Can you please stop taking HN threads into generic flamewars on this extremely divisive and repetitive topic? Regardless of which views are right/wrong, it seriously degrades the threads, and you've unfortunately been doing it quite a bit lately. (You're far from the only one, of course.)

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

Edit: we asked you exactly the same thing quite a while ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30628900. It hasn't gotten better. Worse yet, you've been using HN primarily to post on this flamewar topic. That's actually the line at which we ban accounts. I don't want to ban you, but we need you to use HN as intended: that means curious conversation on unpredictable topics, not repetitive flamewar. If you'd please fix this, we'd appreciate it.

> Ethereum are making lots of people lose millions (if not) billions of dollars annually.

1) No one is making anyone do anything.

2) This comment is more appropriate for /r/buttcoin than HN

> 3) And the above is not an argument or a refutation.

It's not meant to be either. Vitalik is an intellectual. Tyler Cowen says he is one of the more interesting writers that he has come across. That's a big endorsement. But your comment is really not interesting at all and just a general rehash of an old debate.

There are hundreds of other threads on HN that would be appropriate for your comment. It just isn't this one.

> Vitalik is an intellectual. Tyler Cowen says he is one of the more interesting writers that he has come across. That's a big endorsement.

Appeal to authority isn't an argument either, I don't really care what Tyler Cowen says about Vitalik.

The whole point of a blockchain like Ethereum is that it's supposed to be immutable, with Vitalik's own actions in his role in the DAO hack, he has proven that it isn't at all.

So what is new about Ethereum except that we know that it really isn't an immutable blockchain. The Merge? Nothing will change even once complete which I would estimate in 2026 for merchants to use. Gas fees? Ethereum will always have this issue even after the merge.

So Ethereum is useless, just like the entire crypto space.

Don’t expect people to answer your question when it appears you have already decided what that answer is.

Do your own research. There are plenty of current and hypothetical use cases. A lot of the value derives from shifting your mental models away from traditional views of currency and monetary authority that are, frankly, outdated.

> Do your own research. There are plenty of current and hypothetical use cases.

Claim: "There are plenty of current and hypothetical use cases."

Response: "Please list these real world usecases of crypto that the average person can use right now."

Claimant: "Do your own research."

This is the problem that I see with most people who are in the crypto space, "Do your own research" is not a usecase and is in fact a veil to suggest that there is no usecase to begin with.

There's plenty of real world use cases. The fact that you insist that there are none says much more about you and amount effort you've spent on researching the topic that it does about crypto.

> There's plenty of real world use cases.

Such as none? Since you have listed zero real world examples or usecases as usual.

Reading though your comment history is hilarious. It’s like you’re on a mission from Christ to destroy the evil crypto industry by authoring angry comments on HN. Did you ever think this was what you would spend your days doing?

Crypto has religious zealots on both sides of the table for some reason. Sometime in the future we'll probably have books on the psychology aspect of it all, I look forward to reading about it.

It's also hilarious the crypto market is doing all of these things by itself, just as I said. Just now 3AC (3 Arrows Capital) defaulted, Bitcoin is at $20K and sliding lower, Tether is sweating bullets, so pretty much everything I'm saying is already unfolding.

Almost 15 years and I cannot see any usecase for crypto. But yes, it is an evil industry.

> pretty much everything I'm saying is already unfolding.

By definition, cynics are validated in a bear market. That hardly substantiates the claim that the space "needs to be destroyed", nor does it consider the reality that it's here to stay in one form or another.

Instead of screaming murder from the sidelines, maybe it'd more instructive to provide a list of ways that the space could be improved.

> ...provide a list of ways that the space could be improved.

It can't be improved, since crypto has failed at absolutely everything it has tried to improve already.

Too volatile to be used as payments.

Not even decentralised (Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc.)

Not a store of value or digital gold.

Not a hedge against inflation

Most 'DeFi' applications don't have any actual usecase.

Stablecoins aren't even stable and have in fact crashed.

And there is no real usecase for blockchain, crypto, web3 or whatever that improves greatly of what the current system has already.

Now talk shit about A16Z and Multicoin Capital? It's easy to pick losers. The same with startup funds and startups.

Tether is fine at this point. It makes people so frustrated that it hasn't gone to $0 yet. So frustrated.

https://99bitcoins.com/bitcoin-obituaries/

This doesn't really matter since retail is the biggest loser of all of them, which makes my point that crypto is scam more clearer.

We both know that web3 is a space filled by VCs anyway and are always dumped on retail traders and the average person.

So yes it is a scam.

So startups are a scam too? Certainly the public is going to lose money with crowdfunding sites like WeFunder.

Have you considered that retail wants to take risks?

Have you considered that crypto is not regulated?

If you see a startup that has taken VC money (especially if it is crypto) it's pretty much a complete scam that you should stay away from.

Regulation only means disclosures. It's just as easy to lose money. Most startups fail.

