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Show HN: Kong – Physical Cryptocurrency

kong.cash

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Re: Show HN: Kong – Physical Cryptocurrency

#301

Post by sandGorgon »

ccamrobertson wrote: post #267
sandGorgon wrote: post #263

Monero has the concept of private view key and spend key. The view key only lets you check balance without loss of privacy. View keys can be printed as a mnemonic seed (a set of meaningless English words). Would printing of view keys mnemonic not be equivalent to this? With the added advantage that printing is not centralized?

I don't know enough about Monero's construction; wouldn't this be trivial to counterfeit? Can you use this key to ultimately transfer the funds?

no - the view key does not let you do any transactions. It only lets you verify the balances. It also does so in a privacy-preserving manner.

this is full text of a View Key

A keypair specific to Monero. The public part of it makes up the 2nd half of monero address, and is used by the sender to generate a one-time stealth address to where the funds are actually sent. The owner of the wallet uses the private view key to scan the blockchain and find the funds sent to his address. At the protocol level, the sender performs an encryption with the recipient's public view key, and the recipient attempts to decrypt all the outputs on the blockchain to find the one belonging to him (where decryption was successful). For audit purposes, it could be shared with the auditor, along with the signed key images to prove the balance of a wallet. Sharing only the view key would enable the auditor only to see received transactions, but he wouldn't be able to tell if any funds were spent, so he couldn't know the actual balance.

In the trivial case that each kong is a wallet - a view key would actually show the balance.

Re: Show HN: Kong – Physical Cryptocurrency

#302

Post by paulgerhardt »

qwtel wrote: post #249
ccamrobertson wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "tiers" are just bundle names. We could have been super dry but decided to make it more like collectable cards packs; our expectation is that most people will buy Kong since it looks cool (that's totally fine with us). Our margin on Kong is typical of other startup hardware projects; not great. We're not raking in cash from a digital token sale. We've made a physical product, we'll sell it to cover the costs of d…

I agree that they do look cool. They remind me of euro notes but turned up a notch or two. But I'm wondering what made you decide to go with the generic greek bust heads? Missed opportunity to depict some cryptography and computer pioneers imo.

Some of the design elements are skeuomorphic throwbacks to traditional currencies.

One design pattern among currencies is "person on front, place on back" - we didn't want Kong to be too geographically local so we picked the planets (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Luna, etc) for the places and the associated Roman pantheon. Romans used currency while Greeks famously didn't. (Lydians aside.)

Re: Show HN: Kong – Physical Cryptocurrency

#304

Post by ixtli »

siavosh wrote: post #116
ccamrobertson wrote: post #2

Hi folks, I’m one of the contributors at Kong — https://kong.cash/ . Kong is a physical cryptocurrency that looks, feels and works like traditional cash. You can think of it as an ultra-secure, time locked cryptocurrency wallet with a fixed face value — no one can access the token except for the holder of the note after a period of several years. It consists of a secure element and NFC chips mounted on a flexible PCB…

I don't understand any of this.

It’s incumbent upon everyone here to consider how powerful that can be for the people who’re trying to sell Kong.

Re: Show HN: Kong – Physical Cryptocurrency

#305

Post by ixtli »

iamben wrote: post #228
Jamwinner wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use almost exclusively cash and never get that response. Usually a smile as I sail out of the cashiers way faster than our abrtion of a chip+pin system customers possibly could. What part of the world are you in?

Pay with a card at a busy bar in the UK 15 years ago and everyone would sigh as the barman reached for the card terminal, did his thing, waited for you to type in your pin, etc etc. Paying with cash was far quicker. Pay with cash at a bar now and everyone will sigh as the barman counts it up, puts it in the till etc etc. Contactless is so fast, the barman will be pouring the next drinks while you're tapping the machi…

Yeah I’m in NYC and I find it frustrating when people force a bartender to deal with cash at a busy spot.

