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Cryptocurrencies: looking beyond the hype

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Re: Cryptocurrencies: looking beyond the hype

#41

Post by Theodores »

istorical wrote: post #22
gfo wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're joking, right? > Receiving, owning and spending money anonymously. Remember when extortionists had to be paid with a suitcase full of banknotes? As stated in other comments, Bitcoin is hardly anonymous anymore. There's a much greater ability to trace wallet addresses back to individuals or groups than there used to be. > Receiving money without being exposed to the danger of fraud. Receiving money via Credit C…

Cryptocurrencies != bitcoin.

...because bitcoin is actually decentralised. All of the other fake coins have some aspect of control built into them, e.g. that 'airdrop' where everyone gets some new allocation of fake-coin, the people doing the air-drop hope that some people use the new fake-coin and that the price goes up and they can then sell their special founders hoard of fake coins for real money (or real bitcoin).

The 'airdrop' idea is a scam to get around the problem of the ICO - just magic these new fakecoins into existence and avoid any regulatory problems.

Point being that bitcoin is unique among the crypto-coins in that it is actually not centralized in any way, all the others pretend to be that but there is some fat controller hoping to profit from the uptake of the things.

That said, although bitcoin is legit compared to all the rest, there is a problem when it is no longer economic to mine. If the mining won't pay for the electricity bills then there is nobody around to take those exorbitant transaction fees. Of course these problems can be solved with more centralisation and control - lightning networks and the like.

Re: Cryptocurrencies: looking beyond the hype

#42

Post by chrisco255 »

istorical wrote: post #22
gfo wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're joking, right? > Receiving, owning and spending money anonymously. Remember when extortionists had to be paid with a suitcase full of banknotes? As stated in other comments, Bitcoin is hardly anonymous anymore. There's a much greater ability to trace wallet addresses back to individuals or groups than there used to be. > Receiving money without being exposed to the danger of fraud. Receiving money via Credit C…

Cryptocurrencies != bitcoin.

Agreed, this article does make sweeping arguments about the costs of operating these currencies, but their implementations vary wildly, some cryptos are able to do thousands of TPS (and even BTC, with lightning, can achieve this). Some are POS and use minimal electricity.

Re: Cryptocurrencies: looking beyond the hype

#44

Post by aeternus »

phobosdeimos wrote: post #27
gfo wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're joking, right? > Receiving, owning and spending money anonymously. Remember when extortionists had to be paid with a suitcase full of banknotes? As stated in other comments, Bitcoin is hardly anonymous anymore. There's a much greater ability to trace wallet addresses back to individuals or groups than there used to be. > Receiving money without being exposed to the danger of fraud. Receiving money via Credit C…

Bitcoin for us mere mortals who are not drugdealers seems unlikely. It simply doesn't solve a problem that people have. I can pay for my groceries waving a plastic card around and it costs me nothing. Traditional payment systems are safer, cheaper and more efficient than crypto.

If the Bitcoin community gets lightning network off the ground (it's very close), it solves the problem of micropayments. This is a problem many people likely have that they are not aware of. Ability to pay a fraction of a cent for each article you read online could eliminate the need for both annoying paywalls & ads.

Traditional payment systems are actually quite expensive, you just don't see it since the merchant pays. Typically 2.5% + $.10 for most credit cards. That cost is still baked into prices & goods.

Safer is definitely true though, it's just too hard for the average person to properly secure cryptocurrencies.

Re: Cryptocurrencies: looking beyond the hype

#45

Post by 21 »

densitycity wrote: post #26

Cryptocurrencies are interesting to me right now in that they have not suffered any plausible advanced attacks capable of zeroing them. What is stopping a state actor from using their backdoors in internet infrastructure to destroy the Bitcoin network topology for a long enough period of time to destroy the network? Is secp256k1 backdoored? My bet is that state actors are saving their guaranteed Bitcoin destruct butt…

> What is stopping a state actor from using their backdoors in internet infrastructure to destroy the Bitcoin network

Laws. In the Western world, something is legal unless explicitly forbidden by laws.

Countries which don't care very much about freedom explicitly banned Bitcoin more or less (China, Russia, India, Indonesia, Venezuela, ...)

Re: Cryptocurrencies: looking beyond the hype

#46

Post by pests »

densitycity wrote: post #26

Cryptocurrencies are interesting to me right now in that they have not suffered any plausible advanced attacks capable of zeroing them. What is stopping a state actor from using their backdoors in internet infrastructure to destroy the Bitcoin network topology for a long enough period of time to destroy the network? Is secp256k1 backdoored? My bet is that state actors are saving their guaranteed Bitcoin destruct butt…

The Bitcoin network topology is the internet itself. Technically blocks can be announced over one-to-many broadcast situations like satellite and radio which eases doomsday scenarios.

