[boreas]

As an aside, is there anyone else extremely disappointed with the quality of discussion over at /r/cryptocurrency? This conflict over IOTA has been unfolding for a long time and the guys on that subreddit defend it fanatically, accusing DCI of "FUD"ing IOTA. I am not sure if the subscriber base is technically illiterate or users that hold a given coin have a strong incentive to dismiss any criticism.

As someone fascinated by the technology in the crypto space but very skeptical about the real-world usefulness of many of these projects, I wish I had a better forum to read beside the odd HN post.

[justboxing]

> This conflict over IOTA has been unfolding for a long time and the guys on that subreddit defend it fanatically, accusing DCI of "FUD"ing IOTA

It's not just IOTA. It's more or less any of the top 10 / 20 (by MarketCap) Crypto-currencies on the respective sub-reddits. It's especially bad on r/Ripple where anything critical of Ripple / XRP is instantly deleted by the mods in the name of F.U.D (Fear, Uncertainity, Doubt), and even a small +ve news is posted several times in a day, even trials of Ripple that doesn't even use XRP for the transactions.

And then there was this self-proclaimed shill who described in great detail how he made tons of money shilling various coins on reddit. https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/7xkm0z/i_wa...

From what I've observed on r/Cryptocurrency and related coin subs on reddit over the past month or two, Reddit is being carefully manipulated by whales and scam coin creators to attract bag holders and manipulate the markets for a quick profit. And many of the mods engage in circle-jerk postings, maybe they are in on it too. Who knows.

[xbkingx]

Usually you can trust ~50% of the information in popular 'specialty' subreddits, but the crypto subs are straight up useless beyond major headlines. Even then, the discussions are 90%+ trolls and shills and 10% memes. Steem and Bitcoin Forum have been better, but all around the larger problem is that things move so quickly that the information you're looking for is probably no longer accurate.

The chaos is one of the most interesting factors for me. It reminds me of the internet circa 1995 - you have to do your own research, estimate/predict larger trends in information flow, and have a finely tuned bs meter. The biggest barrier to entry is that no one is trustworthy, so even your tools need to be properly vetted or self-made because unlike the 90s internet, the thrill of finding a vulnerability may carry a substantial reward.

I do think there is a legitimate opportunity in the crypto space and 'believe' in the underlying tech. You just have to ignore all the folks building their rockets out of lead and toilet paper while rofling about their moonshot, sneak past the whales, and slip between the trading bots.

One other interesting aspect I don't hear mentioned often is how this comes on the heels of the Russian election meddling and the similarities in tactics. If crypto has any real immediate use for the average person, it's a good way to gauge how susceptible you are to propaganda. Invest (enough to sting if you lose it all) and see if you can turn a profit. Force yourself to put part of that money into an obvious scamcoin and keep track of how you relate to discussions surrounding it. Crypto can be a psychological playground if you let it.

[Waterluvian]

There may be people in on it, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's overwhelmingly just people defending their position. I've seen the exact behaviour I see at r/cryptocurrency in video games. No Man's Sky pre and post launch was exactly the same. Sensible people casting doubt on what it is you actually do with the game, being shouted down by those who are convinced it's going to be the greatest thing ever. Then lots of defensiveness against all the post-launch signals that it's a mess.

[c12]

People who have bought into something will become more entrenched in their views because doing otherwise will cause a "loss of face." It's understandable really, nobody wants to admit to being duped.

[Donzo]

The desire to remain consistent with one's previously established positions is one of the great psychological motivators:

https://www.amazon.com/Influence-Psychology-Persuasion-Busin...

People will often act against their own best interests to do so.

[jiggunjer]

Same with Trump? South Park recently had an episode titled "Doubling Down", which I find a good descriptor for this behavior.

[tarken]

you have a severe case of hindsight bias. nms has perhaps the most outspoken hatred of any game launch ever. heck how long ago did it come out? Year+? and you're still whining about it.

[chrononaut]

It appears the content of the Reddit post has been deleted, but can be found at: http://archive.is/vvwl5

[hobofan]

Do you (or anyone here) have any recommendations regarding subreddits for technical discussions regarding blockchain/cryptocurrency tech? I've seen /r/CryptoTechnology recommended in the past, but I haven't seen too much interesting discussions there yet.

[dlubarov]

I've also been looking but haven't found any better communities. A cryptocurrency StackExchange has been suggested [1], but hasn't happened. Bitcoin.SE and Ethereum.SE do have some good general content, but you have to filter through a lot of BTC/ETH specific content to find it.

[1] https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/271576/stack-exchan...

[justboxing]

UPDATE: Reddit shill appears to have deleted / [REMOVED] his story (must've seen the traffic from HN lol).

Here's the archive link http://archive.is/vvwl5 to his post that @chrononaut here located.

http://archive.is/vvwl5

[shepardrtc]

> It's especially bad on r/Ripple

That's just not true at all. Why are you even going after Ripple?