Re: Show HN: Kong – Physical Cryptocurrency

#306

Post by ixtli »

ccamrobertson wrote: post #284
elil17 wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah see “startup” is the problem word there. That implies you have a product. You have a cool hobby project, but there’s no use case. I’m so curious why people think (and it’s certainly not just you, I see this attitude all over) that it is possible to run a business without providing value to customers.

We've sold and are selling products to customers. That seems to constitute utility for someone as well as fit into the definition of a "business".

This is a truly unbelievable answer to the question you were asked.

Re: Show HN: Kong – Physical Cryptocurrency

#307

Post by __m »

sah2ed wrote: post #278
saxonww wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

However they want? Some people might not remember the Liberty Dollar[0] from 10-20 years ago. The depository was raided after a few years, the company issuing the currency was shut down, and the owner/proprietor was convicted of illegally minting coins. Kong couldn't be shut down the exact same way - these aren't coins - but I'd be shocked if a similar thing didn't happen were Kong to become as popular as ALD (which,…

Exactly. I’m surprised that this point about the legal ramifications isn’t higher up in the thread. Things get complicated real fast once you move from peddling virtual to physical currencies. I fail to see how the US wont use the same laws to shut them down the way they did to the liberty dollar.

Put Trump’s face on it, call it Trump instead of King Kong, get rid off the laws. Profit.

Re: Show HN: Kong – Physical Cryptocurrency

#308

Post by paulgerhardt »

godot wrote: post #270
paulgerhardt wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Context: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21758004

I am not familiar with Snow Crash myself and I read the Wikipedia page [1] on it and it makes sense what you're going for; but just want to say that for someone who was born in HK, seeing the term 港幣 really can only mean HKD in my head, and it's difficult for me to process that it means something else. Even as you keep the name Kong, have you considered calling this something else in Chinese aside from 港幣 specificall…

Would love to talk about this over email. Please drop me a line.

Re: Show HN: Kong – Physical Cryptocurrency

#309

Post by CryptoPunk »

arcticbull wrote: post #289
darawk wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what your point is. The comment I was responding to claimed that verification represented a regression in usability in relation to cash. This is not true, because cash also requires verification. I'm not claiming Kong is better in this regard, simply that it is equivalent.

Cash doesn't really require verification in most cases, if it looks good its probably good, your possession of the notes is almost certainly enough. You're not really looking for anything other than an obvious counterfeit note. Whereas Kong requires verification because literally anything could have happened to the note that you can't determine through mere visual inspection (all the things I noted). That forces you…

>>You're not really looking for anything other than an obvious counterfeit note.

That's not because non-obvious counterfeits are not possible. It's just that not many of them are generated. The same could apply to non-obviously sabotaged Kong: theoretically it's possible to do, but in practice uncommon.

Kong would have the added benefit of not financially rewarding the sabateur the way counterfeiting rewards a counterfeiter.

Re: Show HN: Kong – Physical Cryptocurrency

#310

Post by darawk »

arcticbull wrote: post #289
darawk wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what your point is. The comment I was responding to claimed that verification represented a regression in usability in relation to cash. This is not true, because cash also requires verification. I'm not claiming Kong is better in this regard, simply that it is equivalent.

Cash doesn't really require verification in most cases, if it looks good its probably good, your possession of the notes is almost certainly enough. You're not really looking for anything other than an obvious counterfeit note. Whereas Kong requires verification because literally anything could have happened to the note that you can't determine through mere visual inspection (all the things I noted). That forces you…

> Cash doesn't really require verification in most cases, if it looks good its probably good, your possession of the notes is almost certainly enough. You're not really looking for anything other than an obvious counterfeit note.

Neither would Kong in most cases. Why would you assume that counterfeiting will be anymore common with Kong than it would for cash?

> Whereas Kong requires verification because literally anything could have happened to the note that you can't determine through mere visual inspection (all the things I noted). That forces you through the awkward and painful flow of verifying each Kong note via NFC.

I don't see why verification via NFC would be any more difficult than using one of those counterfeit detector pens.

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