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Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy

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Re: Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy

#21

Post by politician »

FabHK wrote: post #18
politician wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "The claims that the blockchain advocates make are not true," said Bruce Schneier. "It's not secure, it's not decentralised. Any system where you forget your password and you lose your life savings is not a safe system," he added. His tweet. He clearly identifies the problem as “lost password” implies disaster. This line of thinking is what the government uses to argue for back doors in cryptography software. The p…

You are conflating money and messages. It is perfectly compatible to argue, simultaneously, against cryptocurrencies, and for e2e encrypted messages.

The Supreme Court of the US has determined money to be speech, so this is an unwise position to take.

If you ask the government to prevent the use of cryptography in cryptocurrencies then you undermine the argument that the government should not tap or intermediate all communications.

At the end of the day, a financial transaction IS a message. It’s a command to a ledger to make an adjustment.

Re: Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy

#22

Post by politician »

DonHopkins wrote: post #19
politician wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "The claims that the blockchain advocates make are not true," said Bruce Schneier. "It's not secure, it's not decentralised. Any system where you forget your password and you lose your life savings is not a safe system," he added. His tweet. He clearly identifies the problem as “lost password” implies disaster. This line of thinking is what the government uses to argue for back doors in cryptography software. The p…

Have you considered the possibility that maybe he's simply advocating for a customer service representative who can reset your password in the sql database after verifying your identity, instead of going back on everything he's ever said and repudiating his life's work as a well respected security professional, and that perhaps Bruce Schneier is not just an unethical hack like the crypto bros he's criticizing? https:…

I am allowed to be disappointed in his advocacy of a position that undermines his life’s work. That his major accomplishments are cryptographic in nature is precisely why I called him out specifically, and not some random hack.

Don, sometimes people can find themselves advocating for policies that accidentally undermine their long held positions in other areas.

Without the man coming on HN and explaining his apparently incongruous position, though, who can say?

Re: Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy

#23

Post by FabHK »

politician wrote: post #21
FabHK wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are conflating money and messages. It is perfectly compatible to argue, simultaneously, against cryptocurrencies, and for e2e encrypted messages.

The Supreme Court of the US has determined money to be speech, so this is an unwise position to take. If you ask the government to prevent the use of cryptography in cryptocurrencies then you undermine the argument that the government should not tap or intermediate all communications. At the end of the day, a financial transaction IS a message. It’s a command to a ledger to make an adjustment.

And nobody is arguing against digital money.

I am just arguing against public blockchains, resulting in a very specific, wasteful, and unregulated form of digital money.

Re: Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy

#24

Post by ZeroGravitas »

Here's a prediction:

Crypto is the next cancer from cigarettes, lead in fuel, climate change etc.

The thing linking them is that even after it was widely acknowledged these were a net negative, they continued for a long, long time. Harming a wide group of people uneccesarily and massively profiting a select few.

If I'm correct, the key indicator will be right wing governments around the globe being paid off to allow the abuse to continue and their media going on the attack.

Communist computer scientists, what do they know? They just want to keep the poor white men from getting rich because of political correctness etc. etc. Anyone seen any signs of that yet?

Hope I'm wrong, worried I'm correct.

Re: Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy

#25

Post by tatertots1234 »

ghuntley wrote: post #14
rvz wrote: post #9

I can only predict that both the people signing this letter and the crypto maximalists are going to be very disappointed that this will somehow be the end of all cryptocurrencies or the full adoption and dismantling of the current system with one cryptocoin being a reserve currency. An example of such is where the critics were screaming over the so-called NY bill on 'banning' of PoW [0], but it turns out that not onl…

Re: [1] if you are familiar with the developments in the Haskell space ( https://medium.com/@kim_crawley/web3-nfts-and-cryptocurrency... ) where circa eight years back what we see today happened in Haskell - concerns for the future of language due to over exposure of risk. It makes more sense and you’ll understand beginning of the entire story arc better of how we got here today. Specifically re: [2] if you haven’t t…

re: [2] Diehl regularly blocks users who point out that he works at or has worked at Adjoint, and blockchain-based information seems to have been scrubbed from its website.

Why does he not talk about the fact that most of the tools he has built upon, like Bulletproofs, Groth16 provers, Sonic, is research that is funded and driven by the crypto and blockchain space? [a] Why does he seem to hide the competing interest: that the goals of Adjoint Inc, the company he is a director of [b], are to drive more users away from public permissionless blockchains, and toward private permissioned blockchains?

Most crypto proponents will admit they hold crypto and use blockchains, rather than scrubbing it from their timelines and blocking anybody who points out their ties to blockchains. If Diehl were more transparent about his use of blockchain-funded technology and the goals of his own private-blockchain-based company, it would probably give his arguments more credibility.

[a] - https://github.com/orgs/adjoint-io/repositories

[b] - https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/c...

EDIT: lol I am getting downvoted for posting these questions, and due to my limited karma its likely that my comment will soon be hidden. the irony.

Re: Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy

#26

Post by rvz »

FabHK wrote: post #10
rvz wrote: post #9

I can only predict that both the people signing this letter and the crypto maximalists are going to be very disappointed that this will somehow be the end of all cryptocurrencies or the full adoption and dismantling of the current system with one cryptocoin being a reserve currency. An example of such is where the critics were screaming over the so-called NY bill on 'banning' of PoW [0], but it turns out that not onl…

> it's very strange [...] why it's only specifically 'public blockchains' and not all blockchains both 'public' AND 'private'? There is nothing objectionable with private blockchains (except maybe the hype). They are permissioned, and don't need PoW. As such they're just another data structure: an append-only distributed database that certain people can append to (like git). It is neither wasting energy, nor a scam,…

> There is nothing objectionable with private blockchains (except maybe the hype).

