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I Am Not Satoshi Nakamoto

schneier.com

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Re: I Am Not Satoshi Nakamoto

#41

Post by jasonhansel »

askmike wrote: post #28
tyre wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the whole thing with crypto. The only benefits thus far that have come to widespread fruition are illicit purchases and speculation. For it to be broadly accepted, it has to lose the rest. Anonymity? People are unsurprisingly very in favor of KYC so we can apply anti–money laundering and terrorism laws. For it to be trusted you have to insure deposits. Those fly-by-night exchanges going poof with everyone's c…

> Anonymity? People are unsurprisingly very in favor of KYC so we can apply anti–money laundering and terrorism laws. This doesn't scale any further than a website ran by a company providing services. Most eyes are on DeFi which is a world of smart contracts and dapps - which at some point (hopefully, because else there is little point) will run without anyone having any authority to change/stop them. > For it to be…

Most people aren't anarchists (or even libertarians). A world where anyone (including, say, terrorists or rogue states) can conduct transactions "without anyone having any authority to change/stop them" sounds, to most people, like a very bad thing.

Re: I Am Not Satoshi Nakamoto

#42

Post by Dwolb »

tyre wrote: post #14
spurgu wrote: post #9

Quickly skimming through the Wired piece, am I weird for not being that uncomfortable with companies like Coinbase managing your crypto? Or Namebase.io managing Handshake domains? Most people don't care about self-hosting/self-managing their stuff and just want something that works and is easy to use. With both of these (Bitcoin & HNS) you can still have 100% control over it if you choose to. So what if 90% of people…

This is the whole thing with crypto. The only benefits thus far that have come to widespread fruition are illicit purchases and speculation. For it to be broadly accepted, it has to lose the rest. Anonymity? People are unsurprisingly very in favor of KYC so we can apply anti–money laundering and terrorism laws. For it to be trusted you have to insure deposits. Those fly-by-night exchanges going poof with everyone's c…

I dunno I’m an over-halfway believer in crypto.

The other day I wanted to invest in a token. So I transferred ETH out of Coinbase to MetaMask wallet, then traded my ETH for the token.

Each transaction took about 30sec and cost ~$25. That sounds like a lot!

Until you realize ETH has been around only 8 years and the transaction is entirely irreversible by an enterprising (invasive? dictatorial?) third party.

To me it’s entirely insane that I can almost instantly transfer dollars across the world (galaxy?) for so little AND the protocol delivers incredible flexibility through smart contracts.

IMO the future is bright.

Re: I Am Not Satoshi Nakamoto

#43

Post by [deleted] »

tyre wrote: post #14
spurgu wrote: post #9

Quickly skimming through the Wired piece, am I weird for not being that uncomfortable with companies like Coinbase managing your crypto? Or Namebase.io managing Handshake domains? Most people don't care about self-hosting/self-managing their stuff and just want something that works and is easy to use. With both of these (Bitcoin & HNS) you can still have 100% control over it if you choose to. So what if 90% of people…

This is the whole thing with crypto. The only benefits thus far that have come to widespread fruition are illicit purchases and speculation. For it to be broadly accepted, it has to lose the rest. Anonymity? People are unsurprisingly very in favor of KYC so we can apply anti–money laundering and terrorism laws. For it to be trusted you have to insure deposits. Those fly-by-night exchanges going poof with everyone's c…

[deleted]

Re: I Am Not Satoshi Nakamoto

#46

Post by dustintrex »

paulpauper wrote: post #39

A random person called me satoshi..so I am going to write an entire blog post about it.

Schneier is one of a fairly limited set people in the world who has the technical skills and background to be Satoshi, so it's not a completely ridiculous assertion. However, virtually nothing else about Schneier and Satoshi lines up, Schneier being a notable crypto skeptic and having distinctive writing style quite unlike Satoshi's.

Nevertheless, he's prominent enough that it makes sense to forcefully deny the rumor, just to make it less likely that he'll be targeted by kidnappers, cranks, etc.

Re: I Am Not Satoshi Nakamoto

#47

Post by ashtonkem »

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #38
ashtonkem wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't Cryptocurrency have a significantly higher gini coefficient than most developed nations? Cryptocurrency might have not been created to make the rich richer, but that sure seems to be the outcome.

https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/07/29/gini.html Vitalik answers this much more eloquently than I could. And I would say what is the Gini coefficient for stocks? It isn't great either. Crypto is in its infancy. Bitcoin was created in 2009. What was the Gini coefficient for the first US dollars, the Continentals, in 1775? I'm going to assume most went to those closest to and believing in that new currency. I make no ap…

> But in an internet community, measured inequality can come from two sources: (i) inequality in total resources available to different participants, and (ii) inequality in level of interest in participating in the community.

