Bitcoin.com Lists Ponzi Token, Hex, to the Dismay of Bitcoin Fans

https://cryptobriefing.com/bitcoin-com-lists-ponzi-hex-dismay-bch-fans/

by kylebenzle • 7 years ago

36 57 7 years ago

mrosett2• 7 years ago

The religious wars within the cryptocurrency community are fascinating to watch and are the single biggest reason I doubt we'll ever see a meaningful use for cryptocurrency or blockchain other than speculation.

rolltiide• 7 years ago

But is this one of those?

HEX is a lulzworthy new issuance stretching the imagination of the market by someone I’m not even sure could pass KYC with any bank

It’s like if WeWork actually did become publicly traded by issuing shares at different prices over 365 days. It would be a non-sequitur for an outside observer to dismiss the problems - and some actual religious affinity towards Adam Neumann - as why the US markets won’t go anywhere. Itd would be A) what are you talking about and B) nonsense drivel like that is just giving WeWork a pass by criticizing the whole market instead of a shitty offering and organization

loceng4• 7 years ago

Bitcoin et al is indoctrination into religion tied to financial incentive, greed.

djohnston2• 7 years ago

faith is the foundation of any economic system

solotronics• 7 years ago

I think you can make the exact same argument about any form of money. Fiat currency is definately has some religious aspects.

codehalo• 7 years ago

"In God we trust"?

wolco• 7 years ago

It's similiar in the programming world but the language wars don't prevent work from getting work done.

I feel like the cryto has a different story. There is a struggle to find utility because the structure of the system has too many holes.

For bitcoin electrical usage is the true currency + specialized gpus. Anyone who has unlimited power + boards can take all. The side effect is wasting resources for no reason.

For other coins each has there own story.

At the core we want people to do something valuable as side effect of obtaining prove. I'm not sure we're close.

flyingfences3• 7 years ago

Anyone who has unlimited power + boards can take all

So, nobody can take all, then. Even putting aside power, nobody has unlimited boards. The supply of GPUs is very tightly limited by real-world factors, as anybody who tried to buy an AMD GPU a few years ago found out.

mrosett2• 7 years ago

It's similiar in the programming world but the language wars don't prevent work from getting work done.

I worked for a crypto startup in ~2017. Our product wrote a decent number of transactions to the Bitcoin blockchain, so when transaction fees went from a dime to $20 it caused a lot of headaches and I ended up dealing with it. When I asked questions online about managing transaction fees, I inadvertently wandered into a holy war and was thoroughly flamed for my trouble. It was the least pleasant experience I've had trying to get help as a dev. How can such a toxic community grow and achieve anything meaningful?

doublement2• 7 years ago

To me it seems mired in contradiction. The use case for cryptocurrencies is motivated by (though perhaps doesn't require) the assumption that accountable government is a lost cause; yet it also assumes that society provides enough stability for the protocol to operate, instead of devolving toward anarchy or totalitarianism.

bdcravens3• 7 years ago

I think that's the public ideology, but the reality is the largest percentage of those who own cryptocurrency are using as nothing more than a speculative investment, and therefore, a proxy for fiat.

shawnz2• 7 years ago

I don't think it's a contradiction. You can rely on an accountable government to protect your bitcoins, and if you decide at some point they have become unaccountable then you can move your bitcoins to a different location without restrictions. It's just separation of concerns.

gimmeThaBeet• 7 years ago

I read a recent opinion piece that sort of mellowed my feelings on the space, basically that crypto was never made to be mainstream (I'd argue many would view widespread use as 'meaningful').

Most of my thinking you can read crypto as bitcoin i.e. some general payment system, where in bitcoin's case its stated purpose is sort of this inexorable transaction system, it feels intuitive that the meaningful use space is intrinsically going to be fringe/taboo, because it's outside government, outside permission. I know its cliche that freedom isn't free, but what is the honest practical value of freedom unless it's scarce i.e. its impossible or someone it trying to stop you?

But the point is that crypto may be an inherently fringe construct, it may provide no benefit to society because its value add might solely live in activities outside the confines of society at large. Now you can argue whether that is a net positive or negative for humanity, but I think that if "that's it", you know, I think that is a meaningful use.

nemo1618• 7 years ago

Headline is somewhat misleading: "Bitcoin fans" generally could not care less about Bitcoin.com, which is actually the home of the Bitcoin Cash altcoin. Bitcoin.com has been widely discredited for a long time now, largely due to its repeated attempts to conflate Bitcoin Cash with Bitcoin and thus trick unwitting consumers into using the former when they intended to use the latter; see e.g. https://bitcoinist.com/1000-people-join-crypto-industry-figu...

adventskalender• 7 years ago

The headline of the article actually says "BCH fans". Why does it say Bitcoin in HN? Hope it will be corrected soon.

diogofranco• 7 years ago

Besides the BCH part of that quote, the "fans" part is also interesting. Coins having fans is... new.

spookthesunset3• 7 years ago

Why does one group deserve the “true bitcoin” moniker more than another? The bitcoin cash people can just as rightly claim they are the “true” bitcoin as the people squatting the “bitcoin” name.

gruez2• 7 years ago

I'd lean towards the group that's obviously larger than the other (as evidenced by node count and market cap), and isn't a hard fork.

gerikson4• 7 years ago

The original title is “Bitcoin.com Lists Ponzi-like Token HEX to the Dismay of BCH Fans”.

BCH is Bitcoin Cash, a fork organized/promoted by Roger Ver, among others. It’s currently trading at $180.67, which is 2.3% of the current Bitcoin (BTC) price.

Ver owns and operates Bitcoin.com.