>Bitcoin is at $20K

it's still hilarious to me that Bitcoin at 20K is considered a "crash", I remember a few years ago when Bitcoin at 20K was a sign of a massive bubble. People who are rattled by this are giving away the fact they are new to crypto

Who said it was a crash? We haven't even started yet.

I'm expecting it to go even lower, below $10K to $8K.

what is the cynic mindset here? It will crash to $8K and stay put forever? Or keep going down to zero?

It’s hard to imagine the value will go to zero. Harder to imagine that these networks will not continue to improve and find new use cases each year or decade. Ten years ago there was no stablecoins. Five years ago it was hard to imagine how ZKP could reshape blockchain privacy and scalability. Two years ago there was no concept of optimistic and zk rollups that many chains are now adopting.

What happens in the next 5 years? 10? 50?

Can we consider this investment advice?

> Almost 15 years and I cannot see any usecase for crypto

What about the use-case of sending money to pretty much anyone with a cell phone and no bank account?

This has existed for years before crypto, M-Pesa and PayTM to name a few, this is not new.

Looks like M-Pesa is only available in 7 countries.

> The actual cost is a fixed amount for a given range of transaction sizes; for example Safaricom charges up to 66 KShs (0.65 USD) for a transaction to an unregistered user for transactions between 101 and 500 KShs (0.99–4.9 USD). For registered users the charge is 27 KShs (0.26 USD) or 5.4% to 27% for the same amount.

0.65 for $1-5 transaction means a fee between 13-65%

I don't know about the others but my guess is they are similar. Crypto on layer 2 can be a lot cheaper, ubiquitous and not restricted to geography.

https://mpesaguide.com/which-countries-use-mpesa-mobile-mone...

Yes! You also predicted Dai’s collapse!

This seems to be common among those who have lost money. Rather than picking up and moving on, they make it their life’s mission to just attack whatever they feel “wronged” them.

I mean, I think crypto is pretty stupid and scammy myself (and if you know Lars he is suspicious of most blockchain stuff as well) but Vitalik seems like one of the more legitimate people working in that field. You may disagree with his assessment of how useful cryptocurrencies will be but he's not running scams.

After the DAO hack I think Ethereum pretty much failed at being an immutable blockchain, which proves it doesn't work at all, and I think Vitalik is kidding himself with this.

'The Merge' is just smoke and mirrors really and doesn't solve anything like the gas fees which is an overdue problem in Ethereum.

I don't know why you think gas fees (paid by users of Ethereum) are a bigger problem than energy usage externalities(paid by everyone on the planet).

It's not really Vitalik's fault how a decentralized platform is used, for better or for worse. Can only hope people lose interest in buying into crypto scams altogether, or that regulators do their job.

And yes, I know Ethereum is not that decentralized.

If an API allows for awful behavior, shouldn't you blame the designer of that API? Or at least, blame their unwillingness to change that API? What if the awful behavior is baked into the API at its heart?

Nuclear physics “API” allows for wiping the life from Earth. So, we should abandon it at once?

We can patch it: https://www.icanw.org/

Virtually all nuclear physicists advocated for something that amounts to the ICAN. Here's Albert Einstein and Bertrand Russell's manifesto for the abolishment of nuclear weapons: https://www.atomicheritage.org/key-documents/russell-einstei...

Vitalik doesn't give a shit about the harm he's done.

Nothing particulary bad for some less smart people loosing money on stuff they don't understand. Let it be a lesson. Maybe next time they won't believe every thing they see on youtube or TV

What do “more smart people” invest in, and how well do they understand it?

Indices, mostly. And they understand it well enough to understand that they have no hope of outperforming by thinking for themselves, which is why they invest in indices rather than picking individual things to invest in.

Firstly, there is zero chance of understanding an index. Corporations are legal entities formed by documents, each unique, holding assets like intellectual property, and executed by people. It is clearly infeasible you understand all of that for an index. The best you can do is extrapolate from the history of “number go up”.

Secondly, you invoke the efficient market hypothesis for stocks via portfolio theory, which should then apply just as well to alternatives. Higher risk/volatility implies higher expected returns. This is assuming perfect information transparency.

This is where your argument fails. Crypto (on-chain) is a perfectly-transparent market. Stocks are almost perfectly opaque. So crypto is an almost tautologically efficient regardless of whether it shoots the moon or drops to zero. Until recently, crypto was also uncorrelated with stocks, which made them a perfect return-boosting companion to a portfolio. Not anymore of course.

Smart people invest in things they understand.

If you’d like some critical takes on crypto, I was the co host of this podcast and have written many. Here’s my latest: https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/is-web3-culture-similar-to...

They have already made up their mind.

hm, yeah, he should turn it off! /s

I rather like the EVM technology. I wouldn't mind some more centralized ones that can launch of the same things, because I just like deploying on and analyzing EVMs. Its pretty great as a developer tool for launching projects, and there are sooo many EVMs now that Vitalik isn't even relevant outside of the Ethereum EVM.