A variety of reasons. Some think that crypto is a socially pernicious bubble that’ll get people hurt. Others still have to deal with the ransomware attacks that are only viable with crypto. Most of us are pissed off that crypto comes along and keeps ruining the price of hardware we want to buy. The environmentally minded are angry about the energy usage. A lot of us are sick and tired of the naked scamming and the dumb ideas that get floated on the subject.
> I feel that if most HNers would just build a crypto business (DeFi, arbitrage, NFTs, tokenomics, etc.), they'd basically be overnight millionaires.
Obviously not. That’s just not how anything around money works. If it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is. Just because someone got rich off a thing doesn’t mean everyone will; after all some people got rich in pyramid schemes too, doesn’t make it a good idea.
Even when there is legitimately easy money to be made, the rush of people trying to exploit the opportunity usually drives the per person profits down to $0. If someone claims that there are easy, guaranteed millions to be made, your alarm bells should be going off.
Furthermore, even this tiny whiff of “you’re just jealous you didn’t make millions flipping NFTs” is an ugly look.
> The environmental claims are all FUD.
This is hilariously unpersuasive. Not even a hint of an argument, just “please ignore the TWh behind the curtain”.
Meanwhile Etherium seems extremely bubbly to me too. At first smart contracts was the only thing that made any sense to me (bitcoin struck me as goldbug nonsense early on), but over the years it seems like it’s mostly used for gambling and making tokens. Nothing that couldn’t be done more efficiently and conveniently off the chain, especially since the oracle problem always looms large over any given hypothetical use case.
At least if they go to POS it’ll be less wasteful.
Decades? With an S? It's barely been 10 years since Bitcoin's public release and that's ignoring the fact that it wasn't particularly popular (and nowhere near as valuable) for another couple of years. Other cryptocurrencies wouldn't come into their own for another couple of years after Bitcoin, either.
For reference, the dot-com bubble began roughly in 1995 and had popped by 2003. Crypto, especially with the fact that it picked up in value an incredible amount in 2020, is a prime candidate for being a bubble.
> I'm sorry there's demand for popular hardware. That's how markets work.
And the actual demand is being exacerbated by the somewhat artificial demand crypto creates. It also likely means that if crypto is a bubble and it pops, there's going to be a glut of pre-owned crypto-abused graphics cards flooding the market. All of this is definitely a knock-on effect of cryptocurrencies booming.
> The environmental claims are all FUD. None of them hold up to the slightest scrutiny.
Would you like to back this claim up with anything? The way proof-of-work crypto works demands computation, which demands power. Imagine if somebody did take this entire pallet of GPUs and start mining cryptocurrency with it; that'd be a pretty good amount of power consumption. Tack on the fact that there are multiple cryptocurrencies and a lot more than just a trailer full of GPUs working on mining them around the world, plus the fact that those GPUs are unlikely to be as efficient as the latest, and you've got a lot of power consumption.
Obviously, I'm not doing the math here, but just thinking about the (apparently hypothetical) power consumption of something like Etherium or Bitcoin is enough to raise red flags in my mind.
This is the only part I disagree with.
Most miners undervolt their cards to minimize heat and lower cooling costs... I'm cool with the rest of your post.
Mining cards are probably fine to use for years and will probably destroy the markets if crypto explodes.
Nvidia is selling GPUs without output capability to miners to avoid exactly that scenario already.
It's uncool to give power to those who already have it.
Crypto just takes power from banks, it gives it to other powerful groups and corporations. Due to the fact that you still need significant investments to keep it running, it's not actually any more democratic.
Any idea that crypto would hurt traditional financial instituons (aside from maybe savings banks, which are generally the least noxious financial institutions around) was pure fantasy
I mean you said it yourself, not particularly bright people get filthy rich, why would actually bright people think that's cool
I don't agree with blaming crypto, but it's true that these are uniquely perfect things to steal.
Imagine being able to steal a printing press that makes bills that can't be linked back to a specific press, that's what they did
I don't know if you understand how crypto mining works, the electricy expense, the infrastructure expense, the actual expertise in setting up geth/mining nodes, etc.
What I don't understand is why people who claim they know these things are acting like you can't make money off a free Ampere card.
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Like 99% of mining is initial capital, everyone knows that. GPUs alone don't make a farm but you realize the thieves are also motivated to not go to literal prison?
Figure that a fence for stolen goods with trackable serials is already taking a substantial cut if they try to sell.
Mining in an inefficient hacked together "farm" doesn't seem so crappy by comparison suddenly.
It's not like anyone is saying they have to do that, but it's a very unique property of what they stole