Live data from Hacker News

Cryptocurrency is something people tell lies about in hopes of getting richer

defector.com

41–50 of 411 posts

Re: Cryptocurrency is something people tell lies about in hopes of getting richer

#41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- Resistant to centralized censorship (as you pointed out) - It allows you to use the same passphrase for all services without compromising security since your passphrase never needs to leave your own machine; it is never sent over the wire. You just send signatures to different services. - The cost associated with purchasing tokens needed to initialize an account on the blockchain would serve as a spam prevention me…

> Resistant to centralized censorship (as you pointed out) I'd wager that most people don't care about this much, though it is real. Still, this can be achieved with signature-based authentication that doesn't require the tremendous waste of BTC. Just... tell the service your public key and sign a message when you sign up. Your key pair doesn't need to be associated with some distributed system for that to work. This…

>> This sounds like an anti-feature to me. Especially since it'd be foolish for a service to only support authentication via a blockchain. Imagine telling my grandmother that she needed to buy some btc in order to sign up for the service that hosted my wedding photos.

This is different because your grandma would have to buy the tokens once and signup once and she will have access not only to the 'wedding photo service' but a large number of other services. It's more like paying a small amount of money to get access to an ecosystem of services. Like how people pay money to buy an iPhone and this gives them access to the Apple App Store and all the apps therein.

There will also be network effects associated with the blockchain price going up with adoption. People who signed up early to the right blockchains will have priority access to certain software ecosystems and exclusive services which are only accessible to the richest among them (for example).

Re: Cryptocurrency is something people tell lies about in hopes of getting richer

#42
post #15
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does Bitcoin have a clear advantage in solving double spend over a centralized solution?

Because the trust is distributed. One single person can't cause the entire system to break down or steal all them money. With blockchain coins, the incentives are aligned. The weird thing that happened with BTC that I don't think Satoshi could forsee is that the more valuable it got, the less usable it got. This is one of the unsolved issues: how to create decentralized consensus very very quickly that can't also be…

I don't trust the collective anonymous users of Bitcoin more than I trust my bank and the court system though.

If someone hacks into my account, my bank will likely reimburse me for any losses. There are controls in place to stop them from stealing it al. If someone just transferred it to their own account, I could use the courts to get it back. If I use a credit card to pay a scam, I can do a charge-back.

With cryptocurrencies, it's just "bye money". They're not going to fork for you. There's no logic to stop people in Russia transferring my entire account. It's too hard to find criminals to get any relief. It's just your fault for using cryptocurrencies and not having 100% perfect security.

Not to mention, the chance of my bank stealing all my money is nil. They'd be sued and arrested, and the FDIC would reimburse me anyway.

Re: Cryptocurrency is something people tell lies about in hopes of getting richer

#43

ICANN isn't perfect (not even close, lol) - but I wish a consortium of countries would just create their own crypto. Unfortunately this would probably devolve to what we currently have with individual fiat. Would anyone even use a not-for-profit backed "crypto"? I don't mean in the blockchain-backed sense, more in the ICANN/gift-cards/points globally distributed sense.

Bretton Woods, but for crypto?

Re: Cryptocurrency is something people tell lies about in hopes of getting richer

#44

The rebranding of MySQL as blockchain was a brilliant move for sales. Bit torrent is decentralized and it doesn't use "blockchain". "Blockchain" only works for money and nothing else

Even if so, "only money" is a multi trillion dollar industry.

Re: Cryptocurrency is something people tell lies about in hopes of getting richer

#45
post #7
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean at some point NFT had you?

Well, I found it to be a decent solution to support actual artists (esp. Photographers or folks like eBoy fame) who were already selling their digital art in genuine and honest capacity. But when some random guy without a story renders a thousand animated dogs from a script and the actual art is how to push it via Reddit bots, my support for artistic value creation has reached its limit.

Honestly I don't think NFTs - as it exists - was ever a good model.

I know there's a hypothetical resale mechanism, but it's fundamentally operating on a lottery system - artists are buying a ticket hoping to hit it big, and that favors a self-destructive mentality.

A Patreon-like system still has an element of luck, but the steady monthly income makes it much easier for an artist to say "this is working, I should keep going" or "I guess I should start looking for a/keep my day job".

Re: Cryptocurrency is something people tell lies about in hopes of getting richer

#46
post #7
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean at some point NFT had you?

Well, I found it to be a decent solution to support actual artists (esp. Photographers or folks like eBoy fame) who were already selling their digital art in genuine and honest capacity. But when some random guy without a story renders a thousand animated dogs from a script and the actual art is how to push it via Reddit bots, my support for artistic value creation has reached its limit.

I am an artist. Have shown in galleries, museums and rubbed shoulders with all sorts of dealers etc in Manhattan art world. What you see in the nft space is pretty normal.. for every genuine, talented artist there are 1000 copy cats just gaming the market trends. For every genuine, professional art seller/buyer there are 1000 used car salesmen looking to flip hype and bad taste for quick profit, screw over naive and poor artist and the big elephant in the room, money laundering.

The recent Met gala.. socialites and wealth parading the halls hanging Caravaggio and Van Gogh, who died destetute.

Re: Cryptocurrency is something people tell lies about in hopes of getting richer

#47
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I found it to be a decent solution to support actual artists (esp. Photographers or folks like eBoy fame) who were already selling their digital art in genuine and honest capacity. But when some random guy without a story renders a thousand animated dogs from a script and the actual art is how to push it via Reddit bots, my support for artistic value creation has reached its limit.

Honestly I don't think NFTs - as it exists - was ever a good model. I know there's a hypothetical resale mechanism, but it's fundamentally operating on a lottery system - artists are buying a ticket hoping to hit it big, and that favors a self-destructive mentality. A Patreon-like system still has an element of luck, but the steady monthly income makes it much easier for an artist to say "this is working, I should ke…

It wasn't ever meant to be a lottery. It was and remains just a way to sell ownership rights to stuff without physically transferring any stuff. The fact that a speculation market bloomed around it was just a weird circumstance.

Re: Cryptocurrency is something people tell lies about in hopes of getting richer

#48
post #34

We are currently transitioning from the part where they laugh at you, to the part where they fight you.

The article mentions launderers and dirty tricksters, who we haven’t collectively stopped laughing at, yet to effectively fight.

Re: Cryptocurrency is something people tell lies about in hopes of getting richer

#49
If you take every long-refuted criticism of Bitcoin along with cherrypicked examples of cringe celebrities endorsing it, and you combine that with misinformed neo-Marxism and an unquestioning acceptance of government officials, you get this article.

If your average sports writer actually wanted to understand the space, they could read something with real data: https://nydig.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/NYDIG-Bitcoin-N...

Re: Cryptocurrency is something people tell lies about in hopes of getting richer

#50
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the trust is distributed. One single person can't cause the entire system to break down or steal all them money. With blockchain coins, the incentives are aligned. The weird thing that happened with BTC that I don't think Satoshi could forsee is that the more valuable it got, the less usable it got. This is one of the unsolved issues: how to create decentralized consensus very very quickly that can't also be…

I don't trust the collective anonymous users of Bitcoin more than I trust my bank and the court system though. If someone hacks into my account, my bank will likely reimburse me for any losses. There are controls in place to stop them from stealing it al. If someone just transferred it to their own account, I could use the courts to get it back. If I use a credit card to pay a scam, I can do a charge-back. With crypt…

I don't think this is the kind of "trust" that is relevant in the prevention of double-spending.
Post reply on HN