definitely direct all rage at crypto people and ignore Big Oil at YNews, where people have a say with crypto but not at all with Big Oil. makes sense when viewed that way

Easier to make fun of crypto because at least oil has obvious real-world utility, and (unfortunately) still props up our economy. Crypto is like a sideshow. It's also a hot new topic which makes it fun to argue about.

That's not to defend Big Oil or its shills. That industry should've been hamstrung years ago like the poison market it is. But it might be why HN gets extra riled up about crypto while letting other things slide.

Crypto provides better incentives for strong network security than any other security tech: has the bitcoin protocol base layer ever been compromised? Compare its network security against any other corporate or government network, and see if bitcoin doesn't provide some value.

Then look at the ION decentralized identity project Microsoft and others are building in top of it, or Peter Todd's decentralized document integrity attestation project, opentimestamps.org/, or how the bisq.network project has innovated a historically new way of working, where contributors are paid for improving a software project, yet no one is in charge and no funds or data are pooled, avoiding honeypots.

Tons of people and organizations have been building blockchain-based solutions for [vague use case] since like 2010. Announcing that someone is building something on top of the bitcoin protocol is like saying someone is building the next wave of Machine Learning, Big Data, or other [tech buzzword]. I'll believe it when it proves itself in real life, not as a thought experiment or speculation casino.

It's a $2 trillion sideshow and growing faster than anything else.

This is a software forum, and crypto is software. Perhaps a message board for geological engineers might be better for finding criticisms of Big Oil.

I thought by the nature of the forum submissions that it was essentially any STEM-related links or posts would be applicable. Geological Engineers are still considered STEM.

Problem with that is it dilutes the intended audience.