I suppose the difference is that people who know about cryptography think that the iota team obviously don't know what they're doing, and people who don't understand cryptography and have a financial stake in iota not being worthless feel differently.

I've taken some cryptography classes and a graduate level cryptanalysis course, and I could immediately tell that the people on the iota side clearly don't know what they're doing. For example, this should trip anyone's bullshit detector:

"IOTA was created to be immune to quantum computer attacks, today I have revealed that it was also created to be immune to attacks from an AI"

https://www.reddit.com/r/Iota/comments/70ya29/time_for_a_par...

What's funny is that crypto issues are actually not the biggest problem with IOTA.

The biggest problem is that it just makes no sense. It's not going to be decentralized & secure at the same time. It's LESS efficient than blockchain in every way. It's bad for IoT. It doesn't have any of fancy features like Ethereum.

Crypto issues is just an icing on a cake. They can change crypto functions, but they can't change the fact that coin is the worst choice for IoT (or pretty much anything).

The only selling point is that it's fee-less. But it's possible to make a centralized fee-less coin which would be much more secure and useful than IOTA.

IOTA actually has status as an NGO in Germany which gives them a lot of credibility (clout?) and therefore companies are intrigued to start deals, but as an amateur cryptographer I must say that having hash derivatives leaking through your hash function [which has been known for a long time actually with IOTA!] is not the way to make a bulletproof currency. Coverups sadly don't make the protocol more robust, either, but so many people have an [in]vested interest in IOTA being successful that it makes sense they want to minimize FUD and/or flaw pointing-out.

Don't take this as a source of truth, it's just my gut feeling, but:

Germany is lacking behind in tech, and the country is putting lots of bets to their car industry, the Volkswagen scandal not helping there. Now there is this new thing called cryptocurrency and one of them comes from Berlin. I don't know is it just me, but it's not that hard to start speculating why these big German companies want to announce themselves to be working with a Germany-based cryptocurrency.

Germany is trailing in shiny stupid tech like the ICO-of-the-day, but it is still on the forefront of boring tech like automation, machinery, industrial robotics and much more. Guess why China is buying so many "Mittelstand" companies in these fields?

Cars aren't everything.

Eh, maybe, but I think IOTA has more to prove and more to gain by showing that they are associating with well established giants rather than the other way around. Besides, Switzerland is the place for Crypto now.

Again just speculation, but could it be that these announcements are boosted by the IOTA folks? That the giants are not that much into the tech, IOTA just using the attention to boost their value? These guys are rich and I really doubt they'll do anything more than spend quality time in their Florida penthouse.

/r/CryptoCurrency is best used for entertainment, not technical analysis.

Yes, the best technical analysis is done in /r/buttcoin.

What to make of it?

IOTA are rolling their own cryptography which immediately makes me run the other way. At least until I see some respected peer review that it's sound. This exchange makes me think that unlikely at best.

Don't buy a Volkswagen until they have run the other way!

Everyone that posts in r/cryptocurrency has an agenda (including myself).

Most of the posts there are ways of confirmation biases - it's very difficult to get someone to see what they don't want to see in his/her cryptocurrency.

There are certain coins that are exceptionally polarizing (Ripple and IOTA come to mind) - it leads to this my coin vs your coin behavior. It's so fascinating, yet odd at the same time.

I read about 3/4 of the emails before coming to the conclusion I had no idea what was going on.

Check out the book Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain. It's written by a skeptic.

I have this guilty pleasure of occasionally pulling up /r/CryptoCurrency just to find something terrible to laugh at.

(I do think there are cryptocurrencies worth a bet in the long term, if you can afford to take a chance. Better to start with basics like the Princeton course and form your own judgements.)

Why do you think companies jumping on some hype train is indicative of much at all? For Bosch, for instance, it was the VC part of the company making an Iota investment - I'd say investing in unproven tech is their thing. Deployment in actual products would be something else.

Also, it seems logical at this point to disregard anything coming out of the cryptocurrency subreddits. They drink their own Kool-Aid.

That IOTA team is good at marketing but IOTA itself is worthless.

Could it be that HN is filled with early adopter money anxious to portray a threat in the worst light possible?