Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

CEO of a top Bitcoin exchange warns: crackdown on cryptocurrencies may be coming

cnbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

361–370 of 511 posts

Re: CEO of a top Bitcoin exchange warns: crackdown on cryptocurrencies may be coming

#361

Post by Kalium »

ccortes wrote: post #349
Daishiman wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sovereign identity Not a real problem. Any civilized country has solved identity already. > DAOs A solution in search of a problem > NFTs Speculative. Game items, land registries and deeds are a solved problem. If your jurisdiction/company hasn't solved them already with Postgres and hardcopy it's because it's not interested in solving it or it's not a real problem, just a minor annoyance.

> Not a real problem. Any civilized country has solved identity already. Jesus Christ. So the only problems that matter are the ones in "civilized" countries? What does that even mean?

Perhaps it means that this is a known problem with known working solutions. Countries that haven't solved identity are ones that either don't want to or can't, generally due to a mix of corruption and poverty.

Perhaps I am simply suffering a tragic failure of imagination, but I fail to see how adding a blockchain changes things substantially.

Re: CEO of a top Bitcoin exchange warns: crackdown on cryptocurrencies may be coming

#362

Post by viraptor »

intotheabyss wrote: post #355
tonyarkles wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other aspect of these is that, unless we're also going to eliminate the possibilities of courts ruling on things, the reversibility features of land registries and deeds is a feature, not a bug. Husband and wife divorce and the courts rule that the husband gets the deed to the house and the wife gets the Ferrari. Husband refuses to transfer the Ferrari's deed. Now what? Unless you mean that the land registry cont…

Have you ever heard of OpenLaw? https://www.openlaw.io/ Court systems, even traditional ones, can interact with Ethereum. At the end of the day, Ethereum is just a ledger. We humans are the ones that enforce laws and social contracts, Ethereum just helps with the (automated) bookkeeping.

If you want bookkeeping where entries can be rewritten by designated parties, then why would you want ETH / distributed consensus? What does it give you in that case over the existing database with a public mirror?

Also laws change. What you signed in an ETH contract today may be completely different than what's legal / possible to enforce tomorrow.

Re: CEO of a top Bitcoin exchange warns: crackdown on cryptocurrencies may be coming

#364

Post by ibeckermayer »

intotheabyss wrote: post #355
tonyarkles wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other aspect of these is that, unless we're also going to eliminate the possibilities of courts ruling on things, the reversibility features of land registries and deeds is a feature, not a bug. Husband and wife divorce and the courts rule that the husband gets the deed to the house and the wife gets the Ferrari. Husband refuses to transfer the Ferrari's deed. Now what? Unless you mean that the land registry cont…

Have you ever heard of OpenLaw? https://www.openlaw.io/ Court systems, even traditional ones, can interact with Ethereum. At the end of the day, Ethereum is just a ledger. We humans are the ones that enforce laws and social contracts, Ethereum just helps with the (automated) bookkeeping.

Why do I want my contracts publicly accessible on a blockchain? All else equal, I specifically don’t want that at all

Re: CEO of a top Bitcoin exchange warns: crackdown on cryptocurrencies may be coming

#365

Post by Jasper_ »

tiborsaas wrote: post #304
Jasper_ wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What do you think these networks will look like in 20 years? Exactly the same as it looks today. Because nothing has changed in the last 15 years either (Bitcoin was released in 2006). > it's precisely the tech you need to provide an alternative against Facebook or other walled gardens many people love to hate on here. How does cryptocurrency help with any of that? > tech is open an transparent and scalable. Citati…

Just as an example, have you heard of smart contracts? There's a cambrian explosion happening now among networks, everybody tweaks something to be different from others. I suggest you to take a look around, there's a shocking diversity. > How does cryptocurrency help with any of that? How can a globally spanning Turing complete computer help? I don't know, but we will see attempts. > Citation needed. Haha, I always f…

> Just as an example, have you heard of smart contracts?

Yes. They seem to be a solution looking for a problem. What problems can you imagine smart contracts solving?

> How can a globally spanning Turing complete computer help? I don't know, but we will see attempts.

So the answer is "nobody has thought of a single way this helps, after 10 years of thinking about it".

> But for fun's sake, go to https://coinmarketcap.com/ click a random currency and click source code / read the whitepaper.

OK The first one I clicked was Qtum: https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/qtum/ . The whitepaper link goes to a 404.

The second one I clicked was VeChain. https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/vechain/ . It has no link to source code or a whitepaper.

The third one I clicked was Dash, which thankfully had a whitepaper. Let's check it out: https://github.com/dashpay/dash/wiki/Whitepaper

> Currently the Dash network has ~4,800 active masternodes [8]. By requiring 1,000DASH collateral to become an active masternode, we create a system in which no one can control the entire network of masternodes. For example, if someone wanted to control 50% of the masternode network, they would have to buy 4,800,000 DASH from the open market. This would raise the price substantially and it would become impossible to acquire the needed DASH.

