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

Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy

concerned.tech

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–149 of 149 posts

Re: Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy

#141

Post by tatertots1234 »

maccard wrote: post #140
tatertots1234 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The engine’s use is to turn energy into mechanical motion, and from that we can build a variety of utility on top. The chain’s use is to provide a secure layer for signed messages. It might be a dissident writing a message that cannot be revoked by their government; it might be a transfer of value from user A to B that is not reliant on a central clearing house to allow it; it may be a state change that represents th…

> The engine’s use is to turn energy into mechanical motion, and from that we can build a variety of utility on top. The chain’s use is to provide a secure layer for signed messages. I'm genuinely beginning to think you're trolling here. > It might be a dissident writing a message that cannot be revoked by their government; it might be a transfer of value from user A to B that is not reliant on a central clearing hou…

Over ~13 years into Bitcoin, only ~7 years into Ethereum and less than two years into much of the applied zkp tech that is now driving blockchain scalability and privacy. There’s a variety of ideas in human history that take decades to mature and find market fit.

PGP does not achieve timestamped and censorship-resistant record on a distributed network. A closer analogy is Tor which is secured by about 10 authorized nodes worldwide; so a different design space than crypto which is permissionless and secured by thousands.

All of your complaints are just that: complaints. X crypto thing works but not well enough for your needs and expectations. But your supposed solution Y, like PGP or physical USD cash, only achieves some facets of what people are using X crypto thing for.

The suggestion that sending wads of cash in the mail is somehow better, safer, and less reliant on central intermediaries compared to a crypto transfer is a hilarious statement though.

Re: Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy

#142

Post by maccard »

tatertots1234 wrote: post #141
maccard wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The engine’s use is to turn energy into mechanical motion, and from that we can build a variety of utility on top. The chain’s use is to provide a secure layer for signed messages. I'm genuinely beginning to think you're trolling here. > It might be a dissident writing a message that cannot be revoked by their government; it might be a transfer of value from user A to B that is not reliant on a central clearing hou…

Over ~13 years into Bitcoin, only ~7 years into Ethereum and less than two years into much of the applied zkp tech that is now driving blockchain scalability and privacy. There’s a variety of ideas in human history that take decades to mature and find market fit. PGP does not achieve timestamped and censorship-resistant record on a distributed network. A closer analogy is Tor which is secured by about 10 authorized n…

> PGP does not achieve timestamped and censorship-resistant record on a distributed network

PGP is timestampted and censorship resistant, and of course it isn't on a distributed network. Yet again I'm asking what is the use case for it being on a distributed network. That's also not what you said in your last comment

> All of your complaints are just that: complaints. X crypto thing works but not well enough for your needs and expectations.

That's not true, my complaints are that if you remove crypto from the X crypto thing, it still solves the problem in the same way, meaning there's no use case for the crypto part of crypto X.

Re: Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy

#143

Post by tatertots1234 »

maccard wrote: post #142
tatertots1234 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Over ~13 years into Bitcoin, only ~7 years into Ethereum and less than two years into much of the applied zkp tech that is now driving blockchain scalability and privacy. There’s a variety of ideas in human history that take decades to mature and find market fit. PGP does not achieve timestamped and censorship-resistant record on a distributed network. A closer analogy is Tor which is secured by about 10 authorized n…

> PGP does not achieve timestamped and censorship-resistant record on a distributed network PGP is timestampted and censorship resistant, and of course it isn't on a distributed network. Yet again I'm asking what is the use case for it being on a distributed network. That's also not what you said in your last comment > All of your complaints are just that: complaints. X crypto thing works but not well enough for your…

PGP is an encryption technique, it doesn’t include any robust and tamper proof timestamping mechanism. To uphold the veracity of a time stamp and to make a PGP message censorship resistant you need either a trusted authority to continue to host and certify it, or a distributed network of validator nodes like Tor (10 validator nodes) or Ethereum (thousands of validator nodes).

If you remove crypto from this equation you are left with a permissioned solution. Which is fine for many uses, but not the same thing.

A practical example would be removing crypto from a USDC or DAI transfer between two people across the globe who wish to send USD-like asset, despite neither of them having access to a US bank account. The proposed solutions are to send cash in the mail, or PayPal, or whatever, and none are the same as a USDC or DAI transfer.

