[mkohlmyr]

> Investors only care about getting more press releases out so they can pump up the price of their discounted tokens, which have a shortened lockup period relative to something like stocks. It’s almost like a pump-and-dump scheme for investors.

"almost"

If even useful services are being abused for speculation, it's time to realise the entire space is fundamentally broken. We've already seen massive fraud in the space, it's only a matter of time before people who fundamentally don't understand what they are "investing in" are left holding bags. It will necessarily collapse because of how it's being used. (imo)

[berkes]

How is this any different from the "web tech" space at large? Where investors will push towards "data-hoarding", privacy-invasion, dark patterns and/or addictiveness or other psychological "abuse", more often than not?

[throwaway_kufu]

Because these crypto companies are generally deliberately marketing themselves as the democratic solution to the original problem through this new decentralized technology. Then when their private discord and telegram groups get exposed for pump and dump scams, their go to defense rings of your comment “so what, it’s the way it’s always been”

[celticninja]

I think the real issue is that in 2009-2013 it was used by people who understood the risks. Now it is used by retail investors with no clue, who will be hit hardest by it.

I suggested everyone buy it when it was under $500, I said invest with caution up to $1000. Now I can't in good faith suggest to people that they buy it. And I am fortunate, everyone who did buy it on my suggestion made plenty of money.. probably because they had me in their ear saying "don't sell it" when they hit their first bitcoin drop. I get messages often thanking me for introducing them to cryptocurrency. However I and sure that there are many who didn't buy it and now regret it. Same as there are others who bought it, sold at a loss and regret it. It has been repeated as Infinitum, only invest what you can afford to lose and that is most definitely still the case. Bitcoin can still go to zero (or close enough not to matter) but It could also go to $100,000, and right now latter is more likely, but I feel as the price goes up so does the chance it goes to zero.

[throwaway_kufu]

The thing is your entire post is about investment and making money or losing money...what does that have to do with p2p electronic currency and the democratization of money?

Buy/hodl has converted the concept for electronic currency, if there really ever was one, into a money making endeavor based on your current wealth and ability to risk a loss. That’s the antithesis of democratization, or 1 person 1 vote, but a I was here first so that makes me king now get on your knees and grovel at my supremacy.

The only real way to look at Bitcoin is as if there is an AI operating in the background with the sole intent of taking “investors” money through constant cycles of FOMO pump and dumps. It’s a stock without any assets or profits backing its value, at any point the shareholders could just start a new company and nothing would be lost by abandoning Bitcoin, because it’s just a shell company with nothing inside.

[tnzm]

That's why it's the investment space that needs disruption - which is why crypto is met with so much pushback on HN. A year ago, crypto-related stories made front page much less often, if at all.

[tinyhouse]

Because people here try to understand the technology and its usage before riding the hype train. Most people investing in Ether for example have no idea what it even means. But when you ask them they would spit answers like "it's going to revolutionize finance..". When you ask them how, they have no answer. When you ask them for specific applications that they know of outside of the stupid NFT, they send you to Google. Yesterday someone on Youtube gave an example about a fridge that will order you eggs and milk when they run out, and everything will be done on the blockchain.

Not a crypto hater. I even invest for fun and because you cannot deny the opportunity to make money rn. But don't expect people to ride the train blindly. I do think that crypto isn't going anywhere. But the current valuation of these coins is just absurd rn.

[intotheabyss]

There are plenty of useful applications on Ethereum. Maker, Compound, Aave, dYdX, Synthetix, UMA, Uniswap to name very few.

[notJim]

IMO these things are basically driven by speculation as well. From what I can tell, they mainly provide liquidity for financial institutions. Financial institutions are interested in crypto so that they can make money trading it. IMO there is very little actual utility here.

[arberx]

Very actual real utility here?

What's utility to you? Is buying a in-game COD skin utility? Or how about roblox bucks? How about the trillion dollar derivatives market?

All those things easily disrupted by DeFi.

[tnzm]

I suspect financial institutions are interested in crypto because they don't want a new financial system with a more democratic organizational model to make them obsolete.

Maybe there are some forward thinking people there who want crypto to be the driving factor behind refactoring from COBOL, who knows.

[tinyhouse]

Thanks. I will take a look.

[verdverm]

2017 was very different. Crypto type stories frequented the front page with technical marvels. Then a few things happened... 1) we evaluated 2) this scamconomy arose 3) the bubble burst.

I was excited then, when it was new to me, but then I learnt the truth about blockchain

[aabhay]

It’s not that different? That’s why the dot com bust happened

[grey-area]

It could not be more different, to pick one example from web tech with a similar name:

Cryptocurrencies: Efforts to make useful tools are driven out, speculation and fraud are rife.

Cryptography: Used to secure billions of web transactions every day on the web with very little fraud.

[jcbrand]

Cryptography is not web tech.

[grey-area]

This website is being served to you using cryptography right now (tls).

I took web tech to mean the technology used to serve the web - the differences with cryptocurrencies are manifold, the principal one being that billions of people use the web every day to perform important functions, compared to cryptocurrencies where most users are simply speculating on prices.

[nwiswell]

I think GP's point is this:

1) You cannot have cryptocurrency without the web, so it is web tech.

2) Computational cryptography long predates the web. It would be more accurate to say "the web is cryptography tech", if anything.

[grey-area]

1) A depending on B does not mean A is part of B (though I'd dispute cryptocurrencies requires the web to function at all, perhaps you're thinking of the internet?).

2) Cryptographic libraries (many relatively recent, e.g. go or rust libraries) are definitely an important part of the web, they're integral to web tech if you define web tech as the tech that powers the web.

[matheusmoreira]

Is price speculation considered abuse?

[mkohlmyr]

The tokens issued in this case (on of the few) have a purpose which is not speculation. If large amounts of speculation is undermining the business itself then yes I think that might qualify as a form of abuse? Happy to use an alternative term of your choice, ESL etc.

[matheusmoreira]

I'm not sure if the price speculation actually undermines the underlying businesses. For example, I participate in a blockchain wiki project. On the telegram there is a lot of people talking about the price but I don't feel like it diminishes the usefulness of the project. I asked questions about editing, the admins helped me out and I was able to use the platform.