As usual, here on HN, any time something is posted that relates to cryptocurrencies the discussion gets filled with negativity and even, seemingly unprovoked, outright hostility toward the idea. Overall HN (in my opinion) has a very good quality of discussion and I often read the comments before opening a link or even just for the sake of it. Nevertheless when it comes to cryptocurrencies that assumption goes out the window and I'm bound to see overly negative attitude to the point of irrationality. It's surprising to me how, out of all the places, HN would be the one where that's the case.
I wonder if anyone has any theories on why that is? I dare to assume that it's not just my ignorance of some fundamental, unrecoverable flaw in the concept itself that motivates some to speak against it with such certainty. It might be partly a lack of understanding of the multitude of available options (and even those not yet conceived) and how different - "cryptos" can be from each other but I don't understand how that would translate to people writing unprovoked, unsubstantiated claims or even just unrelated but unhelpful, overly negative remarks. Is it some negative experience someone had that traumatized them? Why HN has this problem?
I think there's a certain trap that many software engineer & technical types fall into with crypto. Crypto & blockchain are often portrayed as technically superior solutions to many problems, especially by non-technical people. Many of these problems, upon technical scrutiny, are actually not better with crypto: for most crypto use-cases, one could build a more efficient, simpler & "technically superior" solution using centralized services like, I don't know - a Postgres database and a REST API. In this way, a lot of technical people see crypto as a solution in search of a problem.
But the interesting thing about crypto is - in my opinion - not technical: it's social, and economical. Due to the decentralization, it changes the kinds of systems & solutions that are socially and economically viable. When I say "economical", I don't mean that the solutions are necessarily cheaper in the dollar sense, but in the sense that it changes which parties can participate in and profit from those systems. DeFi, for example, lets individuals participate in, and benefit from, transactions that used to only be provided by traditional banks.
So while there are many technical types that do see this side of crypto, there are many for whom their deeper technical understanding is a bit of a liability on the topic.
I agree with you about the importance of the social and economic ramifications - after all, that's the main idea behind a lot of cryptocurrencies, conceptually. I guess you might be right though that this isn't obvious or some perhaps not think of it as an important objective.
I'm not sure about the trap though - or maybe I think of it differently - because what you're describing I associate only with some form of business bastardization of the idea where people are led to believe false things without ever actually grasping the underlying concepts. In which case, sure, there's your postgres or your web panel or whatever. But if you know any better you'll realize that if you *can* build something without requiring blockchain or other such systems then you're simply doing something else entirely and it might be completely unrelated. The whole point is that you can't just host an application with Postgres backend or create anything that is more efficient or "technically superior" (not easily, anyway) without compromising the uncompromisable which is some crucial property of the system, eg. decentralization, permisionlessness. I can easily conjure up "better" solutions to an infinite pool of problems if I can simply reject the requirements.
The cryptocurrency space has been almost entirely overtaken by people whose sole interest is to get rich from coins increasing in value. These people don’t actually care about the technical aspects or real-world use outside of how it creates buzz that makes the price go up.
The field is basically fuel for the worst elements of the wider financial world - pure speculation, hype, volatility and discourse appealing to greed and FOMO, with the actual fundamentals negligible outside of a few niche uses.
Meanwhile HN is filled mostly with engineers and tech-minded people (“geeks” if you will - I include myself in that group), and it is no surprise that there would be distaste for a formerly technologically promising field that has turned into a playground for trend-following marketers.
I don't find it surprising that this space is being crowded with opportunists, marketers, scammers or people motivated by greed because that's the most obvious thing that would happen when you mix vast amounts of money with new technology that offers such possibilities. Their existence doesn't invalidate any actual premises.
Ignore those people then. There are communities dedicated to their projects and care about the underlying tech and long-term vision. Every industry, especially those involving money, will have unsavory elements. It's human nature.
I would say that depends on what you're trying to achieve. If you're trying to get an overview of the space then probably one of the best ways of going about it to locate key figures that are involved in different projects (e.g. Vitalik Buterin, Charles Hoskinson) and listen to some podcasts with them or read stuff that they wrote. If you're trying to get a fairly good understanding of some specific technology or aspect of it then you must do your own research and that should be enough to be able to identify and ignore "those people" + as a bonus you might gain insights about the shortcomings or trade-offs of that thing.
