TLDR: “ Great theoretical progress, pending more real-world evaluation, plz to buy more magic beans. “
Hard Problems in Cryptocurrency: Five Years Later
191–200 of 378 posts
Re: Hard Problems in Cryptocurrency: Five Years Later
#192None 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…
Points 2, 3, and 5 are essentially "how do we give the government the authority to block or reverse payments even when the sender possesses the relevant private key, or send payments even without the relevant private key".
I'm not saying that's not a fine thing to want, but if that is what you want, then you don't want cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrency is purposefully antithetical to that goal.
Re: Hard Problems in Cryptocurrency: Five Years Later
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is what I really dislike about owning crypto long term as a store of value. It's a cat-and-mouse game with hardware and software development, and there's a lot of faith in maintainers to stay ahead of the threats.
I‘d rather put my trust in an open source community than in centralized banks.
A fool and his money are soon parted :)
Re: Hard Problems in Cryptocurrency: Five Years Later
#194Earlier 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.
I work in banking. AML is always a fine line. Don’t do your job well, you get hit for enabling laundering. Do your job too well and you kill millions/billions in deposits.
AML at its core is asking a bank to purposefully reduce their profit. Other than fines and morals, there’s no real incentive for them to give their all, and those don’t seem to bother most of the industry.
Re: Hard Problems in Cryptocurrency: Five Years Later
#195None 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.
The one's freedom fighter is somebody else's terrorist, so it's not an answer.
Re: Hard Problems in Cryptocurrency: Five Years Later
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
> How do we stop money laundering If that would be stopped, crypto would be pointless. We already have real (regulated) money. But with crypto you can online pay your drug dealer.
Funny you can online pay your drug dealer in countries where drugs are legal, like pot in Canada. It’s almost like social solutions are the right way to solve social problems.
So then should we forget about easily accessible encryption, since it's a social problem if your government spies on your data and not a technological one? That's not a very "defense in depth" approach.
Our democracy is purposely designed to allow such checks and balances through mechanisms like the fifth amendment. It is an important part of what makes our democracy strong and prevents lawmakers from throwing people in prison at their whim.
Re: Hard Problems in Cryptocurrency: Five Years Later
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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Re: Hard Problems in Cryptocurrency: Five Years Later
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
The one's freedom fighter is somebody else's terrorist, so it's not an answer.
That was exactly the point
Re: Hard Problems in Cryptocurrency: Five Years Later
#199That moment when you click on the first paper referenced in the article, and the author is the professor of the lecture you currently should actually study for
Lol. What is the lecture you are studying for? Who is the author?
Re: Hard Problems in Cryptocurrency: Five Years Later
#200It's such a shame that useful proof-of-work is so impractical. The amount of cycles spent mining for the sake of mining is pretty depressing.
Wouldn't work, the security of PoW explicitly relies on waste. If the external value from mining is X and an attack costs Y, the net cost of the attack is X-Y=Z, so the real security is Z, the waste portion.
Not necessarily waste, no. It just needs to be unpredictable.
I think PrimeCoin was a great example of a PoW that had very small but non-zero value.