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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

#161

Post by mhluongo »

arcticbull wrote: post #156
mhluongo wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do we stop money laundering. Hm, so the dollar won't reach wide adoption until we close Wells Fargo, HSBC, and other major banks that have been party to large-scale money laundering?

Luckily there are efforts being made to stop it, and fines paid and systems put in place. Are they perfect yet? No. It is still orders of magnitude better than pretending the problem doesnt exist or outwardly encouraging and abetting it.

Those banks are all still in business after billions in proven conspiracies to launder money. You might want to consider why that is.

Re: Hard Problems in Cryptocurrency: Five Years Later

#162

Post by ses1984 »

notahacker wrote: post #144
ses1984 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>there's a lot of faith in maintainers to stay ahead of the threats. Isn't that true of basically all software?

Not all software purports to be a store of value

It doesn't have to be a store of value to be critical to fortunes greater than bitcoin wallets, or even life and limb.

Re: Hard Problems in Cryptocurrency: Five Years Later

#164

Post by afiori »

mhluongo wrote: post #161
arcticbull wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Luckily there are efforts being made to stop it, and fines paid and systems put in place. Are they perfect yet? No. It is still orders of magnitude better than pretending the problem doesnt exist or outwardly encouraging and abetting it.

Those banks are all still in business after billions in proven conspiracies to launder money. You might want to consider why that is.

Those banks have such a bad record in a system with strict regulations to stop money laundering.

I can only imagine that with less controls and regulations they would behave even worse.

Re: Hard Problems in Cryptocurrency: Five Years Later

#165

Post by wolco »

arcticbull wrote: post #141

None of these are the actual hard problems in cryptocurrency and the fact this is the focus speaks volumes. The real hard problems are: 1. How do we stop using more power than Switzerland to process 4 transactions per second (lol) 2. How do we stop payments to international terrorists and rogue states. 3. How do we stop money laundering. 4. How do we stop price manipulation by fraudulent actors. 5. How do we allow pe…

These aren't problems but one of the many reasons why people use cryto.

You are looking for some power to control cryto but still offer everything it currently does. It can't..

"How do we stop payments to international terrorists and rogue states".. Most of their wealth comes from cash/diamonds/oil/grain.. why would cryto be any different?

Re: Hard Problems in Cryptocurrency: Five Years Later

#166

Post by rmtech »

arcticbull wrote: post #141

None of these are the actual hard problems in cryptocurrency and the fact this is the focus speaks volumes. The real hard problems are: 1. How do we stop using more power than Switzerland to process 4 transactions per second (lol) 2. How do we stop payments to international terrorists and rogue states. 3. How do we stop money laundering. 4. How do we stop price manipulation by fraudulent actors. 5. How do we allow pe…

> 2. How do we stop payments to international terrorists and rogue states.

We should definitely build a technical system that stops payments to terrorists but allows payments to freedom fighters; that stops payments to rogue states but allows payments to states that stand up to bullying by tyrannical regional powers.

/s

Seriously I think these kinds of questions need un-asking rather than answering.

Re: Hard Problems in Cryptocurrency: Five Years Later

#167

Post by wolco »

arcticbull wrote: post #156
mhluongo wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do we stop money laundering. Hm, so the dollar won't reach wide adoption until we close Wells Fargo, HSBC, and other major banks that have been party to large-scale money laundering?

Luckily there are efforts being made to stop it, and fines paid and systems put in place. Are they perfect yet? No. It is still orders of magnitude better than pretending the problem doesnt exist or outwardly encouraging and abetting it.

We are very lucky indeed

Re: Hard Problems in Cryptocurrency: Five Years Later

#168

Post by jotakami »

hanniabu wrote: post #107
jkhdigital wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So glad you asked: 1. https://eprint.iacr.org/2019/748.pdf 2. https://arxiv.org/pdf/1810.11605.pdf 3. https://eprint.iacr.org/2019/775.pdf 4. https://users.encs.concordia.ca/~clark/papers/2019_wtsc_fron... 5. http://homepages.cs.ncl.ac.uk/patrick.mccorry/minerbribery.p... This one isn't an attack per se, it is mostly an exploration of arbitrage bots in decentralized exchanges running on Ethereum smart contracts. Howe…

You're using a poor implementation of an app as a reason why smart contracts are bad. I hope you realize this is the same thing as saying databases are bad because of the Equifax hack.

I don’t think you understand. The arbitrage bots aren’t exploiting poorly written contracts, they are capturing free value that users of a dApp have opened up. This free value is available to miners as well, and could be used to subsidize an otherwise-unprofitable double spend attack.

But more to the point: allowing smart contracts in a blockchain introduces all of the complexity of trying to make any other piece of software secure. Except... now it’s on a blockchain where the code is open source and mistakes can allow adversaries to steal money, not just data. How is this an improvement?

Re: Hard Problems in Cryptocurrency: Five Years Later

#169

Post by weego »

arcticbull wrote: post #152
emsimot wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. I don't know if it will work, but the idea is Proof of Stake (ETH2 in Ethereum-land) 2. You can't -- this is a cultural problem, not a technological one 3. There's no such thing as money laundering 4. Peer-to-peer, transparent finance infrastructure 5. User-money as a layer on top of cryptocurrency

> 1. Proof of stake. This has yet to be proven, and as you say, there’s reasons why it has yet to land. I give this one vitaliks sideways smiley face. > 2. You can't -- this is a cultural problem, not a technological one Uh, one that doesn’t exist in the current financial system. I’m sure y’all will find a way. As I said, it’s a prerequisite. > 3. There’s no such thing as money laundering. Hilarious. I see someone ne…

Hilarious. I see someone never took compliance training at work. With that attitude I’d love to see you explain your position to a judge. Money laundering is literally financial transactions arranged in such a way as to conceal the original source of funds.

I though anonymity and legal safeharbour were founding principles of cryptocurrency? The original comment is correct that what we call money laundering is an artificial construct of power.

Re: Hard Problems in Cryptocurrency: Five Years Later

#170

Post by DennisP »

arcticbull wrote: post #152
emsimot wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. I don't know if it will work, but the idea is Proof of Stake (ETH2 in Ethereum-land) 2. You can't -- this is a cultural problem, not a technological one 3. There's no such thing as money laundering 4. Peer-to-peer, transparent finance infrastructure 5. User-money as a layer on top of cryptocurrency

> 1. Proof of stake. This has yet to be proven, and as you say, there’s reasons why it has yet to land. I give this one vitaliks sideways smiley face. > 2. You can't -- this is a cultural problem, not a technological one Uh, one that doesn’t exist in the current financial system. I’m sure y’all will find a way. As I said, it’s a prerequisite. > 3. There’s no such thing as money laundering. Hilarious. I see someone ne…

> 5. Currently in production

It's DAI, a stable currency based on derivatives, built on Ethereum and backed by ETH. It's not perfectly stable but it's done a reasonably good job keeping a value of one dollar, despite a 94% drop in the ETH price. Current DAI supply is $86 million.

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