HN tends to be very skeptical in general. It's easy to sound intelligent with a well-reasoned negative opinion than it is with an optimistic one. I think with cryptocurrency in particular a lot of HN'ers have really just dug their heals in and don't want to admit they were wrong.

HN folks on the iPod: "No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame."

Tech forums have always been fairly anti-technology and dislike anything new until the rest of society fully adopts it.

Cryptocurrency is currently causing more harm to society than good. PoW is a large reason for that, but even PoS will have huge negative impacts as it is mostly used for speculating and illegal activity. It doesn't solve any problems other than ones that are better solved by VPNs.

Okay. Let’s play the: X is causing more harm to society than good.

X=guns Are guns causing more harm than good? Should we ban guns?

X=religion. Is religion causing more harm than good? Should we ban any form of religion?

X=social media. Is social media causing more harm than good? I heard Facebook consumes more power than the entire state of Argentina! Should we ban Facebook?

X=USD the dollar. 95% of criminal activity uses USD. 95%! It’s clear to me that if no dollar we could prevent a lot of criminal activity. Should we ban the USD?

X=VPNs Used to circumvent local laws!!! Are the causing more harm than good? Ban VPNs you say?

> Are guns causing more harm than good?

Guns have a propensity to do a lot of good, if they were sanely regulated they could easily do more good than harm.

>Is religion causing more harm than good?

Hard to say, religion does a lot of good. Keeping people scared of god is an incredibly strong motivator for many, and most of what religion prescribes is good. I wouldn't mind taxing religion, but it's unconstitutional.

>Is social media causing more harm than good?

I think the answer here is clearly no. Yes, social media causes harm, but it causes much more joy.

>The Dollar

I understand that you're joking here but the amount of good the dollar does so clearly surpasses the harm its illicit use cause that I don't find this very funny.

Anyway, no one is trying to ban cryptocurrency.

Guns do a lot of good? I’m sorry we’re probably living in different universes. In my, I see school shootings after school shooting with lots of thoughts and prayers sprinkled in between. It’s the best guns+religion==winning!

> no one is trying to ban crypto no one is trying to ban it yet. I’m giving it 5 years until it’s outright banned.

Also, if you cripple something to the point where it’s unusable it’s virtually the same as banning it.

>I understand that you're joking here but the amount of good the dollar does so clearly surpasses the harm

This is the problem with your view of crypto, you fail to see the good

Crypto is not an effective currency. Currencies need 3 things to be effective: store of value, unit of account, and medium of exchange. Crypto fails at storing value and being a medium of exchange. It's value is completely unpredictable and transferring it is slow, costly, and annoying. Many of these problems could conceivably be solved, but without government backing crypto will never be a good store of value, as macro economic policy is required to keep currencies stable.

You’re being selective.

Crypto transfers are slow? jesus, did tou ever do a wire? have you seen moving something take days? compared to that minutes is instant.

You’re gonna tell me about CC processing next. Hate to break it to you but when you’re paying with a CC you’re not actually paying. An auth happens but the real payment happens when the transaction is settled (days later). So: days vs minutes in BTC case. wow, crypto sooo slow.

Macro economic policy? Oh yeah. That is working really really well. The government working to protect you.

Crypto is more than currency at this stage, you argument solely applies to bitcoin.

So a VPN will allow me to send money anywhere I choose? To accept payments without the risk of a third party arbitrarily shutting me down? To send donations to WikiLeaks while the US government forces payment processors and banks to abandon them?

No, of course not.

I think it’s a classic example of myopically focusing on some aspects of a technology while missing the entire point.

You’ll hear about net benefits to society (like those are easy to measure), about power consumption (like all if a sudden everyone is an arbiter of the market and decided: too much power), about how it’s a ponzi scheme (without understanding what a ponzi scheme is). All talking point of the anti-cryptocurrency agenda.

Curious to see how/if this changes in the next 5-10 years.

The allure of becoming a billionaire with almost no productive effort spent is the heart and soul of the pop-tech. Crypto that you have becomes more valuable only if more people decide they want it after you have your position. If you're "hodling" then you have an incentive to be a promoter.