But then if you're looking for investment opportunities then you should definitely have a very good understanding of what you're getting into, any why - especially if you're being purely speculative and not doing stuff like arbitrage or some form of DeFi farming, etc.
HN doesn't(as a rule) have economic philosophers in its userbase. What it does have are people who have built their livelihood within the familiar framework and set of rules abided by nations. The system has worked for them, and if it works for you, you're going to be deeply attached to it, in the "attachment theory" sense. When you are attached to an idea, you defend it like it's your kid while also denying that you are doing something exceptional and possibly risky to yourself in defending it. Right from the beginning, Bitcoin made its stance clear that it was going to attack the top-down framework of money. At first this seemed mostly hypothetical, even though the implementation worked. It could be easily dismissed and called dead. Now it's a whole industry with broad, complex impacts. It is winning the war.
The less toy-like crypto becomes, the more you see people freak out about it and try to push it back in the Pandora's box it came from. It's the same kind of thing that happens when people get deeply involved in politics and see an "us and them" and their side loses. They ghash their teeth and spread falsities to keep it from haunting them. And that is most cryptocurrency threads among crypto haters: deep down, they really want the state to enforce the market, because that is "how the world should be".
Not everyone registered is posting on every topic. Not everyone having an opinion is posting in the topic they read.
Making unsubstantiated claims is easier than laying down concrete arguments.
You quickly run out of pearls to throw before the swine.
“Venting” is more socially acceptable than “preaching”.
And there is a matter of customs and culture: people see that badmouthing happens more often than singing praises, and so the cycle continues. HN is evidently the place where you don’t often see positive discussions of the merits on the front page, so that’s exactly what you see, and even if you have something to say you’d rather keep your mouth shut. But you see slandering comments in every topic so if you want to leave another then by all means, feel right at home.
All of this does not even take into account whether there are any technical merits worthy of continued discussion and fervent defense, or everything on this particular topic has been said already and perceived as general knowledge among the literate.
> the discussion gets filled with negativity and even, seemingly unprovoked, outright hostility toward the idea
"the discussion gets filled with negativity and even, seemingly unprovoked, outright hostility toward the IMPLEMENTATION" - here, I fixed it for you :)
If you will read any longer comments about crypto here, then most of them will approve THE IDEA of crypto, and half will admit that they were early supporters of it. But not now.
So you generally find commenters here to be smart and knowledgeable about tech topics, but you feel that crypto is the exception...
Is it also possible that you're just wrong about crypto?
Most of the people I know who are very enthusiastic about it also deeply misunderstand the technology and also some basic economics (e.g. deflationary vs. inflationary assets).
I think HN users get angry because the crypto space is a neverending parade of people getting tricked by pump-and-dump, wealthy elites, etc.
Recently, a friend was gushing about Dfinity and telling me I'm basically stupid for not seeing the promise of it... and now we find out it was a scam and the technology is just tokenized, centralized AWS.
When this happens often enough, it can be upsetting. It feels like being a doctor having to talk to antivaxxers over and over again.
I usually discern rational approach by the merit of the argument not because "someone wrote it on HN". If there is no argument but instead just blanket statements and negative remarks then I can somewhat safely assume that some thought process must've failed that person at some point - or at least I can gain no direct insight from it.
I'm not really a crypto evangelist nor anyone involved in it technically (at the moment) but I do know enough to at least somewhat understand the scope of the Idea - which is enough to never dismiss the whole thing based on some perceived flaw of some implementation.
It's slightly possible though, that HN commenters aren't approaching the topic of crypto significantly differently than other ones - but instead I just notice irrational comments more in relation to this subject - perhaps even because I know enough to recognize them easily. But it's very unlikely, even if true, that this would explain the whole thing away.
Just because your friend misunderstood and jumped on a bandwagon doesn't mean that they're wrong. They have the right idea. Even non-technical people understand that cryptocurrency can solve real problems. However, not all implementations will be executed properly. Any new technology will have more failures than successes, and nobody can say which ones will come out on top until after hindsight. It's risky, it's business.
