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El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

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Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#541

Post by SavantIdiot »

madacol wrote: post #534
SavantIdiot wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. So it's like lots of little ledgers, each channel stays open until N number of transactions between two people complete, then the finally tally is pushed onchain when the channel closes. Am I wrong to thing this sounds a little risky? Like, that channel could be "lost" after the goods/services were exchanged, leaving the seller holding the bag. I don't understand what kind of recourse the seller has to L…

Each update to the channel is a new transaction that references the opening transaction, on each update, this transaction is replaced with a new one, so in practice only the last transaction is kept (old transactions become dangerous to publish) To know how they update trustlessly you should read my other comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27451184 LN eliminates the need of escrow completely by using bitcoi…

> bitcoin's script (smart contracts

I'm out of the loop, I didn't realize bitcoin had contracts yet. Cool.

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#542

Post by kerng »

FreeTrade wrote: post #56

Sigh. Bitcoin BTC, at 3 transactions per second, doesn't have the capacity to support El Salvador's economy. Even if Lightning worked (it doesn't), BTC doesn't have enough capacity to open channels for users at a reasonable cost. Salvadorians will end up forced to use proprietary payment networks denominated in BTC. BTC is not cash anymore, it won't work as such. There are other cryptos that could work, we'll have to…

I have a lightning wallet and it works - please don't post uninformed information.

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#543

Post by kragen »

jkaptur wrote: post #489
kragen wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, read through this 1001st version of the argument, and finally you'll understand why it's not bogus! It's really terrible that you've been arguing with such stupid people, because it's not really that complicated to explain why bitcoin mining is a renewable energy subsidy. It's really very simple, although it involves a lot of facts you aren't acquainted with. > But that's true for renewable energy too. Nothing…

Why is Greenidge bringing a natural gas power plant online to do cryptocurrency mining? https://greenidgellc.com/blockchain

Possibly because they're in New England where the sun barely shines, but more likely because they're totally clueless and going to lose money; that page says they have "a power plant capable of generating over 100MW of clean energy an hour," which is incoherent; power plants don't generate more megawatts of energy if you run them for more hours. New York is not really a well-known bitcoin mining hotspot, and for good reason. Though I guess the state does have Niagara Falls.

Still, who knows? Maybe they have some kind of tricky angle on the problem, like using bitcoin mining to convert earned income into capital gains in order to evade taxes, which might make their clients money even if the actual operation is unprofitable.

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#544

Post by minsc__and__boo »

Dzugaru wrote: post #517
ar_lan wrote: post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This weird meme that Bitcoin is so beneficial to criminal activity (especially in comparison with physical cash)... I don't know where it started, but I wish its completely bad-faith nature would die. Sure, the Silk Road started, but the feds have wised up on how to trace Bitcoin since then - it's fairly straight-forward given the public-nature of the blockchain.

You must be joking? There is a trivial way to hide the traces by using mixers. Why do you think ransomware and black markets today exclusively run crypto not fiat?

All the trusted mixers/tumblers/exchanges gradually went KYC.

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#545

Post by marcinjachymiak »

zapdrive wrote: post #247
marcinjachymiak wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lightning does work. I've used it myself as have many others. You should really work on explaining what it is you actually mean by that statement instead. Apparently they are using Lightning and a service LN Strike that recently launched. https://twitter.com/starkness/status/1402635954653904902?s=2...

Lightning is not decentralised. You have up keep your node online 24/7 to prevent theft. Most people can't do that. So they will end up keeping their coins in the custody of nodes that run 24/7. Leading to centralisation. Lightning is just like a MySQL database extra steps.

You don't have to be on exactly 24/7. The default delay for spending coins from a commitment txn is 144 blocks in some clients and is usually scaled with channel size. Most clients let you configure it manually too.

That means you'd have to be online once within 24 hours of your counterparty trying to steal your channel balance to stop them. IMO this is pretty reasonable for a cellphone user.

It doesn't follow that this would lead to centralization of custody either. If you want to pay for better liveness you could pay someone to run a watchtower to watch your channels. Basically, it watches the blockchain for bad channel closes and posts the justice txn with the correct settlement for you in case it sees it. I'd be surprised if a service like LN_Strike didn't start using these.

https://github.com/lightningnetwork/lnd/blob/master/docs/wat...

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#546

Post by minsc__and__boo »

carlosdp wrote: post #474
rllearneratwork wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

of course crypto would not help criminal money laundering. Bitcoin and Etherium are very traceable by design. In fact, it is often much, much easier to trace to origin of Bitcoin funds than the origin of USD funds, especially when cash was involved. There are "private" coins like Monero but they aren't getting much traction.

Monero is pretty popular in Venezuela right now.

Monero is probably used more like a currency than BTC is.

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#547

Post by sabhiram »

Dzugaru wrote: post #530
vmception wrote: post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn’t an argument I said how it works

Except that's not how it works. This adoption has a massive impact on acceptance of Bitcoin. If we assume Bitcoin is a mistake for humanity - this clearly is a great wrongdoing. A smaller wrongdoing would be buying Bitcoin, holding Bitcoin or making positive comments about Bitcoin on HN. Sadly, all these are economically justified (for now).

Isn't it pretty awesome that as a bunch of environmental activists, we are ok with golf greens and almond exports? Ok with tankers which spill oil by the lake-full and intense deforestation? But when it comes to proof of work crypto - suddenly it's a veil of FUD?

How can you find fault with someone trying to make more money? This is capitalism at work. Not saying the energy argument for crypto is moot, but it is certainly blown way the heck out of proportion. Let's regulate lithium mining while we are at it, no?

Economic advantage is a like gas in a vacuum, it will spread everywhere it can, until it cannot.

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#548

Post by madacol »

SavantIdiot wrote: post #541
madacol wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Each update to the channel is a new transaction that references the opening transaction, on each update, this transaction is replaced with a new one, so in practice only the last transaction is kept (old transactions become dangerous to publish) To know how they update trustlessly you should read my other comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27451184 LN eliminates the need of escrow completely by using bitcoi…

> bitcoin's script (smart contracts I'm out of the loop, I didn't realize bitcoin had contracts yet. Cool.

It has always had, it is just much limited than ethereum's.

But you can express things like "if X and Y cooperate they can spend this transaction or Y can spend after 1000 blocks or X can spend if it reveals the preimage of this hash ____"

These logics are what LN uses in its update-transactions

Re: El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender

#549

Post by fredfoobar »

Dzugaru wrote: post #526
sadfasf122 wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most criminals use cash. USD to be exact.

Most criminals don't kill people. Does that mean we should ignore killers?

Can you (or someone else) please explain this analogy? I didn't understand it at all.
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