201–210 of 394 posts
Monetary Policy. Can someone explain how a country plans to implement a monetary policy (e.g. inject new currency during a recession to fund expansion) when they don’t control their national currency (Bitcoin).
Let's ignore that Bitcoin is climate arson, and that its only used for money laundering and buying drugs. Bitcoin has a max throughput of 7 transactions per second. It's utter lunacy to suggest that it could function as a currency for a country. This will only end in tears.
El salvador payment system is built on the lighting network. A layer 2 scaling solution for bitcoin (up to 25 million transactions per second) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning_Network edit: typos
https://twitter.com/nayibbukele/status/1435197879795212291?r...
Also. Lightning network can give unreliable transaction costs ( eg. When sending to an unknown wallet)
It's weird that everyone is supporting an off chain solution. It kinda defeats the purpose of Bitcoin in general.
On the other hand, the power requirements of Bitcoin seem like they make it a very poor choice - both from an ethical point of view and a practical point of view. In the same way that using a foreign currency exposes you to the ups and downs of that currency, El Salvador now has to deal with the operational realities of bitcoin. This seems potentially worse than simply adopting another fiat currency because you've handed over control of how transactions work.
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... by looking the other way while the cartels operate with impunity. My understanding was there was a handshake deal with the narcos that if they stopped murdering they'd stop checking in on them. [1] So yes, if you allow the state to become an arm of the cartels then I suppose you can call it a job well done that they're not murdering as many people. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-54192736
Seems like a reasonable decision to me. I don't see how else the government could control the cartels. Plus it's got to be decent for their economy.
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> that its only used for money laundering and buying drugs I am not surprised to see hyperbole like this, but i'm disappointed that they are so routinely upvoted. I've personally used bitcoin for sending money across borders (for legitimate purposes) and never for drugs or money laundering. Apologies for my reactivity, but i think highly of the HN community and get deeply frustrated that this sort of ignorant hyperbo…
On one hand I agree with your assessment. On the other you argue with a personal anecdote -- not much better, is it?
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Algorand is not proof of work. Its a variation of PoS with very interesting use of VRF functions.
More than a year after its smart contract introduction devs have still failed to create a single DEX (let alone something more complex) there despite trying. The one Algo were hyping about having a dex last October (idex i believe) have quietly removed mentions of Algo on their site after failing despite all the PR. This should tell you how good of a choice Algo is for anything. There's plenty other promising POS cha…
There are already two HN startups using Algorand: 1) Lofty.AI, which has been a smash hit for tokenizing real estate and making daily income and 2) Algofi, which is S21 and intended for lending.
There's also ANote + Opulous for owning tokenized music royalties, and AlgoGems for NFTs + Yieldly for NLLs, etc. With the recent news that El Salvador will use Algorand for their infra and the $100M+ ArringtonXRP investment fund, Algorand is only getting started. Devs are flocking to Algorand for how easy it is to use the wallet and create unique tokens on a fast and scalable network.
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what an awful waste of energy. Each bitcoin transaction uses the energy equivalent the entire lifespan of a tree. Effectively, each bitcoin transaction is cutting down of tree... in this case, for a hamburger
How do you reach that number? (CO2/block) / (transactions/block)? I imagine these transactions are being done over the lightning network or something like that(I could be wrong on this though), in which case that calculation wouldn’t give the right answer. In addition, I think I would evaluate the CO2 costs per transaction based on the contributions to the mining reward (because this is the part of transaction which…
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>We have also uncovered some security holes. What security holes? The first tweet seems to be some sort of some sort of app saying it's a virus, and the second seems to say that it collects IMEI information. Neither constitute good evidence of "security holes".
My mistake, I should have not said security holes. It's leaking and collecting private information. Did you look into the Android Manifest for the virus tweet link? Merci beaucoup for correcting my mistake.
It's leaking and collecting private information.
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In what sense do you mean that the dollar is cheaper than bitcoin? Surely it doesn't mean anything to say that one currency is cheaper than another, since the exchange rate is what it is. I would predict that people prefer dollars to bitcoins, since they are less volatile.
The dollar is getting cheaper every year through inflation. Hoarding USD is impossible over the long term. Meanwhile Bitcoin has an entire community centered around hoarding. The price they charge you keeps going up. The amount they spend keeps going down.
The U.S. dollar is a transactional currency. It's very good at that. If you're holding value over longer terms and want cash-like liquidity and security, you hold Treasuries, which are inflation resistant.
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On one hand I agree with your assessment. On the other you argue with a personal anecdote -- not much better, is it?
Actually it is because we are dealing with an factual data point (I), rather than someone using hyperbole by saying something is ONLY used for x. one data point proves that wrong