[logicfiction]

> I am not sure if the subscriber base is technically illiterate or users that hold a given coin have a strong incentive to dismiss any criticism.

Both of those are highly representative of the demographic that want to discuss such things on reddit. Others are often even moderated against from some of what I've seen and thus discouraged from discussion. I don't know about that specific sub-reddit, but it certainly happens in some. It's an important echo chamber for exuberant hype so people have a vested interest in protecting that in the mostly unregulated market.

[arkh]

> I am not sure if the subscriber base is technically illiterate or users that hold a given coin have a strong incentive to dismiss any criticism.

Why not both?

Most of those crypto currencies smell like MLM schemes for people who scoff at housewives doing the same with physical products. Get rich fast at the expense of the late comers, you can do it! Start by getting your family and friends in it.

The old goals of making a decentralized money to fuel revolutions disappeared fast once the only users ended being pure criminals.

[josephagoss]

I think that if half of their ideas could actually work and be secure, it would be a good thing. If IOTA was a real thing for example I would happily be apart of that community. Unfortunately it's a total waste of time. I remember avoiding IOTA early on due to the arrogance of the founders, I really didn't like their tune.

I know most of Hackernews hates Ethereum, but I really like Ethereum and their ideals, although I am mostly anti ICO. I'd prefer most of these DAPP ideas to be using ETH and not yet another token.

[Asdfbla]

Even though I'm also more of a cryptocurrency-skeptic (though mostly in regards to their utility vs. the environmental cost of proof-of-work), one thing I appreciate about Ethereum is that its design decisions and the building blocks of the system seem to be well-documented on their Wiki and have at least some academic rigor to them. This already differentiates them from stuff like IOTA.

[loxias]

> Hackernews hates Ethereum

It does? I admit I'm pretty ignorant of the nuances of all the little alt coins, but I know Ethereum has something to do with distributed applications, with a VM, and I've always thought that cool in the abstract. (though I have no idea what I'd do with it.)

Just probing for information, not trying to have any "tone", do you know what the distaste for Ethereum is rooted in?

[bringtheaction]

I never got the impression that HN “hates” Ethereum, but I will say that the primary language used for writing smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain has some disconcerting properties.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14810008

It is still not entirely clear to me how much of these things are problems with Solidity (name of said language) only, or if any of those issues are core to the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) itself.

I remain hopeful that other languages targeting the EVM will bring to fruition the full potential of Ethereum in a safer manner.

https://medium.com/@Hibryda/why-solidity-isnt-solid-3341af77...

Also some people dislike the fact that Ethereum is executing every program for every message on every blockchain node. I agree that it would be better if it didn’t have to do so but I don’t know how it could be avoided in a distributed trustless system.

https://www.multichain.com/blog/2015/11/smart-contracts-good...

[UncleMeat]

EVM has core semantics issues too that lead to easy to make errors.

[mbgaxyz]

What is a "real thing"?

Like Bosch using IOTA to build smart cities in China?

https://twitter.com/BoschPresse/status/968479596868980737

[tialaramex]

Name say, four of these smart cities they've built with IOTA, those would be real things. In contrast, even though the city council is a real thing, and candidates for city councillor are real people, and the leaflets through my door are real pieces of paper, the pictures of a would-be councillor "Yogic flying" do not mean that it's actually possible to levitate using the power of your mind. Yogic Flying is not a real thing in the sense we mean.

[pjc50]

Link does not reference IOTA?

[mbgaxyz]

It references @iotatoken which is the official twitter feed for IOTA.

[espadrine]

Did they retract the tweet? The link now 404s.

[justboxing]

Yes. Tweet appears to have been deleted in the last few hours.

The reddit shill story I linked to is also showing as [REMOVED], but someone in this thread found the archive.is link for that shill story and posted it in this thread.

Here it is. http://archive.is/vvwl5

[loxias]

I certainly am disappointed. I'm not entirely sure why I expected more from reddit, I mean, comeon, it's not twitter! ;-) My guess is that it's a mixture of illiteracy (innumeracy?) and invested interest.

The quality of discourse on /r/iota takes the cake though: https://www.reddit.com/r/Iota/comments/80p3lg/cryptographers... The comments keep going... boy, those iota people really hate zcash!

Also, I completely agree with your fascination and skepticism, but have nothing to add but that agreement.

[tlrobinson]

I agree. It feels impossible to find a cryptocurrency forum that's not filled with shills.

Someone should train an AI to detect shilling and use it in the comment ranking algorithm of a forum. Of course they'd probably release a whitepaper and do an ICO.

[stef25]

Big fan of Reddit here and I find almost all crypto related discussion there is abysmal.

[908087]

> I am not sure if the subscriber base is technically illiterate or users that hold a given coin have a strong incentive to dismiss any criticism.

As with basically every cryptocurrency (or technology, for that matter) related sub on reddit, the answer is both.

[phil21]

The only thing any crypto subreddit is good for is laughing at the silly memes for 15 minutes before your morning coffee.

They are utterly useless echo chambers filled with trolls otherwise.