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In defense of cryptocurrency

blog.cryptographyengineering.com

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Re: In defense of cryptocurrency

#211

Post by lottin »

denkmoon wrote: post #161
adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That works great except for the fact that 99% of crypto trades occur through exchanges which just put you back to the worst of both worlds.

If 99% of users stuck their fork in their eyeball, it wouldn't mean that a Fork is a bad design or a bad implement, it would mean that the users are using it wrong. FWIW, in my own usage of crypto, the lack of central authority is exactly why it is used. I don't really care that other people are just hodl-ing their funny money in someone else's wallet. Crypto, outside of an exchange, means I can send money to anyone…

> Crypto, outside of an exchange, means I can send money to anyone I want, and no other entity can prevent that.

This is basically it. Crypto-currencies are essentially tool to evade financial regulations. The price that you pay for that is a high operational risk and a lack of property rights.

Re: In defense of cryptocurrency

#212

Post by randomran01234 »

dang wrote: post #111
randomran01234 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read the article? No?

" Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that." " https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Sorry, will avoid this type of comment next time.

Re: In defense of cryptocurrency

#213

Post by puranjay »

olalonde wrote: post #206

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 foundati…

I'm in this rationalization camp since I actually did make insane returns from cryptocurrency. Even then, I can't bring myself to defend this space because of the sheer a) amount of scams, and b) lack of utility.

The scams wouldn't even be a problem - every fledgling platform has them - but the fact that the crypto community embraces scams and even encourages them. Scammers can rug a project for millions and turn around and launch another project within a week and everyone will still buy it because of greed.

And this is the crypto dilemma: the crypto community has utterly failed at self-regulation. Ergo, it has to be regulated by the government. However, a cryptocurrency that's beholden to government rules is antithetical to the core crypto ideas of self-ownership, privacy, and freedom.

Re: In defense of cryptocurrency

#214

Post by jolux »

x-complexity wrote: post #173
jolux wrote: post #53

The biggest problem I see with cryptocurrency is the transaction rate problem. It’s not like attempts haven’t already been made to solve it (Bitcoin Lightning), and Dr. Green fully admits that it’s not certain that any currently proposed changes can solve it either. How long is the world supposed to wait for reasonable transaction rates on this technology? If this is truly like the early internet, they should have va…

> The biggest problem I see with cryptocurrency is the transaction rate problem. (...) How long is the world supposed to wait for reasonable transaction rates on this technology? The technology to do so already exists / is currently being developed via: - Optimistic rollups (Arbitrum, Optimism) - 0-knowledge rollups (zkSync 2.0 (in public testing), Loopring, Immutable X) - sidechains (Polygon PoS, Fantom) https://eth…

> At worst, you'll only need to wait for a year or two to get sub-$0.10 transaction fees on the ETH rollups, as user adoption picks up.

I do hope this works, genuinely. I feel I’ve been burned already on this stuff so I’ll believe it when I see it. Would you say my misgivings would be proven correct if TPS is not well over a thousand in a few years?

Re: In defense of cryptocurrency

#215

Post by puranjay »

npad wrote: post #186

I was a crypto skeptic for many years. If you look at crypto purely from an engineering lens, you'll always find it wanting. What I didn't understand was that crypto is as much of an economic and political project, as it is an engineering project. If you think decentralisation and trustlessness are valuable, you should think crypto is important. If you don't care for decentralisation then being negative on crypto is…

No crypto project has managed to solve the trilemma problem so far. Decentralized chains are way too expensive and the cheap chains are heavily centralized.

Re: In defense of cryptocurrency

#216

Post by yata69420 »

Zerverus wrote: post #210
beambot wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

We mostly rely on trust and then prosecute frauds that are "worth" prosecuting (based on dollar value, frequency of fraud, and likelihood of recovery).

Re: In defense of cryptocurrency

#217

Post by lottin »

TapWaterBandit wrote: post #200
npad wrote: post #186

I was a crypto skeptic for many years. If you look at crypto purely from an engineering lens, you'll always find it wanting. What I didn't understand was that crypto is as much of an economic and political project, as it is an engineering project. If you think decentralisation and trustlessness are valuable, you should think crypto is important. If you don't care for decentralisation then being negative on crypto is…

Exactly, if you have complete faith and trust in conventional FIAT currencies and the systems they use to transact the use cases for crypto also seem far less compelling. As an example, the appeal of deflationary Bitcoin is much more salient to a citizen of Argentina than to a citizen of the USA (although recent inflation might make the appeal more obvious). Or on the even more extreme end, the citizen of Zimbabwe wo…

No one has complete faith in anything. The institutional system in liberal democracies is such that no single institution has all the power, precisely because we don't completely trust the government.

The answer to dysfunctional governments is not get rid of the government. This is just dumb. We need well-functioning governments to enforce human rights, and law and order.

Re: In defense of cryptocurrency

#218

Post by randomran01234 »

thawaya3113 wrote: post #122
randomran01234 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This solves inter-bank transfers in EU but does not mean payments going out of, or into, the EU are solved. Crypto takes a different approach: a single protocol that is shared across all countries.

How is crypto any better at doing this than say, Western Union? Ultimately, as someone who finds blockchain technology really cool, what I struggle with is, in which scenarios is blockchain better than Postgres?

Better by what metric? Ethereum settlements are nearly instant and global, involve no need for a private third party arbiter, and are built on permissionless and open source protocols. Some of the areas they fall short is often around throughput, energy externalities, and user privacy. As the article points out, there are engineering solutions and new cryptography being applied to all three of those problems.

Re: In defense of cryptocurrency

#219

Post by 2442267934sv »

Based on these comments I’m surprised that most of this user base is so crypto illiterate. Algorand or even Dash solves 99% of the problems you claim crypto has. Everyone savvy in the space knows btc and eth were always far from the crypto ideal, but they have large economic moat going for them. Crypto is going to change the world for good in a big way. Most of our modern problems stem from economic and political inefficiencies. Crypto can solve both.

Re: In defense of cryptocurrency

#220

Post by lottin »

randomran01234 wrote: post #102
fanf2 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The solution that has actually been implemented in Europe is to regulate the payment providers, so inter-bank transfers are effectively free and instant, and credit card fees are capped at 0.3% (i.e. 10x less than in the USA).

This solves inter-bank transfers in EU but does not mean payments going out of, or into, the EU are solved. Crypto takes a different approach: a single protocol that is shared across all countries.

So bitcoin "solves" the problem by being non-compliant with local laws and regulations.
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