Ask HN: Do you still think public blockchains/stablecoins are useless/a scam?

[spir]

Two and a half years ago I submitted "Warn HN: I've never seen the HN community so delusional about a major tech area" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35172767

Since then, many corporations, governments, Wall St, and central banks have begun adopting public blockchains, especially Ethereum, and stablecoins.

Hacker News has been almost 100% anti-crypto/public blockchains/stablecoins for years.

In light of recent progress, has your view changed?

[gregjor]

> Since then, many corporations, governments, Wall St, and central banks have begun adopting public blockchains, especially Ethereum, and stablecoins.

Do you have actual examples other than companies enabling speculation or worse when they can safely take a cut? PayPal "adopted" crypto (and by extension blockchain) in the sense they will let me buy and sell for a fee. I see that as analogous to a grocery store selling cigarettes -- they haven't "adopted" or endorsed tobacco, they just sell it because they can make money.

[spir]

One example is the potential for tokenization on public blockchains to provide a more globalized, automated, and efficient foundation, with stronger property rights, for global financial asset operations.

https://www.economist.com/by-invitation/2025/12/01/larry-fin...

[gregjor]

If I had a nickel for every claim about the "potential" of blockchain over the past almost two decades... I could almost buy one Bitcoin.

If blockchain has such potential why hasn't that turned into useful implementations or products? Surely enough time has passed to work out the details.

[JohnFen]

> In light of recent progress, has your view changed?

No, my view hasn't changed. The blockchain is not useless, but as near as I can see, it's usefulness is very limited. The cryptocurrency world seems to have many more scammers in it than in the general population, making that world one that I am better off avoiding.

That corporations and etc. have begun using this technology more doesn't make me feel more positively about cryptocurrency. It makes me feel less positively about those entities that are adopting it.

[emmasuntech]

I don’t think they’re useless, but most of the hype was. Stablecoins clearly solved a real cross-border settlement problem, and some public chains found niche but legitimate use cases. But the majority of crypto projects were still scams or unnecessary. My view is basically: useful at the infrastructure layer, mostly noise at the application layer.

[smt88]

HN has been consistent that their only use-cases are the trading of speculative assets (gambling) and circumvention of law (crime).

Wall St. and the other entities you mentioned engage in one or both of these activities. That doesn't mean we should be cheering them on.

[spir]

What do you think of the growing evidence that blockchain will soon provide much more utility to the world beyond gambling and crime?

https://www.economist.com/by-invitation/2025/12/01/larry-fin...

[digital_sawzall]

'growing evidence that blockchain will soon..." is basically the line we've heard for the last 15 years.

I'm more open than most to crypto, I worked at Coinbase during IPO and Avalanche for a short contract after that. But yes, I alternate between it's a total scam and it's a technology waiting for a use case.

[adrianwaj]

Well, if there was a way to monetize bot traffic, wouldn't that be useful? And bots may be willing to pay, given they are training on your data. So getting on the receiving end of the trillion dollar paywall... not useless at all.

I think the idea was for stablecoins to be used to sell government bonds and treasuries. Interesting use cases for digital nomads.. assessing possible geographic locations according to the strength of their stablecoins and government integration.

So it's about micropayments and making them viable and useful. That's still the 'cold fusion' of today's internet. I personally think they should be opt-in and scalable to one's generosity/means. If people are willing/able to pay for something, they should.

Blockchain just needs to be implemented better, that's all.

"Ping the AI and then charge it when it comes" is the future, quite possibly.

[spir]

Coincidentally, there is a renaissance in micropayments happening in crypto right now. It is only a few months old and growing fast. It's called x402.

https://www.x402.org/

https://www.x402scan.com/

Related to x402 micropayments is the ERC-8004 standard for AI agent reputation.

https://8004scan.io/

https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-8004

[adrianwaj]

Yeah, it may well end up being used for "maxipayments" too, as coupled with biometrics, perhaps.

But what will make it ubiquitous?

Also, there's something cumbersome and risky about using today's wallet apps. Imagine you're taking a train, about to buy a book on Amazon, and the guy next to you pulls out a knife and wants you to drain your wallet into his when he sees what you're doing. Or your computer is hacked somehow? Or you get a home invasion?

I think as money-printing keeps ramping up, people will just gravitate to crypto anyway.

But in the future, I expect AIs to become more common: at one point there was only Bitcoin and no long-tail of coins. And all these new AIs will need to be trained. Will x402 make that easy for them? How will the AIs access the new and original knowledge?

People will just expect AI as they expect sat-nav today in their cars, and eventually will expect self-driving cars. When was the last time you went into a library to access a physical encyclopedia? Banks may eventually fall away too as clusters of relationships form across the world to provides goods and services of value and seek refuge from tariffs but also access to resources.

Globalization is fine, but maybe the tech just wasn't/isn't ready yet? Cultural groups are also becoming increasingly intertwined too - but so are AI translation abilities.

[colesantiago]

Yes. It is still a scam.

Just because Wall Street and Silicon Valley are still embracing blockchains, 'stablecoins' and other scammy crypto products, doesn't mean it has any legitimate usecase today or in the future.

Crypto, blockchains, stablecoins and the rest of them still cannot do better that what current system already does and is used primarily for speculative and criminal purposes.

Nothing has changed.

[spir]

We should be increasingly skeptical of the claim that crypto can't do better than the existing system.

I myself use defi all the time. At this moment, I could go borrow money on the blockchain and send it to anybody in the world with 5 minutes of notice. I can also swap dollars into gold or NVDA 24/7/365 with 5 minutes of notice. How can we claim this isn't better than the incumbent traditional finance system?

[colesantiago]

“We should be increasingly skeptical of the claim that crypto can't do better than the existing system.”

This is a fact because you can already do that with regulated and safe banking apps such as Transferwise, Revolut, PayPal, Zelle, Venmo, CashApp, MoneyGram, Western Union, MPesa etc.

Using a blockchain for this stuff is already cumbersome (which network?), remember long silly address numbers, incurs additional fees, rapidly fluctuates in price quotes, and you can’t get your money back if you’ve been scammed or you send your ‘cryptos’ to the wrong wallet.

This does not scream to me the future of finance, instead it is an unregulated ‘wildcat-banking-esque’ speculative scam that makes it easy to lose your money very quickly.

How is that better than what we already have?

[red-iron-pine]

> Do you still think public blockchains/stablecoins are useless/a scam?

yes.

when my mom is able to buy a car with BTC then I'll believe it has value.

otherwise it's just another instrument for speculation and carbon creation

[ares623]

IMO blockchains/crypto haven’t become more legitimate, it’s everything else that has lost legitimacy.

[pestatije]

their trading tokens!...nough said