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Ethereum Has Issues

blog.dshr.org

321–330 of 377 posts

Re: Ethereum Has Issues

#321
post #286
post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the only use case is not illegal activity. NFTs, smart contracts in general, gaming, defi/lending/staking, DEX, DAO, Filecoin/IPFS, and a few more in itself are not illegal. You may consider them to be useless, but that's not the same thing as illegal. Even if you scrap all that, there's the remaining core use case of speculation. Which in itself is also not illegal and an incredibly important use case, if not TH…

> I guess growing your money is popular, who would figure that. But… how is /everyone/ getting rich? Crypto is provably negative sum. Someone has to lose money for you to make money. And miners, exchanges, etc are all middle layers that extract large %s of fees. Where is the extra value generated to be able to make everyone a profit?

How do you get the idea that everyone is getting rich? That's not the case in any market.

Re: Ethereum Has Issues

#322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I meant how much money you got scammed for. Lets say you bought a phone from Craigslist and its a fake one, what do you do? You sent a guy a wire for a collectors item and he sends you a box of rocks? What do you do? There's so many ways that you can get scammed in the real world without recourse. What's happening here is that you have a preconceived notion of "darknets markets bad"

You sent a guy a wire for a collectors item and he sends you a box of rocks? I have bought and sold on Craigslist. This is not how it works --- unless you're stupid. What's happening here is that you have a preconceived notion of "darknets markets bad" Yes. People choose to operate on the darknet instead of craigslist for a reason --- usually because they are doing something illegal. And scamming people is one of the…

I know thats not how Craiglist works. Do you even know how darknet markets work or what they are?

Escrows, vendor reputation, feedback, etc?

Something illegal depending on the jurisdiction

Legal =/= ethical

Re: Ethereum Has Issues

#323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How come darknet markets work extremely well then? Some people value steady profits much more than a one time scam.

How come darknet markets work extremely well then? How do you know they do --- have you done a survey? Some people value steady profits much more than a one time scam. Why do some people become criminals instead of getting a nice steady job? Maybe because it is more profitable and requires minimal effort. And lots of scams aren't "one time".

Because millions of people use them and the feedback is mostly positive?

Because where there is demand there is supply.

Pot sellers were criminals once now they are businessman

You think buying from a well known anonymous user with months/years of reviews will result in a "scam"?

Re: Ethereum Has Issues

#324
post #247
post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no need to point out the obvious, but yes, you're right...risk.

It's not only that it's risky. It's that by construction it can't work for everyone. You can only get rich at the expense of someone else.

Isn't that also the case for capitalism?

Re: Ethereum Has Issues

#325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are actually some insane advancements coming out in the form of zero-knowledge order books, Dusk Network being the most well known. It essentially removes frontrunning as a possibility because buyers and sellers are matched using ZK proofs, but are not able to see any orders before they are matched.

So, the blockchain bros have reinvented... dark pools, which has been around since 1979? Because that's what you just described.

Dark pools rely on the operator being trustworthy. Distributed encryption relies only on cryptography and the validator set being too large, and costly to join, to allow cooption, and both assumptions are highly trustworthy.

Re: Ethereum Has Issues

#326
post #256
post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the worst one being that there's no human you can talk to when something goes wrong. The worst part is that for a DeFi loan, you need something like 200% to 300% collateral (look it up, it varies but is usually around that amount). This makes it less than useless for just about all reasons people now get loans. The whole point of a loan is that you're willing to pay extra over time in order to have access to more f…

>The whole point of a loan is that you're willing to pay extra over time in order to have access to more funds at the present No, that's not the point of these loans at all. They are the equivalent of remortgaging your home to get cash. If need money for renovation and you have a lot of equity in your house you can borrow against it. They are doing the same thing with crypto. They don't want to sell their crypto beca…

> They are the equivalent of remortgaging your home to get cash.

It's actually the opposite of remortgaging a home to get cash. Remortgaging a home to get cash is paying a premium to increase the amount of liquid assets available to you; this is the point of most loans. A DeFi loan is paying a premium and _decreasing_ the amount of liquid assets available to you. As you said, it's useful for juicing speculation, worthless for anything else.

> You get a stable and guaranteed >5% without all the risks of the stock market.

I think the long-term risks are actually greater than something like an index fund, since your collateral is all in crypto. The returns are also less than historical index fund returns.

Re: Ethereum Has Issues

#327
Crypto is far bigger than any one coin, just keep that in mind. Many coins were started to overcome the limitations of Bitcoin and Ethereum. They typically issue whitepapers to go over these details and make comparisons.

Another perspective is that of investing or trading. Ignoring the practical use cases of coins and buying low and selling high. That's why I'm working on TradeCast: https://tradecast.carrd.co/

Re: Ethereum Has Issues

#328
post #51

So Crypto Andys like to hand-wave about the risk of a 51% attack but consider this: > This is in addition to the long-standing concentration of Ethereum mining power, with normally three and sometimes only two mining pools controlling over 50% of the mining power. There is further hand-waving about how Proof-of-Stake (over Proof-of-Waste) will magically fix these problems. But it's actually this PoW computing power t…

Here's a good explanation of why blockchain is the future with real world utility: https://markmanson.net/newsletters/mindfck-monthly-97

Re: Ethereum Has Issues

#329
post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not only that it's risky. It's that by construction it can't work for everyone. You can only get rich at the expense of someone else.

Isn't that also the case for capitalism?

No, capitalism is positive sum outside of a few edge cases where negative externalities are generated. Blockchain-based markets, being hyper-capitalistic, will, I suspect, prove to be positive sum as well.

Re: Ethereum Has Issues

#330
post #256
post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the worst one being that there's no human you can talk to when something goes wrong. The worst part is that for a DeFi loan, you need something like 200% to 300% collateral (look it up, it varies but is usually around that amount). This makes it less than useless for just about all reasons people now get loans. The whole point of a loan is that you're willing to pay extra over time in order to have access to more f…

>The whole point of a loan is that you're willing to pay extra over time in order to have access to more funds at the present No, that's not the point of these loans at all. They are the equivalent of remortgaging your home to get cash. If need money for renovation and you have a lot of equity in your house you can borrow against it. They are doing the same thing with crypto. They don't want to sell their crypto beca…

Often you’re taking credit risk on the intermediary instead, I think - BlockFi, for instance.
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