[eric_cc]

> For my part, I held <$10,000 USD worth of Bitcoin prior to 2016, plus small amounts of altcoins.

LOL ouch. Selling prior to 2016 must sting. It makes sense that somebody who made this mistake would be bitter.

This guys take of:

> It has failed to be a useful currency, invented a new class of internet abuse, further enriched the rich, wasted staggering amounts of electricity, hastened climate change, ruined hundreds of otherwise promising projects, provided a climate for hundreds of scams to flourish, created shortages and price hikes for consumer hardware, and injected perverse incentives into technology everywhere.

is so bad and off the mark and missing the reality that is it even worth a well-thought reply? This reminds me of people who would shit on the Internet in the 90's because of porn and scams and this and that. The Internet had and will always have negative components but it's worth fighting for because of all the good. Crypto and decentralization is exactly the same way and in many ways even more important.

[tome]

> Selling prior to 2016 must sting. It makes sense that somebody who made this mistake would be bitter.

Selling bitcoin prior to any time must sting (and in fact that's a very strong argument against bitcoin as a currency). This argument holds no water.

[NoGravitas]

> This reminds me of people who would shit on the Internet in the 90's because of porn and scams and this and that.

In retrospect, those people were ahead of their time.

[shkkmo]

Seems completely on the mark to me. Your dismissals don't seem appropriate to HN.

Please name one good thing crypto helps people accomplish that doesn't involve breaking the law (or speculation.)

[eric_cc]

off the top of my head: DeFi, NFT's, data storage, services for the bankless, decentralized metaverses, insurance, synthetics, music streaming, video streaming, social networks, DAO's, social money

[shkkmo]

I think most, if not all, of those things work fine (and arguably better) without using a cryptocurrency.

[eric_cc]

so you see no value to:

- DeFi

- decentralized data storage.

- a decentralized & censorship resistant video streaming platform.

- Artists getting compensated fairly via NFT's.

- Banking the bankless

- DAO's (btw, how can DAO's work better without being decentralized? hahaha)

- A decentralized and censorship resistant social network

- Sythentics. What is a better solution to tokenizing assets in your opinion?

and on and on..

[shkkmo]

I see plenty of value in many of those issues. Some appear to be just jargon or beg the question. I see zero evidence that cryptocurrency is necessary or even beneficial in solving any of those problems.

[doggosphere]

That's because you think your currency is secure forever.

Ask Argentinians, Turks, Venezuelans, Zimbabweans, etc. what they think about their central banks.

[eric_cc]

you don’t believe a protocol like ethereum is beneficial to the above problems? How would you solve it without ethereum (or similar) protocol?