
Ask HN: Why does blockchain get so much hate here? - arisAlexis
Sure there is a lot of discussion about how cryptocurrencies can fit in the existing economic system or regulations etc. What is surprising though is that there is a lot of genuine <i>hate</i> over blockchain and the whole sector.<p>You can see that from downvotes here that are vindictive to any comment in favor, you can see huge upvotes for articles saying blockchain is BS.<p>All in all, blockchain is firstly supposed to be a technology. As such, it makes no sense to trash talk it and ridicule it.<p>Secondly, this technology tries (at best without any guarantees) to bring a societal change meaning transparency for everybody, financial inclusion, censorship resistance etc.<p>How can these things be hated upon? Why? I understand the &quot;i told you it was a bubble&quot; effect but I can never imagine someone hating on new tech discoveries for reasons other than psychology.
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cirgue
Most people on HN, myself included, do not hate blockchain, but are
_extremely_ skeptical of the discourse and community that has grown up around
it for a few reasons:

\- Blockchain is essentially a distributed database. It's an interesting
implementation of the idea, but the universe of problems that this can solve
is significantly smaller than blockchain proponents will ever acknowledge.
That kind of intellectual dishonesty does not sit well with people who by
professional habit think critically about the applications of any new
technology. There are a lot of those people on HN.

\- It is extremely profitable to over-hype blockchain. There are enormous
amounts of money to be made by bilking the greater fool in the cryptocurrency
market and the best way to do that is to create media buzz, including on this
platform. That obviously rubs people the wrong way. No one likes sleaze-bags.

\- The proportion of conversations about cryptocurrency that involve a massive
misunderstanding of monetary economics, databases, and the word 'algorithm'
approaches 1. If you ask someone what the differences are between fiat
currency, gold, and bitcoin, you will generally get an answer that is complete
nonsense. Most (many?) people have experienced the desperation of trying to
escape a tedious conversation about the evils of fiat currency, or reading
comments on HN/other platforms that sound like cult-speak. That shouldn't
matter and every great idea has had proponents that are idiots, but people
associate the things hear about something with the thing itself, and a lot of
what is said about blockchain is pretty dumb.

------
hluska
I don't 'hate' blockchain. At various points, I've tried to use blockchain
technology to solve various supply chain, ecommerce and even worked for a
startup that wanted to apply blockchain technology to user authentication. So,
I definitely don't hate blockchain, however, my experience with the technology
has lead me to be extremely skeptical for these reasons:

1.) The technology feels too immature for its age. Whenever I work with a
blockchain, I feel like I'm working with bleeding edge technology that was
theorized months ago and released weeks ago. Yet, blockchain is about a decade
old.

2.) For all the hype, blockchain is just a distributed database.

3.) There are more mature, cheaper ways to solve the vast majority of problems
that distributed databases are useful for solving. This always killed off my
blockchain dreams. Once I got past the (often self inflated) hype, I was
always left with the actuality that I could solve each problem without a
blockchain in less than half the time it would take me to solve it with a
blockchain.

4.) I've been collecting data off cryptocurrency exchanges for long enough
that I can make some conclusions about the market. My conclusion is that I'm
significantly better at predicting results from hands of blackjack than I am
from predicting results from crypto trading. Cryptocurrency is the one killer
application I've found for blockchain, but it's too irrational for me to ever
get involved.

Long story short, in my experience, blockchain is a solution looking for a
problem. This could be solved by more mature tooling, since often, as an
implementor, I'm struck by how much more efficient it would be to solve
distributed problems with tools other than a bc. And, the one space where bc
is a great solution makes too little sense for me to get involved in.

~~~
arisAlexis
but cryptocurrency is not for making profit. It's a killer application because
its censorship resistant peer to peer digital money without counterfeiting and
fungible (some of the coins). That you can't predict the price is totally
irrelevant of the application and societal changes this can bring.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
That may have been the initial motivation and intent. But it's not true of the
reality, and hasn't been for several years.

> That you can't predict the price is totally irrelevant...

For something that aspires to be "money", that is _highly_ relevant.

~~~
arisAlexis
not if the base currency is Bitcoin (I know...)

------
lucozade
I don’t think I’d characterise the discussions around the technology as hate.
Maybe with the exception of the environmental cost of Proof of Work.

Where most of the heat comes from, in my opinion, is the religion that’s grown
around it. Fundamentally, it is just a technology; clever in parts, flawed in
others.

Some people have ascribed almost messianic qualities to it. And like many
religions, the adherents often just ignore evidence that doesn’t align with
their worldview.

Personally, I find the religion bit irritating but I don’t hate it. I do find
it frustrating because it taints the technology which, in my opinion, does
have merit.

------
neilk
The technical reasons why blockchain is overhyped are well-described by
others, including this succinct presentation the other day:
[https://twitter.com/ncweaver/status/980485587827224577?s=21](https://twitter.com/ncweaver/status/980485587827224577?s=21)
.

But I suspect what really annoys people about blockchain is that it’s making
lucky, foolish, or crooked people very rich. For now, anyway.

