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

Coffeezilla, a YouTuber Exposing Crypto Scams

newyorker.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–208 of 208 posts

Re: Coffeezilla, a YouTuber Exposing Crypto Scams

#201

Post by Feriti »

nyolfen wrote: post #200
paulryanrogers wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...which nobody else has control over. Control may be distributed, though it certainly is there. And crypto requires no party have too much control over the hash rate or else the advantage over traditional finance is lost. > ...but it eliminates the need for middlemen... Not technically. Even crypto-to-crypto trades still involve miners at least. And if it's L2 then you're trusting that middleman. Then for the fami…

> And crypto requires no party have too much control over the hash rate or else the advantage over traditional finance is lost. what is your threat model here? what practical attack do you think is going to happen? >Not technically. Even crypto-to-crypto trades still involve miners at least. miners are not middlemen, they have zero control or ability to interfere with the transfer of funds. wiring money involves hand…

They control the whole network if they want.

You make it out as the miners would not own the Blockchain which is just wrong.

And it's not that you can run a node, you actually should run a node.

After all decentralization doesn't work if only big players own it.

But now you need to be tech savvy as you said it yourself.

And every Blockchain has this problem and the fact that there are many Blockchains makes this eve worse.

Re: Coffeezilla, a YouTuber Exposing Crypto Scams

#202

Post by can16358p »

Feriti wrote: post #70
can16358p wrote: post #36

Good for crypto. I'm a crypto enthusiast and I think crypto has a great future and work in the field. However because of many scammy projects the whole crypto ecosystem now has a bad name. I'd love to see more and more scams being exposed for healthy adoption with less manipulation and real investment to projects that have the potential to change things instead of 400000% APYs.

So what are real use cases in your opinion? Something which really need crypto/Blockchain and is really trustworthy? Something which doesn't break the trust Anker of a Blockchain by having any dependency outside of a Blockchain.

I think we shouldn't try to "retrofit" existing mechanics into blockchain.

It brought a whole new potential of "programmable money" and being able to tokenize everything with users in control and no censoring (at least generally in theory).

We should be building dApps that incentivize sharing/hosting things (e.g. Databases (Bluzelle), files (Sia/Filecoin/IPFS), hosting (again IPFS and perhaps some Tor-like layer that can "talk" to blockchain with any kind of servers), providing data (prediction markets/Augur) which can all coordinate with chains and tokenize any good behavior and sharing resources with incentives at a global level.

Crypto should not be for "web2 and below", it should be for "web3 and above" (sorry for the buzzword, but it really defines the culture that I'm talking about). It should perhaps be a whole new layer on top of TCP/IP, and can coordinate with the regular web at interface points, otherwise being a whole new thing by itself.

But we will need some sort of transition and Metamask on "regular" sites is doing well (but not enough yet) for now.

Most of the examples above have perhaps more efficient applications already, but they are all controlled by other entities. I believe blockchain is more about philosophy of every "thing" being addressable and "actable" using a private key that can sign anything publicly with no authority (which is the most important point), and blockchain is the main application of it, yet.

Re: Coffeezilla, a YouTuber Exposing Crypto Scams

#203

Post by everfree »

low_tech_love wrote: post #197
everfree wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

USDC backing, audited by a large US accounting firm: https://www.centre.io/usdc-transparency GUSD backing, also audited by a large US accounting firm, subject to New York State Department of Financial Services regulations: https://www.gemini.com/cryptopedia/gusd-stablecoin-gemini-do... USDP backing, also audited by a large US accounting firm and subject to New York State Department of Financial Services regulations:…

Cool, thanks a lot! But why is it then that these currencies are not as attractive or hyped as Tether and UST? Could it be that the fact they are properly backed makes them less interesting for those who want a more adventurous kind of investment?

Tether is popular because it was the first stablecoin by several years (e.g. Tether launched in 2014, USDC launched in 2018). Much like Bitcoin, Tether isn't a particularly good product nowadays if you look at its fundamental properties - most of its usefulness comes from its extrinsic properties such as liquidity and demand. However, much like Bitcoin, due to its very early launch, Tether became an early schelling point that has gathered significant liquidity/usage due to network effect (liquidity begets liquidity).

TerraUSD (UST) was hyped up and became popular mainly because the network paid 20% APY interest on UST deposits, which is a way higher rate on a "stablecoin" than you can get anywhere else (rates in much safer protocols are about 5-8% right now). Obviously a 20% interest rate is unsustainable when it's supported by money printed from thin air. But people were either unaware of this (unsophisticated investors), chose to overlook it (calculated risk-takers, RIP), or positioned themselves to be able to find a chair right before the music stopped (institutional investors like Celsius).