Re: Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy

#144

Post by NikolaNovak »

NikolaNovak wrote: post #133
bitcoin_anon wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If it helps understand my seemingly heartless position: I have exactly as much sympathy and empathy for somebody spending $4bil on crypto, as for investing $4bil in Phillip Morris or another tobacco company a couple of decades ago. This did help, thank you. Your gambling metaphor is useful, but incomplete. Consider this instead: You come across your fellow citizens gambling in a casino. You decide they must stop wh…

I think "increased regulations" is a wide spectrum. Extremes (I believe) are rarely a good thing. "Confiscate money from all people in Casino" / "Confiscate all Bitcoin" are, I believe, extremes.both "Issue licenses for gambling, provide oversight, age restrict, run information campaigns about dangers of gambling, create support and help programs", is, I think, reasonable (and we can further discuss details, and we d…

If it makes it clearer:

I don't think there's a need or way to "shut down all blockchain / crypto / bitcoin". I don't think anybody seriously proposes that. The letter certainly does not. So the analogy of somebody coming in and taking the gamblers' money doesn't apply - not sure how that would even work in terms of confiscation (though the value of any given chain or crypto currency certainly can, and usually should approach zero, but that's empathically not "somebody else stealing my money":).

But I've been in any number of conferences / meetings / governing bodies where a blockchain / crypto evangelist comes in, flashes couple of dozen slides of essentially nothing, and the non-technically astute leaders get hyper excited about something and get all "Shut up and take my money!" ("In the morning, you'll be picked up in a self-driving car powered by blockchain!" is literally the sentence that was uttered - to wide applause. I felt in a Twilight zone of unquestioning zombies). This TERRIFIES me. Governments adopting bitcoin for alternative currency or inserting crypto where it doesn't belong TERRIFIES me. Because yes, eventually it'll be "too big to fail" and we'll now start propping up stupid-ass systems because "Companies invested $4bil into them and we can't let it evaporate into smoke that it should". And now I and mine will be stuck with stupid-ass stuff.

I'm happy to let blockchain and bitcoin and crypto exist. Let them exist in the same regulated ecosystem and world that all of us exist in. Let the enthusiasts enthuse and investors invest and gamblers gamble. But for the love of all that is holly, let's temper that enthusiasm and counter the immense lobbying and hype before it all gets too far down the black rabbit hole of no return and no sanity.

Re: Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy

#145

Post by politician »

majewsky wrote: post #134
politician wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

IANAL, but as far I understand, "money is speech" relates to the 1st amendment, whereas wiretapping and key escrow relate to the 4th amendment. Which legal theory could be reasonably applied to map from "ban/regulation of crypto-currencies" to "ban/regulation of E2EE communication"? I'm specifically asking for a legal theory, not a political framing, because your explicit mention of the Supreme Court implies a scenar…

Good question. When you look at the original tweet, he said that systems that lack recoverable credentials are not “safe”. From there, it’s easy to argue that if we want “safe” systems, then we need recoverable credentials. Recoverability in a cryptocurrency context necessarily implies mandatory key escrow or algorithm backdoors.

This is my line of reasoning. Whether he dislikes cryptocurrency or not is irrelevant, but the argument that you cannot have a safe system with private credentials was what I found objectionable.

EDIT: Re legal theory: The idea that cryptographic systems are unsafe is likely to result in a weakening of protections for such systems. Cryptocurrency is an easy target because it’s essentially 100% cryptography and because it has no patron. The banning on cryptocurrencies can be extended to a ban on private keys via the safety argument.

Closest analogue might be gun control (Encryption is legally considered a munition).

Last edit, I promise: this creates a situation where a cryptocurrency wallet is simultaneously a munition (2nd amendment), speech (1st amendment), and secure papers (4th). Legislators could use this nexus to move between domains to expand the scope of any bans.

Re: Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy

#146

Post by baby »

zja wrote: post #113
baby wrote: post #100

Disappointing. I think technologists who also understand finance should be heard, not technologists who don’t. Where are the cryptographers on this list besides Schneier?

What makes you think the signatories don’t understand finance?

I guess it looks like a list of random signatures to me.

Re: Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy

#147

Post by baby »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #49
tatertots1234 wrote: post #37

The letter has some good and bad. Good because it advocates for more regulation and consumer protection, and points out some obvious concerns with crypto like energy expenditure in proof of work. Bad because the letter misrepresents the technology and paints privacy as a purely criminal behavior, and suggests the entire technology sector is useless. > Similarly, most public blockchain-based financial products are a d…

> imagine this argument being applied to End-to-End Encryption There's a stark line between encrypted communication and encrypted money. If someone can't see the difference between those bits they shouldn't be handling other peoples' money.

And yet some of the signers are against end-to-end encryption

Re: Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy

#148

Post by kybernetikos »

hnthrow1010 wrote: post #88
tatertots1234 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, every time crypto is on the front page you have nocoiners and web3 pumpers making the same ridiculous blanket statements, and then some people in between trying to discern the reality of the situation.

