Cryptocurrency is something people tell lies about in hopes of getting richer • Hacker News Board

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

#351

Post by yellowapple » Sat, Sep 25, 2021, 7:29 AM UTC

cperciva wrote: post #144

21eleven wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing about NFTs is that many people who buy them "don't get NFTs". All an NFT is is a token that represents ownership, like if the title to your car or house deed was on a blockchain. NFTs have some sane use causes like designating the owner of a valuable asset or creating electronic tickets that can be resold or transferred without some centralized entity like ticketmaster. Prior to NFTs existing, would you pur…

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.

> Thing is, NFTs don't represent ownership, absent some external legal documents which tie ownership to the NFT.

NFTs are the ownership-tying documents - specifically, asserting ownership over some property, just like any other deed/title to some property (be it tangible or abstract/intellectual). NFTs, like any other sort of deed/title, require recognition, validation, and enforcement by society at large to have any real value.

That is:

> I can sell NFTs of bridges all day long; doesn't mean anyone is buying a bridge.

I can sell deeds/titles to bridges all day long (complete with thick paper and fancy seals); doesn't mean anyone is buying a bridge.

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

#352

Post by streamofdigits » Sat, Sep 25, 2021, 7:54 AM UTC

trixie_ wrote: post #340

streamofdigits wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, do some research. A few large operators keep the remittances costs high. https://voxeu.org/article/stubbornly-high-cost-remittances As for fortran and cobol, why change the technology if you are sitting pretty?

Did you read your link because it says nothing about high fees due to cartels or kyc or anything else. In fact it say big old banks are the most expensive while new internet services are the cheapest. Remittance is already paid for with crypto and increasing. It’s a perfect application for it.

"It Is Difficult to Get a Man to Understand Something When His Perceived Crypto Wealth Depends Upon His Not Understanding It"

This is an article by mainstream economists in official positions who would in general not name names - yet the situation is so egregious they actually do. They state in no clear terms in the abstract and section header that lack of competition (and lack of education) are the reasons.

Increasing competition does not lead us one-to-one to adopting crypto except to tunnel vision minds.

In any case, I have given you the benefit of the doubt for the sake of discussion. There is no report that crypto has made any difference in remittances or any other disadvantaged economic group. If there is such evidence please inform us.

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

#353

Post by yellowapple » Sat, Sep 25, 2021, 7:54 AM UTC

andechs wrote: post #232

dkersten wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you limit the types of transactions in your blockchain to "this thing has been issued to this person/id/hash/whatever" and do not have any transactions of the type "this thing has changed ownership to a new person/id/hash/whatever" . A bank account that allows deposits but no withdrawals/transfers, its still a ledger, it just limits the operations you are allowed to do (not the operations you could theoretically d…

When a central authority is in charge of adding transactions to the blockchain, ie: DMV issuing licences, what's the advantage of blockchain over a standard database?

As long as it's done on a public blockchain, validation becomes possible without needing to contact the DMV itself to provide that validation. For example, if you have a California driver's license and I (as a Nevadan) want to verify its validity (say, because I'm running a bar and you don't look 21+), I could check whatever public blockchain to which California posts its ID NFTs, compare that to some reference on the physical ID you're showing me, and make sure the data (namely: name, DOB, etc. - or perhaps a hash of it) matches up; currently that would require either talking to the DMV directly or using some third-party service that does so on my behalf. This becomes even more useful when dealing with international identification, since that tends to involve even more red tape with current systems.

Also, it doesn't necessarily have to be a single central authority adding transactions; a whole bunch of DMVs could very well post to the same blockchain and only trust the validity of ID tokens issued by one another (i.e. with some out-of-band method to associate keys with actual DMVs, much like PGP's "web of trust" concept). This could even pave the way to things like drivers' licenses being partially or fully decentralized, with independent issuing authorities trusting one another based on some external certification process (e.g. "the California DMV has audited Foo Bar Licensing, Inc. and verified that it issues licenses in compliance with the California Vehicle Code, and therefore recognizes FBL-issued licenses as valid").

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

#354

Post by yellowapple » Sat, Sep 25, 2021, 8:09 AM UTC

dkersten wrote: post #185

k__ wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How come? Just think about all cases of fake liceses? This could be verified rather easily with an NFT while faking it would be quite hard.

How? Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you're saying. Since drivers licenses are linked to individuals, and cannot be traded, the traffic cop that's checking your license will need to compare it to your government issued ID. Then they look it up to see that its valid and linked to you as a person. How is doing this as an NFT (or other blockchain thing) any better than having a government database they look up? This is…

> How is doing this as an NFT (or other blockchain thing) any better than having a government database they look up?

If it's an out-of-state (or worse: international) ID, then the traffic cop (or, speaking from experience, some clerical worker back at the station) would need to deal with some bespoke interface for some external government database - and thus be at the mercy of that external agency. Such interfaces do exist, but they're clunky and antiquated, and it's pretty difficult to get authorization to connect to it. Even for intrastate lookups, a centralized database entails a bunch of infrastructure that's rarely publicly-accessible.

With a (public) blockchain, this becomes a heck of a lot easier and more accessible, since anyone from anywhere can query it with a common and publicly-known interface. Likewise, any agency can post to it without necessarily needing prior authorization and without needing to be at the mercy of other agencies; while there's obviously still a need for agencies to communicate with one another to exchange public keys (and therefore recognize/trust each others' blockchain transactions), that's much less complicated than coordinating a bunch of ad-hoc API connections.

