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The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

stephendiehl.com

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Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#381

Post by verdverm »

sjtindell wrote: post #354
llimos wrote: post #301

Most people on HN are rational people who look at the world in a rational way. Bitcoin and friends are not operating in a rational market, therefore we don't understand them, and most of us would probably be pretty lousy investors since we would try to make decisions rationally instead of memeing and YOLOing. But, and this is a key point, that doesn't make us right and them wrong . It's just a different kind of marke…

HN’s attitude is very surprising to me. I would think that they could get very excited about flash loans, decentralized exchanges (automated market makers), daos, and other concrete innovations coming out of crypto asset projects. I think it’s mostly jealousy and a feeling that they missed the boat, so they want to see it sink. I think that because I’ve had the feeling many times. They may not realize these are early…

I was excited 4 years ago when I first discovered these crypto concepts. As time has gone on and I've learned more about them, they are less interesting and come with a ton of baggage. There are interesting things like formal verification, but I expect that these types of things will be taken without the blockchain.

You shouldn't dismiss HN attitudes as jealousy or asleep, that is derogatory.

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#382

Post by rzanella »

dinobones wrote: post #245
rzanella wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not being pegged to a state-controlled currency means your devalued currency competes with stronger ones, at least on the fictitious transitional period, you're sure you want that ? Assuming a stateless money, when/if someone then steals your crypto coin, which gov't backed law/judicial system are you gonna turn to ?

if you aren’t wealthy you are effectively priced out of the US law/judicial system anyway. If I took $5,000, maybe even $10,000 from you right now there would be almost nothing you could do because the legal efforts to pursue me for that amount would likely equal or surpass that.

That's... unsettling.

10 years ago I had my bank account wiped/stolen in Brazil (!!!):

- went to the police, then to the bank (same day)

couple days later: all the money was back in my account.

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#383

Post by lima »

throwawayffffas wrote: post #332
kinnth wrote: post #124

Decentralisation offers the following value over centralisation: * Control by a majority, not a minority. (democratic) * Open ecosystem that visible and able to be analysed by anyone (transparent) * Immutable (no one makes up assets without everyone knowing about it) * Fair. Same price for everyone at all times, no chance of a monopoly. Those don't exist in central systems and so the price you must pay for that is sp…

First of all decentralization is not a property solely confined to cryptocurrencies. The traditional banking system is decentralized, there are thousands of banks that are all separate entities. There is no single central bank, even central banks are not unique, every country has one. Additionally the traditional banking system and cash have a huge advantage, no global consensus is required, Iran still has a banking…

> All these schemes while claiming to be immutable are really not, firstly the last block is always subject to being overridden by a longer chain with more blocks, thus everyone waits for multiple blocks(confirmations) before accepting a transaction as committed

Not in chains with synchronous consensus and instant finality. No forking.

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#384

Post by JuliusBranson »

ineptech wrote: post #176
rawtxapp wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Propaganda? Does it matter where they learned it as long as it's true and factual?

Right, but it's not. The idea that inflation "dilutes" wealth and is therefore bad for rich people is not true.

Correct. Inflation is when the dollar gets weaker for the masses because the elite are printing themselves dollars. Deflation is when the dollar gets stronger for the masses because the elite's proportion of the national currency is decreasing. We have pro-inflation, anti-deflation economic ideology because the elite fund the economists' "research."

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#385

Post by MildlySerious »

stevebmark wrote: post #247
Scarblac wrote: post #38

I wonder how much of the Crypto hype is because the US banking system still lives in the 1980s or thereabouts. If everybody in the US had access to bank accounts with easy electronic transfers within 5 seconds for no charge, no chargebacks and so on, as people are used to in the EU, would people still be excited about Bitcoin?

Crypto is used as a commodity and for scams, very rarely as a currency. Given that transferring crypto is hard, slower, more expensive, riskier, public, and more wasteful than real banking, I don’t see why these would be related.

> Given that transferring crypto is hard, slower, more expensive, riskier, public, and more wasteful than real banking, I don’t see why these would be related.

This is partially true, but I think a bad blanket statement.

Bitcoin has outperformed all other asset classes over the last decade.

You can get crypto credit cards that remove all complexity you aren't forced to deal with anyway. And even if that wasn't the case. Banking is hard, too, so that's a moot argument.

