I think you are right that most people critical of crypto don‘t hold any significant assets. But that seems obvious and means nothing.

If you have a lot of crypto assets, you think it‘s a good thing. If you didn‘t, you would probably divest or would have done long ago. Even if you where ambivalent you may keep it to yourself or erase that doubt, because "you have to believe, wagmi“ seems to be pretty strong in the community (maybe thats too harsh, I‘m not in it).

If you don‘t think they are a good idea, why would you buy into them? Most people in tech aren‘t really strapped for cash and becoming a millionaire with something you think is bad for the world is something many people don‘t want.

But yeah, I also regret selling my 2013 era playing-around assets that would make me a millionaire today. It probably does color my opinion, and if for some reason I had kept them till now, I would have a very positive take, which is also self selecting and means nothing. If I had changed my opinion at any point in those 9 years, I would have sold at the next 10x. I still think that analysis and opinion is colored much stronger for those who hold then for those who don‘t.

If I could take this week's lottery numbers back to 2010 I'd be rich as well.

The thing is, I saw a lot of this stuff happening back in the $400-$500 price range for bitcoin. A colleague ran an arbitrage bot and somehow managed to lose money. The value proposition has always been "you can sell this to others for more" and "you can evade all the existing financial rules", both of which are uncomfortable.

Where has all this crypto money come from?

Dark corners at every level.

Or, and hear me out, we’ve all seen our fair share of swindlers and con men in crypto and understand this isn’t much different.

Could be both. I think it's both.

What I don't understand is the vociferousness of the detraction. This community loves Capitalism; crypto is just Capitalism Capitalisming. We've had snake oil salesmen and door-to-door salesmen and contract housing and pyramid schemes and dotcom startups and on and on. People abuse the freedom of the free market; we've always had to cut the "promise" of such markets short with regulation to stop real harm from being done to consumers. That doesn't mean that every possible iteration of such products were useless, or their sale predatory.

Or maybe that's wrong. But that would tend to make most HNers hypocrites, and it's only fair to give everyone the benefit of the doubt.

> The problem is that just about everyone here could be a multi-millionaire if they had just taken a few minutes to set up pool mining on their gaming rig back in 2010.

You can say this about anything. Look at the stock market right now relative to 2010. If anyone had known the future, they'd be betting on sports and buying lotto tickets. Way OTM TSLA calls would've made me rich beyond my wildest dreams.

If the only response you have to the detractors is "you're jelly," then you're just falling for your own confirmation bias.

I have been using crypto since 2012.

> But the amount of hate and skepticism on this forum is way, way out of proportion to the reality of the thing.

Crypto has enabled a staggering amount of fraud and criminal activity. Not everything criminal bothers me personally...but financial crimes and exploiting gullible desperate investors really rubs me the wrong way. Oh also, its insanely inefficient to have a global network of redundant computers perform trivial work which could be done by a single web app.

I disagree that this is exactly the same as the stock market or the lottery. I think the fact that it is a technology that many in the tech sector missed the value of, during a time that they and only they (ie. pre-Coinbase) could have gotten involved, gives it particular sting.

Regardless of criminal activity and fraud, my main point is still that it is a new and interesting technology. No one knows what useful things it will be used for (or not) in 10 and 100 years, just like all new technologies.

Usually people on HN are positive and constructive about new techs. I observe that in the realm of crypto, people are incredibly negative, dwelling on things, like fraud and criminal activity in the present, that don't seem very important to me on a long timeline with unlimited possibilities. I am confident in the market's ability to correct those kinds of things, where there is real value.

My suspicion is those same folks wouldn't hold those opinions if they were super-lucky crypto millionaires. I think the money is causing a general lack of self-reflection in this realm: like I said, bitterness, embarrassment, and frustration. I spot those emotions in myself if I am honest.

Boiler rooms that sell bogus investment opportunities have been around for decades and extract more money from the gullible than crypto scams ever have.

Yeah and that shit is awful too.