It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency • Hacker News Board

Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency

#951

Post by gnardini » Mon, May 31, 2021, 8:54 PM UTC

idlewords wrote: post #273

c01n wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What I don't understand about the crypto remittances argument is how the people sending and receiving them are supposed to convert them into spendable currency. The final goal is not to be able to convert crypto to fiat, the goal is to keep everything in crypto. Do you think all this infrastructure is being build just to convert it back to fiat, what cypherpunks want is to destroy fiat.

I understand the final goal, but if I want to send my relative in Venezuela half my paycheck this week, how does she spend it on groceries and at the pharmacy before the Crypto Revolution comes? Inevitably the answer is "some trusted third party" that turns it into a vanilla remittance.

I live in Argentina, not Venezuela, but here there are 3 ways to go crypto -> fiat.

- If you have a bank account you can go through crypto exchanges. Centralized of course. - There are p2p platforms that connect buyers with sellers. So in the platform, similar to Binance p2p, you can see how many transactions other people have and buy/sell crypto from them. - There's a black market which has home-delivery. So you contact them through the internet (you can find links in reddit and other sites, most go through Discord) and they send you a person with your crypto/fiat and make the transaction in your home. You can also go to their location if you prefer.

Not sure if that really answers the question, but if I was receiving remittances from abroad doing options 2 or 3 would be simpler and cheaper than using any traditional finance tools, which all require you to have a bank account in the first place (a LOT of people don't have one here because of the requirements to open one) and have higher fees and bureaucracy.

Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency

#952

Post by tornato7 » Mon, May 31, 2021, 9:02 PM UTC

knorker wrote: post #929

baby wrote: post #715

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are your arguments? I’ll be happy to argue in this thread.

Where to start? It's not my book, but this book has a bunch of arguments: https://www.amazon.com/Attack-50-Foot-Blockchain-Contracts-e... I should have a cut-and-paste answer to this question. I actually do already, but under my real name and I don't want to dox myself. Search for my username here for some: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27210604 (some comments are "below the fold" (e.g. this comment: https://n…

Illegal activity in crypto isn't as prevalent as you may think, and it's actually on the decline: https://blog.coinbase.com/fact-check-crypto-is-increasingly-...

ISIS has figured out how to get funded long before crypto was a thing. Banks already launder billions and that's harder to trace than Bitcoin transactions. And now, like it or not, crypto already exists and is here to stay, so perhaps it's better to start building legitimate use-cases around it than to just mumble about ISIS from afar.

All of your examples seem very contrived for how crypto won't work. I can make up examples of areas where crypto won't help, too. It's not supposed to be the end-all use case for everything.

The lack of conflict resolution in crypto is a side effect of decentralization. When you're talking global interoperability and value exchange, conflict resolution is off the table anyway. What court am I supposed to go to if I wire money to a guy in Nigeria and he doesn't fulfill his end of the bargain?

Ownership of the Mona Lisa might not be one, but there are many use-cases where removing a centralized mediator has a ton of potential benefits. One example might be Basic Attention Token, where advertisers and users can get a better experience because there's no need to satisfy the Google Ads middleman. What's the use for a conflict resolution mechanism in online advertising? Same with device connectivity with helium network, or decentralized lending that can provide better interest rates because there's not a huge meatspace banking infrastructure to support.

Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency

#953

Post by aliakhtar » Mon, May 31, 2021, 9:13 PM UTC

amingilani wrote: post #8

> Cryptocurrency is sustained by a mix of money laundering, vaporware, fraud, ransomware, gambling, and delusion. It has no social benefit except helping end first dates fast > What we especially need to stress to regulators is that there's no relationship between the technical claims of cryptocurrency and our now over 13 years of experience. It's not decentralized, it's not a currency, it's not a store of value, and…

Refer to our conversations over the last 5 years, or even the last 2 weeks

Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency

#954

Post by amingilani » Mon, May 31, 2021, 9:28 PM UTC

aliakhtar wrote: post #953

amingilani wrote: post #8

> Cryptocurrency is sustained by a mix of money laundering, vaporware, fraud, ransomware, gambling, and delusion. It has no social benefit except helping end first dates fast > What we especially need to stress to regulators is that there's no relationship between the technical claims of cryptocurrency and our now over 13 years of experience. It's not decentralized, it's not a currency, it's not a store of value, and…

Refer to our conversations over the last 5 years, or even the last 2 weeks

I'm sorry I'm afraid I don't understand what you're talking about. Do you have me confused with someone else?

Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency

#955

Post by aliakhtar » Mon, May 31, 2021, 9:32 PM UTC

amingilani wrote: post #954

aliakhtar wrote: post #953

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Refer to our conversations over the last 5 years, or even the last 2 weeks

I'm sorry I'm afraid I don't understand what you're talking about. Do you have me confused with someone else?

Just so others are aware, me and this guy have been 'friends' since 2015. He sent me a screenshot of this comment on Signal before he posted it. Its just his way to not address what I said.

Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency

#956

Post by jodrellblank » Mon, May 31, 2021, 9:56 PM UTC

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #891

idlewords wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm the author of the thread. For what it's worth, I grew up as a refugee whose mother had to find incredibly inventive ways to send USD to family back home, where it was illegal to possess. What I don't understand about the crypto remittances argument is how the people sending and receiving them are supposed to convert them into spendable currency. My hunch is that a lot of the value of cryptocurrency in those count…

How did they spend the USD that was sent home if it was illegal?

These pieces[1][2] on the economy of soviet Poland say there was a black market of US Dollars:

> "the government, which controlled all official foreign trade, continued to maintain a highly artificial exchange rate with Western currencies. The exchange rate worsened distortions in the economy at all levels, resulting in a growing black market and the development of a shortage economy.[25] The only way for an individual to buy most Western goods was to use Western currencies, notably the U.S. dollar, which in effect became a parallel currency. However, it could not simply be exchanged at the official banks for Polish złotys, since the government exchange rate undervalued the dollar and placed heavy restrictions on the amount that could be exchanged, and so the only practical way to obtain it was from remittances or work outside the country. An entire illegal industry of street-corner money changers emerged as a result. The so-called Cinkciarze gave clients far better than official exchange rate and became wealthy from their opportunism albeit at the risk of punishment, usually diminished by the wide scale bribery of the Militia.[23]"

> "As Western currency came into the country from emigrant families and foreign workers, the government in turn attempted to gather it up by various means, most visibly by establishing a chain of state-run Pewex and Baltona stores in all Polish cities, where goods could only be bought with hard currency."

https://www.nytimes.com/1981/10/09/business/the-lure-of-a-do...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_People%27s_Republic#Eco...

Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency

#957

Post by willhslade » Mon, May 31, 2021, 11:36 PM UTC

alecbz wrote: post #169

willhslade wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is and is not true. The implicit value of a currency is backed by being able to tax the citizens. This is why there are federal but not state / province level currencies as the friction of conversion is a dead weight loss.

> The implicit value of a currency is backed by being able to tax the citizens. Elaborate? Not sure why this would be true. I'm pretty sure there are plenty of "commodity currencies" (shells, salt, even gold) that achieved value without some central agency controlling the currency that could also levy taxes.

All of the examples are currency because they can't be counterfeited. You can't print gold, silver or seashells.

Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency

#958

Post by michaelmrose » Mon, May 31, 2021, 11:48 PM UTC

ctchocula wrote: post #359

michaelmrose wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't there some way to combine proof of work and actually useful work?

No, there's not. It's a fundamental principle among PoS cryptocurrencies that the work needs to have no additional utility or else it will help the attacker "subsidize" 51% attacks against the cryptocurrency you've built, because now they can both launch 51% attacks which cost $X abut subsidize it by selling the useful compute for $Y they've gotten by launching the attack, which ends up costing $X - $Y. Compared with…

The work doesn't have to be economically useful to the miner to be useful to society.

Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency

#959

Post by xpe » Tue, Jun 01, 2021, 1:09 AM UTC

Geee wrote: post #244

xpe wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The author clearly doesn't understand Bitcoin at all Putting aside softer claims, writing "at all" is an exaggeration. Would you care to moderate your opinion or at least elaborate? Please point out area(s) where you think the author is mistaken?

His claims are false. Bitcoin has more social benefit than any other technology. Money is technology that runs our society by allowing us to trade our time between each other. Sound money that can't be diluted or stolen away by a few benefits everyone. It's not only more fair money, but it also allows perfectly efficient markets and saves the environment by not incentivizing overconsuming. Bitcoin is not used for mon…

> Bitcoin has more social benefit than any other technology.

This is highly subjective. What about plumbing, electricity, or antibiotics?

Rank ordering technologies by their social benefits has major methodological problems. First, you can't consider any one technology in isolation; they exist in a network. Second, the value of a technology is relative to alternatives.

Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency

#960

Post by xpe » Tue, Jun 01, 2021, 1:17 AM UTC

Geee wrote: post #244

xpe wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The author clearly doesn't understand Bitcoin at all Putting aside softer claims, writing "at all" is an exaggeration. Would you care to moderate your opinion or at least elaborate? Please point out area(s) where you think the author is mistaken?

His claims are false. Bitcoin has more social benefit than any other technology. Money is technology that runs our society by allowing us to trade our time between each other. Sound money that can't be diluted or stolen away by a few benefits everyone. It's not only more fair money, but it also allows perfectly efficient markets and saves the environment by not incentivizing overconsuming. Bitcoin is not used for mon…

> [Bitcoin] and saves the environment by not incentivizing overconsuming.

First, Bitcoin's tremendous energy usage is a major negative for the environment.

Second, please explain the connection you see between Bitcoin and "not incentivizing overconsuming".