Every blog post that took off on Hacker News, ranked by the votes of its best submission. 488 posts.
Despite considering myself a cryptographer, I have not found myself particularly drawn to “crypto.” I don’t think I’ve ever actually said the words “get off my lawn,” but I’m much more likely to click on Pepperidge Farm Remembers flavored memes about how “crypto” used to mean “cryptography” than ...
In Bullshit Jobs: A Theory , David Graeber makes the case that a sizable chunk of the labour economy is essentially people performing useless work, as a sort of subconscious self-preservation instinct of the economic status quo. The book cites ample anecdotal evidence that people perceive their own jobs as completely…
Musings of a Computer Scientist.
Story time! Around twenty years ago, I was working as a reverse-engineer and cryptanalyst for AccessData while getting my Physics degree at BYU. It was the late 90s and early 2000s. The US governme…
I just discovered that every copy of macOS ships with a hidden PDF of Satoshi Nakamoto's Bitcoin whitepaper. But why?
On April 9, 2025, someone risked $2.5 million on SPY call options—and walked away with $70+ million in under an hour. The trade was placed at 1:01 pm. At 1:30 pm, Trump announced tariff pauses. The market exploded upward. These options that cost 85 cents were suddenly worth more than $25.
Like most traps, they’re mysterious and then appealing and then it’s too late. An NFT is digital treasure chest, a status symbol and an apparent item of value. Like a Pokemon card, or a…
This article is now available in Japanese: 紙と鉛筆でビットコインをマイニング：1日に0.67ハッシュ and Russian: Майним Bitcoin с помощью бумаги и ручки . I decided...
Somewhere in December 2013, a number of traders including myself began noticing suspicious bot behavior on Mt. Gox. Basically, a random number between 10 and 20 bitcoin would be bought every 5-10 m…
This week saw the cancellation of the Australian Stock Exchange’s long-running effort to build a blockchain-based trading system. Which, oddly, has me thinking of 2016, when AWS decided not to make a strategic investment in blockchain, with my input a contributing factor. It felt like a good story while it was…
{{ content|truncate(160) }}
The thought “I know PHP! How hard could running an exchange be?” never goes anywhere good.
When I speak about the inefficiency of popular blockchains, or mention that we seem to be hurtling towards a 'web3' so centralized it challenges big tech's firm grasp on today's web, or point out that somehow no one has managed to find a positive use for blockchains that wouldn't be better served by one of the many…
A horror story.
Personal Blog of Christian Haschek
that expectation is sustained by such profits being paid to those who choose to cash out. However,
Web3 claims to be the only way to save us from commercial entities defining what we can see and what not. Yet, it does exactly this: It results in commercialized entities defining what we can see and what not. More on the blockchain ecosystem in this overview and especially in the simple, hum
You might have heard the term “smart contract,” and you might even know that they are “code” you can run on a blockchain.But how can you run code on a blockc...
Milky Eggs
This post sparked a great conversation on Hacker News! See the comments here.Another update: Scott Alexander just (12/8/22) wrote the best counterpoint to this that I’ve read – see it here “The four most expensive words in investing are: ‘This time it’s different.’” John Templeton I’m writing this essay not so much to…
