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The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

stephendiehl.com

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Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#571

Post by rawtxapp »

prewett wrote: post #345
rawtxapp wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have assets and debt (and a job that will actually pay well, keep up with inflation), money printing is awesome for you! If you're in the majority of people who don't have those things, life just gets harder and wealth gap keeps getting larger and larger.

> If you're in the majority of people who don't have those things ... Home ownership in the US is around 65% [0], so the majority do have an asset and mortgage. There are also some people who choose not to own a house but have other types of assets. Things really aren't as dire as you seem to think. And for those people who actually are harmed by inflation, I think the consensus is that they would be harmed by the ot…

Majority of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, if that's not dire, I don't know what is.

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#572

Post by carpo »

horsawlarway wrote: post #284
betwixthewires wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see your perspective. There's another perspective from which you could look at the details of your situation. You deferred to a trusted party to secure your wealth and because that third party was untrustworthy, you have to defer to an intermediary. Had you deferred to yourself to secure your wealth you wouldn't be in this situation. The ledger would be the canonical one of ownership and possession, and you wouldn'…

Ok - so follow along with me here: I owned no bitcoins at the time I desired to trade bitcoins for a physical product (in this case: ~7g of Cannabis) What recourse do I have that does not require trusting a third party? I do not own the required compute power to mine it myself (not technically true at the time, although certainly true today) I'd like to have you walk me through the exact set of steps to acquire my bi…

You could have reduced the risk substantially by transferring off their wallet to yours right after purchase. You still could have purchased your weed too.

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#573

Post by jakear »

almostkorean wrote: post #529
jakear wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's strange to me how the only two options are "pay obscene transaction fees" or "just keep your crypto in a centralized exchange and hope they don't go MtGox". Is it impossible to achieve the stated benefit of being able to make quick and easy transactions and being decentralized? I spent some time researching the best low transaction fee easily accessible crypto for making a sort of crypto Patreon, but the vast va…

Here are some projects working towards addressing the issues of blockchain scalability: - Lightning network on bitcoin. Super cheap and fast transactions, makes micropayments a reality (this is what Twitter is using) - Layer 2 solutions on Ethereum. There are two optimistic rollups currently on main net (Arbitrum and Optimism). Reddit has recently committed to building on Arbitrum. There are also ZK rollups (starkwar…

As I understand it these layer 2 solutions typically require a resolution transaction in order to actually extract value, which has similar costs to a normal on-chain transaction. In the ideal world folks would be able to use the existing infrastructure of established Bitcoin atms to make transactions with low fees, but that doesn’t seem like it will happen any time soon.

Things like the Twitter solution aren’t great, Twitter owns all the currency and is kind enough to let you have some sometimes. If I were to make my app I wouldn’t want ownership of any of the currency, too much liability.

I’m not very interested in the promises of bleeding edge crypto startups, in my experience they almost never pan out, and certainly aren’t accessible to the masses.

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#574

Post by jakear »

pphysch wrote: post #204
jakear wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's strange to me how the only two options are "pay obscene transaction fees" or "just keep your crypto in a centralized exchange and hope they don't go MtGox". Is it impossible to achieve the stated benefit of being able to make quick and easy transactions and being decentralized? I spent some time researching the best low transaction fee easily accessible crypto for making a sort of crypto Patreon, but the vast va…

> Is it impossible to achieve the stated benefit of being able to make quick and easy transactions and being decentralized? Yes. A transaction is a network-scale operation. It needs to be broadcast and confirmed by at least half the network. Otherwise it wouldn't be decentralized. As that network increases in size, the resources required for that operation increase proportionally. "Decentralization" is a bad meme tha…

Why should a transaction need to be a network scale operation in a decentralized scheme? The ultimate decentralized payment mechanism is bartering, in which the transaction only includes the people making the transaction.

Now, I don’t know how to translate that to the digital world, but there’s no clear reason why a decentralized network must inform the entire network of everything that happens in it.

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#575

Post by louwrentius »

cwkoss wrote: post #467
louwrentius wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. What is stated without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. These unfounded personal attacks is not what HW was about, I remember. > Comparing Bitcoin to doge a…

> What is stated without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. Lol, there is no evidence in this article, it's pure conjecture.

It’s the crypto people that have to prove that their stuff means something, the burden of proof is on them

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#576

Post by blacksmith_tb »

koonsolo wrote: post #551
blacksmith_tb wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was (if 'here' is the US), and I didn't lose money in my bank accounts?

It was a very close call, all because the banks were so reckless. Are you sure next time they will have enough money to bail them out again?

Of course, "too big to fail" - some of them almost certainly should have, though I would have expected the FDIC to work as intended then (instead of using public funds to prop up the banks themselves, it could have covered our deposits).

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#577

Post by compiler-guy »

wyager wrote: post #406
ineptech wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The anti-crypto case is not that it's "worse" than some other speculative investment asset (gold, comic books, etc), it's that crypto is a speculative asset, as opposed to the things it's sometimes claimed to be (e.g. currency, a new way to do finance, etc).

All monetized assets like USD or gold are "speculative". I speculate that my dollar probably won't lose more than 10-20% of its value in the next year.

The value of the dollar has a floor in that the US government requires that you remit your taxes in dollars. Sure, the US could cease to exist, but that is far less likely than any scenario where bitcoin goes to zero.

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#578

Post by andrewla »

actually_a_dog wrote: post #421
wayoutthere wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

KYC laws aimed at anti-money laundering; any large movement of money has to be between trusted parties. Which means a verification process that is more thorough the more money you move around.

Right, but that just means some paperwork gets filed when you attempt to do large transactions with cash, not that it's literally illegal to do those transactions. I don't understand why the toplevel comment says it's illegal to buy stocks. It seems like it would be merely very difficult, not illegal. I think your biggest problem would be finding a broker that would accept a pile of cash to buy you stocks with, rathe…

You are correct; buying a stock with cash is impractical but not illegal or impossible.

You cannot transact with an exchange, you cannot transact with a broker or a broker/dealer, using cash -- your cash must be deposited somewhere in order for it to be used.

You can do a private sale of stock where you give someone cash and they transfer stock that they own to your name, either through a broker or by signing the transfer form on the back of an actual stock certificate. To actually claim ownership of the stock (to receive proxy and dividends) you must transact with a broker dealer or the issuing agent, which will almost certainly mean that you have to deal with AML and KYC regulations.

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#579

Post by exdsq »

mkeeter wrote: post #410
traeregan wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the author's undisclosed competing product Which is: http://adjoint.io "Adjoint digitises cash and settlement processes for multinational corporates."

It's even funnier than that – back in 2019, Adjoint was bragging about "delivering blockchain technology built specifically for the needs of the financial industry" [1] No idea if they pivoted away from blockchain or just stopped saying it on their website, but it makes me take this with several grains of salt. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20190502154457/https://www.adjoi...

He wrote an article a while back insulting the morals of a few colleagues in the Haskell world. When I went to share it with said colleagues I realised he had an account on our internal slack. He had previously worked there on said technologies that he was then slandering, something he hadn't made public.

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#580

Post by cwkoss »

louwrentius wrote: post #575
cwkoss wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What is stated without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. Lol, there is no evidence in this article, it's pure conjecture.

It’s the crypto people that have to prove that their stuff means something, the burden of proof is on them

What happened to "What is stated without evidence can be dismissed without evidence."?
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