You are right. From reading the article, Neal Stephenson doesn't criticize cryptocurrency in itself. His whole criticism is about integrating it inside the universe of games.
I don't agree with your opinion that item transferability is necessarily silly, though. I was happy to be able to sell the rare Dota 2 items I accumulated after playing it for a couple years. It was never a central motivation for playing, but the transferability didn't detract from the experience in any way. It just made for some nice pocket change when all was said and done.
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Meta remark: It's pretty sad that one of the only HN comments correctly pointing out the disconnect between the article title, the HN knee-jerk reactions, and the actual content of the article, seems about to be downvoted to oblivion. The article is barely 3 paragraphs. Is it too much to ask to read it, before jumping in with the same tired crypto takes as every link to crypto-related resources on HN gets?
I wonder how much corporate domain blocking comes into play on articles like this gaining traction on HN during the day on weekdays? I am reading the comments here on my lunch break before reading the article since "gaming" links are blocked. If it sounds interesting, I try to look it up after work.
People may be downvoting because I stuffed my comment with opinions they dislike more so than my calling out the title being irrelevant to the article.
I don't agree with your opinion that item transferability is necessarily silly, though. I was happy to be able to sell the rare Dota 2 items I accumulated after playing it for a couple years. It was never a central motivation for playing, but the transferability didn't detract from the experience in any way. It just made for some nice pocket change when all was said and done.
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Meta remark: It's pretty sad that one of the only HN comments correctly pointing out the disconnect between the article title, the HN knee-jerk reactions, and the actual content of the article, seems about to be downvoted to oblivion. The article is barely 3 paragraphs. Is it too much to ask to read it, before jumping in with the same tired crypto takes as every link to crypto-related resources on HN gets?