Many posts about Ethereum and ICOs getting upvoted quickly to the front page recently.

And reading them I have gotten impression of a lot of people invested in these technologies trying to irrationally argue for them.

Everybody skeptical does not understand the potential of smart contracts which are just like internet in the 80s/early 90s and will take over the world.

I think skeptical replies are a natural push back against this recent wave.

Smart contracts are getting noticed in the legal sphere as a possible alternative to the system we have now. Check out /r/ethlaw

There are lots of negative comments, yeah, but that almost seems like a reaction to articles on crypto constantly showing up on the frontpage. Just over the last few days there was an Eth article with 392 upvotes and a "cryptoeconomics" article with 100+, which isn't unusual. Within the last 24 hours there have been at least three positive Eth articles on the frontpage, it'd be hard to find any topic so thoroughly covered especially considering how the real-world reach of this stuff is almost strictly limited to how much Eth is worth.

Someone intentionally or not is doing a really good job of that.

Occam's razor: Crypto tech works, & will be an incremental improvement to a number of areas.

Yes but that is completely unrelated to price of these tokens which is driven by speculation and has nothing to do with tech.

I believe blockchain will be implemented by industries where it is useful and can improve many processes.

The speculation is driven by the tech. It wouldn't be promising tech if it didn't work.

I believe it will change international capital allocation, via token sales. Worldwide investment in the best & brightest.

There is an inherent limitation of using proof of work to back up a store of value. Something needs to pay for that proof of work so either you have high transaction costs or inflation.

So, it's easy to have altcoin without speculation. Suppose your alt coin has 4+% inflation / year built into the coin. It could become the worlds main currency without making anyone rich. Adoption would increase because transaction costs could be extremely low promoting it's use for a lot of transactions.

EX: Initial adoption would be small purchases like vending machines where CC/other coins have much higher transaction costs. This could extend to things like cheap subscriptions etc, and then work up the value chain until people are using it to pay rent.

I don't see a problem with bubbles. As long as the tech works. If people can spend money on alcohol & drink themselves into an early grave, I can't see why speculation should be demonised.

'Value chain' has a specific meaning in business. It's a set of activities done to create a product.

Bubbles are beside the point. I just mean there is a trade off between value store and transaction costs.

PS: English is not that restrictive of a language. Speed limit is generally thought in terms of velocity, but you could use those same words to refer to the drug. 'With a dosage entering LD50 territory Jim was clearly approaching the speed limit.'

I don't think articles about disruptive tech reaching the front page of HN are evidence of a grand, paid conspiracy (especially considering the majority related to cryptocurrency are negative).

There's a phenomenal amount of it on 4chan.