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

#355

Post by cryptica » Sat, Sep 25, 2021, 8:33 AM UTC

UncleMeat wrote: post #125

cryptica wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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 servic…

> 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). I cannot possibly imagine a world where services will choose to only permit authentication via some expensive blockchain such that they deny themselves access to markets outside of the global rich. And telling my grandm…

The benefit is that many third-party services and many users don't want to have to trust a centralized auth provider. The blockchain provides redundancy and security guarantees which don't require trusting company employees. Not to mention the financial incentives which are associated with being an early adopter of a blockchain project and the network effects which come from that.

I'm convinced that decentralized communities will eventually corrupt and destroy all centralized services and agencies by manipulating their employees and members... Because they can. People will always find a way to create new problems to make themselves necessary. In these political games, decentralized anonymous communities have the upper hand. Unlike centralized projects, you can't corrupt decentralized projects. What can be corrupted, will be corrupted.

To understand why it's the future, you need to look at the big picture. You're assuming that centralized auth providers are secure and trustworthy. This is not going to be true in the future. Trust in institutions and organizations has been eroding and will continue to erode.

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

#356

Post by bob229 » Sat, Sep 25, 2021, 9:16 AM UTC

Cryptos are trash

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

#357

Post by EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK » Sat, Sep 25, 2021, 9:17 AM UTC

jcbrand wrote: post #252

Synaesthesia wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What has happened in those 12 years has been a great deal of scams, get rich quick scheme a and instability. Bitcoin has also become dominated by a few major players and is a power structure in itself, not really benefitting ordinary people much at.

Bitcoin is NOT dominated by a few major players. A few years ago when some large commercial players wanted to increase the block size, they weren't able to do so because a majority of nodes on the network rejected their code. The Bitcoin network has stayed remarkably stable and it's still possible to run a node on a raspberry pi, which is done exactly because the Bitcoin community value the ability of normal people t…

Exactly the opposite has happened: most players, including the lead developers, wanted block size to increase, because of the insane fees. But a small minority, who happened to hold the passwords to some major sites like bitcointalk, bitcoin.org and /r/bitcoin succeeded to wrangle control over and through bans and censorship took over the bitcoin project. They promised to deliver a solution to the problems of fees in the form of Lightning network, but it failed - still doesn't work reliably after all these years. Now that governing body gave up on Bitcoin development and advance their own projects based primarily on Tether. As a result, Bitcoin development has stagnated compared to competition, which is reflected in its market share diminishing.

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

#358

Post by EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK » Sat, Sep 25, 2021, 9:23 AM UTC

KorematsuFredt wrote: post #312

jcbrand wrote: post #190

This article conflates NFTs with cryptocurrency, in a way that looks to me to be intentional in order to bolster his argument that crypto is for rich people to conspicuously consume and to pump and dump on the plebs. NFTs aren't money, or currency and just because they can be created on some blockchains doesn't make them so. I also don't see a genuine effort from the author to really understand why proponents think t…

May be I am too old but completely fail to see any value in the notion of NFT. I do see value in Bitcoin. Bitcoin has basically thrown a wrench into all government controls on cross border payments. I don't know if Bitcoins will be very successful or not, but I am pretty sure the concept will last very very long. NFTs on other hand appears to be equivalent of selling Golden gate bridge to tourists.

Do you see value in rare baseball cards selling for millions of dollars? That's the same, but the card's authenticity can be verified cryptographically rather than through complex means like radionuclide analysis and such.

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

#359

Post by arisAlexis » Sat, Sep 25, 2021, 10:32 AM UTC

leppr wrote: post #306

boh wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really a revolution when most people just trade it (mostly via fiat money). The original idea was for Bitcoin to be a currency, unfortunately the "hodlers" won, now its only reason to exist is to be more expensive. Boosters are still milking the original premise as some revolution they're supporting, when of course, if you ask how much of their crypto assets they've actually used/spent, the typical answer is 0%.…

L2s and decentralized stablecoins keep the dream of a free decentralized economy alive. It's a smaller community for sure (as most pretend enthusiasts aren't actually interested when there's no Ponzi in it for them, and most detractors would rather focus on easier strawmen), but it exists and it's thriving.

Stable coins do not solve the money printing problem at all. Their existence is mostly for avoiding tax events when speculators sell tops and buy dips. Also they are as centralized as it gets.

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

#360

Post by teleforce » Sat, Sep 25, 2021, 11:50 AM UTC

yellowapple wrote: post #353

andechs wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When a central authority is in charge of adding transactions to the blockchain, ie: DMV issuing licences, what's the advantage of blockchain over a standard database?

As long as it's done on a public blockchain, validation becomes possible without needing to contact the DMV itself to provide that validation. For example, if you have a California driver's license and I (as a Nevadan) want to verify its validity (say, because I'm running a bar and you don't look 21+), I could check whatever public blockchain to which California posts its ID NFTs, compare that to some reference on th…

This is such an insightful comments!

Allow me to use your example if I want to explain the main advantage of Blockchain derivative technology. Most of people seem to mix up Blockchain and Bitcoin, and think that Blockchain is equivalent to Bitcoin.