Ask HN: What is the HN of Cryptocurrency? Hackernews is what I would consider a website with solid discussion about technology. However it's extremely skeptical when it comes to cryptocurrency. I'd like know if there is a similar technically minded community for crypto. I sometimes read /r/CryptoCurrency but its mostly shilling and asking about prices, so it doesn't really interest me. |
Was quite surprised something like this is possible and I love seeing new crypto tech on HN.
Speaking personally, I know I was really interested in some of the Bitcoin technology in the early days, and super excited about the idea of a "world computer" that could never be shut down with Ethereum. But the more I dug into the technology, the more I realised the gap between what was promised and what was possible was pretty much insurmountable. However, the more time I spent in tech meetups etc. and understood the human nature angle to it, the more I realised that the gap wasn't actually important - most cryptocurrency people weren't particularly interested in delivering a genuine functioning new financial system (albeit one lacking the basic consumer protections of the existing financial system) they were just interested in convincing enough people that it was possible for long enough to get rich quickly.
A million times this. I used to be a huge bitcoin fan in the early days. It's become obvious that it's failed and will never be a usable currency. Now it's just destroying the environment as a get-rich-quick scheme for unscrupulous people.
As a blockchain / crypto enthusiast I'm actually unable to have a meaningful discussion on HN. It's gotten to the point where I can't even bother to share my views in the comments as it's not worth it. People are so dismissive and set that blockchain is a scam, that every debate becomes so heated with people reiterating the same position over and over.
So I fully agree with OP - a HN-like community, where people can discuss the non-price aspect of crypto and BC would be nice. I hate reddit and twitter as most of discussions seem price driven.
I have never heard/read anyone on HN saying blockchain is a scam. Blockchain is a mathematical construct. If anyone says blockchain is a scam, he/she/they may as well say addition is a scam, so is subtraction.
What IS scam, in my opinion, is the ability to exchange crypto currency for tangible and non abstract products that has a meaningful value in day to day life. Crypto is not backed by any real assets, hence my problem.
So unsuprisingly, she's CEO of a growing and successful startup, while I still nitpick design and code reviews all day!
Personally, I try to be mindful of my kneejerk "pessimism" and skepticism, and try to balance it with optimism and acknowledging that it's a lot harder for me to identify opportunities than weaknesses.
A framework I have found to temper this instinct involves shifting from predicting whether something will or won’t work to finding the smallest, most-plausible set of assumptions which need to be true (or false) for the idea to work. You’re still identifying potential weaknesses. But instead of resolving the question around that weakness with flippant dismissal or a gut-feel guess , you’re considering how to solve it and being explicit about the boundaries between what you know, what you could learn, and what you cannot know.
So yes, the HN crowd as a group aren’t cheerleaders for crypto, but IMHO it’s for good reason.
put another way, there are broadly four possible types of people who would discuss cryptocurrencies on a website like this:
A) crypto fans who have invested in crypto
B) crypto fans who have not invested in crypto
C) crypto skeptics who have invested in crypto
D) crypto skeptics who have not invested in crypto
for obvious reasons, you aren't going to find many—if any—people in categories B and C, so that leaves categories A and D arguing with each other, and largely unlikely to change each others' minds—especially category A, because, again, they are literally invested in the thing they're a fan of.
I think most engineers try to think more critically than the general population.
You can authenticate yourself with a tiny tiny bitcoin payment over the lightning network.
There actually isn't a cost to using Lightning Login (lnurl-auth). It operates without really touching the Lightning Network, i.e. a channel. It just uses your Lightning wallet's key pair to authenticate you.
More on login: through the QR code (or lnurl string), I effectively send your wallet a randomly generated string, a challenge, it signs it using a deterministically derived key pair using my domain and your wallet key pair, then hits an endpoint on my server with the signature which authenticates you.
Rather than staking your reputation, you're staking Bitcoin. Rather than earning just reputation, you're earning Bitcoin (your earned karma/upvotes is Bitcoin you can withdrawal from SN at anytime).
Even technical discussions devolve into arguments about how things will be priced; but this is all because everyone is trying to make their altcoin a meme and become rich. When success equals a huge payday and the risk to shilling is so low, it infiltrates all discussion around a topic.
The bias HN has here is fine if that's what the community wants, but don't pretend there aren't valuable discussions that aren't better had elsewhere.
Practially any deep topic on HN is 90% just people with no expertise making pronouncements or asking for it to be explained to them. It's still worth reading for the occasional insight from the minority, though.
$ echo 'Ah yes those 280 character tweets lend themselves extremely well to deep thought.' | wc
1 13 82These are some solid news sources, if you don't have time to follow everyone on twitter
b) I socialise the transaction and have everyone try be the first to crack an algorithm that proves I've given my friend a cryptocoin worth $1
There's a community out there claiming one solves a bunch of problems the other had. You tell me...
I've found more value in newsletters: - https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-d... - https://ethhub.substack.com/ - https://weekinethereum.substack.com/
I created a multireddit to this and I use it to read information on the topic. https://www.reddit.com/user/jvlg/m/cryptocurrencies/
@GGfpc I think that this is a good way of tracking a topic in depth.
# Create a youtube channel to track a topic
You can create a youtube channel per topic of interest and use it to subscribe to channels related to the topic and even publish some content on it later.
Here is a bitcoin topic I follow https://twitter.com/i/topics/1007360414114435072
The signal-to-noise ratio is depressing.
It appears even this question was heavily downvoted based on its rank and timing relative to older, fewer upvoted Ask posts.
Looking forward to seeing you there!
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
currently i see it happening with Kubernetes - one league absolutely loves it, another absolutely despises it
But there isn't a website with comment threads that are high quality. Most of the quality crypto discussions happen in Telegram and Discord.
I've realized one of the reasons programmers dislike cryptocurrency is because they value efficiency more than they understand incentive systems. They complain that crypto is inefficient and unoptimized and miss that it's an entirely new incentive system.
There's a lot to be skeptical of in the cryptocurrency space, but a community centered around outsized gains through startups should remember that pessimists get to be right and optimists get to be rich.
(I cringe inside, but my paycheck thanks me)
This is one of those "guns don't kill people" arguments. Of course blockchain isn't a scam it's just a tool, but every instance of blockchain I've seen used has been inefficient and unnecessary and better performed by other existing technology. People trying to flog their banal products as something special because blockchain is the scam.
I don’t think you actually care if something is “backed by real world assets”, you’re concerned with downside risk. What is the likelihood bitcoin goes to zero within a decade? What level could it go to? It’s “fundamentals” are at least its level of intrigue with the population (much like Instagrams only fundamentals are its attention of the population).
Stock is backed by a company, fiat is backed by the govt, Instagram is backed by the attention it receives, Bitcoin as well. This is more a spectrum than a binary, and Bitcoin doesn’t seem that far off from most tech companies who’s only “real asset” is attention.
I should add that this is hilarious considering the name of this website.
Either way, I find crypto to be difficult to discuss online, in general. Mostly because there seems to be fanatics on both sides. You seem to notice more the ones on the "anti" side, I see plenty on the "pro" side. Not to mention the wrinkle where many people who were early adopters believed in it as an actual currency. Today, many of the "pro" comments I read seem to view it as an investment (i.e. phrases like "hodl").
- this was not a hack
- nobody stole anything, it's code LOL
- it's just shitcoins
- nothing is backed with real money
- good riddance, it's all a scam
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