why is this 'Show HN' even here and getting so much attention?
Show HN: Kong – Physical Cryptocurrency
321–330 of 395 posts
Re: Show HN: Kong – Physical Cryptocurrency
#322Earlier quoted context omitted.
1% of 1% (so .01%). Is refusing large bills an effective countermeasure? If so, then yeah — not really an issue. Our economy somehow grinds along just fine. > Sure, the physical objects are made by someone. But the digital tokens to which they refer are produced algorithmically, and the digital tokens are the source of truth here. In what sense? The whole idea here is that I can exchange a physical note to transact w…
> 1% of 1% (so .01%). Is refusing large bills an effective countermeasure? If so, then yeah — not really an issue. Our economy somehow grinds along just fine. So refuse large Kong notes. Why would you assume the economy finds workarounds for cash but not this? > In what sense? The whole idea here is that I can exchange a physical note to transact with someone. Ya, and for most transactions you will. If you're suspici…
Why do you assume only large Kong notes will be easily falsified? The scenario I foresee is if printing notes becomes decentralized, a malicious printer makes any note likely to be duplicated.
Re: finding workarounds, we’re talking about money — we shouldn’t be “testing in production”, so to speak. IMO the government should come down hard on this.
Re: Show HN: Kong – Physical Cryptocurrency
#323Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are missing the point of crypto in general. It is a trust less fixed inflation and issuance decentralized non government controlled global currency
it is none of these things. The value of cryptocurrency swings wildly, the primary way to interact with it is through exchanges which are ordinary trusted institutions, and they are far from globally useable. What you are missing is that I need to pay my bills in practice, not in theory. I measure the value of cryptocurrency against what it delivers in practice, not on the white paper of the people who are going to b…
I have paid numerous things in bitcoin and you can even pay some bills. People do exchange it directly just not in your circles. I'm not saying that adoption is massive yet but you need to differentiate the idea with the current status. Value is in price discovery mode and will be for the foreseeable future but the volatility is going down. Lastly you can argue without down voting different opinions.
Re: Show HN: Kong – Physical Cryptocurrency
#324These so called "currencies" that you can't actually use as a currency (read as: pay or trade something for) are getting more and more. Has this become some new form of trolling in the internet now?
Re: Show HN: Kong – Physical Cryptocurrency
#325Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not having that property so far hasn't proved to be useful in the real world.
This is pretty clearly false. People use things with this property to hedge inflation risk all the time (e.g. gold).
Those things arent currencies. And it seems people have solutions to hedge against inflation already. That use case isn't the point.
Point is it being not tied to a state level actor is only useful if you can use it to get out from underneath the control of an oppressive regime by not being beholden to it's financial system.
So far we haven't seen a crypto succeed at that. So... so what if it has that property? Doesn't seem to be useful in practice. In theory yes, but not in practice.
Re: Show HN: Kong – Physical Cryptocurrency
#326If the private key is inside of the note and stays the same when it changes hands, how do I know you did not make a copy of it when you created the note?
Another contributor here. This is one of the novel advancements made by Kong. Specifically, Kong notes use a secure element which 1) self-generates a key pair 2) can attest the key pair was self-generated and 3) does not leak the private portion of that key pair. Section 2 of the paper (specifically 2.2) goes into more detail[1]. [1] https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmRNRCocj4PwKMXrd1jeUGw7ASQSuEk7BDJu5Ks...
So your answer is "trust us". Because how would I know if the claims of the hardware manufacturer (you or your supplier) are true?
This of course holds true for all hardware. When someone creates or stores a Bitcoin key on a laptop, they are at the mercy of the laptop manufacturer.
Re: Show HN: Kong – Physical Cryptocurrency
#327What's to stop someone from passing many duplicate notes?
Re: Show HN: Kong – Physical Cryptocurrency
#328I like the idea of fancy cyberpunk cash but I feel like in the real world I'd be getting the worst of both worlds if I tried to use cash thats also a cryptocurrency.
Re: Show HN: Kong – Physical Cryptocurrency
#329Hi 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…
A user accepting these "verifies" them by assuming that two properties hold if they connect over NFC or via pogo pins to the "gold elements", send a challenge over this connection, and receive in response the challenge signed with a public key associated with locked Kong tokens. 1. the relevant private key is known to only a Kong note's secure element. this is (hopefully) enforced by the secure element's, uh, securit…
Is it more risky than getting a fake cash from someone? Is it difficult to validate NFC with say...your phone (make sure the NFC signal changes when you bring it close to your phone)?
For 2) I get the part about relaying communication but regardless of that, what makes you think any sort of communication will cause it to output the private key? As far as high powered NFC, I am not sure that would work to begin with (someone who knows radio explained it to me but I cannot recall) but even if it did how is it different than existing mobile phone NFC payment?
You also gotta keep in mind,this is in-person. If someone defrauds you, they face several risks including law enforcement,legal,phsyical altercation(violence) and more.
Better would be nice but I can live with "as good as cash" or "as good as mobile nfc payment" when it comes to security.
Re: Show HN: Kong – Physical Cryptocurrency
#330Earlier quoted context omitted.
>>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 counte…
The risks for a cash bill are just counterfeiting. The risks for a Kong bill are both counterfeiting and failure of the secure element from any of a myriad ways, including thermal, mechanical stress, static, and so on. Those failure modes cannot be detected with the naked eye necessitating much more scrutiny. It's far more likely your Kong bill just break taking its value with it into the aether than you receiving a…
Kong bills are far harder to counterfeit than cash bills. Counterfeits non-obvious to the naked eye only require producing a convincing plastic film and hologram. Compromising the secure element to extract the private key requires advanced mechano-electronic skills.