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In defense of cryptocurrency

blog.cryptographyengineering.com

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Re: In defense of cryptocurrency

#201

Post by SkyMarshal »

denkmoon wrote: post #169
haswell wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except you've replaced something people want: easy access to their crypto and a feeling of assurance with something that people clearly don't want: no one wants to stick a fork in their eyeball. The thing is, users define the market. If we were talking about a traditional "product", if 99% of users used a product wrong, that product would be considered an abject failure, at least from a UX / messaging standpoint with…

I would argue that the decentralised nature is a crucial aspect of the value proposition. It's part of the mythos of why crypto is valuable/worth investing in/going to the moon. The way it's actually used completely destroys that part of its value, but don't let reality get in the way of a good investment opportunity. I think if you set up a coin that doesn't use a distributed ledger, and instead uses an SQL database…

> I would argue that the decentralized nature is a crucial aspect of the value proposition.

I would go so far as to argue it's the entire aspect of the value proposition. Take away decentralization and all you've got is a poorly architected, inefficient, unwieldy PayPal.

Re: In defense of cryptocurrency

#202

Post by MomoXenosaga »

yata69420 wrote: post #190
Nursie wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You'd need some kind of shared database that all parties can trust Government run then, the institution that is involved with contract oversight here, an easily identifiable authority in this situation. If you don't trust that here, then there's no point in bothering with sales contracts in the first place. > It'd have to be regularly audited but also kept as up to date as possible. It should have very precise acce…

I suspect we have different governments. I don't see mine doing anything remotely like that. I come from a place that still has toll booths so that toll booth workers can keep their jobs. I have to take off my shoes before I can get on an airplane so that my government feels safer. I personally compute my government taxes, which only occasionally (if ever) get verified. That's how we fund the country. If I routinely…

This hatred for the government Americans have is frankly unhealthy.

Besides replacing it with tech bros and crypto douchebags doesn't seem like much of an improvement.

Re: In defense of cryptocurrency

#203

Post by everfree »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #195
everfree wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's a fair script to use against arguments of the form "cryptocurrencies will never amount to anything". I would hazard to say that it's not the criticism of the current state of cryptocurrency that irks most of its proponents - most of them agree that it's not very useful currently . However, it becomes problematic when you take that valid criticism of the technology's current state and use it to support th…

> If you want your mind changed that cryptocurrency is currently useful, I can't help you there. But if you want your mind changed that many of the drawbacks of blockchain technology are not as insurmountable as detractors would have you believe. Let me summarize the sentiment to see if I'm understanding: "I'm excited about crypto now because of what crypto could be in the future." To me it feels like being really ex…

It's a less prescriptive sentiment than that.

It's your right to not be excited about cryptocurrency, and your reasoning is fair enough. Also, the article does a good job of clearing up misinformation about what cryptocurrency is intrinsically incapable of. I don't think those two things are in conflict.

Re: In defense of cryptocurrency

#204

Post by Quekid5 »

lbwtaylor wrote: post #147
dcolkitt wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many real world systems are "nearly trustless". Of course you still need some sort of court system if someone decides to break bad. But in the 99%+ of times you're in the happy path, economic transactions occur based on autonomous rules encoded in software. The analogy I like to use is what's harder to buy a $1 million house or $1 million of Microsoft stock? The former process takes weeks, and dozens of man hours fro…

>>The analogy I like to use is what's harder to buy a $1 million house or $1 million of Microsoft stock It's interesting, both have registries, so why is one harder? Is it because the registry is better? No, it's because real property transactions are more complex: - What condition will the property be delivered in and when? - What happens if the condition is not as specified? - what personal property is included in…

Exactly.

Microsoft stock is basically fungible whereas houses and most other real-world property very much are not.

Re: In defense of cryptocurrency

#205

Post by lottin »

yata69420 wrote: post #175
Nursie wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As with many proposed blockchain solutions - what's important there is that you've wrapped everything in a legal vehicle that makes fast transfer possible, NOT the fact that the record sits on a blockchain. That record could sit anywhere. A database perhaps. It's not really the NFT that's the 'win' there, if indeed it is a win.

You'd need some kind of shared database that all parties can trust. It'd have to be regularly audited but also kept as up to date as possible. It should have very precise access controls. Also, it should be as fast as possible, and there should be a record of everything that's ever changed. If you want a full copy of it, you should be able to request it at any time. It sounds like a lot of work to build that though.…

Look up land registration. These databases have been around for centuries.

Re: In defense of cryptocurrency

#206

Post by olalonde »

Great article but let's get real, a great deal of the cryptocurrency criticism is rationalization. HN recently revealed the true motivation behind much of it[0]:

> It's less that I'm glad the market is crashing, and more that I'm glad that the insufferable crypto bros are finally getting a punch to the mouth. Seriously, these people are the worst. Your average "crypto investor" has no skills, no mathematical foundations, nothing. Except for pure stupid luck, and the ability to spew inane crypto babble 24/7. And yes, they think they are much smarter than you, because they achieved better financial results than you did while only doing 1/1000 of the work to get there. I truly hate the fact that these people are so rich. It makes me want to move to Alaska and just try to ignore society for the rest of my days.