Confusingly, /r/btc is where BCH is discussed/promoted, while /r/bch was quickly taken over by BTC proponents after Ver failed to get exchanges to recognize BCC as the ticket symbol for Bitcoin Cash. (BCC was already in use by Bitcoin Connect, a ponzi/exit scam that imploded shortly after BCH forked).

Please note that using the otherwise innocuous “bcash” moniker will get you branded as a troll in the Bitcoin Cash community. I’ve forgotten the specific reason for this.

flyingfences3• 7 years ago

I’ve forgotten the specific reason for this

It's because they desperately want you to call it "Bitcoin" to further their ploy. Shortening "Bitcoin Cash" to a name that isn't "Bitcoin" exposes them.

greenhacker• 7 years ago

Exactly. Ver has repeatedly tried to hijack the bitcoin brand and confuse adopters, most notably via his ownership of bitcoin.com domain and subreddit r/btc https://greenhacker.dev/bye-bye-bcash-good-riddance-to-bad-a...

spookthesunset3• 7 years ago

Well, why can’t they rightly claim they are “Bitcoin” and the current “Bitcoin” is the altcoin?

bdcravens3• 7 years ago

Confusingly, /r/btc is where BCH is discussed/promoted

Well before Bitcoin Cash ever came into existence, /r/btc was created as a response to alleged censorship in /r/bitcoin, mostly as part of the block-size debate. As a choice emerged to fork to a big-block version of Bitcoin, a principle /r/btc in generally already supported, it made sense to follow that coin.

mchristen• 7 years ago

Your history is bit wrong, r/btc was created in response to excessive moderation on r/bitcoin, well before Bitcoin Cash existed.

gerikson4• 7 years ago

I elided a lot of history - Bitcoin Cash indeed had its genesis within the community around /r/btc (aka the "big-blockers", Bitcoin XT, etc.).

When BCH launched, there was some confusion around the ticker, /r/bch was quickly colonized by trolls, and the community continued to use /r/btc.

lawn3• 7 years ago

r/btc was created long before Bitcoin Cash, as an uncensorable alternative to r/bitcoin, which is extremely censored.

Bitcoin Cash was created because Bitcoin didn't scale, not because of technical reasons. Instead they used a massive social engineering campaign (censorship, trolls and fake news) to block the development. Roger wasn't even involved in BCH back then.

This can be verified by anyone who cares to, and you'll see that the parent is still forwarding the same troll narrative.

They use newspeak with terms like "bcash" to try to distance Bitcoin Cash from Bitcoin. Because Bitcoin Cash is proof that their arguments against "big blocks" and the impossibility of hard forks were, and are, bullshit.

gerikson4• 7 years ago

I actually don't have a bone in this fight. I am critical of Bitcoin and BCH in equal measure because I don't agree with their view on how money works.

I do respect people in both projects for being intellectually honest about their work and goals.

I have unmitigated contempt for Bitcoin SV and the shills who promote it (and am disappointed in those I used to respect who've hitched their wagons to it), but I do appreciate the entertainment value of following the drama.

Aaronstotle• 7 years ago

Bitcoin cash is a scam, so it's not surprising to see them list other scams. I hope that bitcoin goes back to a few hundred dollars in order to purge the market of weak crypto-currencies.

BubRoss2• 7 years ago

Most informed people would say that the scam is that the original Bitcoin was taken over so that its throughout could be stifled and the people controlling it could sell an awkward and unnecessary second layer.

When one side says the other is a scam but goes to enormous lengths to stop technical discussions while saying that throughput below a 144p YouTube video is too much data, people should start to question whether they are being fed propaganda.

gruez2• 7 years ago

[...] while saying that throughput below a 144p YouTube video is too much data [...]

That's a gross simplification of the issue. The problem with large block sizes isn't with bandwidth, it's with the storage requirements of running a full node, and the time it takes to bring up a full new node.

spookthesunset3• 7 years ago

Bitcoin cash is no more if a scam than “Bitcoin”. All crypto coins are scams. Or at least a transactional layer for higher level scams (which often have scams piled on top of those scams”)

One delightful thing about cryptocurrency is everybody thinks their coin is the good one and all the others are “shitcoins”. With slightly more introspection, they might realize that their chosen coin is just as scammy as the rest.

jraedisch2• 7 years ago

Pretty sure that Bitcoin is the one exception, simply by being first. Thus, it is the single most suited experiment to determine, whether a digital store of value is possible at all, (the argument being that if it cannot be a SoV or can easily be replaced, so can the next, thus none should be entrusted with significant savings).

tuesdayrain2• 7 years ago

Your recent comment, but with the examples switched to crypto-related things, is an amusingly apt description of your post.

HN is getting full of people with some serious chips on their shoulder. Any article with the words "cryptocurrency", "Bitcoin", or "Ethereum" in it will be flooded with, to be blunt, a bunch of garbage posts. Not a good insightful, intellectual discussion. Just people with massive chips on their shoulders flooding the comments with noise.

iamaelephant• 7 years ago

They're all Ponzi schemes.

behringer• 7 years ago

What's all ponzi schemes?

m3kw9• 7 years ago

Finally, the correct name for an ICO.

tom812• 7 years ago

This article is a total misleading piece of information. The code of the HEX token smart contract is publicly accessible and one can clearly see it implements the logic of a CD (certificate of deposit), you only need javascript knowledge to verify that.

https://etherscan.io/address/0x2b591e99afe9f32eaa6214f7b7629...

The initial airdrop amounts are totally arbitrary though, with a founder getting more than everyone else. But that doesn't make something a ponzi scheme.

To qualify as a ponzi scheme you need to directly use newcomers investment money as return for old investors. There is absolutely no line of code in the contract that does this.

Bitcoin.com Lists Ponzi Token, Hex, to the Dismay of Bitcoin Fans

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