Ask HN: Why does HN hate Bitcoin so much?

[yourabstraction]

Any time the topic of Bitcoin, and cryptocurrency in general, comes up around here the comments are mostly negative. I'm really puzzled by this, because Bitcoin seems to tick a lot of the boxes of what people around here are interested and believe in.

It's open source money! Open source is huge on here, there are tons of people who will go out of their way to use an open source version of something even if it lacks features of a similar commercial offering.

It's censorship resistant money. This is definitely one of the more interesting things about Bitcoin, and one I expect people around these parts would rally behind.

It's permissionless. hackers don't like asking for permission to use a protocol. Open protocols allow for innovation to flourish on the layers built on top.

The technology is fascinating and extremely innovative, even if it did simply put pieces of prior inventions together in a new and unique way and throw in some game theory.

It's not controlled by any corporation or government, isn't that a hackers wet dream?

Also, with regards to price, a lot of naysayers like to mention how people only talk about it when the price is going up. While it is true that excitement brings in new people and more discussion, high price is actually a feature, not a bug. Let me explain.

The price of Bitcoin is a proxy for the amount of trust people place in it, the security of the network, and the ability to store and transfer large amounts of wealth. The higher the price and market cap of bitcoin, the more wealth an individual or corporation can realistically store and transfer with it. You can now realistically move billions of dollars in Bitcoin, this was not possible when the price was lower, thus price is a feature.

TLDR: Bitcoin has unique properties that align with the hacker ethos, why do people on HN hate it so much?

[croissants]

I can only speak for myself, but to me Bitcoin exists in a weird space where it's both 1) a legitimately interesting piece of technology that a "hacker" should find interesting, and 2) a magnet for hucksters and pseudo-philosophers to hype up as the way of the future and profit (ethically or not) without understanding or caring about what's happening technically. When I see many people who fit into bucket 2), it makes me not want to spend any more time around the Bitcoin community. Maybe that's a shame. I'd probably be more willing to put up with 2) if I thought 1) was super interesting, but I'm not that excited about it, for whatever reason.

Alternatively, if you subscribe to the "geeks, mops, and sociopaths" theory of subcultures [1], Bitcoin seems to me to be well into the "mops and sociopaths" part.

[1] https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths

[yourabstraction → croissants]

I get it, there's a lot of unsavory stuff in the crypto space, but I think it's a huge mistake to miss the good stuff just because you dislike the bad stuff. We're talking about open protocols here, that means they're open to drug dealers, money launderers, scammers, and other bad actors just as much as they are to everyone else. This is no different from other protocols we all know and love. People on here wouldn't dismiss BitTorrent just because it can be used for software piracy and illegal porn.

[mytechtoday → croissants]

You seem pretty judgemental. It's not a good look

[verdverm]

We went through this hype almost four years ago... HN was interested then, but...

Is anything truly different today? Is it really that interesting? Is it worth dealing with the shillz? (no, no, and no)

Simple is better, blockchain is needlessly more complicated. Censorship resistant, not really, ask those who gave up their BTC over going to jail. The only people having wet dreams about it are those who want to get rich quick. Any competent techie will quickly realize blockchain is just git+raft with some permissionless shenanigans. Does anyone actually want to live in a permissionless world? (you should think hard about what that actually means)

Hammer in search of nails being sold as snake oil. That is why HN doesn't care about it today. We looked, evaluated, and moved on. (you should think hard about what this actually means)

[bbg215]

Much like certain sports teams and other cult products or companies its loyal supporters are incredibly annoying and turn off people who might otherwise be open to it.

[ur-whale]

Bitcoin is disruptive by design.

“Stories of imagination tend to upset those without one.” ― Terry Pratchett

“It's not worth doing something unless someone, somewhere, would much rather you weren't doing it.” ― Terry Pratchett

[SideburnsOfDoom → ur-whale]

> Bitcoin is disruptive by design.

Sounds cool, means nothing.

[gge]

This comment explains it perfectly: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24310174

> It's a sentiment that gets expressed under most every blockchain-related submission on HN, and I wonder why.

> Maybe it's something about blockchain tech, but I have the nagging feeling that HN is just getting old and complacent. If this community had existed, in 1995, on a BBS, it probably would have found nothing but fault with the emerging web.

> I can't understand why a tech-minded person would find blockchain repulsive. It's (in the case of Ethereum) the biggest and most powerful distributed computing environment. BTC has a history of no major losses or exploits in 10y of existing in the most adversarial environment I could think of.

> HN meanwhile: let's get totally over-excited by a new ePaper reader with drawing functionality

Good quote from @balajis: "Crypto is what comes after Silicon Valley." Defi is the new frontier, which HN and the Silicon Valley mainstream are completely missing out on it.

[yourabstraction → gge]

Thanks, and I agree this perfectly sums things up.

[c000e3]

The sadly inavoidable fact that haters gonna hate.

Others make an analysis a little bit deeper, and can separate the traders activity (by its own name: speculation) from the tecnology itself, but the hate to speculators is more nice to transmit than the positive thing and opportunity that cryptos are... so, they belongs too at haters gonna hate crew.

I think similar to you, bitcoin and cryptos in general, are a great opportunity to create a new paradigm of capitalism maybe little more healthy (or less unhealthy, you choose).