> This came off as pretty bitter. I apologize, but I am bitter, and I'm having a shit couple weeks.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31356857

Re: In defense of cryptocurrency

#207

Post by bfung »

dcolkitt wrote: post #127
JackC wrote: post #98

"transaction reversibility is not about the ledger, but rather about the transaction rules that a currency uses. A reversible currency requires that someone anoint this trusted party (or trusted parties) and that they use their powers to freeze/burn/transact currency in ways that are at odds with the recorded owners’ intentions. And indeed, this is a capability that many tokens now possess" I think this is arguing th…

Many real world systems are "nearly trustless". Of course you still need some sort of court system if someone decides to break bad. But in the 99%+ of times you're in the happy path, economic transactions occur based on autonomous rules encoded in software. The analogy I like to use is what's harder to buy a $1 million house or $1 million of Microsoft stock? The former process takes weeks, and dozens of man hours fro…

> Many real world systems are "nearly trustless"…

> But in the 99%+ of times you're in the happy path, economic transactions occur based on autonomous rules encoded in software.

In the happy path, people just “trust” that the system works; that the merchant and cc company transact properly, that cc company and bank work together, that the software underpinning all this is tested and has no errors, that the bank and cc company can help in disputes of fraud from the merchant…

It’s actually based on a lot more trust than the normal person realizes and polar opposite to nearly trustless.

Re: In defense of cryptocurrency

#208

Post by yata69420 »

Nursie wrote: post #193
yata69420 wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect we have different governments. I don't see mine doing anything remotely like that. I come from a place that still has toll booths so that toll booth workers can keep their jobs. I have to take off my shoes before I can get on an airplane so that my government feels safer. I personally compute my government taxes, which only occasionally (if ever) get verified. That's how we fund the country. If I routinely…

> I suspect we have different governments. I don't see mine doing anything remotely like that. Then why are they going to bring in a blockchain solution? It's got the exact same problem there as any other software solution would. That's my point here, making it a blockchain (or a database!) doesn't magically solve the root cause, it's just an implementation detail. If it even is a problem (a lot of other posters don'…

> Now instead of directly transacting at the very low-tech county property registrar

I think you've overlooked this in the grandparent, because you've probably never had the experience of going to a low-tech county property registrar's office to pull a record.

> it's the absolute ton of bureaucracy and paper-shuffling that takes several weeks

Of course, but so much of that bureaucracy is about being risk-adverse. I really do have to take my shoes off at the airport because somebody tried to wear explosive shoes once, about 20 years ago.

So, yes it's the "ton of bureaucracy and paper-shuffling that takes several weeks", but that doesn't really address what's going on. Our governments will easily adopt new technologies when they're simple.

If minting officially signed records is as cheap and easy on-chain as it looks like it's going to be, it would be silly not to use the technology, even if you think government should have been the entity to build and maintain it.

> Choosing blockchain + API vs DB + API here doesn't address that.

This whole class of technology precisely addresses that.

It removes the "who has to build and maintain this DB and keep access to it forever" step, which is pretty significant for important records.

Literal teenagers can buy and sell pictures of apes easier than I can prove to a mortgage company that I own my residence. Something isn't right there, and I don't think it's the children and their fancy record keeping that's wrong.

When the intern at a county clerk's office somewhere in the middle of the country says "hey boss, let's mint NFTs for these records, it costs about a penny each and I can set up the computer to do it as a summer project", that's about the threshold we need for widespread local government adoption.

Re: In defense of cryptocurrency

#209

Post by Quekid5 »

beambot wrote: post #189
evouga wrote: post #152

This article doesn’t address the main objection I have about the practical value of cryptocurrency, namely, why I can’t take such an application, replace the distributed ledger with a SQL database, and get a solution that’s better in every way. As soon as you have a trusted central authority (monitoring and reversing payment transactions, interacting with government agencies to execute real estate transaction, etc.)…

How do you prove that no one manually added or edited database rows? How do you store the transaction logs & verify their accuracy & authenticity? By the time you build a system with historical "proofs" with enough replication, you'll basically have invented a Blockchain with more complexity.

Write-once physical storage?

Re: In defense of cryptocurrency

#210

Post by Zerverus »

beambot wrote: post #189
evouga wrote: post #152

This article doesn’t address the main objection I have about the practical value of cryptocurrency, namely, why I can’t take such an application, replace the distributed ledger with a SQL database, and get a solution that’s better in every way. As soon as you have a trusted central authority (monitoring and reversing payment transactions, interacting with government agencies to execute real estate transaction, etc.)…

How do you prove that no one manually added or edited database rows? How do you store the transaction logs & verify their accuracy & authenticity? By the time you build a system with historical "proofs" with enough replication, you'll basically have invented a Blockchain with more complexity.

Oh gosh how does anything in the world work today without the blockchain
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