greed and bad faith arguments of it

it's a scam that separates people from their money and wastes absolutely gobsmacking amounts of energy for literally no reason. what good could possibly come of it

Cryptocurrency is much hated here because many people got scammed and lost money in tech.

Probably because a vast majority of cryptocurrency projects are just attempts to print money and fool people with tech word soup descriptions.

My personal theory is much simple: the crowd is a bit aged here.

They may try to rationalize their hate, but I think it's not about reason but people seeing crypto as "against the natural order of things":

“I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies: 1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. 2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. 3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things.”

― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt

It used to be a field dominated by tech (yay!). But increasingly a mix of idiots who just act like they have some inside knowledge and management types have taken over.

About 5 years ago I worked at London Stock Exchange. Our division did transaction reporting and I followed crypto out of interest. I was called to an urgent meeting and told our division was launching a crypto unit to make products on blockchain. What products? I asked. "We don't know, just find something, the division upstairs have one and we don't want to be seen as behind" was the answer after about 60minutes of careful questioning. Queue 101 meetings on crypto, often with expensive external "experts" who didn't understand mining or thought blockchain was bitcoin etc.

The fastest way to turn techies against a techis for it to become "fashionable" and therefore be shoehorned into things it isn't good for used as an excuse to waste money on non-sense by people who know no better but somehow control the decisions and the cash.

:(

As currently set up, with proof of work, it is an environmental disaster.

> the distributed ledger system is pretty interesting, isn't it?

It's mildly interesting, until you realize all the limitations with it, and then realize that the use cases are basically nil.

There's very very few use cases where you need a specific kind of trustless consensus. In fact, the end state of these systems shows that trust is still necessary in so many other ways. So no, I don't think it's actually that interesting.

This is my personal take only.

It’s mostly speculative and the ones who benefit the most are essentially criminals: Those that either want to hide their monetary activities; or hide their money.

There’s also a snake-oil aspect to it, which makes it ripe for fraud.

More down-to-eath, it steals away from the GPU supply and I imagine HN has its fair share of gamers.

Finally, there’s an old investor saying: When widows and orphans get in on the action, it’s time to get out.

The rampant scams turn people off. Also, I think HN skews a little privileged and there are many people here who can’t imagine living unbanked or under an embargo.

The hate is about the over exuberance for a technology that just isn't that interesting. While a distributed ledger with permissionless consensus has a few places it applies, the vast majority of proposed use cases are better solved without it. This irrationality for the technology and an ecosystem rife with malice and profit seeking without true curiosity for the problem or solution is quite the turn off.

A heuristic I like to use is that when someone presents many reasons for why they like or dislike something, they’re usually excluding the main reason.

The rationale for this is that causes are often power-law distributed in importance, so the top reason will be most of it and the other reasons are merely supplementary or for the purpose of argument.

> [...] but the distributed ledger system is pretty interesting, isn't it?

Yes, the protocol itself is pretty interesting and I've seen no one bashing Satoshi. If anything, Satoshi is often venerated on this website for his impeccable technical and communication skills - and for good reason IMO as the body of work he left is astounding.

A big part of parties involved don't understand the first thing about currencies and yet they want to disrupt "currencies". Don't understand the trade-offs of democracies but they claim that BTC will "democratise money".

So put together all these absurdities that we often have to bring down on HN and I can why someone would consider that "hate". It's not hate it is healthy criticism. Before disrupting something, you need to make sure you understand the reasons behind specific choices the society made.

That said, crypto-currencies are here to stay, eUSD, eEUR, etc. are on the way :-)

ps. Isn't it ironic that Satoshi invented BTC as a non-centralised system and instead the tech will be used to enable the most tightly controlled monetary flow ever :-P

Core features of crypto are a severe detriment to crypto holders: if you lose your passphrase/private key that money is gone forever* and if you get scammed you have little recourse outside the legal system. If you can solve those two things I'm more likely to get on board. As far as I know, they can't be solved, so to me it's a non-starter.

* unless you put it in a third party service, that likely isn't insured for the full value of all deposits