I would be interested why hackernews is so strong against cryptocurrencies. I am not sure but I assume most readers are from the US where the benefits are limited. Personally, for some time already I'm supporting a friend in Colombia financially and last year I switched to sending him Bitcoin. It's so much easier, cheaper and faster for both of us.
It doesn’t offer advantages for most people in the United States and we’ve had decades of people making claims which were highly fanciful if not fraudulent, with the hucksters behind them refusing to engage intellectually with anyone who points out the flaws in their business plans. The field has tried rebranding a few times (“web3”, NFTs, etc.) to shed that reputation but most people simply burnt out on the topic since promoters weren’t making competitive services.
That doesn’t mean that there are no problems with the status quo - for example, PayPal and western Union have many critics - but rather that the blockchain companies would have been much better off building things which were competitive rather than relying on MLM marketing. International remittances are so bad that even Bitcoin is better but there aren’t many cases like that and “slower, costs more, riskier, harder to use” is not generally a compelling sales pitch.
I just fear that if people here remain hostile, it could give regulators the support they need to get rid of it. I don't care whether the technology becomes big or not, and I don't think it's suitable for business models. However, I do think that since 2008, the banking system has changed for the worse. People are now suspected of committing a crime if a transaction looks odd. Sometimes, I receive emails from my bank asking about the source of money I've received. This is a huge invasion of privacy, and many people may not have documentation about such transactions anymore. It's unfair to be treated like a criminal when you haven't done anything wrong. I believe that Bitcoin provides great relief from this situation. The community can be inconvenient at times, but I don't think that matters much.
> I believe that Bitcoin provides great relief from this situation.
I think this is a mistake: your country’s laws usually apply to everything, which means that Bitcoin either doesn’t change anything because you’re using a legal exchange or you’re technically in violation of the law and leaving a public record for prosecutors. We’re inclined to technical solutions here but the banking system is a political construct and there isn’t a good way to change it other than engaging with the political process.
This also provides the answer for perceived negativity. The bad reputation is due to providing poor, often illegal, services and the way to change that is to provide something useful which makes life better for someone. For example, PayPal is pretty unpopular but many people still use it because it’s a necessary evil (broad reach, available in most of the world, etc.). If some of the many billions of dollars spent on cryptocurrency companies had produced a useful payment system which was fast, easy to use, had reasonable fraud and privacy protections, etc. a lot of people would switch. Instead, we had 14 years of people shilling Bitcoin despite it providing none of those things because they knew it had only the value they could talk buyers into believing, and nobody at PayPal, etc. is staying up nights worried that they need to offer customers a better deal to keep them.
I understand it's better than traditional remittance services, but did you try (transfer)wise? I use it monthly and it's so good - fast/cheap/easy - that I haven't felt any draw to crypto.
Doesn't bitcoin's volatility affect your use case?
I actually used it in the past (when it was still called transfer wise) because of predictable FX rate transfers. However, I didn't think of it when we were looking for a better solution for this purpose. I guess, it would have worked as good as Bitcoin, you're right. In regards to volatility: It was not a problem so far as he usually sells some months of runway immediately and for the remaining part he waits until the rate is to his advantage. Sure, there is no guarantee that the price will increase but you have to consider that there is at least 15 percent inflation a year in Colombia. That makes COB/BTC price pairs more attractive than USD/BTC.
I had bitcoin to spend and Tiger Direct was the first "major" retailer to take it. As soon as that slashdot post appeared in January 2014 I moseyed on over to check it out and made a purchase, probably the same day the payment method was implemented.
Almost immediately after this the first cycle of widely-publicized scams/grifts/schemes started. And then the cycle never stopped.
The market became flooded with cryptobros and instead of being used for basically nothing it became a vehicle for fraud.
Rather than being a cryptographic curiosity it became a distasteful embarrassment so I did a cost-benefit analysis found that it wasn't for me.
I still have several BTC. I do not care. 1BTC could equal a quadrillion dollars and wouldn't care. I don't want a quadrillion dollars, I want my rose bushes to look magnificent this year.
Besides, I'm a "smart tech" person so I make enough money and have no desire to live the greasy crypto lifestyle.
Where did the $24,000 in value per BTC difference between when I last touched my wallet and today come from?
It came from schmucks pouring money into a system that, eventually, will run out of schmucks.
My moral compass is such that I would rather die penniless underneath a bridge after having spent a decade in squalor collecting cans and shitting in bushes than participate in a market like crypto.
I respect the principles but with all due respect I thibk you could do a lot of good by selling them and giving the money to charity. Most of the people buying crypto are speculators, let them fund charity.
No one on HN is suggesting that sending money to Boliva, Columbia, Venezuala via Western Union with local currencies is a great solution to your desire to send money to your friend. Most people would say what you re doing is totally reasonable.
We do suggest that 99%+ of crypto value is not being spent like that. Most of crypto valuations is built on a vague promise of some future useful use cases when the underlying technology is just a slow database with no root password.
As mentioned in a previous comment, I believe that crypto has limited utility as a business model, primarily serving as on- and off-ramps and for transaction fee handling.
Right, so you can understand that it seems like a scam when people are saying that investing in something with limited utility is going to be worth 100x what it is today in purchasing power.
Exactly. I'd be happy if the market cap of the entire ecosystem dropped 90% (though it would devalue my own holdings), because it would take the focus off the price. Although I'm sure it would just give more ammunition to the people who call it useless and currently criticize it based on its speculative nature.
I don't think it will drop that much anyway, maybe 60% at most from current prices
Aside: what I really want more than anything else is for bitcoin to just disappear from the whole conversation, because it's been demonstrated to be unsustainable, especially since most other blockchains can be sustained on 0.00001% as much energy.
