This was on the front page of HN. My favorite comment there was,
I look forward to more open an earnest conversation about bitcoin on the orange site.
It's funny how HN's theme is orange, but historically commenters have been unkind towards Bitcoin. For that reason, I've been very thankful for the yellow site (SN) because there is no friction here!
I really enjoyed this glimpse into the Hacker News perception of Bitcoin and the linked article.
I don't really find the article compelling -- IG seems to me that such arguments usually assume a much more static system than is the case. A 51% attack takes time. It is not clear to me how the field would change as the awareness of the attack grew.
From the perspective of this yellow site, I suspect many of the people on the orange site would be shocked at how fanatical we are. Sort of like you show up somewhere expecting a cocktail party and it turns out they are all seriously committed D&Ders in full costume. A paradigm shift is required to understand how bitcoiners will react.
I think the fanaticism is certainly off putting to many people. I've had good interactions with people who were initially hostile to bitcoin simply by presenting a more open minded but still firm case for why I like bitcoin: #998456
Beyond market reaction there is reputational and operational blowback. Mining hardware is not infinitely redeployable across chains and once an attack is attempted the attacker becomes a known quantity. That identity risk bleeds into the derivatives space. Counterparties may refuse to fill positions or demand collateral that eats into the profitability of the strategy.
It is also important to consider that Bitcoin security is not just about hardware procurement and block production speed. Network participants continually monitor chain health. A successful attack that double spends or reorganizes a chain deep enough to undermine confidence would trigger coordinated countermeasures, from temporarily halting withdrawals to hard forks designed to invalidate malicious blocks. These defensive actions can nullify the profit thesis if they happen quickly enough.
So while the arithmetic of large derivative volumes versus smaller hardware investments is compelling in isolation it does not capture the strategic and social barriers that make such an operation far riskier than it appears on paper.
This was on the front page of HN. My favorite comment there was,
It's funny how HN's theme is orange, but historically commenters have been unkind towards Bitcoin. For that reason, I've been very thankful for the yellow site (SN) because there is no friction here!
Did you catch that the color bar can be changed if you have more than a certain amount of karma?
I really enjoyed this glimpse into the Hacker News perception of Bitcoin and the linked article.
I don't really find the article compelling -- IG seems to me that such arguments usually assume a much more static system than is the case. A 51% attack takes time. It is not clear to me how the field would change as the awareness of the attack grew.
From the perspective of this yellow site, I suspect many of the people on the orange site would be shocked at how fanatical we are. Sort of like you show up somewhere expecting a cocktail party and it turns out they are all seriously committed D&Ders in full costume. A paradigm shift is required to understand how bitcoiners will react.
I think the fanaticism is certainly off putting to many people. I've had good interactions with people who were initially hostile to bitcoin simply by presenting a more open minded but still firm case for why I like bitcoin: #998456
Beyond market reaction there is reputational and operational blowback. Mining hardware is not infinitely redeployable across chains and once an attack is attempted the attacker becomes a known quantity. That identity risk bleeds into the derivatives space. Counterparties may refuse to fill positions or demand collateral that eats into the profitability of the strategy.
It is also important to consider that Bitcoin security is not just about hardware procurement and block production speed. Network participants continually monitor chain health. A successful attack that double spends or reorganizes a chain deep enough to undermine confidence would trigger coordinated countermeasures, from temporarily halting withdrawals to hard forks designed to invalidate malicious blocks. These defensive actions can nullify the profit thesis if they happen quickly enough.
So while the arithmetic of large derivative volumes versus smaller hardware investments is compelling in isolation it does not capture the strategic and social barriers that make such an operation far riskier than it appears on paper.