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I Am Not Satoshi Nakamoto

schneier.com

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Re: I Am Not Satoshi Nakamoto

#71

Post by Sebb767 »

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…

> Cryptocurrencies have proven that you don't have to have traditional layers of trust and that's where I see the technological breakthrough.

Are you sure about that? Crypto forums are littered with posts of people having lost their coins due to some stupid mistake, be it a harddrive crash, a malformed transaction, a scam or even an actual hacker. Now, I'm not saying banks are perfect, but you at least have some hope to get your money back. With crypto, it's quite easy to loose it in the void.

And if your money is in an insured, legal exchange, managed by someone else, you're using a fancy stock brokerage with some extra payment options. It's cool, yes, but not a paradigm shift.

Re: I Am Not Satoshi Nakamoto

#72

Post by tptacek »

Bitcoin uses elliptic curves. Schneier has infamously forsworn them, saying he doesn't trust the math. He hasn't to my knowledge (admittedly limited!) published any analyses of elliptic curve systems. He didn't need to tell anyone he wasn't Satoshi Nakamoto.

Re: I Am Not Satoshi Nakamoto

#74

Post by shakna »

toolz wrote: post #67
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…

well over 90% of illicit purchases are done in fiat and you've really not been paying attention if you think those are the only benefits of crypto. There's an entire country that uses crypto as legal tender. I could stop there, but there's more. Fees are lower than credit cards charge, there are businesses saving money by utilizing crypto. Sending money overseas is cheaper and more accessible with crypto. The list go…

> Sending money overseas is cheaper and more accessible with crypto.

Not in any of the countries that have implemented PayID. (Most of Europe, Aus/NZ, and South America, with the US finally beginning to get on board this year).

It's a case of sending to a mobile phone, with instant-3days timeline, with a cost in 20-50c range for anything less than $10k.

Re: I Am Not Satoshi Nakamoto

#75

Post by judge2020 »

lsiq wrote: post #68
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…

The likes of Paypal locks your funds without explanation or appeal. And the likes of HSBC launder money with impunity. (BUT BUT KYC/AML!) But hey, let's continue trusting self interested people who don't care about you to "do the right thing" and protect your funds.

Thanks to KYC, HSBC is in the news, and the real evidence provided by KYC about their transactions makes light of evidence to actually enforce a fine for allowing the money laundering operations. If it were crypto it just wouldn't ever be found out.

Re: I Am Not Satoshi Nakamoto

#76

Post by SavantIdiot »

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…

> am I weird for not being that uncomfortable with companies like Coinbase managing your crypto

Maybe don't skim the article?

Because that is literally what it is about: trust. You claim to blindly trust a single point of failure. But traditional banks aren't the same: there are multiple levels of recourse and regulation.

Re: I Am Not Satoshi Nakamoto

#77

Post by SkyMarshal »

Sebb767 wrote: post #65
SkyMarshal wrote: post #50

> 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 cryptograph…

I think the could is meant as "technically, it would have been in my skillset to create something akin to this". It's clear that either motivation and/or ideas were missing, otherwise we would be crediting him for inventing bitcoin ;)

Afaik he doesn't actually have the full skillset required. He has the cryptographic and systems knowledge, but not the deep interest in or knowledge of monetary theory. The latter is prereq too.

Re: I Am Not Satoshi Nakamoto

#78

Post by Sebb767 »

lsiq wrote: post #68
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…

The likes of Paypal locks your funds without explanation or appeal. And the likes of HSBC launder money with impunity. (BUT BUT KYC/AML!) But hey, let's continue trusting self interested people who don't care about you to "do the right thing" and protect your funds.

An exchange can do exactly that, just like PayPal. Or simply disappear, for that matter. So you either buy that drawback and have the same system in a different skin, or you go for the self-hosting way and eat all the problems it brings (especially for non-technical people).

And the hard forks did happen. And they definitely undermined the whole model of what the coins actually should do.

The positive point, though, is that with crypto, the self-hosted side and the managed side can work together seamlessly, so everyone can choose their approach.

Re: I Am Not Satoshi Nakamoto

#79

Post by syshum »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #27
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…

>Most people don't care about self-hosting/self-managing their stuff and just want something that works and is easy to use. Crypto is no different to regular currencies in this regard. There's nothing stopping you from physically withdrawing all of your cash and stuffing it under your mattress. If you're concerned about the government devaluing your cash through dodgy bailouts of financial institutions, you can even…

>> you can even convert a significant percentage of it to precious metals that you bury in your garden.

People tried that in the US once.. The government passed a law that made owning said metals illegal...

Which was in effect from 1933 to 1974...

Re: I Am Not Satoshi Nakamoto

#80

Post by [deleted] »

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…

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