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Cryptocurrency doesn’t address the hard parts of financial inclusion

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Re: Cryptocurrency doesn’t address the hard parts of financial inclusion

#191

Post by randomhodler84 »

loceng wrote: post #186
randomhodler84 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you were at the whim of the banks. They could confiscate your funds, lose the tx, reverse the payments, etc. You are missing what cryptocurrency is about. No banks. No middle man. No censorship. No do-overs. Personal responsibility for wealth. When a person says “but I can do x with bank” they have missed the entire point of the exercise.

And Bitcoin et al is at the whim of the government, example: China ban Bitcoin et al.

Governments can ban whatever they like, it is meaningless. Bitcoin exists. As long as there is a communication channel, transactions will flow. It is a simple thing, and cannot be stopped. Every network level distribution can by bypassed. It is by design.

Re: Cryptocurrency doesn’t address the hard parts of financial inclusion

#192

Post by dmitriid »

everfree wrote: post #190
dmitriid wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, hackers remove your money or exploit an error in your smart contract, the history is there, okay. Then the data and transaction history is dropped. Yup, the " " tells you that history is correct. So?

Just because you don't understand a data structure doesn't make it a magic buzzword. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merkle_tree#Uses

That is not an answer to my question.

Re: Cryptocurrency doesn’t address the hard parts of financial inclusion

#193

Post by dmitriid »

everfree wrote: post #189
dmitriid wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't have time to do the chain analysis right now For a system that claims to "have all data on the chain" it sure seems to be hard to trace the money. > looks like they cashed out the equivalent of at least mid-7-figures USD. That amount of money is easy to cash out even on a relatively small exchange. I've seen a few transfers out to USDT. And then some transfers to Kuna.io which is an offshore company registe…

> For a system that claims to "have all data on the chain" it sure seems to be hard to trace the money. What I linked you was a raw trace of the money. It includes all transactions to and from the address, with the amounts of each transaction shown, and with the exchange addresses labeled. If you don't want to pore through their account history manually, write a script. The API is free. > It looks more like someone d…

> Do you really think we just witnessed a 7-figure heist from the Ukrainian government in plain view, and nobody is reporting on it?

Oh sweet summer child. "A criminal who stole from the government, a heist from the Ukrainian government".

How about: someone in the government found a way to profit during the war using tools that are largely unknown to the public, and where "plain sight" is "write a script, the API is free"?

Re: Cryptocurrency doesn’t address the hard parts of financial inclusion

#194

Post by dmitriid »

everfree wrote: post #184
dmitriid wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Data doesn't magically get deleted from the internet with "no trace". This is what you said, emphasis mine: "Bitcoin make the silly argument that ... a full history of all transactions needs to be maximally available on the network. Other chains either drop, or plan to drop data that's been on the network for over a year or so". I'm reading exactly what you wrote. I don't know, may be the meaning of words in crypto…

There's a wide spectrum between a piece of data being maintained by every participant of a particular blockchain and maximally available, and that data being completely unavailable to anyone. It's that spectrum between 0-of-N and consensus-enforced N-of-N that you don't seem to grasp. I'll say it again, once a piece of data is no longer maintained by all N-of-N participants in a blockchain as a matter of its consensu…

> there are many reasons why particular actors would want to retain that data

> data availability is likely to remain incentivized within dedicated sub-protocols

> private entities that will have their own external incentives to retain that data

A lot of wishful thinking which is presented as fact. Someone somewhere might still retain all that data because someone somewhere might have some incentives, and hopefully someone might still retain that data.

Whereas the reality is this: history will be purged. There are zero guarantees for availability of any historical data after the purge.

Additionally, the linked reddit thread is hilarious. "State expiry is so important for decentralisation, so we're proposing a solution where actual history and state is stored on a few centralised nodes, maybe". And there are literally no answers to the question "what happens to historical data" except "well maybe there will be altruism and maybe there will be incentives to store data in some protocols, oh and this centralised service infura surely will want to store the data, trust us it will never disappear".

Yeah, right.

