In defense of cryptocurrency • Hacker News Board

Re: In defense of cryptocurrency

#21

Post by s1k3s » Thu, Jun 09, 2022, 6:26 PM UTC

j_walter wrote: post #4

PaulHoule wrote: post #2

If you think Mastercard and Visa fees are too high, fees are higher on Bitcoin. It's like the way Amway victims will try to sell you an $8 tube of toothpaste, "draw circles" to show that 7 people get a cut from that tube of toothpaste and then say "How does Amway bring you great prices on quality products?" (tap whiteboard) "By eliminating the middleman!"

Not really...the fees for Bitcoin, Ethereum and other L2 options are flat fees and are well under Visa/MC fees most of the time. Might want to look at Western Union and the like too...way way under those fees. Current transaction fee (for 1 cent or a billion dollars) Bitcoin - $1.62 per transaction Ethereum - $3.50 per transaction Ethereum L2 - as low as 12 cents https://l2fees.info/ Here are credit card fees by comp…

Off topic but I’m really curious, why are these taxes a percentage? What justifies paying $0.1 for every $10 transfer, but $1 for $100? Is it more complicated to move $100 than it is to move $10? In the end it’s still a single transaction, right?

Re: In defense of cryptocurrency

#22

Post by kkielhofner » Thu, Jun 09, 2022, 6:26 PM UTC

j_walter wrote: post #4

PaulHoule wrote: post #2

If you think Mastercard and Visa fees are too high, fees are higher on Bitcoin. It's like the way Amway victims will try to sell you an $8 tube of toothpaste, "draw circles" to show that 7 people get a cut from that tube of toothpaste and then say "How does Amway bring you great prices on quality products?" (tap whiteboard) "By eliminating the middleman!"

Not really...the fees for Bitcoin, Ethereum and other L2 options are flat fees and are well under Visa/MC fees most of the time. Might want to look at Western Union and the like too...way way under those fees. Current transaction fee (for 1 cent or a billion dollars) Bitcoin - $1.62 per transaction Ethereum - $3.50 per transaction Ethereum L2 - as low as 12 cents https://l2fees.info/ Here are credit card fees by comp…

Credit card fees include reward systems (points), zero liability fraud protection, extended warranties, car rental protection, dispute resolution/chargeback systems, customer service, support for tens of thousands of transactions per second, airline lounge access, priority entertainment tickets, airline miles - the list goes on and on.

Whether you need any of these is debatable of course but it’s extremely disingenuous to consider it an apples to apples comparison seeing as blockchain provides literally none of these things.

For large transfers (a billion dollars) the banking transfer fee is likely zero. I don’t pay for wires with no limit and my status/relationship with banks is nowhere near where it would be for a billion dollar transfer.

Oh and wire transfers provide quite a bit of protection too. I recently had an international wire transfer where the recipient provided the wrong account number. For $10 the funds were returned. With blockchain they would’ve gone up in smoke and lost forever.

People make mistakes. Payment information gets compromised. Fraud happens. As long as blockchain is based on ignoring these fundamental truths it will never achieve any meaningful adoption.

Re: In defense of cryptocurrency

#23

Post by mrcus » Thu, Jun 09, 2022, 6:26 PM UTC

bowsamic wrote: post #15

Cryptocurrency don’t need defense. I think that people outside of cryptocurrency communities don’t realise how accepted the technology is within them. HN is being misled into thinking they are widely hated

No post body was provided.

Re: In defense of cryptocurrency

#24

Post by WJW » Thu, Jun 09, 2022, 6:26 PM UTC

latchkey wrote: post #3

PaulHoule wrote: post #2

If you think Mastercard and Visa fees are too high, fees are higher on Bitcoin. It's like the way Amway victims will try to sell you an $8 tube of toothpaste, "draw circles" to show that 7 people get a cut from that tube of toothpaste and then say "How does Amway bring you great prices on quality products?" (tap whiteboard) "By eliminating the middleman!"

> If you think Mastercard and Visa fees are too high, fees are higher on Bitcoin. Source for this misinformation? https://ycharts.com/indicators/bitcoin_average_transaction_f... Remember that for bitcoin value transaction size is not a factor in the transaction fee. So if you want to transmit a billion dollars worth of bitcoin around the world, it is the same exact fee. Unlike credit card transactions, which are a pe…

It's all good and well that bitcoin is cheaper than credit cards for billion dollar transactions, but that is not really important for all of us non-billionaires. For smaller amounts, the fixed cost of a bitcoin transaction can make it a significant amount of the total. L2 networks would be nice, but "work is being done" for years now so let's wait to see if they ever get that working properly before touting possible future innovations as a current benefit.

I don't imagine anyone ever uses credit cards for billion dollar transfers anyway, normal banking is good enough for that. I just checked and the business account that I use for contracting has EUR 0.10 flat fee costs per transfer to anywhere in the SEPA region.

