81–90 of 100 posts
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Which doesn't really help when the actual transfer of the product has to be done in meatspace, so doing the cash transfer securely from my couch doesn't seem to add much value to me.
Would you prefer teleportation?
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That's a partial answer to only one question which, if a quick google search is correct, ignores all but the easiest problem: BIP38 appears to offer a way to backup a primary key using a printout and a memorized passphrase. That doesn't answer what happens if they lose one of those two things, much less what happens if someone malicious gets either the primary or the backup. Remember that I didn't say your favorite t…
>That's a partial answer to only one question which, if a quick google search is correct, ignores all but the easiest problem: BIP38 appears to offer a way to backup a primary key using a printout and a memorized passphrase. That doesn't answer what happens if they lose one of those two things, much less what happens if someone malicious gets either the primary or the backup. Bitcoin's slogan is 'be your own bank' wh…
And this gets back to my original point. Security is hard enough that it's common for seasoned security professionals to not follow best practices. Regular members of the public don't have a chance if they have to assume all the responsibility of their own security - this is why they outsource that to banks right now. Hence: in order to manage your own security properly with bitcoin, you have to understand the underpinnings of it. How can a person be ultimately responsible for their own security if they aren't aware of even the most basic of security issues in tech?
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> a fraudulent-transaction-free processing network except, of course, for all the fraud, thefts, exchange collapses, "hacks" and sorry-for-your-loss events in every other part of how Bitcoin works in practice. Except for the fraud, it's completely free of fraud!
Bitcoin may very well be fraudlent- transaction -free. It has plenty of fraud elsewhere in the ecosystem though.
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That's a partial answer to only one question which, if a quick google search is correct, ignores all but the easiest problem: BIP38 appears to offer a way to backup a primary key using a printout and a memorized passphrase. That doesn't answer what happens if they lose one of those two things, much less what happens if someone malicious gets either the primary or the backup. Remember that I didn't say your favorite t…
>That's a partial answer to only one question which, if a quick google search is correct, ignores all but the easiest problem: BIP38 appears to offer a way to backup a primary key using a printout and a memorized passphrase. That doesn't answer what happens if they lose one of those two things, much less what happens if someone malicious gets either the primary or the backup. Bitcoin's slogan is 'be your own bank' wh…
> This is no different from modern day identity theft.
Identity theft is a nuisance caused by large companies trying to dodge responsibility for negligence onto the public. The failure mode is that your credit rating is damaged, not that all of your money ends up irrecoverably belonging to some guy in Russia – and you have legal means to solve these problems.
> Bitcoin isn't ready for the average user, much like computers in the 80s weren't ready for the average user.
Fewer people could afford them but 80s PCs were incredibly useful – things like VisiCalc and WordStar transformed offices, the gaming industry had grown enough to support multiple dedicated studios, etc. People were willing to pay large amounts of money to own a PC precisely because it had real tangible value. Other than paying off ransomware, what can an adopter do with BitCoin which is significantly harder / impossible now? (Or, for many of the distributed ledger proposals, couldn't do faster using existing PKI?)
Regarding bitcoin, the main problem is that a lot of people have large amounts of bitcoin horded from early days and they tend to be biased and start spamming forums about how great it is as it will make them very rich if the adoption increases. This is despite there being very major flaws with the system. As someone that has actually tried to sell things with bitcoin, there are major flaws with it, and they will nev…
The term confirmation is a bad one. It gives people the impression that they have to wait 10 might.s to an hour to know if they have their money. The moment you see a transaction in you wallet, you have it, you just have to wait 10 mins to an hour to spend it. So to compare this to legacy systems which take 3-5 days and claim its too slow seems unfair.
And then after 10 mins to an hour you find you can't spend it because it's been marked invalid, and the guy you sold your iPhone to is long gone.
Regarding bitcoin, the main problem is that a lot of people have large amounts of bitcoin horded from early days and they tend to be biased and start spamming forums about how great it is as it will make them very rich if the adoption increases. This is despite there being very major flaws with the system. As someone that has actually tried to sell things with bitcoin, there are major flaws with it, and they will nev…
The term confirmation is a bad one. It gives people the impression that they have to wait 10 might.s to an hour to know if they have their money. The moment you see a transaction in you wallet, you have it, you just have to wait 10 mins to an hour to spend it. So to compare this to legacy systems which take 3-5 days and claim its too slow seems unfair.
And I can spend money I get from Paypal as soon as I get it. I don't have to wait 1 hour.