Oh my god

> Bad actors could also run masternodes, but not provide any of the quality service that is required of the rest of the network. To reduce the possibility of people using the system to their advantage nodes must ping the rest of the network to ensure they remain active.

Oh my goddddd

Nobody making this has any clue about distributed systems, do they

Re: CEO of a top Bitcoin exchange warns: crackdown on cryptocurrencies may be coming

#366

Post by chabes »

mbesto wrote: post #325
rudderz wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take crypto out of the equation, what are the implications of the fed issuing a programmable currency? Many financial services would become obsolete. What do I need a stock broker for? What do I need a bank for? You have Wall St and other sophisticated investors profiteering and competing against the general public, devaluing our purchasing power, making leveraged trades because they know the public will hold the bag…

> It's a system that exists to favor the few and it's time to disrupt the orgy. I've got news for you: BTC: 2% of the anonymous ownership accounts that can be tracked on the cryptocurrency's blockchain control 95%[0] ETH: Just 376 People Found to Own a Third of All Ether Cryptocurrency[1] [0] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-11-18/bitcoin-w... [1] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-15/jus…

Are you familiar with the concept of cold wallets held by exchanges? https://www.longhash.com/en/news/3257/A-New-Way-of-Measuring...

Re: CEO of a top Bitcoin exchange warns: crackdown on cryptocurrencies may be coming

#367

Post by throwaway22211 »

puranjay wrote: post #116
kec wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're describing is laundering, so now you're committing two crimes. I wouldn't bet against the government taking an interest once values being exchanged are large enough.

What I'm describing is free trade.

[dead]

Re: CEO of a top Bitcoin exchange warns: crackdown on cryptocurrencies may be coming

#368

Post by viraptor »

beambot wrote: post #331
graeme wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you name some use cases that aren’t trading crypto derivatives or crypto debt? Ethereum is certainly more interesting than Bitcoin but the use cases so far seem to be more speculation.

Censorship-free distributed storage (using Ethereum & Filecoin)

I wouldn't rely on that one. As cool as Filecoin is, LE can query who has a given file and chase them and their ISP until they no longer advertise that file. Without secrecy you can't have a censorship-free solution.

Re: CEO of a top Bitcoin exchange warns: crackdown on cryptocurrencies may be coming

#369

Post by intotheabyss »

viraptor wrote: post #362
intotheabyss wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever heard of OpenLaw? https://www.openlaw.io/ Court systems, even traditional ones, can interact with Ethereum. At the end of the day, Ethereum is just a ledger. We humans are the ones that enforce laws and social contracts, Ethereum just helps with the (automated) bookkeeping.

If you want bookkeeping where entries can be rewritten by designated parties, then why would you want ETH / distributed consensus? What does it give you in that case over the existing database with a public mirror? Also laws change. What you signed in an ETH contract today may be completely different than what's legal / possible to enforce tomorrow.

Because you trade and automate assets through contract logic. The benefits of contract composability on Ethereum mean that the velocity of money increases because now assets can be manipulated by logic without an intermediary. So if someone wants to borrow your asset, you can deposit it into a contract and now can lend it out peer to peer, and have interest acrue on an ongoing basis. Assets can be more easily "put to work". This is exactly what banks do with your money actually, only with Ethereum it's easier so liquidity / velocity is greater with assets because they can easily move around. It needs to have decentralized consensus because otherwise it's not credibly neutral.

If a law changes and affects an on-chain asset, then that logic will need to be reflected on-chain, otherwise the involved parties won't come to agreement in the real world. There are ways to make contracts upgradeable on Ethereum while still preventing someone from stealing funds, like through a multi sig wallet, perhaps with lawyers holding some of those keys. It all depends on how it's structured, but the benefits of using Ethereum (or something like it) are clear.

Re: CEO of a top Bitcoin exchange warns: crackdown on cryptocurrencies may be coming

#370

Post by intotheabyss »

ibeckermayer wrote: post #364
intotheabyss wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever heard of OpenLaw? https://www.openlaw.io/ Court systems, even traditional ones, can interact with Ethereum. At the end of the day, Ethereum is just a ledger. We humans are the ones that enforce laws and social contracts, Ethereum just helps with the (automated) bookkeeping.

Why do I want my contracts publicly accessible on a blockchain? All else equal, I specifically don’t want that at all

You can use zero knowledge proofs if you really want to conceal the information in a contract, but still prove to the world that you've fulfilled that contract. If you're using public Ethereum, then presumably you want your contract to be public.
Post reply on HN