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Hard Problems in Cryptocurrency: Five Years Later

vitalik.ca

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Re: Hard Problems in Cryptocurrency: Five Years Later

#131

Post by solveit »

heinrichf wrote: post #122
BLanen wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the guy that thought you could do Shor's algorithm by emulating a quantum computer and having it be faster than a classical solution.

Hm, sounds worrying, do you have a source for that?

Buterin was briefly involved with people trying to efficiently simulate quantum computers (https://twitter.com/VitalikButerin/status/106215696645222809...).

I don't know much about the details of this particular attempt , but the strategy is not ridiculous on its face. Very implausible, yes, but it contradicts no theorem nor any established law of physics. Mostly, it's implausible because many people have tried very hard to find efficient classical simulations of quantum computers and all have failed.

Re: Hard Problems in Cryptocurrency: Five Years Later

#132

Post by haakon »

heinrichf wrote: post #122
BLanen wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the guy that thought you could do Shor's algorithm by emulating a quantum computer and having it be faster than a classical solution.

Hm, sounds worrying, do you have a source for that?

Not sure how reliable you might consider this source, but here's some information: https://medium.com/@tradertimm/vitaliks-quantum-conundrum-34...

Re: Hard Problems in Cryptocurrency: Five Years Later

#133

Post by dorgo »

joosters wrote: post #64
magma17 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what oracles do.

If you have to trust an oracle, you have essentially thrown away all of the plusses of decentralisation/trustlessness. At that point, the blockchain becomes pointless busywork, useful only for duping mug investors.

care to elaborate?

Afaik, oracles are used to synchronize the blockchain to the real world and there are sophisticated mechanisms to keep them honest.

Re: Hard Problems in Cryptocurrency: Five Years Later

#134

Post by Huycfhct »

dang wrote: post #38
snitko wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vitalik and ETH are the definitions of scam and scammer. He's very good at obfuscating it by appearing very smart: read his articles and tweets, they always sound complex, but can be rewritten in much simpler terms. And ETH is the same: it obfuscates its uselessness and nonsense by being overly complex, every year employing new terms and coming up with tons of code that only increases the attack surface and complicat…

Please don't cross into personal attack. It degrades discussion. Maybe you don't owe every person better, but you owe the community better if you're posting here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I would happily sacrifice my account if it makes 1 person aware that Vitalik is a complete fraud

Re: Hard Problems in Cryptocurrency: Five Years Later

#135

Post by notahacker »

lawn wrote: post #66
unityByFreedom wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cash? Otherwise, for digital, who are we talking about, exactly? What country doesn't have banks? If you can't get a bank account it's unlikely your basic needs are going to be met by a stranger you've never met.

There are 1.7 billion adults in the world who are unbanked. 420 million of them have internet access. You can find them in countries all over the world. For example USA have 18 million and France have 3 million who don't have a bank account. It's not just poor people in countries without banks who have these problems. Even rich porn stars have had their bank accounts closed (for being porn stars) and people in the ma…

There are 0 adults in the world who are unbanked but have access to a mining rig or card payments to buy cryptoassets.

By an interesting coincidence, 0 is also the number of unbanked people who should risk the money they need to eat on unregulated, complicated and easily stolen intangible financial assets which wealthy foreigners invented to print themselves money.

Re: Hard Problems in Cryptocurrency: Five Years Later

#136

Post by solveit »

algerd wrote: post #104
mrb wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

« There is still no actual and relevant use case for crypto » What a short-sighted view. Perhaps no use case for you personally. There are 7.7 billion people in this world who have vastly different life circumstances, some of them certainly need crypto to make their lives better. In no particular order: hyperflation, financial censorship, instant low-fee international transfers, etc

>> Hyperinflation Human competence the main cause. >> Instant low-fee international transfers We have it already >>financial censorship Depends firstly on political system. If you have undemocratic government crypto won't help you anyway, because it will be banned or controlled. Practice is the criterion of truth. Can provide cases, when crypto solves problem better than existing instruments?

I have to say crypto seems much easier to solve than bad politics. If you'll grant this, your argument hinges on crypto being useless under an oppressive government, because it will be controlled. I find this implausible given that no government in history has ever really succeeded in fully controlling black markets. Indeed, the trend is that the more dysfunctional the government, the more power the black markets have.

Re: Hard Problems in Cryptocurrency: Five Years Later

#137

Post by Huycfhct »

elamje wrote: post #57

Can some people from the crypto space give a quick tl;dr of what’s going on in the space that’s of note? Seems like I hardly hear about interesting stuff after the bubble burst (kind of at least). Are there any people using crypto to actually do work for clients and solve fiat currency based businesses problems? I am curious if the crypto start up space is mostly filled with crypto-to-crypto services or if there are…

Token sale scams plus token sale scams. For references see above

Re: Hard Problems in Cryptocurrency: Five Years Later

#140

Post by amiga_500 »

hodder wrote: post #8

The biggest problem is actual uptake for real transactions, as opposed to speculation and black markets. The 2 biggest barriers to be solved are: -lack of trust/ease of use for the layman -volatility These problems may or may not sort themselves out with time.

Bitcoin is looking pretty weak over the last couple of weeks!
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