The lucky and the fools - who either got in super early, or spent a lot of
their net worth on a speculative asset - now consider themselves geniuses and
proselytize how blockchain is going to change the world. Worst example: crypto
bro disaster capitalists in Puerto Rico.
[https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/02/02/technology/cryptocurre...](https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/02/02/technology/cryptocurrency-
puerto-rico.html)

The crooked - do I even need to explain?

PS: I’m not saying everyone who is into blockchain is lucky, foolish, or
crooked. Just the vast majority at this time. Notable exceptions: some of the
original Bitcoin developers, Vitalik Buterin, apparently the whole nation of
Argentina
([https://twitter.com/santisiri/status/980483903633977344?s=21](https://twitter.com/santisiri/status/980483903633977344?s=21)),
and some interesting projects like Filecoin.

PPS: I forgot the most annoying bitcoin supporters: anarchocapitalists. For
them, it’s all about making money laundering go mainstream. These people cheer
for the defunding of public institutions and the disenfranchisement of
everyone who isn’t already in the 1%.

~~~
justaguyhere
Valid point about crooked, but why the hate for lucky/foolish people? A lot of
people owe their success in life (at least partially) to luck, being at the
correct place at the correct time. Not just financially, but in
relationships/politics etc.

A lot of deserving/smart/hard working people don't get what they deserve, but
a lot of dumb/lazy people get more than what they worked for. That's how life
works, isn't it?

~~~
arisAlexis
exactly. it's funny that the same people that don't like communism where these
things don't happen get very mad about how capitalism works and how some
people become rich without skills/effort (although it's just random variance I
am not saying that skills are not rewarded).

------
patio11
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13420777](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13420777)

~~~
arisAlexis
yes I know but there is a time factor, these days is even more pronnounced

------
Suncho
The problem is that, as a technology, blockchain does almost nothing new. It's
a much slower and less-efficient version of technology that already works
correctly (i.e. the distributed database).

The only thing that proof-of-work (or proof-of-whatever) accomplishes is that
it addresses the "double-spend" problem whereby the same person signs two
mutually incompatible transactions and tries to get different nodes to respond
to both of those transactions as if they were valid.

Proof-of-work addresses this issue by using a voting system whereby everybody
gets votes based on how much electricity they waste. There are other, better,
ways to address this issue.

Anyway, I could talk about blockchain and what's wrong with it all day, but I
don't want to bore you. I could also talk about specifically what's wrong with
Bitcoin and what would _still_ be wrong with Bitcoin even if it were
implemented using a sane distributed database, but again, I don't want to bore
you.

The important thing to remember out of all of this is that you have a
fundamentally silly technology. So it's only ever going to be used by people
who don't understand it, or people who are trying to trick other people.

It is therefore not an coincidence that there are so many blockchain-based
scams. And it's also not a coincidence that it's so hard to tell the
difference between what's a scam and what's not. These are fundamental
consequences to the nature of blockchain as a technology.

And if you think I don't know what I'm talking about, you should probably know
that, for a time I was considering using blockchain as the underlying
technology for my digital currency project. But the more I learned about
blockchain, the more I came to realize that there's essentially nothing there.

If you think I'm wrong, prove me wrong.

~~~
arisAlexis
how and why (incentive) would you run a node of a distributed database
checking that all the country's assets and budget spending is transparent and
not tampered with if not with this technology? truly curious about the just a
distributed argument

~~~
Suncho
Hmm. I'm not sure I fully understand the question. Anyone who wants a
country's assets and budget spending to be transparent would be free to run a
node. And there's nothing about a traditional distributed database that
prevents it from using hash pointers to ensure that the history cannot be
tampered with. That's not a special feature of blockchain.

The question is: how do you get a country to record all its transactions in a
public ledger? Once you've figured that out, the technology to use for it
probably isn't blockchain.

Most of the work that goes into running a Bitcoin node is actually just for
burning electricity to find the next block. No real work is being done in
proof-of-work.

~~~
arisAlexis
The point is that this would work if we lived in Utopia. Since we don't then
running nodes needs some incentive because electricity costs money and that's
where the difference lies and why cryptocurrencies exist.

------
dlwdlw
A lot of skepticism is warranted. But there is also a lot of bias and
unwarranted skepticism. Or more specifically, lack of faith.

Blockchain's is like a precocious child and everyone is saying this genius
will revolutionize the world. It is still a child though.

Faith is the opposite of technical measurement so for many people anything
that requires faith deserves a heaping ton of skepticism. The biggest negative
example in many people's minds is religion.

Blockchain involves not only technology but psychology, economics, politics,
etc... It mixed in a lot of soft things that tech people may not appreciate.

Many people get involved in tech or other hard fields BECAUSE they don't see
the value of soft things. Combined with the recent validation of tech (tech
hasn't always had such high relative salaries) that "idiots" or "wee-woo"
people are making bank is very distressing.

The validation of tech via money has in some ways poisoned the original
mindset of technology as empowerment for all. That people can make money doing
things they don't understand is anathema in tech circles.

