[thawaya3113]

E2E privacy has a lot of uses.

Crypto has none.

It’s just an enabler and hotbed of a variety of scams.

Any use it may have can only possibly reveal itself after the crypto asset bubble/scams die.

So even if you’re a crypto enthusiast, you should be in favor of this whole disastrous phase for crypto ending so you can try again and actually make it useful this time.

Since crypto has become a completely speculation driven asset it’s become useless for anything other than buying and stuffing under the mattress.

Any value crypto may add to the world will only happen once that dynamic is eliminated.

[tatertots1234]

Your post is so perfectly in line with the blanket dismissal and absolutist attitude of the letter that you could pass as one of the authors.

Crypto has its uses. Crypto also has lots of scams. Crypto bubble popping will not destroy the scams; these are endemic to any semi decentralized system, see email spam and robocalls. We can do much more to regulate, moderate, and improve the tech for better consumer protection and usability, which is one thing the letter calls for.

[faddypaddy34]

I see a lot that crypto has it's uses. Please explain like I am 5 what some of the best ones are.

[hnthrow1010]

>Crypto has its uses.

No, this is wrong. By itself it has no uses besides speculative gambling. The technology fundamentally doesn't enable anything else, if you take that out it's just a really niche and inefficient distributed database. You may be suggesting that some companies have been able to build useful things on top of a blockchain. That might be true but out of all the examples you gave, they're useful in spite of cryptocurrency, not because of it. The exercise for crypto builders now becomes how to separate the useful parts from the ponzi tokens and build just those.

[tatertots1234]

> By itself it has no uses besides speculative gambling.

And the earth is flat, and I refuse to accept any evidence to the contrary.

A simple example of crypto being useful is as a timestamped, censorship-resistant and tamper-proof ledger of cryptographically signed messages. That is one use case for it besides gambling, ergo your statement is easily refuted. I presume you will move the goalposts, though.

[hnthrow1010]

Well first of all, cryptocurrency isn't "censorship-resistant" any more than any other encrypted distributed system, so you can take that phrase out. Take a look at Tor or Freenet to see how this is done without the ponzi tokens.

Second of all, you can easily build a timestamped and tamper-proof ledger without making people pay to access it using speculative tokens. The aspect of trying to assign money value to these tokens is the problem, not the tamper-proof part. Conflating all these concepts together under the roof of "blockchain" is one of the many sins of web3 companies, but it's not true. Another sin is this constant attempt by people to "refute" critics. You don't need to do that, the fact that it happens so often should tip you off that the technology is not the focus of the discussion here. If you ever find yourself getting hostile about this, you're falling for the trap that the marketers are setting.

[tatertots1234]

re: censorship, prove to us how you would go about censoring an Ethereum transaction please?

re: timestamp, prove to us how easy it is to build a distributed and tamper-proof append-only ledger without a BFT consensus mechanism?

The technology is absolutely the focus of this discussion here.

[hnthrow1010]

>censorship, prove to us how you would go about censoring an Ethereum transaction please?

Very simple, throw the wallet holder in jail. I don't know why you're asking this question, you should be able to answer the same question about Tor or Freenet and extrapolate from there.

>re: timestamp, prove to us how easy it is to build a distributed and tamper-proof append-only ledger without a BFT consensus mechanism?

I also don't know why you're asking this question or what it has to do with cryptocurrency or what I said at all. There are BFT consensus mechanisms that don't require the use of speculative tokens. BFT algorithms are by and large, good and useful; the problem comes in when people try to solve this by handing out tokens and convincing people to use them as money. In that way web3 is actually very intellectually lazy to me, the only proposed solutions it appears that most of them have for this is to simply mint more and more tokens.

[anon2020dot00]

Don't you get tired of the endless recycling of pro and con crypto arguments? It's the same thing every time ad-infinitum.

[tatertots1234]

Yep, every time crypto is on the front page you have nocoiners and web3 pumpers making the same ridiculous blanket statements, and then some people in between trying to discern the reality of the situation.

[hnthrow1010]

The reality of the situation is that blockchains are a mostly useless and inefficient datastructure that by and large don't solve any real problems. I find it insulting that I can't say this without someone labeling me a "nocoiner." Yes you can make money with them, that isn't the point. Sometimes an algorithm can just be bad. If you can't look at an algorithm objectively, maybe consider that you're not trying to discern the reality of the situation?

[maccard]

That's not a use of crypto, that's what it does. What is a use for that? I'm with OP on this, I've yet to see a use for it that isn't speculative gambling.

[tatertots1234]

OP asks for a use, I provided. You say it is not a use, it’s “what it does.” Yes, it’s exactly what it does? That’s what it’s being used for.

[maccard]

That's like saying a use for a car is to turn the wheels when you press the accelerator - technically true but meaningless. What problem does

> timestamped, censorship-resistant and tamper-proof ledger of cryptographically signed messages.

solve? _That_ is the question that people aren't answering.

[logicalmonster]

> Crypto has none.

Posts on HN about some payment provider robbing somebody blind and destroying their life's work are a common occurrence here.

We're not too far gone from wrong-think protesters in Canada having their bank accounts seized by the government.

But crypto has no use case. Gotcha.

[helloworld11]

>E2E privacy has a lot of uses. ZCrypto has none.

>It’s just an enabler and hotbed of a variety of scams. T his just keeps getting trotted out again and again on HN as if it were a dying circus horse, but with no real merit. Even analysis by companies that spend all day, every day tracking cryptocurrency use and transactions estimate that only something like 2% of them are criminal. Even if we add in fraudulent/criminal funds that were laundered well enough to hide their origin and purpose from these tracking services, the percentage is still almost certainly a small minority.

Add to that a couple things: First, that not all "criminal" transactions are morally wrong just because they're illegal. No doubt there are anti-Putin Russians right now trying to get their money out of country with crypto and breaking a law or two. Are they scum?

Secondly, yes, there are many, many normal people using crypto for many things. I personally know many who do this, for work payments, difficult transactions because of some regulatory bullshit, remittances and even in one case as payment for contemporary dance services while living overseas. Anecdotes, but I have no doubt that they're extremely widespread, because my friend circle isn't one of crypto bros and money launderers. It's of ordinary people.

How fucking tedious to see so many on a so-called hacker site shit so repetitively and with so much categorically dismissive ignorance on something many of its readers emotionally dislike. It's not hard to verify how exaggerated or just worng some of these dismissive claims are.