Crypto

Bitcoin as a phenomenon has many aspects in it, but it has been “evolved” into a speculative asset (interment meme socks to get rich quickly) and an internet collectible - digital baseball cards, if you wish.

It is traded by pros, by institutions (in-house trading desks), by exchanges and “whales”, because the whitepaper has a direct appeal to finance and math literates.

BTC is The crypto. It is a blue chip internet meme token - a risky asset to be traded in an emergent industry of exchanges offering sophisticated trading vehicles.

Ethereum is traded by not so smart, common techies who believe in genius of fucking Vitaliks and in the tech (which is actually outrageous amateur crap).

It is loved by delusional russians, who think of it as something very special and the most clever (which is, obviously, not).

ETH is literally PHP of crypto and the only selling point is that it already works somehow and is everywhere in amateurs “projects”.

IOHK capitalizes on the enterprise meme. It attracts soiboys who did some “research” and fell for the sophisticated buzzwords, and Haskell, you know, and really big names (Phil Wadler!) on the “abput” page.

It takes real knowledge to realize that all the actual coding has been left to hired amateurs and the project is crap (10 transactions per second).

In other words, there is a company who develop crytpro solution for enterprises (as if it is really in demand).

Chainlink is traded by utter degenerates, who literally believe and have faith in the hundreds of pages of abstract bullshit they cannot even comprehend.

This is why its price actions are so emotional (a roller coaster) - everything is on faith and unshaken belief.

The model is of a religious sect or a cult where knowing is impossible and believing what is required. Mostly low IQ degens are attracted by it.

I am sure some pros are secretly trading this shitcoin against the retail because it is literally a textbook case of volatile emotional market full of amateur idiots.

These literal shitcoins are traded by average Joes who never bothered to do any research and just FOMOing in as everyone around them else does.

Smart people short big green candles of mass hysteria and take Joe’s money. I wish I knew this in 2020.

A well-thought and probably mathematically modeled beforehand system. Definitely designed by a math-nerd, MIT style.

The tech is solid, but it will never be a “currency” which is a biggest meme, and will never had any “adoption” (ATMs and exchanges are the only adoption).

The cost of mining (adding new blocks to the chain) will eventually transform it into mere “digital souvenirs”.

An “I could do it too” bullshit, designed by an ambitious, narcissistic youngster without any adequate mathematical or technical background. Just naive wishful thinning. A few basic concepts (a state machine, VM, blockchain) put together without any understanding.

Had lots of developer’s attention, a lot of enthusiasm and momentum, and naive elitism (still the major driving force), however, poor design and technical dept will ruin it.

Any 2.0 memes will fail due to errors, hacks, poor code quality (think of some early PHP shit).

The definition of a scam and bullshit. Incompetent, inadequate CEO, majored in “philosophy” (shitty one, Hegelian piles of abstract nonsense) pushing ’’abstract solutions’’, which lacks any real demand or even implementations.

The whole idea of being a middle-man (between data producers and data consumers), a broker of other people’s data is clearly an economical bullshit.

Technological side is, obviously, neglected and nearly non-existent, and amounts to some set of parsers and convertors in Javascript (LMAO!) .

The most important thing that this “projects” is about securing founder’s decent living (money in a bank), not delivering ’’any’’ solutions. Being funded with meme-coins is way more profitable than any actual development.

The shitcoin is centralized, pre-mined, ERC20 token (lmao) being sold to exchanges.

A corporate scam, similar to Chainlink (the whole purpose is a decent living while in the “project”).

Much better marketed and executed. Got lots of technology big names involved (at least on paper).

The advertised reliance of formal-systems (specifications, theorem proving tools, etc.), pure-functional languages, peer-reviewed “scientific” papers makes it look solid for unsophisticated “investors”. This is the main reason for its “success”.

Despite the being affiliated with the brightest people in academia, who brought in all the advantages of the last 50 years of PL research, the actual implementation is crap (an ’’Enterprise Java-like’’ code, but in [wiki:/Languages/Haskell Haskell]) and, it seems, does not match specifications (which is a major difficulty in ’’implementing’’ partially formally defined and partially verified system) and this is the cause why there is still no working product being delivered).

Of course, the big guys on the front page do not write any actual code, they only publish and review papers, give talks and serve on boards.

Actually, Cardano is by far the best ’’attempt’’, and its failure was in becoming “a typical corporation”.

Another ambitious attempt, by a gifted programmer. It is based on the Ocaml (’’a decent, mostly functional language’’ of the ML family) and the guy, allegedly had some math background.

However, the code reveals immaturity and lack of understanding of fundamental FP principles - Monads are used in strict language (unnecessary, redundant abstractions). Other messy (poorly understood) abstractions are expected.

To be fair, it is ok to use monadic composition for error handling, but the topic (monads in a strict, mostly functional language) is very subtle.

Otherwise, the code is well-documented, well-structured into modules, and is otherwise OK. The guy is principle-guided, which is a sign of a better developed mind.

However, this project has no memes, which is everything for running a good scam.