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In defense of cryptocurrency

blog.cryptographyengineering.com

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Re: In defense of cryptocurrency

#221

Post by randomran01234 »

jolux wrote: post #108
randomran01234 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read the article? No?

I did. He lays out several possible solutions but notes that none are proven. That’s what I’m criticizing: I’ve seen these claims made before, and they were never proven.

The author reasonably concluded that these solutions are early and effectively “beta software” but I think it would be wrong to say they are completely unproven. L2s are currently securing billions of dollars and the amount of block space they take up is on increasing rapidly.[1][2]

The unproven part is whether users will be satisfied enough with the security and censorship considerations of something like a ZK Rollup for it to scale to facilitate a significant part of the world’s economic activity. This is reasonable to question as we are only about 1 year into a range of this tech being heavily applied on mainnet.

https://l2beat.com/

https://dune.com/funnyking/L2-Gas-Consumption

Re: In defense of cryptocurrency

#222

Post by deepu256 »

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.)…

I guess because it's almost impossible to trust an authority which also allows permissionless building on top such data.

Most corps now have proven that they act for their own shareholders and can't be trusted to look after all users.

Gov agencies while are a potential candidate for establishing trustworthy data owners are too beaurocratic to ever allow for permissionaless building on top.

Blockchains sort of allow both trust yourself (by owning private keys) & build permissionlessly on top .

Re: In defense of cryptocurrency

#223

Post by lola-hart »

2442267934sv wrote: post #219

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 ine…

And I am surprised there are still so many illiterates who believe "blockchain technology" is in any way useful. Or indeed anything new.

Re: In defense of cryptocurrency

#224

Post by olalonde »

puranjay wrote: post #213
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 aro…

There are plenty of existing laws for dealing with scammers and fraudsters, why not use them? Also, are victims really victims when they knowingly buy into scams "because of greed"? At the very least, they don't seem to be the ones calling for a cryptocurrency ban.

I disagree that there is a monolithic "crypto community" that encourages scams. For example, a great deal of the Bitcoin community is fervently anti altcoin and many even consider Ethereum as a "shitcoin".

Regarding utility, everyone is entitled to their opinion. I disagree. There was a time in my life when I was "unbanked" and Bitcoin was the only way I could transact online. In the end, utility is subjective and it is not the government's job to decide whether something has utility or not.

Re: In defense of cryptocurrency

#225

Post by lottin »

landemva wrote: post #181
photochemsyn wrote: post #68

> "The top credit-card merchant fee actually rose in the United States between 1991 and 2009, and this is a goddamn tragedy, since these fees are baked into the cost of most retail goods and thus born by the working poor (who pay them even if they use cash.) . . . Why are these IT-focused industries so consistently immune to the same technological improvements and cost reductions we see everywhere else?" The simplest…

>> it should be state-owned and state-managed (see the network of roads ...) Where I live, the 'roads' are owned by each individual property owner with an easement to every other property owner in the town. