Could you elaborate a little on how this is different or better than past projects like BitBills?
Also what do you mean by "after a period of several years"?
Show HN: Kong – Physical Cryptocurrency
81–90 of 395 posts
Re: Show HN: Kong – Physical Cryptocurrency
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is no such thing as "defacto" legal tender. By definition only legal tender must be accepted as a form of payment - you can choose to accept something else but you don't have to.
Sorry, but (at best ) this is pure pedantry. Literally every bank in the UK will accept Scottish bank notes - if that's not a defacto legal tender, I don't know what is.
It's a very common misconception, there is no requirement for Scottish banknotes to be accepted as payment anywhere in the UK (including Scotland!)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banknotes_of_the_pound_sterlin...
Re: Show HN: Kong – Physical Cryptocurrency
#83So in theoretical use, is everyone expected to validate authenticity of each note exchanged? That seems painful for small transactions, but without it you lose absolutely all the security benefits of crypto, right? (e.g. vulnerable to good old fashioned counterfeiting)
Just do it like we do it in the US, $50s and $100s get checked consistently for counterfeits, $20s sometimes, $1s, $5s, and $10s never, and $2s are automatically assumed to be fake.
Why are $2's assumed fake?
Re: Show HN: Kong – Physical Cryptocurrency
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just do it like we do it in the US, $50s and $100s get checked consistently for counterfeits, $20s sometimes, $1s, $5s, and $10s never, and $2s are automatically assumed to be fake.
Why are $2's assumed fake?
They are so rarely encountered than many people don't think that they are a denomination actually issued.
Re: Show HN: Kong – Physical Cryptocurrency
#85IMO this breaks the entire security model of cryptocurrency. If these bills are intended to be spent hand-to-hand in meatspace without cryptographic validation on a computer, then it is no longer a cryptocurrency. It is another paper currency like the U.S. Treasury's. The innovation of Bitcoin was money as a purely digital artifact that cannot be double spent. As a merchant accepting Kong bucks, I have no idea how ma…
The bills are intended to be spent hand-to-hand in meatspace with cryptographic validation. See section 2.1 [1] The innovation of Bitcoin was decentralized electronic peer-to-peer cash. Kong does not remove any of those elements and makes the overhead of the peer-to-peer bit easier. Physical cash is still the dominant form of payment. The advancement here is figuring out how to issue physical cash without needing a c…
What does Kong bring to the table that a gold coin does not?
Re: Show HN: Kong – Physical Cryptocurrency
#86One of the best things about Bitcoin is that it’s not physical. If you want a physical currency that can’t be printed, use gold bullion.
Well if you have some colliding neutron stars you can make more gold!
Re: Show HN: Kong – Physical Cryptocurrency
#87Kong? I'll stick to Dong, thanks.
Re: Show HN: Kong – Physical Cryptocurrency
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sorry, but (at best ) this is pure pedantry. Literally every bank in the UK will accept Scottish bank notes - if that's not a defacto legal tender, I don't know what is.
It's a very common misconception, there is no requirement for Scottish banknotes to be accepted as payment anywhere in the UK (including Scotland!) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banknotes_of_the_pound_sterlin...
I have no misconceptions here - I know Scottish bank notes are not technically legal tender, and thus, technically, nobody is under any compulsion to accept them.
But in the real world, they are absolutely defacto legal tender - as above, every bank in the UK (and even many beyond) accepts them.
Re: Show HN: Kong – Physical Cryptocurrency
#89Question: since bills can be either loaded or unloaded (either because they haven't been put in circulation yet, or because they're counterfeit), doesn't that mean that e.g. a vendor taking my Kong who has no trust in me would have to individually check each bill via NFC or i2c to make sure that the contract backing the bill is valid (and the correct amount, etc.)? And that I would have to do the same for all the bil…
Ideally you should check every Kong note. In reality behavior would probably be similar how bills are verified now; businesses regularly check $100 and $50 notes under backlights and with special pens but don't worry about lower denominations.
A dedicated "Kong scanner" could do this very quickly.
Re: Show HN: Kong – Physical Cryptocurrency
#90Could you elaborate a little on how this is different or better than past projects like BitBills? Also what do you mean by "after a period of several years"?
For lack of an epistemological framework, we can call Kong a 4th generation wallet. If you'll bear with me:
Paper Wallet were 1st gen - one couldn't guarantee the person giving you a paper wallet didn't have two copies or kept a copy of the private key for themselves. Probably ok for personal use assuming you trust your printer firmware.
Hardware Wallets were 2nd gen - seed phrases made recovering from device loss nice but again, seed phrases were designed to be exported and cant be used as cash. They are very useful for other applications.
Java smart cards were 3rd gen - meant to be used as pre-paid gift cards but again these were designed for banks who wanted to handle the key material in software and have dangerous APIs for doing such[1].
Kong - uses a specific kind of secure element which allows for key generation but not extraction. On chain contracts convert the R1 keys used by the chip to K1 used by most cryptocurrencies today.
The paper goes in depth on this in section 2.3 [2]
[1] https://docs.oracle.com/javacard/3.0.5/api/javacard/security...
[2] https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmRNRCocj4PwKMXrd1jeUGw7ASQSuEk7BDJu5Ks...