Oh man, that is some seriously shaky foundations to rest your argument on. It also only holds for very early day cryptocurrencies; nowadays the main thing that limits your ability to hold a lot of crypto is not interest, but how much disposable income you've got.

Maybe if you intended your cryptocurrency to remain niche this argument might be fine, but if your currency is supposed to replace fiat (as Bitcoin claims) then that argument is pure unadulterated bullshit. All it's saying is that inequality is fine because it's about who cared earlier, please ignore all the people that bought in with USD.

I suspect that Vitalk knows he's playing a rhetorical trick here, he's too smart to not be aware of that.

> The average person with $15 in fiat currency is poor and is missing out on the ability to have a good life. The average person with $15 in cryptocurrency is a dabbler who opened up a wallet once for fun. Inequality in level of interest is a healthy thing; every community has its dabblers and its full-time hardcore fans with no life. So if a cryptocurrency has a very high Gini coefficient, but it turns out that much of this inequality comes from inequality in level of interest, then the number points to a much less scary reality than the headlines imply.

Yeah, except if your currency "wins" and replaces fiat, then that dabbler becomes a new feudal lord, and everyone who didn't have "interest" starves. Not really a comforting argument in that context, is it?

Worse still if that "dabbler" "dabbled" because they had spare cash to spare; e.g. if they were already rich.

> Cryptocurrencies, even those that turn out to be highly plutocratic, will not turn any part of the world into anything close to dystopia A.

I do not trust this argument coming from someone who is in fact a plutocrat of a crypto currency.

Re: I Am Not Satoshi Nakamoto

#48

Post by fedreserved »

tyre wrote: post #14
spurgu wrote: post #9

Quickly skimming through the Wired piece, am I weird for not being that uncomfortable with companies like Coinbase managing your crypto? Or Namebase.io managing Handshake domains? Most people don't care about self-hosting/self-managing their stuff and just want something that works and is easy to use. With both of these (Bitcoin & HNS) you can still have 100% control over it if you choose to. So what if 90% of people…

This is the whole thing with crypto. The only benefits thus far that have come to widespread fruition are illicit purchases and speculation. For it to be broadly accepted, it has to lose the rest. Anonymity? People are unsurprisingly very in favor of KYC so we can apply anti–money laundering and terrorism laws. For it to be trusted you have to insure deposits. Those fly-by-night exchanges going poof with everyone's c…

The argument I've heard against FDIC insurance encourages a race to the bottom. Banks take more risk to make more profit (combined with the back drop of the feds willingness to bail then out? The more conservative banks either have to loosen up, or lose out to the looser banks.

There was not much money lost relatively speaking to banks not having FDIC insurance in the past. And there can be tremendous upside in researching to make sure your bank is only loaning to reputable investments, homes, etc

Re: I Am Not Satoshi Nakamoto

#49

Post by goatsi »

Dwolb wrote: post #42
tyre wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the whole thing with crypto. The only benefits thus far that have come to widespread fruition are illicit purchases and speculation. For it to be broadly accepted, it has to lose the rest. Anonymity? People are unsurprisingly very in favor of KYC so we can apply anti–money laundering and terrorism laws. For it to be trusted you have to insure deposits. Those fly-by-night exchanges going poof with everyone's c…

I dunno I’m an over-halfway believer in crypto. The other day I wanted to invest in a token. So I transferred ETH out of Coinbase to MetaMask wallet, then traded my ETH for the token. Each transaction took about 30sec and cost ~$25. That sounds like a lot! Until you realize ETH has been around only 8 years and the transaction is entirely irreversible by an enterprising (invasive? dictatorial?) third party. To me it’s…

>the transaction is entirely irreversible by an enterprising (invasive? dictatorial?) third party.

Are you aware of the history of Ethereum?

Re: I Am Not Satoshi Nakamoto

#50

Post by SkyMarshal »

> For the record, I am not Satoshi Nakamoto. I suppose I could have invented the bitcoin protocols...

That's not a given. Nick Szabo provides a good explanation [1] of the state of things when Bitcoin was invented, and why very few people were capable of it then:

"The overlap between cryptographic experts and libertarians who might sympathize with such a "gold bug" idea is already rather small, since most cryptographic experts earn their living in academia and share its political biases. Even among this uncommon intersection as stated very few people thought it was a good idea. Even gold bugs didn't care for it because we already have real gold rather than mere bits and we can pay online simply by issuing digital certificates based on real gold stored in real vaults, a la the formerly popular e-gold."

Schneier has the cryptographic knowledge, but I've never gotten the sense he as any deep interest in the nature of money, at least not enough to drive him to put together something like Bitcoin. That drive, that obsession with something, is a prerequisite for making something as unprecented and dissimilar to anything previously existing as Bitcoin.

[1]:https://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2011/05/bitcoin-what-took-...

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