Is that why companies like Adjoint closed down their products and removed services like 'Uplink' and even basic projects like nanocoin, because maybe they also think that blockchains 'including private blockchains' in their case didn't work for them?

So when a company partners with Adjoint and shut downs their solution, the whole chain is abandoned and rendered useless for these clients; assuming you have read the article [3] mentioned by another critic of all blockchains.

> It is neither wasting energy, nor a scam, nor an unregulated mechanism to move/launder money.

And Adjoint and others still shutdown their private blockchain offerings. Not all blockchains 'waste energy' or neither is the technology a 'scam' (some are but not all of them are) and some of them are compliant with standards like ISO 20020. Otherwise they all would have been destroyed a long time ago.

Re: Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy

#27

Post by miracle2k »

FabHK wrote: post #18
politician wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "The claims that the blockchain advocates make are not true," said Bruce Schneier. "It's not secure, it's not decentralised. Any system where you forget your password and you lose your life savings is not a safe system," he added. His tweet. He clearly identifies the problem as “lost password” implies disaster. This line of thinking is what the government uses to argue for back doors in cryptography software. The p…

You are conflating money and messages. It is perfectly compatible to argue, simultaneously, against cryptocurrencies, and for e2e encrypted messages.

It's certainly a needle you can thread, but I don't think such nuance will be a winning political argument.

e2e encryption is in danger as is, and the strongest arguments against both are rooted in the same ideological substrate (criminals vs those needing protection); as are the arguments in favor.

Re: Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy

#28

Post by tatertots1234 »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #24

Here's a prediction: Crypto is the next cancer from cigarettes, lead in fuel, climate change etc. The thing linking them is that even after it was widely acknowledged these were a net negative, they continued for a long, long time. Harming a wide group of people uneccesarily and massively profiting a select few. If I'm correct, the key indicator will be right wing governments around the globe being paid off to allow…

Proof of Work and Bitcoin may be generally trash, and unless they evolve they will eventually crash and burn, but "crypto" on the whole encompasses a wide range of good and bad applications.

Here's a prediction: Over the next decade or two, scalable proof of stake crypto currency networks and blockchain-based systems will probably be used as base settlement layers for a growing portion of digital payments, disrupting VISA and PayPal and enabling new ways of sending and coordinating value online.

Re: Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy

#29

Post by rvz »

ghuntley wrote: post #14
rvz wrote: post #9

I can only predict that both the people signing this letter and the crypto maximalists are going to be very disappointed that this will somehow be the end of all cryptocurrencies or the full adoption and dismantling of the current system with one cryptocoin being a reserve currency. An example of such is where the critics were screaming over the so-called NY bill on 'banning' of PoW [0], but it turns out that not onl…

Re: [1] if you are familiar with the developments in the Haskell space ( https://medium.com/@kim_crawley/web3-nfts-and-cryptocurrency... ) where circa eight years back what we see today happened in Haskell - concerns for the future of language due to over exposure of risk. It makes more sense and you’ll understand beginning of the entire story arc better of how we got here today. Specifically re: [2] if you haven’t t…

> if you haven’t touched blockchain then your opinion is discarded but if you have touched blockchain then your opinion is also discarded.

Nope. And not what I said. Not all projects and blockchain startups will survive either. Hence why some of them end up shutting down or becoming dormant and inactive like Adjoint.

From what I see, the successful ones seem to be partnering up and co-existing with companies like Moneygram, Stripe, Namecheap, Checkout.com, etc. Some cryptocurrency projects and their technologies are more useful than others and some of them comply with standards like ISO 20020 whilst others do not and some of them are more inefficient than others and work better for a use case than others.

> There’s no winning in this space. All critique is off limits because people are concerned that it will devalue their magic beans.

One thing that's certain is there is only one absolute here: There are no absolutes. Which is why both the pro-crypto and the anti-crypto camps will both be disappointed in achieving their very absolute goals, as mentioned in the letter.

Re: Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy

#30

Post by prohobo »

paulgb wrote: post #6
prohobo wrote: post #3

"...and urge you to consider our objective and independent expert judgments to guide your legislative priorities, which we remain happy to discuss anytime." So they have no real demands, just "listen to us about crypto, and not anyone else". I'm all for responsible regulation to protect people from scams, but this is ridiculous. Signatories include every single mega tech corporation, which is an obvious development;…

I mean, that seems like a reasonable demand? We all know that most politicians have a shaky understanding of technology at best, and corporate lobbyists fill that information void with a narrative that advantages their employers. This is a neutral (as in not on crypto payroll) group of technologists saying “hey, we understand this stuff at a technical and/or economic level, we’re willing to talk too”. The signatures…

They're aren't all neutral, many of them are working on private blockchain technologies. For example, anyone working for Meta is on the crypto payroll - just not the Bitcoin/Ethereum/etc ones.

My pointed questions are: 1) What are their specific concerns/demands? 2) Who specifically are politicians supposed to be listening to? 3) Why aren't the government appointed CBDC research groups already informing politicians? 4) If they are, then what is this letter about?

This is about on the same level as the "Please stop people from talking about the Wuhan lab leak" letter.

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