351–360 of 364 posts
Crypto is ridden with rugpulls. It’s extremely hard to find a diamond in the rough and you’re going to lose money doing it. Look for projects that focus on building community rather than pumping and dumping. I’ve been dabbling in DogeBonk and it’s funny how other “bonk” coins keep getting rug pulled around it while DogeBonk keeps on going
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So it seems like you are saying DotComs were a scam? Which is obviously insane. I believe we are seeing something similar in crypto. Yes to bubble, and yes there are scams, but wow it seems like there are a lot of people here that think the entire thing is a scam. There are a lot of insanely smart people working on this that are obviously not doing scams, maybe you should take a deeper look?
Agreed. Super-smart people made these systems possible. Sad to see many people associate crypto with scams and illegal stuff. Well, I've bought a tshirt with Ether and VPN subscription to access Wikipedia and YouTube, from a country that blocks many common VPNs. Super, illegal. Let them keep saying crypto is scam, people who believe in it will win in the long run anyway.
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Bitcoin does have smart contracts; it has its own bytecode language. What about it isn't “DeFi”?
You appear to be enraged that a specific open-source project you chose doesn't have good enough documentation for a specific feature you want, which is not the main aim of the project. Not sure I can help. Additionally, all the answers to your question are contained in my first comment.
> that a specific open-source project you chose
It was but an example; I assert the rest are also like that. I chose Bitcoin because it is the biggest, but I could just as easily have chosen Ethereum (as I have already said).
> doesn't have good enough documentation for a specific feature you want, which is not the main aim of the project.
If not making transactions, blocks, and mining, what is the main aim of Bitcoin?
> Additionally, all the answers to your question are contained in my first comment.
You provided a link to the documentation for Solidity, one of many high-level languages over the Ethereum VM. While it provides a little documentation of Ethereum bytecode, and a high-level overview of how Ethereum is used to handle smart contracts, this isn't Ethereum documentation. The answers are not to be found there.
(And I don't expect you to help; I'm aware that the answers aren't easy to find. That's my whole point!)
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> you need to know how all the small parts work to explain the functionality. I know how all the small parts work. It's not new technology. I just don't know how Bitcoin does it! To mine a block, you: • collect a load of transactions (somehow) • validate them (the obvious stuff, plus the special transaction type requirements, plus unspecified “consensus“ magic I can't find anywhere) • put them in a block (somehow) al…
collect a load of transactions (somehow): by this you mean the mempool. the implementation is client dependent, it uses the p2p network to receive new txs, thats what you need to look at to know how to "get txs from the network". some implementations have better documentation. if you need to look at code i would recommend the go implementation https://github.com/btcsuite just because it looks cleaner to me. validate…
> finding a block means that the hash256() operation (sha256(sha256(block))) returns an hash with at least D (either left or right most, can't recall right now) bits set to 0, where D is the current difficult, which is adjusted by the network to make the 10min/block average time
This is a lies-to-children explanation. Bitcoin actually uses less-than a certain value (source: [0]). The tricky part is that a SHA-256 digest is a 256-bit number, and the SHA-256 function's input is a sequence of bits; the SHA-256 specification explicitly declines to specify a canonical representation of that 256-bit number, so it can't be used as the input to SHA-256 without explaining how it's being used. I can't find anywhere what this intermediate function (the one I called f) actually is. There are only half a dozen obvious possibilities (bits from most→least, or least→most, and the four normal ways of doing ASCII hex digests) so it's not that hard to guess, given an example… but still. It's the principle of the matter; it's all under-documented.
(Thanks for the rest of the info by the way. You've given me leads I wouldn't otherwise have been able to easily find.)
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There are definitely ponzi schemes in defi, but I'm not sure celsius is one just because they pay what seem on face to be impossible rates. Gemini, which is regulated and based out of NYC, offers 8% on GUSD, their USD stablecoin. My understanding is returns on this come from a huge demand for crypto lending from institutions participating in the "basis trade", and a limited supply of USD lending available to them for…
They claim to make 20-40% APY risk free. Just LMAO right now. There is no such thing as 20-40% APY risk free, if you think you can get such returns risk free you must be a total fool. I am unsure how they are doing it but I presume they are using a technique similar to the "Arbitrage in Dual Classes" for stocks. Basically you bet that the price of the class A and the class B of a stock will eventually merge to the sa…
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I found someone's car keys in the street this morning. I'm pretty sure that didn't entitle me to their car.
No, because keys for a car and keys for a wallet are wholly different, and even then, picking a lock (bruteforcing a keyspace) isn't comparable, because the value, intent, and purpose of a car is not in its properties of being able to be transferred, transmitted, and it's future value increasing (although that last one is true incidentally), but it is primarily used to get from A to B. If you found a gift card with t…
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Seems super unlikely that somebody with a HN account can't find docs for defi projects that in most cases have github accounts with available contracts and api docs, doesn't it? Maybe it's just deceptive
And not to mention that by definition, those DeFi contracts are readable. The actual code, itself. Sure, there might be (and probably are) bugs, and we need auditing tools, the list goes on, but at least it's not a black box.
At least smart contracts usually don't have that much code, so it's not too much effort to reverse-engineer. But that's not source code.
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Just like with any kind of criminal, stopping deceptive crypto scammers isn’t ‘coddling’ people at the expense of everyone else. Society relies on trust. The crypto dream that it can be trustless is just a way to cheat people.
> Just like with any kind of criminal, stopping deceptive crypto scammers isn’t ‘coddling’ people at the expense of everyone else. It is if you're trying to stop these scams by putting greater constraints on, say, the fiat on- and off-ramps. I mean, how exactly are you going to stop the average investor in doing something dumb like dumping their money into a shady project, without placing additional hurdles on everyo…
That’s a selling point advanced by crypto advocates.
Frankly, it’s ok to make that point. What is not ok is pretending that crypto isn’t also a high risk environment full of scams.
I’m not trying to police anything. I can’t stop crypto advocates claiming it’s a good place for regular people to invest.
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> Just like with any kind of criminal, stopping deceptive crypto scammers isn’t ‘coddling’ people at the expense of everyone else. It is if you're trying to stop these scams by putting greater constraints on, say, the fiat on- and off-ramps. I mean, how exactly are you going to stop the average investor in doing something dumb like dumping their money into a shady project, without placing additional hurdles on everyo…
> The whole point is that you're allowed to move, manage, and spend your assets as you see fit, without any government's ability to freeze your assets or block you from accessing financial services via sanctions That’s a selling point advanced by crypto advocates. Frankly, it’s ok to make that point. What is not ok is pretending that crypto isn’t also a high risk environment full of scams. I’m not trying to police an…
I don't pretend that at all. Like I've said elsewhere in this thread, "caveat emptor." I am sorry if others have told you that is not the case about crypto. Unfortunately, I cannot do anything about them.
> I’m not trying to police anything. I can’t stop crypto advocates claiming it’s a good place for regular people to invest.
Then we are in full agreement. As I said elsewhere, the average Joe who cannot remember their own passwords should not be using crypto, IMO. With freedom comes the freedom to shoot yourself in the foot, and unless you understand basic digital safety procedures, you are best off not shooting yourself in the foot.
Cryptocurrencies would be so boring without the scams and shenanigans. I love the wild west.
Maybe because without the scams and shenanigans all that remains is some imaginary tokens that literally do nothing and serve no purpose other than "hodling" them?