511–520 of 650 posts
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Okay, but that seems like a pretty small niche? Most people don’t borrow just to save money on taxes on their cryptocurrency gains.
They might borrow to hold on to their asset's appreciation.
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You do realize it’s law and not technical incapability that prevents financial institutions from lending like this, right?
I don't think law would prevent a fully collateralized loan on the basis of borrower/lender risks. AML seems a non issue too, as the loan only moves the question. KYC remains one big problem but there are many startups providing those services and they are slowly gaining acceptance in courts. Don't be impressed if a few years (and maybe even months) from now you start to see classical banks trading mortgages onchain.
It doesn't.
AML seems a non issue too, as the loan only moves the question.
No, anti-money-laundering laws are at the heart of why the financial system can't do this. KYC laws apply at the customer level, so you only need to handle KYC once per customer. AML laws apply at the transaction level, so you need to apply them to each loan.
Cryptocurrency solves absolutely none of the existing legal reasons that banks can't issue large loans in minutes or seconds to existing (or new, well collateralized) clients.
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I strongly disagree with this loaded characterization of mining as "waste". Converting power into value is the opposite of waste, and that's not even addressing the network security that it provides. Mining provides useful work. If you don't like cryptocurrency, fine, but don't pretend that no value is being created or that no purpose exists. Waste would be an incandescent bulb that throws away the majority of its en…
The issue isn’t the useful product of light or a functional crypto system, the issue is the amount of waste heat produced by the light bulb or data center. This should be obvious when you consider proof of work systems that generate less waste heat by using a memory bound rather than a computationally bound algorithm. They both operate on the principle of wealth destruction as all proof of work algorithms do, but you…
..which in the case of the average crypto, is overshadowed many times over. One block mined equates to $333K worth BTC generated alone, and that's not counting the value of every transaction included in that block. A block happens every 10 minutes give or take, so in an hour, that's about 2 million worth of coin generated and 13K transactions.
There's no way on earth every bitcoin miner, combined, is using $2M+ worth of electricity every hour, even factoring in negative environmental externalities (which in the case of crypto mining, will be lower than most people think given their proximity to renewable, hence cheap, energy.)
It is, objectively speaking, not a waste.
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So the stability fee you pay is 4.50%. You're still holding on to your assets appreciation, so if Bitcoin continues to appreciate at 300% per year, the 4.50% is a drop in the bucket and you didn't have to pay a capital gains tax. Eventually, some companies are working on tokenizing homes, so once that happens, you could potentially deposit that as collateral just as easily, but that's still far out.
Do you not pay the loan back in Bitcoin? How would you exercise the 300% gain while also paying the loan back?
Given that we are more than ever moving toward a centalised society where corporations have an increasingly tightened grip over the people, decentalised technologies are in my opinion a glimmer of technological hope.
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I didn't say that it has to be for illegal things or avoiding regulation. I said it's a trust-less global payment infrastructure. Say I need to send $500k to a relative in a third world country at 12AM on a Sunday. A completely legal transfer of money that I plan to disclose to the government. 100% regulated. But I need the transaction to go through very quickly. What are my options? Chase? Paypal? Western Union? Wha…
I agree. The "without a bank to tell you what you can and can't do" made me believe that you were hinting to non-regulated transactions, my bad then.
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Just because something doesn't work in the first attempt doesn't mean it never will (see various attempts at ecommerce, online news, streaming video, or just general computer-network-for-the-masses attempts from the 80s and early 90s).
It does work, that's the problem. Because even though it's working, few people are actually using it for anything other than speculative trades (and its been working for ~11 years).
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I think the decentralized web pieces are starting to fall in place: decentralized file storage, decentralized domain names, decentralized communities and streaming, decentralized payments, etc. I wouldn't declare it "failed technology" just yet.
Just because something works doesn't make it a success (see Betamax, laser disc, steam powered cars etc.).
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I'm going to agree https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=599852 The only surprise is that HN is still a terrible place to discuss crypto. Not many posters or commenters seem to have much knowledge, which is strange for HN
Maybe somehow they simultaneously have plenty of knowledge and don't agree with you. So in the spirit of education - what amazing things are there about ethereum or Bitcoin that will change my mind about their intrinsic value that I don't already know? (My current opinion is that the intrinsic value of PoW systems is negative due to low actual utility and very high cost.)
For me in my daily work, this manifests itself as companies that want to use more obscure currencies as a transaction method in games. I say: "That currency is not on a lot of servers, how will you protect against 51% attacks?" They say: "All transactions are also verified by trusted servers.." So does the person understand what they are talking about, or are they used to talking to people (investors / business partners) who don't have a great understanding. Doubts raised.
However: There are times when experts dismiss new things and are wrong. So I try to keep an open mind.
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Blockchain is just a ledger. So "the Blockchain" does not make anything significantly better. Its in fact ridiculously expensive. The idea is that everytime sweat shop X finishes sewing sequins on a dress, they can scan the RFID tag on the dress with their smartphone, and the ledger gets updated, and then Walmart can prepare for that dress, the shipping company can print out labels etc. Its a good idea. Industries ar…
I appreciate the response, but it's still entirely unclear how blockchain would help here. In a supply chain, why would blockchain be better than a centralized process? It seems to be trying to put a square peg in a round hole.
1. If the central database is proprietary then it is enforced (usually by a major retailer ie Walmart drives all sorts of RFID supply chain requirements for its suppliers. If blockchains come in this is likely how)
1.a. But which other retailer will sign up to walmart's versions ? So it is hard for all suppliers to sign up to the same standards
2. Open standards make it easier for anyone to write apps to join the chain.
3. it's not at all clear how this is better I will admit beyond "decentralised" and "open". But those are excellent places to start.