Re: Cryptocurrencies: looking beyond the hype

#47

Post by bena »

EthanHeilman wrote: post #28
scardine wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Receiving money via Credit Card is surprisingly risky for the merchant. In this aspect cryptocurrencies are surprisingly dangerous for the customer because there is no easy way to revert a transaction done by mistake or fraud (lets say someone cracked your wallet). With credit cards in the worst case you just screw the merchant and I guess this is what marketplaces will end up doing instead of setting up their own…

You can build in the ability to reverse cryptocurrency transactions into wallets however that use case is well covered by credit cards. Credit cards/checks: Merchant trusts user, user doesn't trust merchant Wire-transfers/Cashiers Checks/Cash/Bitcoin: User trusts merchant, merchant doesn't trust user

> You can build in the ability to reverse cryptocurrency transactions into wallets

But that just puts the risk back with the other party. We're just back to the credit card scenario like you mentioned.

The point is that crypto can't get rid of the issue of trust. At some level, there has to be some level of trust in order to perform a transaction.

No matter what we do, all we're doing is pushing the trust somewhere else.

Re: Cryptocurrencies: looking beyond the hype

#48

Post by vthallam »

21 wrote: post #45
densitycity wrote: post #26

Cryptocurrencies are interesting to me right now in that they have not suffered any plausible advanced attacks capable of zeroing them. What is stopping a state actor from using their backdoors in internet infrastructure to destroy the Bitcoin network topology for a long enough period of time to destroy the network? Is secp256k1 backdoored? My bet is that state actors are saving their guaranteed Bitcoin destruct butt…

> What is stopping a state actor from using their backdoors in internet infrastructure to destroy the Bitcoin network Laws. In the Western world, something is legal unless explicitly forbidden by laws. Countries which don't care very much about freedom explicitly banned Bitcoin more or less (China, Russia, India, Indonesia, Venezuela, ...)

I'm really surprised you including India in the list. India is as democratic as the USA. The laws were put in place in India at least around Crypto to save people from being scammed.

Re: Cryptocurrencies: looking beyond the hype

#49

Post by Sir_Substance »

brokensegue wrote: post #7
CrazyInNewYork wrote: post #2

it is hard to identify a specific economic problem which they currently solve Receiving, owning and spending money anonymously. Remember when extortionists had to be paid with a suitcase full of banknotes? Receiving money without being exposed to the danger of fraud. Receiving money via Credit Card is surprisingly risky for the merchant. Transferring money internationally without additional costs. Portfolio optimizat…

> Transferring money internationally without additional costs. nope > Portfolio optimization nope. i still await an explanation using MPT that shows why someone should hold non-zero cryptoassets. It's like saying I should hold euros because it stabilizes my portfolio. Euros are not a productive asset dude.

>> Transferring money internationally without additional costs. >nope

It costs between $70 and $90 to send $1AUD from Australia to Iceland. Bitcoin transaction fees have _never_ been that high, and they're currently somewhere around $1AUD.

$50-$70 of that fee is taken out of the transaction instead of charged seperately, which means it may be impossible to pay a bill accurately via SWIFT.

I tried to pay for a tent via SWIFT from Iceland to the USA recently. Because the US bank used a customer support system that required you to log in via a wells fargo account that I didn't have, I was unable to ask whether they charged fees to receive swift transactions. I added $15 extra to the SWIFT payment as a hedge against any extra fees from wells fargo. I guess that was enough, because the merchant sent me the tent.

If you think that the SWIFT system is better than bitcoin you haven't used SWIFT much.

Re: Cryptocurrencies: looking beyond the hype

#50

Post by hybridsole »

densitycity wrote: post #26

Cryptocurrencies are interesting to me right now in that they have not suffered any plausible advanced attacks capable of zeroing them. What is stopping a state actor from using their backdoors in internet infrastructure to destroy the Bitcoin network topology for a long enough period of time to destroy the network? Is secp256k1 backdoored? My bet is that state actors are saving their guaranteed Bitcoin destruct butt…

To which the honey badger says, "Bring it on". Bitcoin is a public network that has been attacked relentlessly by the best hackers in the world for the past 10 years. It is currently protecting/storing around $115 billion dollars in wealth, which can be seen as a bounty to anyone who succeeds in bringing it down. So far it hasn't happened, and even in the face of hypothetical challenges there's no reason why the protocol cannot patch a fix and move on.
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