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>That's a partial answer to only one question which, if a quick google search is correct, ignores all but the easiest problem: BIP38 appears to offer a way to backup a primary key using a printout and a memorized passphrase. That doesn't answer what happens if they lose one of those two things, much less what happens if someone malicious gets either the primary or the backup. Bitcoin's slogan is 'be your own bank' wh…
> Bitcoin's slogan is 'be your own bank' which means you're ultimately responsible for your own security. And this gets back to my original point. Security is hard enough that it's common for seasoned security professionals to not follow best practices. Regular members of the public don't have a chance if they have to assume all the responsibility of their own security - this is why they outsource that to banks right…
Phone based AES hardware with fingerprint security, coupled with QR code scanning payments. Literally point and pay with biometric data.
Or should we use pieces of plastic/paper?
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>That's a partial answer to only one question which, if a quick google search is correct, ignores all but the easiest problem: BIP38 appears to offer a way to backup a primary key using a printout and a memorized passphrase. That doesn't answer what happens if they lose one of those two things, much less what happens if someone malicious gets either the primary or the backup. Bitcoin's slogan is 'be your own bank' wh…
“be your own bank” is at least honest but it's very different from what most proponents say. > This is no different from modern day identity theft. Identity theft is a nuisance caused by large companies trying to dodge responsibility for negligence onto the public. The failure mode is that your credit rating is damaged, not that all of your money ends up irrecoverably belonging to some guy in Russia – and you have le…
That's one way of looking at it.
>The failure mode is that your credit rating is damaged, not that all of your money ends up irrecoverably belonging to some guy in Russia – and you have legal means to solve these problems.
That's great and all but your identity is still stolen and your credit can never be fully trusted. In the case of Bitcoin the law clearly hasn't caught up with the tech, it will eventually as gov realizes they're not getting their taxes.
>Fewer people could afford them but 80s PCs were incredibly useful – things like VisiCalc and WordStar transformed offices, the gaming industry had grown enough to support multiple dedicated studios, etc. People were willing to pay large amounts of money to own a PC precisely because it had real tangible value.
Lots of people decried PCs as fads, the internet was a fad, smartphones were a fad. Believe it or not credit cards were declared a fad at one point.
>Other than paying off ransomware, what can an adopter do with BitCoin which is significantly harder / impossible now?
Send money to anyone on earth with an internet connection, for anything you want, fast with low fees.
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Would you prefer teleportation?
Of course. But until such a time, how does doing the cash transfer "securely" and from my couch help?
If not you could always broach the subject with a friend. 'Hey do you know anyone that sells molly?' Super awkward.
Point being there is a market for drugs and up until now you just had to be 'in the know' to get them. Now you don't have to.
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This follows from basic computer science. (Something I increasingly find Bitcoin advocates handwaving away.) If decentralisation were more efficient than centralisation, systems aiming for efficiency would naturally centralise; this is not what we observe. The decentralisation is stupendously inefficient, Proof of Work is 47kg of carbon per transaction literally wasted, and it all centralises anyway - the code is con…
>If decentralisation were more efficient than centralisation, systems aiming for efficiency would naturally centralise; this is not what we observe. I'm going to assume you mixed up your words there. I'd argue that we see lots of decentralization on the web. I don't see why it has to be one or the other, they seem to work fine in a hybrid state. >the code is controlled by just a few people, the mining is controlled b…
Youtube, Paypal, Facebook, Steam, Reddit, Medium, Github, hell even hackernews - I think the big success story of the internet in the past decade has been the centralization. Decentralization is usually popular because of illegal intents (like bittorrent). I agree with you though, they could exist in a hybrid state and there will always be markets for decentralized systems. But a global economic system run that way is on a totally different scale and stake.
> I'd say that money should definitely be decentralized.
Depending on how it's done, it very well should, but a lot of things come into question like governance and consumer protection, and actually moving the world forward and helping those who aren't computer savvy. Unless you're a libertarian, the economy is really a means to an end and not and end in itself, and another big success story over the past decades has been the huge global economy that has been created and enabled everyone from the poor to the old to people who aren't as savvy to work and live relatively safe lives. You can't just dump the bitcoin software on everyone and say, "here it is! your life savings, your paycheck, your everything, just make sure you don't fry the hard drive that it's stored on and make backups!"
Decentralization is for the most part, an enthusiast endeavour. The centralization aspect is powerful because it offloads all the technical details so that 5 hours per day of brainpower on the whole globe isn't wasted on just trying to do something as simple as recovering 5 bucks in an emergency. And this applies to almost any decentralized service and applies even more strongly to things that are of survival importance like money. I'm not disregarding the idea or making a prediction, it's just there's a lot here to think about I think