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Crypto is an unproductive bubble

alexkolchinski.com

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Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#371

Post by nl »

randomhodler84 wrote: post #213
nl wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm entirely unconvinced that self custody is an advantage for anyone except extremely sophisticated people (sophisticated in both the technical and financial sense). I've been doing blockchain on and off since 2008. Recently I lost a few thousand dollars by sending crypto to a L1 address when I was on a L2. I work on self-soverign identity in my day job. I've written smart contracts. I'm a careful person. Basically…

You mean you sent to an exchange address because you didn’t check the chain? Sorry mate. Not high scores for that. I’d your going to claim to be OG sign a message with the keys…

It was the Boba airdrop if you are familiar with that debacle. There was a L1 and L2 Boba address and and OMG address and the claim process instructions were... less than ideal. There were a bunch of people on the discord who did the same as me.

> I’d your

Let the person who has never made a typo be the first to throw stones.

Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#372

Post by chasil »

8organicbits wrote: post #369
chasil wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want you to pay attention to this very carefully: https://www.openssh.com/releasenotes.html * ssh(1), sshd(8): add the sntrup761x25519-sha512@openssh.com hybrid ECDH/x25519 + Streamlined NTRU Prime post-quantum KEX to the default KEXAlgorithms list (after the ECDH methods but before the prime-group DH ones). The next release of OpenSSH is likely to make this key exchange the default method. There is a non-zero prob…

I think this is a question of algorithm agility. Bitcoin has a mechanism to change its implementation[1], so it's possible to upgrade. On the mining side, miners would pick a new algorithm, vote, and then cut over when approved. Although, if a post-quantum technique allowed faster mining, a change to the mining algorithm may not be needed. Bitcoin would notice the faster hashrate and increase the difficulty, miners w…

I hope so. Your perspective seems sound.

One thing seems certain, waiting for NIST is folly.

Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#373

Post by dmitriid »

q-big wrote: post #113
jmcgough wrote: post #19

One of the biggest drawbacks for blockchain is that transactions can't be revoked after the fact (with the only exception being costly forks of the entire ledger), and there's no additional human oversight (like I'd get when sending a large amount of money through a bank) to protect me. If someone steals my credit card, I have my credit card company to give me some level of protection. They can block transactions if…

This is a problem (if you consider it as such) that smart contracts intend to solve. For example, in the smart contract introduce some authorities that are allowed to block and revoke transactions for some time (if the block chain has no support for certified timestamps, use "number of new blocks mined and appended to the blockchain" as substitute). Let the market decide what kind of protection stakeholders prefer.

"Smart contracts" are neither smart nor are they contracts.

It's a piece of code written in an esoteric programming language that even people who are experts in have trouble understanding and spotting errors in.

Compared to actual contracts which are human readable.

Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#374

Post by volkse »

Osiris wrote: post #320
pavlov wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU created and deployed instant zero-cost 24/7 bank transfers while crypto was twiddling its thumbs talking about “early days” and puffing out PoW carbon. If even the European Union moves faster than your cutting-edge decentralized system, maybe you have a problem.

You're comparing a centralized approach with the force of law to a decentralized approach which requires buy-in by the masses without any coercion. Of course the two approaches will be different.

I can’t understand how anyone has any confidence in crypto after the current Ukraine/Russia situation. I thought that crypto was decentralized and no-one could place restrictions on who could own it, and what they could do with it.

This also turned out to be total BS as Russian crypto accounts keep getting frozen. Funnily enough, I haven’t heard the “crypto community” make a single peep about this. Hilarious..

Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#375

Post by nl »

randomhodler84 wrote: post #361
nl wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't of course. If I still had that wallet.. I'm not really a "true crypto believer" though. I do have this from 2014: Project Proposal: Data Rental using the Ethereum Blockchain, Spetember 2014 https://imgur.com/a/XLo2P3Z If you know the history of Ethereum you'll know that is pretty early. I was on the old "decentralization" Yahoo mailing list and the p2p mailing list back in the early 2000's too. If you can fin…

What I object to is any doubt that today it is unsafe for anyone to self custody given the appropriate operational security. A hardware wallet is probably sufficient for nearly all cases of even non technical user. Where people go wrong these days is a) phished [education, instruct never never type those words into the computer…] b) tricked approvals [just don’t mess with eth until you know what you are doing. You wi…

> "I was there at the start but I still don’t really get why…”

Where do you get that?

I understand the reasoning entirely. I disagree that it is important or that the security trade off is appropriate for almost anyone.

Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#376

Post by adastra22 »

volkse wrote: post #374
Osiris wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're comparing a centralized approach with the force of law to a decentralized approach which requires buy-in by the masses without any coercion. Of course the two approaches will be different.

I can’t understand how anyone has any confidence in crypto after the current Ukraine/Russia situation. I thought that crypto was decentralized and no-one could place restrictions on who could own it, and what they could do with it. This also turned out to be total BS as Russian crypto accounts keep getting frozen. Funnily enough, I haven’t heard the “crypto community” make a single peep about this. Hilarious..

Noone’s crypto wallets have been frozen, afaik. Custodial services have frozen people’s accounts, but those are websites which hold your crypto for you. Not your keys, not your crypto.

Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#377

Post by randomhodler84 »

nl wrote: post #371
randomhodler84 wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean you sent to an exchange address because you didn’t check the chain? Sorry mate. Not high scores for that. I’d your going to claim to be OG sign a message with the keys…

It was the Boba airdrop if you are familiar with that debacle. There was a L1 and L2 Boba address and and OMG address and the claim process instructions were... less than ideal. There were a bunch of people on the discord who did the same as me. > I’d your Let the person who has never made a typo be the first to throw stones.

I was being rude. I am sorry for making a bad assumption about that. I’m not familiar with that one. I am pretty much a BTC maxi.

Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#378

Post by nurettin »

chasil wrote: post #308
pavlov wrote: post #302

Crypto people love to say “it’s the early days.” But it’s not. Bitcoin is 13 years old. At that age, Windows was on >90% of the world’s computers. Java at age 13 had taken over enterprise software and was about to conquer mobile via Android. Cryptos are used by maybe 0.1% of computer users (if we’re very generous about what exactly constitutes usage). Considering the amount of investment they are an expensive failure…

This is a major problem. Without redesign, this falls on "q-day". https://csrc.nist.gov/Projects/post-quantum-cryptography/rou... "Formal complaint regarding 8 June 2021 incident - 2021.06.15, Daniel J. Bernstein "Executive summary. A week ago Dr. Daniel Apon from NIST publicly accused me of professional misconduct. Specifically, he accused me of initiating private contact with NIST so as to provide false information…

Alexa, unsubscribe from amazon music.

Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#379

Post by lern_too_spel »

gonehome wrote: post #201
lern_too_spel wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your tokens become valueless to other Canadians, other Canadians won't accept them. Non-Canadians who trade with Canadians won't accept them because they can't trade them with Canadians. The value goes to zero by induction.

Yeah, a lot of this assumes you get out of Canada at that point. Just like the people fleeing Russia or Ukraine. The thing crypto gives you is the capability to get your wealth out intact (at least whatever you had moved into self-custody). If you have fiat in banks frozen by the Canadian government your wealth is trapped. You’re right if Canada banned Bitcoin it could influence the value of the coin. Similar to gove…

I wasn't discussing the case of Canada banning Bitcoin but of Canada sanctioning the truckers' wallets. Wherever the truckers go, their Bitcoins would no longer be allowed on Canadian exchanges.

The fiat equivalent would be moving money to an overseas account. Before you are sanctioned, doing so is just as easy as buying Bitcoin. After you are sanctioned, both are equally hard. The difference is that your Bitcoins can be demonetized, while your overseas assets can only be seized if the governments cooperate.

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