501–510 of 539 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can’t say a social network is objectively better when all of the people you consider to be cool don’t use it.
Yeah, there's nothing at all objectively better in any way on Mastadon.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"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.
> Compared to actual contracts which are human readable. People are just more used to and exposed to texts written in, say, Englisch in comparison to code written in, say, Solidity.
Moreover, human languages will always be more simple at expressing human interactions than programming languages. "You pay me 2.5% of the agreed sum on the 25th of each month" will always be infinitely more understandable to an average human than whatever the implementation of that would be in Soldity.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If the "benefit" is that crypto-currencies allow people to evade laws, well... that's probably true, it's just not a great selling point if you're aiming for mainstream adoption. Especially considering that, for everything else other than evading the law, a standard currency would be more practical than a crypto-currency. And this addressed in the article, it's one of the predictions: "cryptocurrency adoption will be…
Retaining more individual capability does allow people to commit crimes (though in the public ledger case this is often a stupid idea if you stay in the jurisdiction where what you’re doing is a crime). Not all governments are good, not all laws are just. It’s easy to roll eyes at this in the west, but a lot of countries in the world are lead by bad people acting in their own self-interest. The other bit you get from…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, there's nothing at all objectively better in any way on Mastadon.
of course there is! It's ad free and fully customizable. Isn't that objectively better?
Not really? I'm pretty happy with the Twitter UX as it is.
> ad free
Meh.. I don't really care one way or the other.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But why would someone accept your less-useful crypto when they can accept fully useful crypto instead? Other exchanges will either refuse to accept it (easier) or have to mark it as tainted and set up separate markets that accept those tokens and pay them out.
You're right that sanctions and restrictions could impact the price. What I'm arguing is that this impact doesn't cause the price to be zero, requires global coordination to have a big impact, and that even in this case, the self-custody capability of crypto is still something better than the alternative (no access to any funds or any ability to transact). We're also discussing an extreme worst case (and even in that…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Retaining more individual capability does allow people to commit crimes (though in the public ledger case this is often a stupid idea if you stay in the jurisdiction where what you’re doing is a crime). Not all governments are good, not all laws are just. It’s easy to roll eyes at this in the west, but a lot of countries in the world are lead by bad people acting in their own self-interest. The other bit you get from…
Okay, just don't call it the future of money. A form of money that is worse at everything except clandestine transactions is not the future of money. Regarding the supposed guarantees of limited supply, this is both irrelevant and factually wrong. The issuer of a currency (e.g. a central bank, or the "bitcoin protocol" in the case of bitcoin) does not control the supply of the currency. This is because fractional res…
Limited supply is not irrelevant or “factually wrong” for a long term store of value (like gold) which is more the role BTC plays specifically.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're right that sanctions and restrictions could impact the price. What I'm arguing is that this impact doesn't cause the price to be zero, requires global coordination to have a big impact, and that even in this case, the self-custody capability of crypto is still something better than the alternative (no access to any funds or any ability to transact). We're also discussing an extreme worst case (and even in that…
If you're a random Ukrainian citizen in Russia, you can buy assets outside Russia and have your wealth on the other side before the sanctions. The fact that you can buy Bitcoin in Russia from other Russians and leave is only a temporary workaround with Russia not yet regulating it. People consistently mistake the fact that Bitcoin hasn't been regulated with the idea that Bitcoin can't be regulated, which is false.
This is probably why Chinese wealth leverages it to get around attempted controls by the ccp despite regulation.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My initial comment, which (I think) we have been debating thus far, stated "If you take this argument to its logical conclusion, anarchism is the only form of free government." It seems that we are in agreement on this point? If so, I'm really not sure on which point you're disagreeing with me (with a healthy amount of sneering, nonetheless, which I might remind you is against HN guidelines). Is it that the term 'soc…
I am sorry if it read as sneering, i tend to loose track of people identifying with the positions, i hoped to make the error in perspective better visible. You argument is that my assertion cant be true because it would mean Anarchism to be the only form of government. I think this is intellectually dishonest, you dont end up at it as a logical conclusion, after all, there are some practical problems with Anarchism t…
Re: statement 1, if any single individual were able to disagree, a murderer could just say 'I don't consent with the social contract, because I believe it's within my rights to murder'. At that point, I don't see how you can describe it any other way than 'anarchism', as anybody can then choose the rules that apply to themselves without regard to other members of society.
Re: statement 2, the terms aren't set in stone, they can be changed by the people, i.e. via democratic processes or via revolution.
Anyway, we are going in circles here, and you are also continuing to call my attempt at a good-faith discussion 'dishonest', so this will be my last comment on the topic. Have a good day.