
Crypto as in Crypto - Tomte
https://benlog.com/2018/01/07/crypto-as-in-crypto/
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egwynn
When I first heard “crypto” for “cryptocurrency” I was saddened because it
seemed like the meaning was being coopted away from the “real” meaning of
“cryptography”. But now, I think we're stuck with it. Words sometimes just
have multiple related-but-different meanings. Like how a chemist's "organic"
is different from a farmer's "organic". Or, perhaps more saliently to this
community, Y Combinator's "hacker" is different from CNN's "hacker".

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babypistol
I think the problem is that blockcain fans mostly don't care about real crypto
:) and use "crypto" as a synonym for digital currency. To me, saying "crypto"
means blockchain seems like saying "paper" means book. Sure it is needed, but
it is not really the most relevant thing to its function. We surely wouldn't
call a pdf "paper" but I think some might call Ripple or even a simple sql
database "crypto", and cryptography probably still is used in there to some
degree but I think it is very far from the core.

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c22
I dunno, I seem to have many papers in pdf form on my hard drive.

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rdl
And your "hard drive" is presumably an SSD, now.

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21
And by "SSD" you mean the storage on the phone.

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ameliaquining
Radical proposal: Abbreviations can mean more than one thing depending on
context.

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coralreef
Yeah, but the real question is how do we pronounce GIF?

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21
This reminds me of those insisting that drones are not drones, but quad-
copters (what about those with 6 propellers?)

Language is defined by it's usage.

Taken to extreme, I've seen serious linguists argue that if a lot of different
background non-native speakers make the same mistake when speaking English,
maybe they are right and the native speakers are wrong.

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babypistol
Maybe it's just me, but I really don't like this view in this case.

Crypto in cryptocurrency still stands for cryptographic and by using crypto
for cryptocurrency we are making things harder to understand for eveyone.

Of course language evolves, but I think, given the chance, we should make it
easier to understand and not harder.

Edit: spelling

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lostmsu
How do we make it harder exactly?

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sp527
> Whatever we call it, we still need a use case for full trustless crypto. The
> reason you find many cryptographers skeptical of Blockchain as a major new
> technological framework (Internet 3.0!) is that many of us have tried to
> pitch and develop trustless business models before. And all of the use cases
> we had in mind have consistently been better served by more centralized,
> higher-trust alternatives. So we look at Blockchain with a feeling of “we’ve
> tried this before, and it’s not clear there’s anything sufficiently new to
> make users want this.”

Is there a reason this argument isn't getting wider airplay? Always felt the
same way. Interesting to have it validated by someone who sounds like he's
been around the block (pun intended).

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natch
The loss of the word 'meme' was unfortunate imho. For cryptography, we can
always say simply 'cryptography,' instead of 'crypto.'

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21
Was the 'meme' word ever used before?

The first time I remember seeing it ten years ago was exactly to describe the
modern internet phenomenon.

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natch
It was coined in 1976 as a term meaning "information virus" (akin to gene)
something that manages to get itself copied by using its hosts, humans. It
still sort of has shades of that meaning in its modern usage, but the original
usage was more serious... useful for discussing things like how religions
evolve self defense mechanisms.

Nice to see Wikipedia still talks about the old meaning, and uses "internet
meme" for the newer meaning.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme)

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giancarlostoro
Idk I've always said encryption when talking about cryptography. Also context
would matter when discerning the intended meaning of crypto as a coin or
crypto as in cryptography.

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smadge
Cryptography is a broader subject that encryption, including for example
message authentication, not just message encryption.

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giancarlostoro
Fair enough, it's not my area of expertise.

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lostmsu
I don't understand why there has to be a battle at all. What is this, a
grammar nazi club?

