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I Am Not Satoshi Nakamoto

schneier.com

51–60 of 185 posts

Re: I Am Not Satoshi Nakamoto

#51
post #42
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…

Until you realize ETH has been around only 8 years and the transaction is entirely irreversible

It’s funny you make this comment specifically about ETH since it literally exists today as a result of a hard fork that reversed transactions in 2016.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/ethereum-classic.asp

Re: I Am Not Satoshi Nakamoto

#52
Hal Finney is Satoshi, IMO. Not only is he the first person to respond to Satoshi and receive bitcoin, he lived minutes away from Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto, an unrelated person who Newsweek falsely claimed was Satoshi. Satoshi also stopped posting at the same time Hal's ALS disease became unbearable, and after Hal's death Satoshi never posted again. I believe Hal either interacted with Dorian or drove by his house and saw the name, and decided he liked it as a pseudonym.

RIP Hal

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hal_Finney_(computer_scientist...

Re: I Am Not Satoshi Nakamoto

#53
post #49
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Good point on ETH Classic.

I guess I didn’t think of that bc I don’t consider myself important enough to be overruled by so many people.

Possibly the good thing about the ecosystem is anyone can make a protocol or form the existing open source ones and then users and miners can vote with their feet.

Re: I Am Not Satoshi Nakamoto

#54
post #42
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…

My memory is fuzzy and I'm having a hard time finding details, but didn't Eth actually go through a hard fork to reverse a theft or bug in a smart contract or something?

Re: I Am Not Satoshi Nakamoto

#55
post #25
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…

It may not be that people are afraid of custodians, more so that they have just lost faith in traditional institutions (banks, fed, politicians etc) to such a degree that has allowed things like cryptocurrencies and their transparent policy to be alluring. The success of cryptocurrencies is for the most part only possible because of the failures of these institutions.

> allowed things like cryptocurrencies and their transparent policy to be alluring

Genuinely: lol, what? How many exchange exit scams have we seen over the past few years? The idea that crypto institutions are "transparent" and trustworthy makes absolutely no sense. If there's any institution that should have no public trust, it should be crypto exchanges.

No, most people are buying crypto because number goes up. It's pure gambling, nothing else.

Re: I Am Not Satoshi Nakamoto

#56

** IRS noises intensifying **

LOL my wife has this past year started keeping bees “keeping” they aren’t kept you are just lucky they like to live in boxes you provide… anyway this resonates with me because if you do things that alarm a few of them (thousand) they gradually alert the rest … that can really make you reconsider any action you take after that point

Re: I Am Not Satoshi Nakamoto

#58
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…

Crypto is supposed to be about DeFi... but to your point, its just a rehash of CeFi. (Centralized Finance)

The major paradox here is that Coinbase, a company that has banked its success on crypto for the masses, derives most of its marketcap through listing on the NYSE. Go figure...

Re: I Am Not Satoshi Nakamoto

#59
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…

When Mt Gox went under and it took my father's $11k gift to me along with it, it messed me up for awhile. The idea that my father had worked so many years to save up for me, and that I had squandered it in one day... it took a long, long time to make peace with that.

"Not your keys, not your coin" is trite, but true. I was an ardent, outspoken critic of Coinbase for a long time.

I was also wrong. Coinbase didn't lose the crypto. I don't know how they managed not to, but it was an excellent reminder that the most successful startups in history often seem like terrible ideas at the start. I'm weirdly proud of them, because I understand how difficult of an achievement that was to pull off at scale.

Just remember that the losers like me are forgotten in the sands of history. For every winner, there were dozens of horror stories you never hear about. Keep control over the assets that matter to you.

Re: I Am Not Satoshi Nakamoto

#60
post #42
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…

irreversibility is mostly a negative for anyone who is interested in getting a scam/fraudulent charge taken back. What happens when you purchase an item from some web shop with ETH and it never arrives?
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