Ethereum and others are moving away from proof-of-work.

Upgrades like taproot and zkrollups improve privacy and can be used today.

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#386

Post by koonsolo »

stevebmark wrote: post #247
Scarblac wrote: post #38

I wonder how much of the Crypto hype is because the US banking system still lives in the 1980s or thereabouts. If everybody in the US had access to bank accounts with easy electronic transfers within 5 seconds for no charge, no chargebacks and so on, as people are used to in the EU, would people still be excited about Bitcoin?

Crypto is used as a commodity and for scams, very rarely as a currency. Given that transferring crypto is hard, slower, more expensive, riskier, public, and more wasteful than real banking, I don’t see why these would be related.

I don't think you are up to date. There are "cash" crypto's out there such as Nano, with sub second transactions, 0 fees, and can run the network on the power of a single windmill.

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#387

Post by isoprophlex »

cwkoss wrote: post #375

This is the second time this week I've seen an article from Diehl on the front page that is critical of cryptocurrency but has next to zero substance. Weird that people regard him as a crypto expert, he doesn't seem to understand the space very well. - Comparing Bitcoin to doge and shiba is laughable - Re progcoins, he says "After twelve years of these technologies existing" - Ethereum is only 6 years old... - Like m…

The thinly veiled ad hominem stuff against Diehl is uncalled for.

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#388

Post by CTDOCodebases »

horsawlarway wrote: post #253
CTDOCodebases wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“I don't trust the ledger to accurately reflect ownership (it can only represent possession, not true ownership).” Possession is ownership on the Bitcoin network. Not ownership in the sense of it is written down in some legal document somewhere but ownership in the sense that you have the power to perform a transaction with what you say you own. You were trusting a central party all along. If you didn’t you wouldn’t…

But the alternative here is that you have to place all your trust in an unknown and untrusted 3rd party to ever actually make an exchange. Even the silk-road used an escrow service that required that the seller trust the buyer, and both parties trust the silk-road. (a buyer places coins in escrow with the silk-road, the silk-road confirms it has the coins to the seller, the seller ships the product, the buyer unlocks…

After enough confirmations a transaction is final and I can trust that the transaction is final and my account balance on the ledger is correct.

Present forms of digital cash do not offer this. A payment can be reversed if the buyer claims the transaction was fraudulent and the banks involved agree to reverse the transaction. Money can be accidentally withdrawn from my account and I have to ask the bank to return it. In both these cases if the institutions involved refuse to return my money then I have to take the issue to court and I am deprived of using or investing this money in the meantime.

If consumer protections are your concern these laws exist in many countries regardless of the payment medium.

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#389

Post by rawtxapp »

AlexandrB wrote: post #376
rawtxapp wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you implying that no rational person should ever buy Bitcoin? That seems a bit far-fetched, no? At this point, considering that it's stronger than ever and it's pretty clear it's not going away, I would expect a rational person to allocate even a small percentage to it for diversification, in case they happen to be wrong on their conclusions or understanding of Bitcoin.

Couldn't you make the same argument for pets.com stock in early 2000? "Diversification" is a conveniently vague reason to invest in something when there are no "fundamentals" that can be evaluated. At the very least pets.com had some assets that could be sold off after the company went under. Bitcoin can't even claim to have that.

If this was 2013, I would agree with you, because the risk of it being worth nothing was much larger, but today the Bitcoin blockchain moves thousands of bitcoin per day (worth billions of dollars in value) and it's network effects are stronger than ever before and you can see usage go high through on-chain metrics (like # wallets, transfers) and increase in lightning network usage (1ml.com).

So I would say, investing in Bitcoin in 2013 probably has the same risk as investing in pets.com, but today, it would be like investing in Amazon a couple years after the dot com bubble when the trajectory is clearer. Just my 2 cents.

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#390

Post by verdverm »

mlcrypto wrote: post #366
secondaryacct wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The endless printing is more necessary than the strict stock control fot a currency. You cannot avoid people starving unless you do it, and you cannot live in peace unless you avoid people starving and getting desperate. You do know there was no printing in the middle age. Good old days these all were.

I see the world transitioning to a USD central bank digital coin for currency and Bitcoin as the store of value in the future

There will likely be many national currencies, the Digital Yuan comes to mind as a major contender. A global currency increase the risk to larger scale domino effect in the economy.
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