[cloakandswagger]

The original commenter belongs to a very persistent faction of people who openly mock and malign cryptocurrencies despite being completely unaffected by them

My only theory to date is these are sour grapes type folks who are upset that they've missed the bus in terms of crypto's fantastic investment value.

The only comfort these people get is jeering from the sidelines in hopes that an eventual collapse will prove them "right"

[csydas]

There may be a faction that thrives on the pleasure in misery of others and specifically those who follow cryptocurrencies, but it's not hard to have major doubts about Bitcoin given it's tumultuous history up to the given point. The coin itself has had a rollercoaster of a valuation, pock-marked by fairly well trusted bit coin operations that just grabbed the money and ran with it.

The currency itself is beholden to a small group of dedicated miners and their whims, the fork has been looming over bitcoin for some time now, which is the only thing that seems to give any value to the other cryptocurrencies as if it forks it means a potential foothold for other services to get in.

Cryptocurrencies are a real mess, and for a awhile there, the fad was to attach a new cryptocurrency to whatever service you wanted to try and be "the next big thing", and it's always been ridiculous.

The idea of a decentralized currency isn't bad in and of itself, but there is a lot to laugh at in the current history of cryptocurrencies.

[Bartweiss]

> The idea of a decentralized currency isn't bad in and of itself, but there is a lot to laugh at in the current history of cryptocurrencies.

Ethereum seems like a good reminder of this. It has an air of being less seedy and more 'professional' than Bitcoin, with actually-pretty-cool "smart contract" tech. But... the first big project was the DAO, and we all know how that turned out. Robbery and a hard fork. And now the Gnosis auction just hit, and that went terribly and exactly counter to predictions about a "rational market".

Despite any philosophical argument, the actual history of cryptocurrencies is pretty ludicrous so far.

[cloakandswagger]

Shitting on emergent tech is completely antithetical to the ethos of the "hacker mindset".

A real hacker would recognize these are the early days of a new technology with incredible potential. Its tech is disruptive enough to already grow a marketcap measured in billions, I don't know what is gained from harping on all the early failures.

[csydas]

Because I don' t take it as harping on the tech - it's not the tech that's the problem, it's the hype and culture around it. There's tons of hype, many outright scams and ponzi schemes within bitcoin to point to, it's fraught with outright criminal activity just within trading, not to mention that it's the payment of choice for Ransomware.

The distributed ledger isn't what people are making fun of - it's the frantic rush and chaos around using it that is ridiculed, and in many cases, rightfully so.

Edited additional thought: Come to think of it, I don't think a lot of the new found SV culture is really as hackerish as it's made out to be - it's the same business stuff that cyberpunks in stories would snub their noses at and work to undermine, except it's masquerading as hacker culture - there's a very cool protocol underneath bit coin that probably will fundamentally change how we do "something" in the future. But what is everyone climbing over themselves about with Bitcoin? Get-rich-quick after get-rich-quick schemes and ridiculous business enterprises.

Silk road I got - buy whatever with crypto-currency, hard to trace, from hard to find sites on TOR, and a package arrives or a service is done. Cool! But that's not what the clamoring is about now, and it hasn't been for ages.

That's not a hackerish interest, that's business people playing with yet another asset to trade.

[Bartweiss]

> I don't know what is gained from harping on all the early failures.

Avoiding them in the future, perhaps? I wouldn't mock a mature technology for historical teething issues, that's pointless. But cryptocurrencies keep replaying the same errors and conflicts without seeming to learn a thing. I like the idea of cryptocurrency, but it's not going to succeed unless we learn from the (myriad, severe) mistakes of the past.

[microtherion]

> crypto's fantastic investment value

True, many crypto currencies are rapidly increasing in value (because of built in scarcity effects, and investor interest). But that very speculative attractiveness makes them quite unsuited as currency (because their value is unstable and generally deflationary). So you're left with a "commodity" that is unsuitable for anything but speculation. Those kinds of stories usually don't tend to end well.

[cloakandswagger]

You're right, it's a vehicle for speculation now. And when the tech matures and the price steadies, it will be, at the very least, a new store of value for diversifying wealth with, akin to bullion.

That is valuable to me and a lot of other people. Until that time comes, I'm happy to embrace the risk of early adoption and the many thousands of dollars it's made for me already.