Crypto and Other New Faiths

Why does crypto on HN always seem to be polarizing? This article too is theorizing that people who are attracted to crypto, wish for the current banking system to be overthrown and thus they are mentally unstable.<p>Sigh. You know what’s also possible? Put 5% of your savings into Bitcoin and then continue to live your normal life.

Bitcoin had organic usage and, thus, value before the hype of 2013. You can still find old online poker videos of people with substantial BTC balances making $10 bets that would be worth millions today.<p>So if we agree on that (I know, big IF), can we get past the &quot;religion&quot; argument and label these people correctly as &quot;gamblers&quot;?

The quasi-religious nature of the Bitcoin&#x2F;crypto community has been a big turn-off for me - the systems where evidence is replaced with belief are naturally suspicious.

This covers the retail side. However I think there’s a lot to be said about modern, global, 24&#x2F;7 infrastructure for institutions. Maybe crypto needs a rebrand.

Bitcoin is quite literally a religion. It has dogmas (&quot;not your keys, not your coins&quot;), traditional values (&quot;21 mil&quot;), a prophet (satoshi), celebrated dates (Jan 3).<p>On the serious side, Bitcoin is all about &quot;let&#x27;s all agree this is money&quot;. This means it&#x27;s a useful tool only after you play the social game. Technology does not matter if people don&#x27;t get to a consensus on it, but when they do (and they seem to continuously re-enforce this consensus over years), it works better and better.

Meh. I think to write about this intelligently you need to include the fact that there is definitely and provably &quot;new tech&quot; in here that can be world changing depending on how humans choose to use it?<p>This isn&#x27;t a guarantee that it will be used well, but at least a <i>base mention</i> of the new thing they are looking at and the ways in which it could work need to be discussed.

hacker news talking about crypto is like your racist maga boomer uncle talking about crt.