Coinbase from YC to DPO • Hacker News Board

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#841

Post by lotsofpulp » Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 1:49 PM UTC

g_sch wrote: post #617

lotsofpulp wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would include the energy needed to maintain trust in other currencies including efforts to prevent counterfeits, which I might argue includes some portion of a nation's militaristic might. Trust is an even more ambiguous, yet crucial aspect of maintaining a currency's value, tied up in the "order" or predictability of the society using the currency, which involves various legal systems and at the most basic level,…

I don't really understand this argument. If militaries are part of the embodied infrastructure of a country's banking system, this would imply that replacing the banking system with something decentralized (like cryptocurrency) would cause countries across the world to reduce their military footprint. I find it much more likely that military resources would be diverted to somewhere upstream of mining in the value cha…

Yes, similar to countries going all over the world to find gold in years past. In that sense, fiat would require less military since you don’t need to go conquer anyone, just being able to project enough of a threat to stop counterfeiting is enough.

Either way, it’s very convoluted and tough to tease out line item costs, but I don’t think comparing electricity usage is a good proxy.

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#842

Post by cableshaft » Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 1:51 PM UTC

rawtxapp wrote: post #360

lpapez wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In theory yes. In practice, cashing out billions of dollars worth of stocks is easier than cashing out billions of dollars worth of crypto.

You wouldn't be selling those on the open market, institutions have been able to acquire billions of dollars worth of crypto OTC without moving markets. Another option is, now that it's becoming clear to people that Bitcoin is here to stay, you can just borrow against it to spend (avoid taxes, hold on to the upside). Case in point, this person/group borrowed 300M$ with about 1B$ net worth[1]. 1: https://defiexplore.c…

I still don't completely get the borrowing against your bitcoin. You'll end up having to pay that back with interest, so it's going to end up costing you more assuming the price stays the same.

Are people just banking on the assumption that it's going to go up higher than how much they have to pay back over time? What if that stops being true 5 years from now somehow, like another coin becomes dominant? Not saying it's likely, I do think Bitcoin will probably still be doing well in 5 years, but I'm not certain of it.

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#843

Post by codyZ » Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 1:53 PM UTC

joering2 wrote: post #696

deviation wrote: post #667

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Credit to him for following through with his vision, and standing his ground in his replies to all the comments in that thread. Looking back now, it's certainly evidence of a group bias and the "If the opportunity was that great, X company would be doing it by now" way of thinking. Props are owed for bringing some true innovation to the space. I'd love to know how this turned out. Did he eventually find a co-founder?…

How did he follow thru with his vision? Read his other comments to get better picture - he was angry at the system of Credit Cards, PayPals etc that charge outraged fees just to be able to use their network. He wanted to build network that performs exchange at zero fee. Instead, he ended up building and owning one of the most expensive crypto exchanges in the USA. Sure props to him to pull it off, you don't get net w…

I regularly tell people this - that Coinbase really could have "died being the hero" but instead has "lived long enough to see yourself become the villain"

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#844

Post by cryptica » Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 1:54 PM UTC

cryptica wrote: post #813

swensel wrote: post #778

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Proof of Stake has yet to demonstrate as much resistence to adversarial attacks as Proof of Work. An expert in the space, Andreas Antonopoulos, speaks to this topic here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0T49duRt74&t=2720s

There is a very strong incentive for Bitcoin proponents to push this narrative but it doesn't stand up to scrutiny. Proof of Stake is more secure than Proof of Work because it's not possible to use external resources to take control of the system. The cost of hijacking PoS is exponential, not linear. With PoW, someone who has no stake in the network could buy or rent mining hardware using fiat and take control of the…

Also, most of the drawbacks that Andreas mentioned in the video are not related to PoS in general; perhaps it is more specific to certain older implementations of it. Most current PoS blockchains do provide guarantees of immutability since all transactions must be signed and the signatures must match sender public keys.

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#845

Post by piva00 » Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 2:01 PM UTC

alvah wrote: post #829

dd36 wrote: post #731

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the last few decades tell us anything, it’s once you’re large and have a lot employees, you’re above any regulation that would put you out of business. Slaps on the wrist are the worst you can expect.

Arthur Andersen and their ~85,000 employees would like a word.

After rubber stamping the squandering of California's energy market into a complete fraud of a company. I think that's a very high bar to cross, requiring damaging a lot of rich people in the process to call attention to it, to be punished.

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#846

Post by ketamine__ » Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 2:04 PM UTC

randomopining wrote: post #553

ketamine__ wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Users are moving to Binance Smart Chain (BSC) and using BNB because Ethereum transaction fees are too expensive for people that aren't rich.

Aren't the BSC/BNB gonna go up if lots of people use it? If not, what technological advantage does it have? If it's because it's too centralized... doesn't that defeat the whole purpose?

https://www.bsc.news/post/binance-chain-mainnet-lowering-of-...

It may become more decentralized over time as more validators are added.

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#847

Post by GoblinSlayer » Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 2:22 PM UTC

sneak wrote: post #640

olalonde wrote: post #606

Fun trivia: Brian Armstrong was looking for a co-founder on HN back in 2012: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3754664

I spoke to him on the phone within a few hours of that post, as I had already prototyped an app to do what was described. I didn't launch mine, nor participate in his (obviously). I suggested that a business in that space, if successful, would result in a similar outcome as happened to other founders of international money transmission systems that weren't under direct government control: i.e. swatting. He was not di…

>censored by the exact system it was built to replace

Bitcoin was designed to replace fiat money, it can't replace swats.

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#848

Post by mensetmanusman » Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 2:27 PM UTC

What’s the current status on what % of BTC owners control >50% of the active pool?

Last I read it basically matches the income inequality of the world.

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#849

Post by g_sch » Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 2:37 PM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #841

g_sch wrote: post #617

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really understand this argument. If militaries are part of the embodied infrastructure of a country's banking system, this would imply that replacing the banking system with something decentralized (like cryptocurrency) would cause countries across the world to reduce their military footprint. I find it much more likely that military resources would be diverted to somewhere upstream of mining in the value cha…

Yes, similar to countries going all over the world to find gold in years past. In that sense, fiat would require less military since you don’t need to go conquer anyone, just being able to project enough of a threat to stop counterfeiting is enough. Either way, it’s very convoluted and tough to tease out line item costs, but I don’t think comparing electricity usage is a good proxy.

My point is that, if a country no longer derives its power and wealth from controlling the banking system through military might, rather than freely giving up that power, it's going to flex that military might in other ways to ensure that it maintains that power and wealth. If crypto merely displaces military resources (as I think it would) instead of replacing them (as you seem to be arguing), then it's not really fair to count the military as part of the banking system's energy/carbon footprint.

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#850

Post by ufo » Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 2:42 PM UTC

Grustaf wrote: post #786

ufo wrote: post #557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the sense that verifying transactions is what keeps the bitcoin network alive.

Yeah but if people would mostly store their bitcoins, wouldn’t the energy needs go down?

Here is where Bitcoin's wasteful algorithm comes in. The vast majority of the energy expenditure comes from bitcoin miners burning compute cycles to bid for the right to add the next round of transactions to the ledger, which happens every 10 minutes. The more energy that the miner spends on computing SHA1 hashes, the higher the chance that they'll find a lucky hash that entitles them to a monetary reward from the transaction fees, plus freshly minted bitcoins.

The idea behind this proof-of-work scheme is that creating an alternative blockchain history becomes prohibitively expensive, pushing the network to achive a distributed consensus. However, it's tremendously wasteful because the energy isn't actually being spent on "useful" work.