Especially as tech workers (I am one btw) often consider themselves having
cutting edge ideas and more foresight but somehow missed the boat. Either they
have to admit they were shortsighted and over-conservatism or that other
people are fools.

------
borplk
It's not hate it's normie and charlatan fatigue.

------
sharemywin
I think because from a technology perspective it's only a 6-7. "Tech people"
only find it mildly interesting at best. and let's face it devalues code and
the skills of people that make it.

"tech money people"(VCs/Angels) find it interesting because it allows you to
monetize something you couldn't before a protocol. Also, it's interesting
because it lets you capture value from an economy as opposed to just a
marketplace. (I'm calling an economy something where the rules aren't as rigid
and controlled as much by a central authority versus an ebay or uber). ie Why
some VCs are investing in it.

The open question is just because you monetize V1 or V2 of a protocol does it
allow you to profit or does V1.2A split and you lose your shirt.

Plus, as with any new "tech" it's over hyped at best and a lot of fraud at
worst.

And it's current best Use Cases "secret economies" aren't exactly something
that's going to benefit society in general.

------
dizzystar
The problem, for me (and I'm hardly an expert) is that you need a considerable
amount of double speak to work through it.

Anonymous? No, this isn't going to help with censorship.

Crypto that's world changing? How we all forget history.

My problems with crypto run deep, but it's really a high-level poker game. I
know I'm a sucker that doesn't know the rules, but 99% who's diving in aren't
aware of this fact.

Distributed / decentralized internet? Ugh... Let's talk when our cell phones
have 100tb of storage.

I've had the misfortune of working on crypto contracts. I'll never do it
again. If you honestly believe your information is safe or if you believe the
developers working on this stuff are l33t, I'm sorry, but I have to burst your
bubble.

In my opinion, the tech is interesting in it's own right for research, but
real-world uses has shown it to be dangerous, and I don't see that changing
anytime soon.

~~~
slededit
> Anonymous

Bitcoin is almost the opposite however ZCash and Monero do offer anonymity.

> World Changing

The world has changed because of cryptocoins. It's empowered criminals but
it's also become a way to get around price controls (e.g. The adoption in
Cyprus). Not always for the better but certainly it has caused change.

There are a lot of people who don't know what they are doing in this space but
that is to be expected from any new technology with mass adoption. Very few
people even in established industries have the whole picture - yet they are
able to operate in their niche.

~~~
arisAlexis
actually the amount of criminals using cryptocurrency is very minimal there
are reports from EU official bodies. This is a myth. Also capital controls are
in Greece but very few people use it. A much better example is Venezuela where
many people do.

~~~
spiralx
> A much better example is Venezuela where many people do.

I've yet to see any evidence of this being true, it appears to be a claim
backed by endless "news" articles that have sourced other such articles in
some giant stack of crypto-turtles.

------
marssaxman
I'm just reacting against the use of "blockchain" as a mass noun. It's absurd
to talk about a data structure as though it were a substance, like toothpaste
or motor oil, and I have a hard time taking anyone seriously if they think
this is normal.

~~~
arisAlexis
blockchain is a term for a technology that is much more than a data structure.
if you object to the term that's fine, come up with a new one?

~~~
Tomte
„The blockchain“. Problem solved.

Really, skipping the article sounds infantile.

------
potta_coffee
There's a lot of hype surrounding blockchain. It's cool technology but IMO a
lot of the talk in business (in my own sphere) sounds like, "How can we sell
this expensive, flashy tech for a lot of money and cash in on the gravy
train?".

------
hapnin
Most of the hate for it is spite and envy combined with a little bit of
groupthink.

------
teapot01
I think there is a question of terminology here, Blockchain is a concept,
Cryptocurrency is an application of that concept.

I imagine there are few people on HN who hate blockchain, it is a useful
concept and forms the basis for some very useful technologies i.e. Git version
control.

I imagine there are a whole range of reasons for negativity toward
Cryptocurrency/Cryptoassets on HN. Personally I think the enormous number of
new ICO and currencies being made available is purely driven by greed and
fraud. While I see bitcoin and other major coins representing a great new
application of the technology, I think it's been over-hyped to the point where
I just tune it out.

TL;DR: Crypto != Blockchain. People hate Crypto for many reasons.

~~~
teapot01
One more thing.

Shoehorning new applications of Blockchain concepts into every new conceivable
application, especially where the key advantages, i.e. decentralised trust,
distributed consensus are not needed also causes a great deal of hate. But so
it should.

------
fred_is_fred
> All in all, blockchain is firstly supposed to be a technology. As such, it
> makes no sense to trash talk it and ridicule it.

Bullshit. Who says we can't hate a technology? I hate XML.

------
thrway22
The widely touted notion that technical people are open-minded is laughably
absurd.

The opposite is true.

Never has a collective so violently assailed change more than ours, whose
identity and livelihood swing on the strictest adherence to dubious 'norms'
and unconsidered methods. Pattern-think is everywhere.

We are not innovators, we are craven perpetuators who fear any form of change
that may lay bare our vulnerability.

