I can't speak for the parent comment but I've had the same problem myself in discussing this. I would actually love to have to stop repeating myself, but the crypto CEOs keep also repeating the same marketing lines over and over again with reckless abandon and then a new group of people reads it and pops up the next day asking the same questions. Sometimes I can even directly map some comments to a series of tweets from a CEO just by searching and it's really frustrating. Dan, you should know this as well as anyone: it's easy for some startup to dump out unverified claims all over the internet. It takes continued and constant effort to refute those claims. So what can we do here? It feels like the amount of hype that's (still) happening is inherently not conducive to good discussion.

If both sides are just repeating the same points, then there's no diff, and if there's no diff then it's off topic for this site. Diffs are what's interesting.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

Then ban positive promotion of crypto, as a whole.

You can't, because you want a site that values free speech. But any site that values free speech is going to have to repeatedly answer the same basic questions on Crypto and Communism. It's going to have to repeatedly say "No, we're not trying to censor you because of chosen group X that claims to be innate, we're banning you because of actual crimes you have committed"

It's fine to argue about crimes in the sense of whether they should be illegal and whether people have actually committed them. At some point, you need to acknowledge that criminals will continue to argue their points, and that you either need to ban them or acknowledge that the same arguments will be repeated against them.

You're making some incorrect assumptions here. The kind of site we want is described at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. The sort version is we want curious conversation on topics of intellectual interest. That rules out excessive repetition, among other things.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

This is a website where everyone gets some of their compensation in lottery tickets at a smaller company selling a service to a larger ad conglomerate with fraudulent conversion metrics, or they get paid half theyre comp in easily convertible shares at the larger ad conglomerate with fraudulent conversion metrics

I really cant spot a reason to treat “crypto” differently

The similarity being that there is just other aspects of these projects and technology to focus on, that can be interesting

If you think a submission is bad you can flag it. You can also mail the mods if you think it needs more than that. That can actually reduce the incidence of bad submissions, railing against them repetitively in every thread just feeds them.

I agree. It has been flagged. It has been marked flagged. It has been re-added to the front page. If Dang wants people to stop arguing about it, then the flag moderation framework needs to stop putting crypto back on the front page. That may well involve banning people who are otherwise good commenters, like when China issues come up.

I suggest we stick to the technical aspects and what ideas people have for using the technology. it rather than veering off into money and fraud, which are highly charged topics. I'm genuinely curious about how this new tech will change things.

How can you possibly discuss Bitcoin without the topics of money and fraud ?

It's intrinsic to what Bitcoin is.

Money, sure. Fraud? No. That is too broad of a topic to require its inclusion with BTC. Almost every scam/phish/SPAM I receive is USD-desiring. And you are aware of this yet insist BTC is the main fraud coin.

The mapping is the other way around. That most fraud requests USD is indisputable, but looking at it the other way, a disproportionate amount of the movement of Crypto (incl. bitcoin) is fraud-related compared to traditional currencies [assuming we define fraud separately from corruption.]

This disproportionate share may be less than it appears when you take into account all of the things that Crypto is typically not used for, but the fact remains that there are daily stories about even large Crypto proponents being defrauded.

That this fraudulant activity is enabled by the underlying mechanics (i.e. the decentralization and lack of a verifying authority [i.e. the primary draw of Crypto afaik]) of the platform is worthy of being brought up when discussing the technological merits of the platform.

Yes one of BTC's main features _and_ biggest issue is: decentralization. Reminds me of when people go full libertarian and suggest no government intervention whatsoever, and then someone suggests they move to the governmentless land of Somalia that is anything but freedom and paradise.

With great power comes great responsibility; decentralization is a loaded gun. Use at your own risk!

10 years. Constant discussion. Unbelievable hype. Yet nothing has fundamentally changed. At this point, I’m tired of waiting, and I simply assume blockchain tech will never change anything.

Ok, thanks. I get what you mean, but English language diffs can easily be falsified with a thesaurus :) A better analogy might be that every comment should be like a unique algorithm, or something along those lines.

A diff of word meaning, not a diff of word choice.

It's like a discussion on abortion. There are fundamental disagreements that have little to do with technologoy. Everybody keeps repeating their conclusions and predictions, only time will tell who is right.

Then you might as well ban blockchain related posts until something in that space gains some kind of relevance, because until that point, the only thing we can really discuss is how nothing in the blockchain space has produced a compelling product yet.

I've never seen you make such a comment on an account that repeats pro crypto nonsense.

It's not as if we're tracking that, but I'm sure I have. It's all equally tedious, and the principle applies regardless of polarity.

Some talking points get repetitive because the scams are so common.

It is a problem indeed. We do not want the same: 'crypto is scam', 'ban all of crypto', 'no use case', or 'it's early days', 'adoption is round the corner' and 'it will take over the current system' etc sort of responses that have been recycled from other critics and maximalists and parroted here.

Given this keeps happening, the fact is, there are no new arguments from both those totally for and those totally against it and they keep having to repeat themselves or at worst their arguments are not in good faith and they are not attacking the best representation of it in each crypto-related thread.

I'm lead to believe that in all these threads, it isn't 100% going to get destroyed no matter how upset and angry the anti-crypto folks are or how much they want it to, but it is neither going to take over the world as well; a narrative made by the delusional and aggressive pro-crypto folks. Both of them will be very disappointed in their utopian goals.

Posts like this one only confirm this, and both maximalists and the critics are giving very narrow extreme responses which sounds like both of them are trying to boost replies and clickbait.

Either way, it is inevitably going to get regulated and crypto will continue to survive with 90% of the meme coins and useless projects dead and with the rest of the useful ones being here to stay.

> We want curious conversation

Up to a certain point I guess. There’s never nothing new under the sun regarding blockchains: they’re useless. Curiosity doesn’t change that.

I don't disagree with your points but dang is the super duper moderator. I don't think he's going back to 4chan or Reddit...