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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

#361

Post by woah »

_7fvc wrote: post #303
ddrdrck_ wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vitalik is extremely smart, but even people that are 10 times less smart than Vitalik can create a crypto project ...

Assessing crypto problem is itself a problem. Vitalik maybe 10 times smarter than me. But his track record is poor. He hasn't really proposed a solution that is worthy contribution to crypto. I have solutions to some of the problems he lists. 10. Stable-value cryptoassets 13. Proof of excellence My solution is to add inflation into supply. A percentage point inflation, not tail emission. Inflation will discourage HOD…

At first glance, your coin looks like a copy and paste bitcoin clone with some tweaked parameters. If something like that was going to make a difference, I think we would have seen it happen in 2014 when a lot of copy and paste coins were being created.

I was involved with Dogecoin back then. I advocated for inflation for the same reasons you want it. It has not led to Dogecoin having any great breakthrough in usage.

Re: Hard Problems in Cryptocurrency: Five Years Later

#362

Post by tkmunzwa »

ShorsHammer wrote: post #317
Nextgrid wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just wondering, unless you’re doing something illegal or are targeted by the government and your money is at risk of seizure, why would you keep it in crypto with all its associated risks instead of in a bank? Banks are highly regulated and so can’t just run away with your money.

> Banks are highly regulated and so can’t just run away with your money. It's not your money in a bank. The bank barely has $1 or two for every $100 you put in. There's plenty of people who have philosophic disagreement with fractional reserve and some who couldn't care less about ethical matters and just there preparing for the worst as good evolutionary diversity dictates they should. It's easy to sit in a country…

> How do you think someone in Cyprus, Zimbabwe or Venezuela would feel about your statement saying to trust the banks?

Someone from Zimbabwe here - I endorse their statement: trust the banks. I lost my money to a bank closure in early 00s, eventually got some of it back from the zombie entity that the central bank resuscitated. The CEO of a Zimbabwean crypto-exchange[1] "lost the password" of a cold wallet (wink) a year ago - the deposits therein were lost with no recourse; the exchange is struggling with solvency[2]. So yeah, if you're not going to stuff money under your mattress, give it to a bank before going full crypto.

1. Golix - you might have heard of it as it was offering the world's highest USD:bitcoin rates. The fine print was that you couldn't get USD out of Zimbabwe

2. https://cointelegraph.com/news/ceo-of-zimbabwean-crypto-exch...

Re: Hard Problems in Cryptocurrency: Five Years Later

#363

Post by _7fvc »

woah wrote: post #361
_7fvc wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assessing crypto problem is itself a problem. Vitalik maybe 10 times smarter than me. But his track record is poor. He hasn't really proposed a solution that is worthy contribution to crypto. I have solutions to some of the problems he lists. 10. Stable-value cryptoassets 13. Proof of excellence My solution is to add inflation into supply. A percentage point inflation, not tail emission. Inflation will discourage HOD…

At first glance, your coin looks like a copy and paste bitcoin clone with some tweaked parameters. If something like that was going to make a difference, I think we would have seen it happen in 2014 when a lot of copy and paste coins were being created. I was involved with Dogecoin back then. I advocated for inflation for the same reasons you want it. It has not led to Dogecoin having any great breakthrough in usage.

I'm glad to find someone who has the same idea. Crypto is very niche and specific. From start, I think each coin has a narrative. It'll be very hard to change that narrative. I think Dogecoin started out as a meme and fun coin. It currently has tail emission which is not really percentage inflation. Long-term, tail emission behaves like zero supply. Adding inflation to Dogecoin won't change its narrative. I don't think its community will be supportive of a change that devalues their bags and change its narrative.

I want to create a chain that has inflation as its main feature. Its supply schedule is designed to bootstrap inflation. It looks like this:

0: 50 (supply: 10 million)

1: 25 (supply: 15 million)

2: 12.5

3: 6.25 (end of halving)

4: 6.56 (start of inflation 7%)

5: 7.02

6: 7.51

7: 8.04

8: 8.60

9: 9.20

10: 9.85 (supply: 31 million)

The chain has 7% inflation. It is a fairly high rate. It's designed to break out of Store of Value and HODL narrative.

In 2014, people were still attached to the idea of limited supply and Austrian economics. Maybe, in 2019, people will have second thought about Keynesian.

If you still have interest in the idea, please reach out to me contact@bitflate.org.

