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

defector.com

171–180 of 411 posts

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

#171
post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thing is, NFTs don't represent ownership, absent some external legal documents which tie ownership to the NFT. (And even with such external documents p perhaps not; see e.g. the statute of frauds which restricts in what form land ownership can be transferred.) I can sell NFTs of bridges all day long; doesn't mean anyone is buying a bridge.

An NFT is decent evidence in favour of the keyholder being the creator of a work, if there's no earlier evidence of somebody else being the creator of the work. When people first started talking about them I thought that was the idea - a kind of people's copyright registry on the blockchain. Which seems like a fairly reasonable idea, as far as it goes. Edit: To be clear, I mean a copyright registry that is used for t…

> An NFT is decent evidence in favour of you being the creator of a work, if there's no earlier evidence of somebody else being the creator of the work

It's really not at all reliable. I could create an NFT for the "Joeboy" HN account right now, and ostensibly become the owner of your HN account since such an NFT does not already exist. Obviously, this makes no sense, the NFT is meaningless.

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

#172
The title is 100% true for much of the cryptocurrency sector, but the body of the article is a shameless bad-faith attempt to rationalize an extremely heavy handed government response that would criminalize entire classes of voluntary interactions between consenting adults, and turn the future of the internet into a much darker place with much more government repression.

Only a deep-seated ideological precept, that idealizes the supremacy of the state over all aspects of the lives of private citizens, could motivate such a dismissively mean-spirited article. There isn't an even an attempt by the author to give the subject an objective treatment. Usually this would sit fine with me, as a useful counter-force to the mirror negative that exists in the deluge of crypto hype from profit-motivated speculators, but the advocacy for illiberal laws that would prohibit financial privacy and imprison peaceful individuals makes the article unconscionable.

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

#173
post #127

Here's your seemingly month reminder that there is only one cryptocurrency. Bitcoin. NFTs are epitome of tulip mania. Bitcoin, while it does increase in value due to low supply, is the only secure and actually fair escape hatch to the global monetary system and holds value globally. Proof of Stake, and every single coin below Bitcoin, copied from Bitcoin, are similar to fiat and centralized. Ethereum is the worst of…

For everyone who doesn't follow crypto. OP is obviously a Bitcoin maximalist. For them, the world of crypto begins and ends with Bitcoin.

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

#174
post #127

Here's your seemingly month reminder that there is only one cryptocurrency. Bitcoin. NFTs are epitome of tulip mania. Bitcoin, while it does increase in value due to low supply, is the only secure and actually fair escape hatch to the global monetary system and holds value globally. Proof of Stake, and every single coin below Bitcoin, copied from Bitcoin, are similar to fiat and centralized. Ethereum is the worst of…

A fair escape hatch?

Anybody can buy BTC with stablecoins, which are unaudited, and whose creators have openly lied about maintaining a 1:1 ratio between USD and stablecoins in circulation.

Say what you will about fiat, but no bank in the world will let me exchange monopoly money for something I can use to buy a sandwich.

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

#175
post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An NFT is decent evidence in favour of the keyholder being the creator of a work, if there's no earlier evidence of somebody else being the creator of the work. When people first started talking about them I thought that was the idea - a kind of people's copyright registry on the blockchain. Which seems like a fairly reasonable idea, as far as it goes. Edit: To be clear, I mean a copyright registry that is used for t…

> An NFT is decent evidence in favour of you being the creator of a work, if there's no earlier evidence of somebody else being the creator of the work It's really not at all reliable. I could create an NFT for the "Joeboy" HN account right now, and ostensibly become the owner of your HN account since such an NFT does not already exist. Obviously, this makes no sense, the NFT is meaningless.

If there was no evidence of the account existing before you registered the NFT, I think that would be a reasonably credible bit of evidence in your favour.

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

#176
post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Real charities, not those billionaire tax avoidance schemes. No such thing.

Do you even know what you're talking about? In the US, a billionaire has more money at the end of the day if they just pay taxes on it than if they give it to charity and take the deduction. The only other way a charity helps a billionaire save on taxes is if they use the charity's assets (e.g. boats, helicopers, real estate) as personal assets. But that's felony tax fraud. A billionaire wouldn't be likely to risk pr…

Yeah, charities aren't full tax avoidance for the rich. It's more of a dick swinging contest amongst the wealthy with some tax breaks to take some of the sting away. At least some good may come from these contests though. Even if 90% of the funds go to pay charity management salaries it's better than nothing.

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

#177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The path forward are contact wallets and dead man switches

Ah, so then possession becomes ten-tenths of the law. I'm not sure this is a system that we want. A system that allows for every day trading (buying something at a store) that requires a second piece of equipment to verify your identity that, if someone steals, there is no means of recourse. Sure, multiple wallets, something something, but this just sounds like a nightmare of record keeping where you offload a single…

You could store that second piece of equipment on your person, like an ultraviolet invisible ink qr code tattoo on your right hand or your forehead since no one can see it except under a black light.

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

#178

Off topic. Did anyone else's AI generated text radar go off on this article? Seems like too many fancy words. I wonder how many media outlets use GPT-3 to help generate content.

The author does seem to be influenced by the writing style of https://www.pakin.org/complaint, but the arguments he presents are coherent.

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

#179
post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of the examples you gave, degrees, driving licenses, and permission to an API service are not suitable for NFTs, since they cannot/should not be traded. Presumably we do not want for people to sell their driving licenses or their degrees.

The (non-) fugibility of a token is just one aspect of it. You can code a non-tradable NFT no problem. Tradable NFTs are just the hype right now.

> You can code a non-tradable NFT no problem.

WTF does that even mean?

Do people remember what a blockchain even is, at this point?

A blockchain is a chain of transactions. You take away the transactions, and its not a blockchain anymore. Unless we really stretch the definition of a "transaction" or blockchain......

Cryptocurrency has lost the plot. People are talking about blockchains, that don't have mining, or transactions now apparently.

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

#180
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…

Well on the 2008 Crash your ""acount"" was robbed and if you live in US you did not get your money back.

You had to cover the "too big to fail" system.

On btc no.

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