Live data from Hacker News

A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

news.mit.edu

191–200 of 839 posts

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#191
post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bitcoin is a technical embodiment of some of the Fifth Amendment (due process -- protection against deprivation of property, ...) How is it in any way different than having money in your bank account? If the government wants to, they can decide to take all your money from all your account, but they can also decide to throw you in jail until you hand over the keys to your Bitcoins. In the end there is no difference.

In the second case, the money didn't move, and the government didn't get it. Meanwhile, the Technological Singularity people are working on the other half of the problem you describe.

Ok, so how is it any different than having your money in a numbered account in Panama or Switzerland, which the government can't seize?

And what's this Singularity nonsense of which you speak?

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#193

I have long wondered how cryptocurrency fans would answer the question: ‘Would you be happy if the crypto-utopia you bring up happens in the next 10 years, and all value is stored/transacted through a cryptocurrency, but it was a coin that you do not possess now, nor could you transfer any of you current currencies into it?’ Say tomorrow someone releases the one true coin, but no one notices. All other cryptocurrenci…

How do you think bitcoin started ? You'd had to be crazy to believe in it 9 years ago, and spend time and energy in the community, nlt to lention monney, to foster the project. My family and friends said i was stupid, utopist, being conned, wasting my time, and so lany things. Btc was banana money at first, and only people believing it would be a great thing as a concept made it work. We didn't expect to make banks,…

Bitcoin doesn't work in any meaningful sense. It can't be used for purchases in most contexts and you can't use it as a stable store of value. It is also controlled by dubious actors and mining is a horribly destructive practice, both in terms of environmental waste and the constant nuisance of people stealing CPU time. But you were saying?

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you think bitcoin started ? You'd had to be crazy to believe in it 9 years ago, and spend time and energy in the community, nlt to lention monney, to foster the project. My family and friends said i was stupid, utopist, being conned, wasting my time, and so lany things. Btc was banana money at first, and only people believing it would be a great thing as a concept made it work. We didn't expect to make banks,…

> My family and friends said i was stupid, utopist, being conned, wasting my time, and so lany things. ... All great things start like that. "But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown." -- Carl Sagan https://www.brainyquote.com/qu…

We were talking about being genuine, and here you come implying I brag that I was smart.

That's really rude.

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#195

I have long wondered how cryptocurrency fans would answer the question: ‘Would you be happy if the crypto-utopia you bring up happens in the next 10 years, and all value is stored/transacted through a cryptocurrency, but it was a coin that you do not possess now, nor could you transfer any of you current currencies into it?’ Say tomorrow someone releases the one true coin, but no one notices. All other cryptocurrenci…

YES!! Emphatically Yes! I travel quite a bit. I would much rather have 1 wallet no matter the digital currencies than have 10 physical currencies at dubious future value.

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

absolute control over your money

Again, nothing stops you from keeping gold under your bed. The reason people don’t do this is because most people don’t actually need, want, or care about having absolute control over their money. And the probability of your home being robbed is much higher than that of your bank (and the FDIC) becoming insolvent.

A government can steal your gold an outlaw it, as the US government did in 1933.

They can also try to outlaw bitcoin, but they have a bit more trouble stealing it.

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#197

A "faster, more efficient cryptocurrency" is already in productive operation since 2015. Called "Nano" https://nano.org/en

Care to elaborate? If this is faster and more efficient, why is it #40 on coinmarketcap.com?

I haven’t looked yet, but sometimes it can be due to difficulty of acquisition due to lack of exchanges that offer trading pairs for it

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#198

There's no free lunch. These gains come with a tradeoff in security. Bitcoin's proof of work which uses an algorithm and processing power to secure it. Vault/Algorand throws out PoW and replaces it that with a pure "proof of stake" system that requires 2/3rds of the currency's value is held by honest actors. In addition, if the network were ever to go offline, there isn't a deterministic way to get it back online.

>In addition, if the network were ever to go offline, there isn't a deterministic way to get it back online.

I haven't heard anyone say this about Algorand. Can you provide more details? Lets say a bug causes all the Algorand nodes to crash. After a patch is released 90% of the network comes back online. What prevents the selected users from arriving at consensus over the next block?

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#199

Another approach to similar problems is Coda: https://codaprotocol.com .

Coda takes an entirely different cryptographic approach than Algorand. Different layers of solutions.

Indeed, thus “another approach” :) There are several different approaches trying to tackle this same problem in the space, some further along than others, and typically all with different tradeoffs and at different points in the system. e.g. Lightning is arguably addressing some of these issues as well, but at a different point---on top of Bitcoin, rather than instead of.

I called out Coda because it's both an independent system and aimed at a very similar set of issues, but it's absolutely a different approach. Figured it might be of interest to folks who were looking at this article.

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#200
post #87

This gets asked often, but in case something changed recently - what are the use cases of cryptocurrencies that are not: - Attempts to side-step the law (however misguided the law is) - Trivial to do using a typical centralized database (e.g. Federal Reserver or VISA) - Tantamount to waiting for a greater fool to buy out the current players I am not looking for answers of the form "well whenever you want to avoid a t…

It depends on what you consider "side-step the law". If you encrypt your communication so no one can't read it, but the government didn't demand you not encrypt it.. are you side stepping the law? That's kind of what crypto is like buying regular stuff; you're protecting your money (it's value and your right to trade it as you see fit) even though no one is trying to take it at this particular moment.

I'm trying to find mainstream adoption drivers. Securing your money against possible future government intrusion is akin to prepping, hardly a mainstream way of life. Even the prepper community itself is more likely to stockpile gold and ammo instead of crypto currency. There isn't much room left in between the regulars and the preppers to provide demand for crypto currency.
Post reply on HN