Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

MobileCoin: A New Cryptocurrency from Moxie Marlinspike

wired.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 258 posts

Re: MobileCoin: A New Cryptocurrency from Moxie Marlinspike

#151

Post by dacox »

AlexCoventry wrote: post #91
mtgx wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. So it has the same privacy protections as Monero, the only cryptocurrency with a track record of being untraceable so far? I wonder if the Stellar network is "leakier" than a decentralized network would be, though.

How is zcash's track record with regard to untraceability?

It's fantastic, but it takes a lot of memory to generate a private transaction (no mobile wallets for that!) and because private addresses are opt in, not many are being used in the wild

Re: MobileCoin: A New Cryptocurrency from Moxie Marlinspike

#152

Post by olalonde »

Asdfbla wrote: post #110
Confiks wrote: post #25

To repeat an earlier comment, this scheme encourages a centralization of trust into a private key managed by processor manufacturers. You might say that by integrating SGX mechanisms into your security model, you create a set of 'feudal lords' [1] who can wield their power over you. A manufacturer may 'legitimately' establish an enclave in your most trusted hardware which you may not audit or even measure. And if tha…

I still think it's an interesting approach. If you want to be more efficient and less wasteful than Bitcoin, at some point trust has to come into play. And reducing your trust to the manufacturers of secure enclaves (whose products can also be audited to a degree) is surely an improvement still, even if it doesn't have the radical threat model of conventional cryptocurrencies (which inevitably run into scaling proble…

> From centralized exchanges, to centralized mining cartels, what does something like Bitcoin have left to offer?

I'd say you're being overdramatic here. Mining is still decentralised and if there are any mining cartels, they haven't abused their position yet. It's still possible to buy, sell and spend Bitcoin peer to peer as well.

Re: MobileCoin: A New Cryptocurrency from Moxie Marlinspike

#154

Post by mtgx »

Asdfbla wrote: post #110
Confiks wrote: post #25

To repeat an earlier comment, this scheme encourages a centralization of trust into a private key managed by processor manufacturers. You might say that by integrating SGX mechanisms into your security model, you create a set of 'feudal lords' [1] who can wield their power over you. A manufacturer may 'legitimately' establish an enclave in your most trusted hardware which you may not audit or even measure. And if tha…

I still think it's an interesting approach. If you want to be more efficient and less wasteful than Bitcoin, at some point trust has to come into play. And reducing your trust to the manufacturers of secure enclaves (whose products can also be audited to a degree) is surely an improvement still, even if it doesn't have the radical threat model of conventional cryptocurrencies (which inevitably run into scaling proble…

It's far from ideal though. I think it's actually worse than using banks from a centralization point of view, because you can typically choose between multiple banks.

In this case you only have one single point of failure: Intel. If that breaks, what then?

From a pure efficiency/centralization perspective, there are likely better cryptocurrencies out there. I think Ethereum's sharding network is interesting, too, and it seems to maintain a high-degree of decentralization, but I don't know how easy it will be to implement:

https://youtu.be/9RtSod8EXn4?t=3h10m7s

Re: MobileCoin: A New Cryptocurrency from Moxie Marlinspike

#155

Post by mtgx »

teraflop wrote: post #128
rjromero wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you can not start running any code session on the SGX at ALL without this Remote Attestation call to Intel? That seems silly, considering the SGX has two 128 bit keys on board (one known to Intel, and one known only to the SGX).

Oh, it's not quite that bad. You can run SGX code and work with encrypted data, including generating attestation messages. It's just that there's no way to verify those attestation messages yourself; you have to ask Intel to do it. It's also worth noting that SGX can run in two modes. There's "debug mode", which provides absolutely no security because a debugger has complete access to the state of the enclave. And th…

Why the hell would Intel require an NDA to give you the private key?

That's shady af.

Re: MobileCoin: A New Cryptocurrency from Moxie Marlinspike

#156

Post by psergeant »

dogma1138 wrote: post #103
celticninja wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. You only have to report capital gains in excess of your annual allowance, which is £11,300 at the moment.

You still have to record them. Also don’t forget that if you have an ISA, other savings and investments that allowance isn’t that big. As an individual if you mine you have to record the value as it was at the time of mining if you buy you record it at the time of purchase and you pay capital gains if you exchange the crypto for fiat currency or goods or services directly on the difference between the values. It gets…

I don’t believe any assets held in an ISA have any bearing at all on your capital gains allowance.

Re: MobileCoin: A New Cryptocurrency from Moxie Marlinspike

#157

Post by laichzeit0 »

Cyberdog wrote: post #43
em3rgent0rdr wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't lightning network fix this problem?

Tell us all about all the problems Lightning Network fixes once it is actually implemented.

Doesn't Litecoin already use Lightning Network?

Re: MobileCoin: A New Cryptocurrency from Moxie Marlinspike

#158

Post by stordoff »

nradov wrote: post #102
highd wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cash is cheaper for merchants, but people have only continued to use credit cards more. Further, if crypto becomes attractive from a cost perspective Visa will just be forced to bring down fees and stay competitive. It's pretty near impossible to imagine crypto with costs less than Visa's database.

Cash isn't necessarily cheaper for merchants once you account for handling, security, and theft.

There's a shop near me that has had its card payments out of commission for about a week. They are having to bring in staff for additional hours due to the fact that the transactions typically take longer and you have the cash to handle at end of day. I doubt it's a negligible additional cost.

Re: MobileCoin: A New Cryptocurrency from Moxie Marlinspike

#159

Post by nunyabuizness »

oculusthrift wrote: post #118
Nrbelex wrote: post #31

> "9. Bob's MobileCoin node sends Bob's client a message, which can then calculate the private key that corresponds to the generated one-time public key." >" 10. Bob has now successfully received a payment." If I'm reading this correctly, Bob's client (e.g. mobile app) must be in contact with the node for his address to receive the payment. This is pretty different from what I think will be Mobilecoin's closest compe…

how is the need to be in contact with the node different than the need to be in contact with venmo’s servers?

It's different because regardless if your node is online or not, venmo's servers can still accept payments on your behalf, and it's presumed that taking venmo's servers offline would be considerably harder than taking yours offline.
Post reply on HN