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The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

stephendiehl.com

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Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#641

Post by anonymoushn »

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.

Transferring SPL USDC is easier, faster, less wasteful, and less expensive than transferring dollars in a bank account.

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#642

Post by TheProbes »

horsawlarway wrote: post #114
voldacar wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Now it turns out I have to turn around and trust a central authority anyways! That authority being the government that is handling the prosecution of MtGox for fraud and theft. In theory, DeFi can solve this. In practice it is hampered by poor UX and high transaction/gas fees. I think in the far future, the idea of ever having "your" assets in a wallet whose key you don't control will be seen as a ludicrous archaism…

> Sorry for your loss btw, that really sucks You and me both - 41 bitcoin at $4.17 a piece. Admittedly, if they hadn't been stolen I was planning on buying a 1/4 of weed with them, so I probably wouldn't be rich either way... shrug Fun story though - I can honestly say I spent more than USD 10 million in bitcoin on weed in college. Only about $500 at the time.

You should be getting some of them back soon then right?

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#643

Post by bildung »

rvz wrote: post #524
bildung wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Such claims must be further substantiated with strong and sufficient evidence. No, it's the other way around. Bitcoin only employed approaches that were well-researched already, the innovation essentially was combining these together. The projects I mentioned claim that they can achieve better performance without the known costs of bitcoin (really slow, really energetically expensive). It is up to them to post proo…

> No... So you have no evidence or sources to your previous claims? As expected. > Projects with some form of blockchain, which Stellar and Ripple don't have. Projects such as what? Yet again no examples or sources given and more unfounded claims. > I only replied with the projects named by posters before me. Nano has no blockchain, only a DAG (a proven, decades-old data structure used e.g. in spreadsheets). And your…

> So you have no evidence or sources to your previous claims? As expected.

If someone comes around and claims to have invented a perpetuum mobile, it is not my duty to disproof them.

> Projects such as what?

Such as Bitcoin or Ethereum.

> First of all evidence that it isn't a 'blockchain'?

It's in their whitepapers, read it up. With all due respect, I don't get the feeling you know what these words mean. Hint: the G in DAG stands for "graph", so it can't be a blockchain.

Take a step back for the moment and think about it: The inherent problem cryptocurrencies have to solve, when you take away central coordination, is the trust issue with the data. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies tried to replace the trust in the central institution with trust in the implemented market incentives. That's why there is mining. They didn't put mining into the equation because they liked putting out CO2. There has to be something expensive to compensate for the lack of central coordination. That is why crypto is so horribly slow and expensive. The inventors didn't sit around and thought of creating the slowest possible implementation, it simply has to be expensive so that forging the ledger is expensive - because that price is the only thing preventing the rewriting of history.

With a central institution you don't have this problem: If say Paypal is the only institution allowed to write onto the ledger, you can easily have 100k ops per second or more - because these literally are simple writes to a conventional database.

You simply can't have both. In cryptocurrencies, by definition, everyone connected to the net has write access to the ledger. So you have to have a method to make writing to it expensive. If some project comes around and claims to have invented something that can only be described as an economic perpetuum mobile, i.e. having neither central coordination nor expensive writes, it is their burden of proof. Just like bitcoin did.

Edit: I looked into Nanos whitepaper and apparently Nano is trivially DDOSable for very small amounts of money. Have a look yourself:

Page 7: 4.2million transactions = 1.7G ledger size. So a transaction is 405 bytes.

Page 8: A GTX 1060 can calculate 1.25tx/seconds.

Pre Covid a GTX was 200€ and could spam the ledger with 43.74MB/day. So one only needs to invest 100k€ to flood the ledger with 22G/day / 660G/month.

So either a) the whitepaper lies, or b) Nano is completely broken, or c) There is centralization somewhere to ward off that spam.

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#644

Post by anonymoushn »

worik wrote: post #610
koonsolo wrote: post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't get it do you? There is no point in giving arguments to people who don't understand. All this HN discussions have proven that already, no? Do you really think at this point you or me are going to change someones opinion with arguments?

That is not a logical argument. No crypto booster has an answer to: It is not useful Or It is a huge waste of energy Or All the technology involved has better counterparts I do not think I will change your mind, but others are reading this

Cross-posted: Transferring SPL USDC is easier, faster, less wasteful, and less expensive than transferring dollars in a bank account.

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#645

Post by TheProbes »

bhouston wrote: post #71

Stephen is mostly likely right that the decentralized nature of Crypto is not really a benefit. That said digital cash and tokens and NFTs do have value and I expect them to get even more popular. I am reminded of the P2P/decentralized nature of Napster and how it was going to be a revolution. Napter's P2P infrastructure (and later Gnutelle and Bittorrent) allowed it to operate in a legal gray zone or at least have d…

I think that the main problem with this logic is that Bittorrent is a tech designed to illegally distribute a consumer good, ie a movie. Once the movie has made it's final stop, your eyeballs, that's it. It's been consumed.

Cryptocurrency only has value if you can sell it on to someone else, and it's value is entirely dependent on what value you think you will be able to sell it for.

Once the number starts to go down as fiat on/off ramps start to get squeezed, it will be come much much less attractive to everyone, including, and maybe especially, to criminals. It only have value to them currently because they can store value in it and exchange it for fiat with non-criminals. If it becomes criminalized everywhere, and their only option is exchanging it with other criminals......well. It's not the same as Bittorrent is it?