Re: Cryptocurrency doesn’t address the hard parts of financial inclusion

#195

Post by bb88 »

everfree wrote: post #162
bb88 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>... but it's silly to measure the viability of a whole class of financial instrument by it's weakest and shadiest actor. Tether is the weakest actor? What reality are you living in? It has 90% of all stable coin trading volume. I think it's silly to make arguments which are falsified by a simple google query. https://coinmarketcap.com/view/stablecoin/

You're conflating popularity into my argument. Tether is one of the weakest stablecoins in terms of regulatory compliance and general community trust. In other words, most arguments I hear against stablecoins apply narrowly and specifically to Tether, yet people tend to use those valid arguments against Tether to straw-man the entire asset class. Popularity and volume have nothing to do with that.

I would say that if 90% of stable coin transactions are through tether then they have the general trust of the community. It's as plain as day, and you seek to dismiss it as a "side show" when it's really the main act.

Pro crypto arguments these days have come down to basically "You're not allowed to make that argument. It's early days. There are no good critics..." and now "you can't conflate my argument."

Re: Cryptocurrency doesn’t address the hard parts of financial inclusion

#196

Post by everfree »

dmitriid wrote: post #192
everfree wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because you don't understand a data structure doesn't make it a magic buzzword. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merkle_tree#Uses

That is not an answer to my question.

What was your question?

Re: Cryptocurrency doesn’t address the hard parts of financial inclusion

#197

Post by everfree »

dmitriid wrote: post #194
everfree wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a wide spectrum between a piece of data being maintained by every participant of a particular blockchain and maximally available, and that data being completely unavailable to anyone. It's that spectrum between 0-of-N and consensus-enforced N-of-N that you don't seem to grasp. I'll say it again, once a piece of data is no longer maintained by all N-of-N participants in a blockchain as a matter of its consensu…

> there are many reasons why particular actors would want to retain that data > data availability is likely to remain incentivized within dedicated sub-protocols > private entities that will have their own external incentives to retain that data A lot of wishful thinking which is presented as fact. Someone somewhere might still retain all that data because someone somewhere might have some incentives, and hopefully s…

History will always exist because I will personally keep a copy of all of it. The chain grows by 140GB/yr, and it's within my budget to buy two new 10TB hard drives every 7 years (two for redundancy).

Re: Cryptocurrency doesn’t address the hard parts of financial inclusion

#198

Post by everfree »

bb88 wrote: post #195
everfree wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're conflating popularity into my argument. Tether is one of the weakest stablecoins in terms of regulatory compliance and general community trust. In other words, most arguments I hear against stablecoins apply narrowly and specifically to Tether, yet people tend to use those valid arguments against Tether to straw-man the entire asset class. Popularity and volume have nothing to do with that.

I would say that if 90% of stable coin transactions are through tether then they have the general trust of the community. It's as plain as day, and you seek to dismiss it as a "side show" when it's really the main act. Pro crypto arguments these days have come down to basically "You're not allowed to make that argument. It's early days. There are no good critics..." and now "you can't conflate my argument."

You said that you don't trust stablecoins because one particular stablecoin is untrustworthy. That's a classic strawman, plain and simple.

You took down the Tether strawman, while pretending that you took down the entire concept of stablecoins.

This conversation is going way off track from your original claim that you don't trust stablecoins. Your perception of the community's perception of Tether is neither here nor there.

Re: Cryptocurrency doesn’t address the hard parts of financial inclusion

#199

Post by everfree »

dmitriid wrote: post #193
everfree wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For a system that claims to "have all data on the chain" it sure seems to be hard to trace the money. What I linked you was a raw trace of the money. It includes all transactions to and from the address, with the amounts of each transaction shown, and with the exchange addresses labeled. If you don't want to pore through their account history manually, write a script. The API is free. > It looks more like someone d…

> Do you really think we just witnessed a 7-figure heist from the Ukrainian government in plain view, and nobody is reporting on it? Oh sweet summer child. "A criminal who stole from the government, a heist from the Ukrainian government". How about: someone in the government found a way to profit during the war using tools that are largely unknown to the public, and where "plain sight" is "write a script, the API is…

Okay sure, perhaps we've stumbled onto something big here in the Hacker News comments section. You want to do the honors and alert the media?
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