Re: Hard Problems in Cryptocurrency: Five Years Later

#364

Post by koheripbal »

whb07 wrote: post #354
koheripbal wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as coins are designed as a store of value rather than an actual currency, they will have limited use-cases. People need to get over the concept of inflation. Inflation is GOOD.

Can you describe to me how inflation is good for a household? The literature you've probably seen is ex post facto about inflation trying to convince themselves and the world that the inflationary behaviors that were done are "good". "So every year, your savings get watered down and you lose wealth", is not what one wants to hear.

Inflation is good for an ECONOMY because it ensures that currency is not sitting on the side lines, but being actively invested wherever possible. ...so the velocity of money is increased, and hence volatility is decreased.

The negative impacts of volatility on the economy are very well documented.

Inflation has zero impact on a household as long as their savings are kept in assets other than cash.

Re: Hard Problems in Cryptocurrency: Five Years Later

#365

Post by rmtech »

arcticbull wrote: post #348
alphydan wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is hard to make a definitive statement either way. For example: > Analysts estimate that underground economic transactions account for one-third (33%!) of the total economy in developing countries and slightly more than 10% of the total economy in developed countries. [0] On the Bitcoin blockchain it may be around 19% (approximately USD $380bn in yearly transactions on Bitcoin [1], $72bn of which may be illegal [2…

Once you eliminate the fake transactions, wash trading, tape painting, manipulation, etc, I'd wager you're left with a much much larger proportion of crypto transactions being illicit. Probably close to 100% if you exclude speculation too, since only about 2 or 3 big merchants accept crypto at all.

For now, but remember that crypto essentially doesn't work at the moment because of scaling problems

Re: Hard Problems in Cryptocurrency: Five Years Later

#366

Post by omarchowdhury »

skohan wrote: post #347
omarchowdhury wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bitcoin certainly got enormously slower. https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-confirmationtim... Average block time data doesn't agree with you, or are you talking about something else?

It's not about whether the next block will come on time, it's whether your transaction will be in it.

That has only been an issue around the Dec '17 congestion. I can have my transaction mined in the next block for the satoshi equivalent of $0.61 today.

Re: Hard Problems in Cryptocurrency: Five Years Later

#367

Post by Nursie »

jstanley wrote: post #221
Nursie wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And as a result will stay irrelevant :/

That's like arguing that TLS will stay irrelevant unless it comes with government backdoors. The fact that authority figures can't break it is a feature , for the kind of people who would want to use it in the first place (which should be all of us, but sadly is not yet).

> The fact that authority figures can't break it is a feature, for the kind of people who would want to use it

Like I said, this is why it will stay irrelevant. Most people don't want to perform those actions, nor support those actions by using the systems that do. We're never, as a society, going to want to support money-laundering, terrorist-funding or price manipulation.

Re: Hard Problems in Cryptocurrency: Five Years Later

#368

Post by Nursie »

jki275 wrote: post #301
Nursie wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

m-pesa fits virtually none of what the parent said about cryptocurrency.

The point of the OP was that he believes electronic money cannot benefit the unbanked. It's wrong. The exact details of bitcoin aren't the right thing for it, but there are many cryptocurrencies that are more like m-pesa in their use requiremnts than they are bitcoin.

> The point of the OP was that he believes electronic money cannot benefit the unbanked.

Not really, if you read what you replied to it says that none of the unbanked have cards to buy it with, and that they don't need to be risking what little they have on "unregulated, complicated and easily stolen intangible financial assets which wealthy foreigners invented to print themselves money."

That doesn't describe M-Pesa, but it does describe cryptocurrency.

Re: Hard Problems in Cryptocurrency: Five Years Later

#369

Post by Nursie »

knocte wrote: post #227
Nursie wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could block, and may find themselves required to block transactions from unknown sources if this space becomes more regulated.

Solution to this is privacy-based wallets and/or second layer payments (e.g. lightning network).

Lightning is a joke. A really bad one that keeps dragging on.

Production ready in 18 months! Forever...

Re: Hard Problems in Cryptocurrency: Five Years Later

#370

Post by skohan »

omarchowdhury wrote: post #366
skohan wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about whether the next block will come on time, it's whether your transaction will be in it.

That has only been an issue around the Dec '17 congestion. I can have my transaction mined in the next block for the satoshi equivalent of $0.61 today.

That's interesting, I didn't know it speeded up again. I guess it still is an issue though: it's hard to trust a currency with the knowledge that it's transaction speed could potentially slow down by hours or days if there is too much traffic.
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