You would think that the HN population would be a subset of the crypto community, but I have found a lot of anti-crypto sentiment here.<p>I am studying the space and welcome all shades of view.
Define Crypto.<p>If you're talking Cryptography, there's quite a few buffs of it here.<p>If you're talking cryptocurrency on the other hand...<p>My objections to it tend to be based around the mechanics of it. Particularly anything based on Proof-of-work. Computation isn't free, and anything that predicates being a store of value based on computational work being done misses the point. We burn resources in order to facilitate that currency exchange. When compared to say, printing off monopoly moneu, and getting a bunch of buy in from other people to respect it (the basis of fiat currency), your fiat currency wins out in that cash doesn't require anything but people's faith they can trade it to be valuable.<p>Other than that, and the tendency for the technology to lead to pump and dump schemes, I just find the tendency to think that making digital financial transactions easier/more pervasive repugnant.<p>Digital payments may enable expansion into previously untappable markets, but it hasn't in the years I've worked in the field, done much but create more middlemen to extract fees without creating anything more than a negligible convenience value for being in a position to process the transaction.
10 + years of Cryptocurrency hype and no killer or even useful app gives people the idea that it's useless. A few people have gotten rich but there's no single useful use.<p>I, for one, think that Crypto is still in its development stage so I still think that eventually there will be a use for it but it needs to evolve and stop being a drain on the world's energy resources too.
Great fan, student, and user of, cryptography.<p>Not a fan at all of resource wasting speculation schemes for no good reason whatsoever, that I wish would stop being called 'crypto'...