The reality of the situation is that blockchains are a mostly useless and inefficient datastructure that by and large don't solve any real problems. I find it insulting that I can't say this without someone labeling me a "nocoiner." Yes you can make money with them, that isn't the point. Sometimes an algorithm can just be bad. If you can't look at an algorithm objectively, maybe consider that you're not trying to dis…

'blockchains' (the ecosystems generally, not the datastructure specifically which wasn't the innovative part) solve the problem of arbitrary, mutually unknown individuals making transactions about things of value. They're pretty much the only way we know to solve that problem.

Of course, humans have been around a long time and had to manage before the bitcoin white paper, so most problems where the best solution involved arbitrary, mutually unknown individuals making transactions about things of value have either been ignored and are considered 'not that important' or have been solved 'better' through the creation of trusted third parties (which doesn't solve the problem for truly arbitrary participants, just moves it), or just forcing the risk onto others who previously had no choice but to accept it. This point of view is mainly just because society has had thousands of years being built around a constraint that the publication of the bitcoin whitepaper removed, and it takes a certain amount of imagination to see the possibilities.

When you think about blockchains, you should be imagining what they enable: nonpermissioned (so even foreigners in war zones, or the homeless can take part), access to an international network that allows cross-party transactions dealing in hetrogenous kinds of goods. The network is by default API enabled and compatible (so I can write a smart contract that uses other smart contracts). It uses modern cryptography (unlike many Banks). Because it allows transactions across organisations and assets, things like flash loans where a loan can be made at zero risk to the lender (because the capital must be returned in the same transaction) are possible, something that is entirely impossible in traditional finance. They enable immediate transactional settlement, which is also hard in traditional finance (how do we swap something so that at no point one party has to take on the risk of the other party not delivering?). They enable groups of people that don't know each other to pool their money. This was impossible in the past without a trusted governing body that would incur costs and therefore need to take a cut.

In finance, the main strategy up to now has been to register a corporation with multiple governments, spend lots of money on large marble buildings and conservative (i.e. non-innovative) smartly dressed staff for hundreds of years in order to give a sense of solidity and trustworthiness. Sure, it works, but that's what's really inefficient.

Re: Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy

#149

Post by gjm11 »

rvz wrote: post #112
gjm11 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A key premise of this comment -- that the "concerned.tech" open letter only complains about public blockchains (with the insinuation being that some of the people involved are only doing that because their own private-blockchain companies are threatened by public blockchains) -- seems to be false. Almost everything the open letter says about blockchains is neutral on public versus private. There are two exceptions. (…

> A key premise of this comment ... seems to be false. Seems false? I don't think you are even sure yourself. > Almost everything the open letter says about blockchains is neutral on public versus private. And is that why they didn't 'mention' stopping all 'blockchains' and they knowingly hid their ties to Adjoint Inc.? At least the Bitcoin maximalists are a bit honest at disclosing their associations and holdings wh…

I said "seems" rather than just "is" mostly to be polite. In view of your response I am regretting that.

I do not know what you mean by asking (I assume mostly rhetorically) "is that why they didn't 'mention' stopping all 'blockchains'?". Why the quotation marks and italics on "mention" and "blockchains"? Why should they have "mentioned stopping all blockchains"? So far as I can tell, they are not in fact arguing that all blockchains should be stopped.

I didn't mean to (and do not intend to) get into a debate about whether in fact public blockchains are as bad for privacy as the open letter claims, or whether it's a bad thing if they are. My only point was: whatever you make of that issue, it is definitely one that doesn't apply to private blockchains, so it is not surprising that when bringing it up they did so specifically with reference to public blockchains, so the fact that they did that is not evidence of any sort of sinister motivation.

How do you know that Adjoint-the-company has not shut down? (To be more precise, it looks to me as if the company is no longer functional even if it still exists as a legal entity. Note that your link [1] shows that the CEO has resigned (and shows no sign that another CEO has been appointed) and that Diehl is no longer a "person with significant control" (i.e., he no longer holds >= 25% of shares or voting rights) and in fact there are now no such people. This looks to me like a failed company in the process of being taken apart for scrap.

If they are no longer offering a private blockchain product, how does that fit with your insinuations that their executives are trying to shut down public blockchains in order to give the private blockchain company they're associated with an advantage?

My question about the "long utopian conquest" stuff was: what evidence do you have that these people are in fact aiming at any sort of "long utopian conquest"? So, indeed, if you think they want to ban all cryptocurrencies and projects, do you have actual evidence that they want that? Again, this open letter doesn't seem to offer any such evidence.

Post reply on HN