Re: In defense of cryptocurrency

#25

Post by simias » Thu, Jun 09, 2022, 6:27 PM UTC

j_walter wrote: post #4

PaulHoule wrote: post #2

If you think Mastercard and Visa fees are too high, fees are higher on Bitcoin. It's like the way Amway victims will try to sell you an $8 tube of toothpaste, "draw circles" to show that 7 people get a cut from that tube of toothpaste and then say "How does Amway bring you great prices on quality products?" (tap whiteboard) "By eliminating the middleman!"

Not really...the fees for Bitcoin, Ethereum and other L2 options are flat fees and are well under Visa/MC fees most of the time. Might want to look at Western Union and the like too...way way under those fees. Current transaction fee (for 1 cent or a billion dollars) Bitcoin - $1.62 per transaction Ethereum - $3.50 per transaction Ethereum L2 - as low as 12 cents https://l2fees.info/ Here are credit card fees by comp…

L2 is pushing the problem a bit further away, but it's not a long term solution. All L2 solutions in existence are fundamentally centralizing (it doesn't have to be, but it's a lot harder and since most cryptocurrency speculators don't actually care about centralization it's much easier to do it that way, and L2 solutions are already super complicated anyway) and they only offer a maximum theoretical transaction count improvement of about 500x in a very optimistic case[1].

Except 500x is not nearly enough. It may be enough to temporarily drop the fees but it a post-blockchain world where everybody does dozens of blockchain transactions a day, be it to play a game or buy a coffee or ride the subway, it's not ever close to being sufficient. Your scaling factor needs to be millions of times better.

So what's the solution? Even more complexity on top of this ridiculous Rube Goldberg machine? All that to emulate solutions that already exist and already work well and vastly more efficiently?

Why?

[1] https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/01/05/rollup.html

Re: In defense of cryptocurrency

#26

Post by matkoniecz » Thu, Jun 09, 2022, 6:27 PM UTC

sumy23 wrote: post #18

matkoniecz wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have called this mention dishonest, not the author.

You said it's "dishonest to mention." The author is the mentioner. If the mention is dishonest, then it necessarily follows that the author is dishonest.

> if the mention is dishonest, then it necessarily follows that the author is dishonest.

Not really. If someone did something stupid it does not follow they are stupid. The same for evil, dishonest or irritating acts.

Though maybe "weird" would be better than "dishonest"? I posted in this form in comments on the original article.

Re: In defense of cryptocurrency

#27

Post by hericium » Thu, Jun 09, 2022, 6:28 PM UTC

99_00 wrote: post #13

My hot and uneducated take is that in 5 years we will see some Phoenix rise from the ashes of Cryptomania. If the entire field turn into toxic waste that no one wants to touch it will be extremely undervalued. Therefore it would be a tremendous opportunity.

> If the entire field turn into toxic waste that no one wants to touch it will be extremely undervalued.

Bagholders will always try to find new victims. Crypto is praised even when it's in the shitter. "Buy the dip, it will be $200k before years end, I'd buy it myself but..." etc.

Re: In defense of cryptocurrency

#28

Post by samvher » Thu, Jun 09, 2022, 6:28 PM UTC

bowsamic wrote: post #15

Cryptocurrency don’t need defense. I think that people outside of cryptocurrency communities don’t realise how accepted the technology is within them. HN is being misled into thinking they are widely hated

Accepted in what sense? Everyone I know who is involved with cryptocurrencies is so for “investment”, not for other kinds of usage.

Re: In defense of cryptocurrency

#29

Post by propter_hoc » Thu, Jun 09, 2022, 6:28 PM UTC

This article is a rebuttal to a letter, that in his interpretation, claims:

>[...] that the entire technology field is worthless and cannot be used for any practical purpose.

However, instead of addressing the core issue of whether cryptocurrency or DLT serves any practical purpose, the article instead cherry-picks specific issues that he thinks are resolvable:

* Energy waste

* Transaction speed

* Privacy

The author seems to be missing the forest (that he himself identified) for the trees. Why doesn't he provide a real world use case for DLT? I'm still waiting for that.

Re: In defense of cryptocurrency

#30

Post by AlexandrB » Thu, Jun 09, 2022, 6:28 PM UTC

bowsamic wrote: post #15

Cryptocurrency don’t need defense. I think that people outside of cryptocurrency communities don’t realise how accepted the technology is within them. HN is being misled into thinking they are widely hated

Saying that cryptocurrency is widely accepted within cryptocurrency communities seems tautological. Meanwhile many attempts to force NFTs into games have been met with a lot of pushback from the "general" gaming public. I think it's fair to say that there's definitely a group of people for whom cryptocurrency is a "no way, no how" issue. Whether this group is large enough to justify the "widely" in "widely hated" is open to debate.