alt Hacker NewsCrypto was initially interesting to me because scarcity based economics is failing us and crypto give us a way to explore alternatives. But so far, nearly everything we've built with it has just been a clone of some scarcity-based thing that already exists outside of crypto.
Since then I've come to the conclusion that it's never worthwhile to buy crypto with fiat. Any scheme which asks that of its users creates too much continuity between the old way and the new way--it allows the illegitimately rich to continue to be illegitimately rich even after switching to the new system. Anything with that property doesn't deserve to be the new system.
What we need is a discontinuity. A system that wants not your money, but your participation, and which doesn't acknowledge the value of your old money. Today's crypto isn't it.
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> scarcity based economics is failing us and crypto give us a way to explore alternatives
The entire field of crypto was an attempt to create scarcity where none existed, by turning scarce electricity into special numbers.
https://github.com/CirclesUBI/whitepaper/blob/master/README.... seemed interesting because it uses a different model that's not interchangeable with any current system. It died in 2024 however.
My guess is a lot of people had too much expectations for blockchain and crypto.
I remember here on HN 10 years ago everybody wanted to put everything on a blockchain. Some were betting on the collapse of the financial system.
None of those things happened but ethereum created a neutral, stable, secure cheap and transparent programmable financial platform.
Because it is neutral a lot of people ported the bad things happening in the traditional financial system to crypto: the scams, debt, speculation, etc.
And then most people started to hate it.
I guess 20 years ago most porn was hosted on Apache web servers, now it would be nginx. Should we hate nginx because of porn?
Isn't the whole point of an economy a method of resolving scarcity? Money is a proxy for participation; it keeps me from having to agree to paint the miller's fence in exchange for some flour.