It's not just IOTA. It's more or less any of the top 10 / 20 (by MarketCap) Crypto-currencies on the respective sub-reddits. It's especially bad on r/Ripple where anything critical of Ripple / XRP is instantly deleted by the mods in the name of F.U.D (Fear, Uncertainity, Doubt), and even a small +ve news is posted several times in a day, even trials of Ripple that doesn't even use XRP for the transactions.
And then there was this self-proclaimed shill who described in great detail how he made tons of money shilling various coins on reddit. https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/7xkm0z/i_wa...
From what I've observed on r/Cryptocurrency and related coin subs on reddit over the past month or two, Reddit is being carefully manipulated by whales and scam coin creators to attract bag holders and manipulate the markets for a quick profit. And many of the mods engage in circle-jerk postings, maybe they are in on it too. Who knows.
The chaos is one of the most interesting factors for me. It reminds me of the internet circa 1995 - you have to do your own research, estimate/predict larger trends in information flow, and have a finely tuned bs meter. The biggest barrier to entry is that no one is trustworthy, so even your tools need to be properly vetted or self-made because unlike the 90s internet, the thrill of finding a vulnerability may carry a substantial reward.
I do think there is a legitimate opportunity in the crypto space and 'believe' in the underlying tech. You just have to ignore all the folks building their rockets out of lead and toilet paper while rofling about their moonshot, sneak past the whales, and slip between the trading bots.
One other interesting aspect I don't hear mentioned often is how this comes on the heels of the Russian election meddling and the similarities in tactics. If crypto has any real immediate use for the average person, it's a good way to gauge how susceptible you are to propaganda. Invest (enough to sting if you lose it all) and see if you can turn a profit. Force yourself to put part of that money into an obvious scamcoin and keep track of how you relate to discussions surrounding it. Crypto can be a psychological playground if you let it.
https://www.amazon.com/Influence-Psychology-Persuasion-Busin...
People will often act against their own best interests to do so.
[1] https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/271576/stack-exchan...
Here's the archive link http://archive.is/vvwl5 to his post that @chrononaut here located.
That's just not true at all. Why are you even going after Ripple?
Both of those are highly representative of the demographic that want to discuss such things on reddit. Others are often even moderated against from some of what I've seen and thus discouraged from discussion. I don't know about that specific sub-reddit, but it certainly happens in some. It's an important echo chamber for exuberant hype so people have a vested interest in protecting that in the mostly unregulated market.
Why not both?
Most of those crypto currencies smell like MLM schemes for people who scoff at housewives doing the same with physical products. Get rich fast at the expense of the late comers, you can do it! Start by getting your family and friends in it.
The old goals of making a decentralized money to fuel revolutions disappeared fast once the only users ended being pure criminals.
I know most of Hackernews hates Ethereum, but I really like Ethereum and their ideals, although I am mostly anti ICO. I'd prefer most of these DAPP ideas to be using ETH and not yet another token.
It does? I admit I'm pretty ignorant of the nuances of all the little alt coins, but I know Ethereum has something to do with distributed applications, with a VM, and I've always thought that cool in the abstract. (though I have no idea what I'd do with it.)
Just probing for information, not trying to have any "tone", do you know what the distaste for Ethereum is rooted in?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14810008
It is still not entirely clear to me how much of these things are problems with Solidity (name of said language) only, or if any of those issues are core to the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) itself.
I remain hopeful that other languages targeting the EVM will bring to fruition the full potential of Ethereum in a safer manner.
https://medium.com/@Hibryda/why-solidity-isnt-solid-3341af77...
Also some people dislike the fact that Ethereum is executing every program for every message on every blockchain node. I agree that it would be better if it didn’t have to do so but I don’t know how it could be avoided in a distributed trustless system.
https://www.multichain.com/blog/2015/11/smart-contracts-good...
Like Bosch using IOTA to build smart cities in China?
The reddit shill story I linked to is also showing as [REMOVED], but someone in this thread found the archive.is link for that shill story and posted it in this thread.
Here it is. http://archive.is/vvwl5
The quality of discourse on /r/iota takes the cake though: https://www.reddit.com/r/Iota/comments/80p3lg/cryptographers... The comments keep going... boy, those iota people really hate zcash!
Also, I completely agree with your fascination and skepticism, but have nothing to add but that agreement.
Someone should train an AI to detect shilling and use it in the comment ranking algorithm of a forum. Of course they'd probably release a whitepaper and do an ICO.
As with basically every cryptocurrency (or technology, for that matter) related sub on reddit, the answer is both.
They are utterly useless echo chambers filled with trolls otherwise.
As someone fascinated by the technology in the crypto space but very skeptical about the real-world usefulness of many of these projects, I wish I had a better forum to read beside the odd HN post.