Re: Coffeezilla, a YouTuber Exposing Crypto Scams

#204

Post by 10amxn10 »

ratsmack wrote: post #46
colesantiago wrote: post #34

Coffeezilla is right. ALL crypto is 100% scams. There is no 99%. In fact 100% of the time, they have no use case at all and they are even worse than the current system. Crypto has totally failed time and time again to prove itself. We now need to come to terms with this failed experiment and call it all off and make them all illegal, where it rightfully should reside in. I lament to think of the time wasted of many e…

The whole "proof of work" concept regarding crypto is a sham. Normally, the expenditure of energy produces tangible products or services. In the case of crypto currency, massive amounts of heat is wasted to produce a number with questionable "value". I just can't wrap my head around this.

No post body was provided.

Re: Coffeezilla, a YouTuber Exposing Crypto Scams

#205

Post by Feriti »

can16358p wrote: post #202
Feriti wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what are real use cases in your opinion? Something which really need crypto/Blockchain and is really trustworthy? Something which doesn't break the trust Anker of a Blockchain by having any dependency outside of a Blockchain.

I think we shouldn't try to "retrofit" existing mechanics into blockchain. It brought a whole new potential of "programmable money" and being able to tokenize everything with users in control and no censoring (at least generally in theory). We should be building dApps that incentivize sharing/hosting things (e.g. Databases (Bluzelle), files (Sia/Filecoin/IPFS), hosting (again IPFS and perhaps some Tor-like layer that…

Yeah like network of trust with pgp keys.

I'm a big fan of it and joined plenty of signing parties but I will tell you a secret: no one else cares.

No one cares about 2fa, backups, decentralization for decentralization sake, security...

Even the crazy Snowden findings.

Re: Coffeezilla, a YouTuber Exposing Crypto Scams

#206

Post by Traster »

practice9 wrote: post #191
Traster wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're describing is totally different in scale though. When the British pound got displaced as the currency for international trade it didn't suddenly lose 99.9999% of its value in a weekend. And whilst the Dollar isn't guaranteed to be the most popular currency for international trade, it's still going to be the currency a bunch of guys with guns insist Americans pay taxes in. There are real reasons people mus…

> it's still going to be the currency a bunch of guys with guns insist Americans pay taxes in Well, yeah, most currencies are defacto backed by military force. That fact creates bad incentives. Crypto doesn't have this luxury, it can be only be backed by the trust in code. If the currency is trusted - because it's open-source, open for all to use, is well designed - it's value is going to go up. See Bitcoin and Ether…

Sure, and UST is another example of this, it built a multi-billion dollar market cap by obfuscating the fact you were buying a perpetual motion machine. The incentive created by "trust the code" is "lie about the code". Which is why you'll hear several thousand reasons why BTC is valuable but none are as compelling as "Those bunch of guys over there will shoot you if you try and undermine it", and most of them aren't even as compelling as "Number goes up".

The theory is that the market can efficiently decide whether the code actually does work. But the practice is that you can make billions tricking people about what the code does. And often it's people who have never even glanced at the code telling you what it does. I would wager good money that there was no one invested in UST that understood the code.

Re: Coffeezilla, a YouTuber Exposing Crypto Scams

#207

Post by low_tech_love »

everfree wrote: post #203
low_tech_love wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cool, thanks a lot! But why is it then that these currencies are not as attractive or hyped as Tether and UST? Could it be that the fact they are properly backed makes them less interesting for those who want a more adventurous kind of investment?

Tether is popular because it was the first stablecoin by several years (e.g. Tether launched in 2014, USDC launched in 2018). Much like Bitcoin, Tether isn't a particularly good product nowadays if you look at its fundamental properties - most of its usefulness comes from its extrinsic properties such as liquidity and demand. However, much like Bitcoin, due to its very early launch, Tether became an early schelling p…

Just wanted to thank you again for all the valuable information. It’s certainly food for thought during a couple of coffee breaks!

Re: Coffeezilla, a YouTuber Exposing Crypto Scams

#208

Post by can16358p »

Feriti wrote: post #205
can16358p wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we shouldn't try to "retrofit" existing mechanics into blockchain. It brought a whole new potential of "programmable money" and being able to tokenize everything with users in control and no censoring (at least generally in theory). We should be building dApps that incentivize sharing/hosting things (e.g. Databases (Bluzelle), files (Sia/Filecoin/IPFS), hosting (again IPFS and perhaps some Tor-like layer that…

Yeah like network of trust with pgp keys. I'm a big fan of it and joined plenty of signing parties but I will tell you a secret: no one else cares. No one cares about 2fa, backups, decentralization for decentralization sake, security... Even the crazy Snowden findings.

I'd still give some time. People will most likely be more inclined towards crypto when they start understanding having power in their hands instead of authorities is much more important than they envisioned.

I'm seeing it now. All one needs is a heavily corrupted government.

Post reply on HN