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by Hinrik 2291 days ago
>The HN camp is mainly anti cryptocurrency

What's the point of starting your comment by unnecessarily painting this entire community with such a broad brush and dismissing the nuanced opinions on cryptocurrencies found here? What does it add? It just makes me more skeptical of whatever you're about to say, to the point where I barely feel like it's worth reading.

2 comments

I just edited my comment and removed that part. As an active HN community member I shared my feelings here but never said that all the HN community was anti crypto. I said "mainly" because I see a shift to the anti crypto camp. I can obviously be wrong but it is based on my cognitive device reading thousands of messages for years.
I think I speak for more than just myself when I say that blockchain has enormous potential and cryptocurrencies have already proven themselves to be a viable technology.

The problem is more the social and economic aspects of cryptocurrencies. The community is filled with scammers, get rich quick schemes, and self-appointed blockchain experts who have no idea what a Merkle tree is. All these people who see cryptocurrencies as this profitable investment creates a roller coaster market that undermines their usefulness as an actual currency. What you want in a currency is stability, you don't want to suddenly not be able to afford rent because the market collapsed over the last week.

There is an abundance of evidence that HN was one of the most anti cryptocurrency sites. It was/is surprisingly bizarre, given the expectation that the posters would be more knowledgeable of future tech than other sites. History has now shown that it way too high of an expectation.
> It was/is surprisingly bizarre, given the expectation that the posters would be more knowledgeable of future tech than other sites.

Is it? A few people got super rich, a few others did alright, and there have been several notable failures or downright frauds.

The huge amount of obvious marketing pitches also did (and does) make it sound super sketchy.

But I agree it's here to stay.

Perhaps cryptocurrency isn't "future tech" but just a massive hype cycle?