Earlier quoted context omitted.
The issue of payment processors cutting off perfectly legal and valid organizations, individuals, or whole classes of activity is a separate issue. Since they provide what should be considered essential infrastructure, they should be required to provide service to anything legal, IMHO.
Why is it that the rest of the time we should solve problems and this time we should wait for the state to solve them?
Ask HN: Why does cryptocurrency subjects on HN lack curious conversations?
111–120 of 278 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why does cryptocurrency subjects on HN lack curious conversations?
#112There is no consensus on this topic because a lot of people just want to "get rich quick" ignoring the question of the source of richness.
The community generally doesn't have a problem when the source of richness is harvesting the personal information of a few million victims and getting bought out by Google.
It's likely that the people that question the source of bitcoin's wealth are also questioning google's ethics, and that the bitcoin get rich quick people are happy working for google too.
Taking a community to be homogeneous is a common fallacy.
Re: Ask HN: Why does cryptocurrency subjects on HN lack curious conversations?
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why is it that the rest of the time we should solve problems and this time we should wait for the state to solve them?
it isn't 'just this time'. It's the same principle as law, vs lynch mob.
Re: Ask HN: Why does cryptocurrency subjects on HN lack curious conversations?
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
Crypto solves a problem around distributed trust. If you have a bunch of people who need to trust something is correct, but don't trust each other, putting that data on a verifiable blockchain that you pay people to cryptographically sign is a good solution. The thing is though, that's a really unusual problem that few people actually have. If you're buying diamonds or bananas or cobalt, and you need a provable suppl…
> NFTs could enable people to transfer digital assets between platforms without needing the platforms to talk to one another. I could buy an NFT of a 3D model of some Yeezy sneakers, and then bring that NFT to Fortnite for my avatar to wear there, and to the Metaverse to show off there, and to a sneakers forum to verify my ownership in the community there as well. That could be quite useful. 3D cosmetic assets for ga…
I didn't say it would be. NFTs are about access control and ownership, not 3D models. That was only the example I've used. The (huge, but largely unrelated) issue there is about standardizing assets which would also need to be solved (gltf does go some way to doing that though ... it is "the gif of 3D models" according to Kronos). If it's easier to think about, try applying the same solution to unique avatars or something, where the display mechanism is solved.
Re: Ask HN: Why does cryptocurrency subjects on HN lack curious conversations?
#115I think basically because there is nothing interesting left to discus. One camp (where I am in) basically believes it is an environmental disaster, unsuitable for its stated purpose and most likely as scam by the "whales" manipulating the price, and with a potential 51%-disaster. The other camp believes that it is the future of money, untraceable wealth storage and inflation/"confiscation proof" and that all the envi…
I disagree. There is a lot of interesting things to discuss. But all of them start from the premise "blockchain works as a distributed ledger". People in the camp you are in are not that interested in those discussions, because you disagree with the premise. These interesting things are about how to do privacy, build second layers, make other smart functionality, etc. In general there are actual cryptographic innovat…
I just fail to see how it is better than so many other alternatives on a case-by-case basis... mostly on efficiency...
And just because I don't believe in the idea itself, I acknowledge that some good can come of it..
See for example wars, where most cutting edge innovation happens. I think wars are bad (but sometimes necessary), but we are reaping the benefits of generals wanting to throw more cannonballs further (If you are unsure I mean our computers where developed mostly because of that), also microwaves, the internet (a cold war though) and lots and lots of other stuff...
Re: Ask HN: Why does cryptocurrency subjects on HN lack curious conversations?
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not a straw man. Yes, if the energy mix was only reliant of renewables, energy usage wouldn't be as much as a problem. But it is not, and won't be in years, decades, so we can't just brush off the energy usage of crypto as "well it's the energy mix fault". You cannot evaluate a technology in isolation of its real world, practical context. Not to mention that even with renewables, energy usage would be still a co…
56% of energy used for Bitcoin mining is coming from renewable sources of energy.
Re: Ask HN: Why does cryptocurrency subjects on HN lack curious conversations?
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
We can say that when it will be easy to withdraw the transferred coins (convert them into real, offline currencies such as dollars, euros, and so on). Right now you need to confirm your identity, pass the KYC procedure - no difference in comparison to real banks.
My real bank won't send a wire transfer on a weekend with settlement time measured in seconds, so no, it's not like a bank.
But it's not like a bank, I agree - a bank gives some protection to your money, because they have responsibilities.
Re: Ask HN: Why does cryptocurrency subjects on HN lack curious conversations?
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I tried recently to explain to someone that cryptographically codifying law and contracts can be beneficial in a lot of ways (like transparency/enforcement in governance) There's another trend with crypto discussions which relates to this idea you said. I see a lot of discussions on applications that follow the template: X has not been done, and X can be done with crypto, so now that crypto is available X will be d…
You're wrong about "lacking initiative and the detailed procedures" - that's exactly what blockchains were created for: As a response to opaque and unreliable systems. This is the solution to a systematic problem in governance. Blockchains simply add verifiability of claims. Yes, you could create a central system which flags "bad actions" or something, but it'd be difficult to prove someone scammed you without the co…
You can't solve non-tech problems with technical solutions. If the government doesn't bother to have accessible documentation about how to do X thing, why would they bother to make a blockchain about it? If the knowledge about how to do X thing is not written down but depends on how a bunch people end up implementing it and never cared about it, how are they going to put those procedures into code?
> Yes, you could create a central system which flags "bad actions" or something, but it'd be difficult to prove someone scammed you without the cooperation of the central authority.
Given that we rely on the central authority to enforce rules, it doesn't seem too weird to expect them to cooperate.
> Currently if someone says "no I didn't scam you", the truth of their statement is ambiguous without cooperative investigation. On a blockchain it's inherently unambiguous and the information is immediately available for all parties involved to know how to proceed.
That's a naive way to look at it. We don't live in the blockchain. You'd still need cooperative investigation to ensure that what ended up in the blockchain is what the parties agreed to. Unless you move absolutely everything to the blockchain, including personal understandings and expectations of contracts, you will still need out-of-chain investigations.
Re: Ask HN: Why does cryptocurrency subjects on HN lack curious conversations?
#119I'm going to attempt an answer, but as with all things this is only my perspective and I obviously don't speak for all HN readers. HN is largely for founders who want to build things. That's certainly how it started, and there's still traces of that vibe around in the Show HN and startup-y threads. There's a lot more going on here now, like more code topics, AI, electric vehicles, environmental things, a little futur…
Do you mean that without crypto the bad guys are unable to perform exchanges of value? How is crypto different from a Big bag of cash? Both are anonymous/trustless transactions. Cat memes and mindless YouTube videos use more bandwidth and cpu cycles than crypto ever will…
You cannot win an argument that something is bad by pointing to something that's worse. You're just reinforcing the idea that we need to do better in both things.
Re: Ask HN: Why does cryptocurrency subjects on HN lack curious conversations?
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
it isn't 'just this time'. It's the same principle as law, vs lynch mob.
sure. so uber shouldn't exist and we should all be paying more to local taxi monopolies who don't have mobile apps, and so on.
And let's see how that story pans out actually. I don't agree with the taxi mafia, but uber are not exactly knights in shining armor either, and are only really viable because of a Venture Capital subsidized attempt to create a monopoly.
Is your argument that bitcoin circumvents established institutions, particularly the unjust ones? I see the appeal, but those should be attacked directly; legally, and politically, IMHO. Not with tech hacks, the ultimate consequences of which are quite unpredictable, but also quite likely to just shift the concentration of power to a different set of people.