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#646

Post by TheProbes »

moolcool wrote: post #222
bhouston wrote: post #71

Stephen is mostly likely right that the decentralized nature of Crypto is not really a benefit. That said digital cash and tokens and NFTs do have value and I expect them to get even more popular. I am reminded of the P2P/decentralized nature of Napster and how it was going to be a revolution. Napter's P2P infrastructure (and later Gnutelle and Bittorrent) allowed it to operate in a legal gray zone or at least have d…

> am reminded of the P2P/decentralized nature of Napster and how it was going to be a revolution Torrents still account for a massive share of internet traffic. Furthermore, I think it's reductive to just consider it a tool for piracy. Blizzard uses (used?) BitTorrent in their game launcher to alleviate server costs. Not to mention that a lot of bittorrent traffic lives in the fuzzy area of sharing lost media and aba…

I think that the main problem with this logic is that Bittorrent is a tech designed to illegally distribute a consumer good, ie a movie. Once the movie has made it's final stop, your eyeballs, that's it. It's been consumed. Cryptocurrency only has value if you can sell it on to someone else, and it's value is entirely dependent on what value you think you will be able to sell it for.

Once the number starts to go down as fiat on/off ramps start to get squeezed, it will be come much much less attractive to everyone, including, and maybe especially, to criminals. It only have value to them currently because they can store value in it and exchange it for fiat with non-criminals. If it becomes criminalized everywhere, and their only option is exchanging it with other criminals......well. It's not the same as Bittorrent is it?

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#647

Post by CTDOCodebases »

Jerrrry wrote: post #605
CTDOCodebases wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They will just try to turn crypto into the existing banking network by forcing citizen coin holders onto the exchanges, banning transactions from non custodial addresses and continuing to control the on-ramps and off-ramps. This way they can monitor transaction and if they don’t like something or are suspicious they can just seize the funds once they hit an on-ramp/off-ramp. A CBDC will be introduced and all other US…

This. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102 Remember, the use of encryption above a certain keyspace is still considered exporting arms, and subject to ITAR. They will let more suffer from the bubble to allow swift legal reform.

Maybe the bubble will be popped deliberately like it was back in 2017.[0]

[0] https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2019/10/22/trump-administra...

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#648

Post by mandmandam »

bildung wrote: post #643
rvz wrote: post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No... So you have no evidence or sources to your previous claims? As expected. > Projects with some form of blockchain, which Stellar and Ripple don't have. Projects such as what? Yet again no examples or sources given and more unfounded claims. > I only replied with the projects named by posters before me. Nano has no blockchain, only a DAG (a proven, decades-old data structure used e.g. in spreadsheets). And your…

> So you have no evidence or sources to your previous claims? As expected. If someone comes around and claims to have invented a perpetuum mobile, it is not my duty to disproof them. > Projects such as what? Such as Bitcoin or Ethereum. > First of all evidence that it isn't a 'blockchain'? It's in their whitepapers, read it up. With all due respect, I don't get the feeling you know what these words mean. Hint: the G…

> apparently Nano is trivially DDOSable for very small amounts of money

Do a little more research - Nano had real life spam attacks, then mitigated the spam problem with an innovative 'bucket' method. This put the lie to the common Bitcoin Maxi claim that "There has to be something expensive to compensate for the lack of central coordination."

As for Nano not being a blockchain; hint: there are chains of blocks. Look at the Nano Wiki page (very short): "Nano uses a block-lattice data structure, where every account has its own blockchain (account-chain)."

I'd say it's funny how confidently wrong your comments are; but it's just way way to common to be anything but tedious. Which was my original point precisely.

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#649

Post by TheProbes »

tigereyeTO wrote: post #260

The author of this article makes specious claims that can each be refuted. >Any application that could be done on a blockchain could be better done on a centralized database. Except crime. That's simply not true. First he doesn't define "better" which is incredibly important when making such a claim. I would agree that centralized databases can do things "more quickly" and "with less overhead" but you'd lose the most…

I'm not that au fait with the other cases you mention, but Helium is a straight up scam. No-one uses it for anything at all, even in markets where they have full coverage. This is because, in the real world, companies need security. They will pay a little bit extra so that: A: The network works everywhere, and doesn't suddenly develop dead spots because Jason went scuba diving for a week and turned off his node and B: There is someone on the end of the phone they can call when things go wrong.

No-one beyond those trying to make money of their tokens cares about Helium at all, easily provable by looking at their data record. "Oh....but LIME scooters!" No, they ripped off Lime's logo and are BSing that Lime uses their network. Lime doesn't. Lime uses a non-blockchain network called Twillio, because they are a real business in the real world need the things I mentioned above. https://customers.twilio.com/2050/lime/

Helium's only business, like every blockchain business that I have ever seen, is scamming people to buy tokens and selling them hardware. Oh, and lying.

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#650

Post by pjc50 »

rawtxapp wrote: post #219
pjc50 wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is crypto if not money printing? While any one chain may be limited in issue, you can always just fork it or create a new currency or token. People are printing tokens at a phenomenal rate. And unbacked or badly backed "stablecoins" are money printing of real-looking but unstable currency.

What gives a chain value is the network effects which are notoriously hard to establish. So yes, you can fork it, but can you get people to actually use it? Really doubt it.

BCH allegedly has a billion dollars of daily transactions and is worth about 1% of officially-forked bitcoin: https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin-cash/
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