Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Crypto: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

seldo.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 318 posts

Re: Crypto: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

#191

Post by streamofdigits »

sjtindell wrote: post #169
streamofdigits wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now anyone can play, at the same time that traditional paths to wealth... the association of wealth with "playing" is very much a metastasis of the old system masqeurading as some sort of innovation. this is not wealth creation, this is zero sum games robbing orphans and widows. be my guest "playing" and feeling smug about it, but lets not rewritte the meaning of words actually that strongest hint that crypto as it…

Sure, I see you saying there’s no “real value” here. I get where you’re coming from, there’s no clear output of value the way we think about it sometimes. For years, even owning tokens, I was torn by this dichotomy. There’s no real value being produced…yet they’re transacting millions of dollars, and now billions, and now trillions. It was hard for me to reconcile that. What gives? I would ask you to consider your de…

> If you also advocate for the shuttering of high frequency trading firms...

yes, that is what I mean by "metastasis of the old system" but there is much more nuance: the overfinancialization of the economy is a recent phenomenon and while it is not black-and-white to separate from actual underlying intermediation needs I seem to recall somebody claiming that 5% of the current financial sector is actually useful. The rest is parasitic wealth transfer, essentially exploiting governance failures. With crypto there is no real economy so it is 100% parasitic.

I don't have a problem with an entertainement oriented gambling industry provided it is informed, discretionary and it does not become an abused addiction. But ideally in a society that has real problems to solve (health, education, environmental degradation) you want to harness the speculative instincts of both finacial system end-users and intermediaries to really perform "God's work"

Re: Crypto: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

#192

Post by aemreunal »

8note wrote: post #166
aemreunal wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> in much of the world private healthcare is accepted and efficient. It is accepted in many parts of the world, unfortunately, but in what part of the world is it "efficient"? Can you give an example? Is "basic medicine costing $500 (see insulin) to the few that can afford it and the rest dying because they can't access it" what you define as efficient? > I'd rather euthanize myself at age 80 and pay much lower taxes…

> So the rich should get clean streets and running water while the poor walk on their own shit? That's a pretty accurate depiction of the US. Seattle at least

At least San Francisco is more democratic in that sense. We all get to walk on some amount of shit :P

Re: Crypto: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

#193

Post by lui8906 »

saberience wrote: post #174
mantenpanther wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being technically a verifiable signature, this brings new incentives for users (emotions, possibly valuable) and devs (monetary, user base) which might change the game. But I agree, until we see more advanced intermediary-platforms only the simplest forms like unique avatars or simple rpg-items will be possible to integrate.

NFT technology doesn't add anything for games that isn't already available using guess what, a database! Using a MySQL or whatever database allows single use only items, one-off items that only player can have, multi-use items, any possible combination of items is possible using simple SQL. It's not rocket science, the only difference (which doesn't really add any utility to games) is the idea of this database being…

> https://mmos.com/news/ubisoft-deleted-account-with-hundreds-...

"Trust us, your items are safe with us!"

> the only difference (which doesn't really add any utility to games) is the idea of this database being public.

On the contrary, this does add utility. By the database being public I: A) Have reasonable guarantees of ownership of my items B) Can use my high value items across multiple experiences

Re: Crypto: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

#194

Post by klntsky »

nmaley wrote: post #187

Some remarks from Captain Obvious here. The primary use case for crypto is simple: (1) People buy crypto because it keeps going up in value (2) It keeps going up in value because people keep buying it. (3) For why people keep buying Crypto, see (1). That's the logic of a Ponzi scheme. All previous Ponzi schemes failed because either (a) sooner or later the scheme runs out of new suckers, and/or (b) the authorities in…

> so as not to cause a crash in their remaining holdings. That is one reason BTC prices are so volatile.

I may not have all the data, but is there any evidence that at least one observable price drop was caused by someone's cash-out e.g. in BTC?

Re: Crypto: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

#195

Post by Thlom »

Slartie wrote: post #130
jasongi wrote: post #115

I don't understand how any take on crypto can not mention that it is now the de-facto currency of online black markets, from pornhub to silk road 9.0 or whatever version we're up to. This is crypto's utility and the only thing I've seen crypto being used for seriously that isn't speculation. Cryptocurrency is disrupting the black markets the same way amazon/ebay/online shopping disrupted the retail markets. Crypto is…

I'd add ransomware payments to the list, but otherwise your take "the problem was found back in 2011 - it's just that nobody wants to admit it" is spot-on! An interesting tangent of your BitTorrent analogy is that, for BitTorrent the protocol, an actually legal use case was found later: it is now used to create powerful ad-hoc CDNs for limited use cases with the novel property of gaining bandwidth automatically as mo…

At my last workplace we used BitTorrent to distribute content to thousands of sites. The endpoints were not ‘seeding’, the main reason for us to use it was the splitting of files into pieces and the automatic checksumming of the content. Quite convenient when the content could be several hundred GB.

Re: Crypto: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

#197

Post by randomhodler84 »

jasongi wrote: post #173
kmmlng wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With credit cards, you have to give out your details to whoever you are paying. That party will save them somewhere and then there is a possibility that someone else will gain access to your details and abuse them. You won't ultimaltely lose money here, because your credit card company will reverse the transactions, as you said. Being the victim of credit card fraud is still a hassle, however. With crypto, the only t…

Sure, but I think the risk is overrated. Almost all online shops outsource payment processing to a third party payment gateway, which you can validate pretty easily. They never get access to your details in order to abuse them. Third party payment processor breaches where CC data is lost are quite rare I don't think I've read about one in a very long time. Sure, I guess you can't get phished out of secrets with crypt…

The last time my cc was compromised is when the bad guys injected js into a large e-commerce site and stole the card data. This is a real threat. I’d rather not use any pull based payment mechanism if possible. Push only.

Re: Crypto: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

#199

Post by thenoblesunfish »

The author states without very specific evidence that "proof of stake" demonstrably works, and thus quickly dismisses the energy costs of cryptocurrency. I'd personally be very interested to hear more about that, since there is a lot of hand waving around proof of stake. The cynic in me says that it would already be broadly used, if there weren't fundamental problems with it. It does, however, seem like a handy way to support the idea, in the long term, wasting real-world resources isn't an essential element of crypto, which is of course very attractive to people who stand to make short term gains from crypto.

Re: Crypto: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

#200

Post by ls15 »

secondcoming wrote: post #164
ls15 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speculation is a use case and a market too

How easy is it to convert gains back into fiat though?

You send it from your wallet to the exchange where you bought it, sell it for fiat and withdraw it to your bank account. The most complicated parts are complying with KYC regulation and calculating taxes, as well as not losing or leaking your private keys.

If the asset has only low liquidity, then it is difficult to sell it at the sticker price and your sale may actually lower the price, but this will not happen for most people with high liquidity assets, such as BTC or ETH and so on.

Post reply on HN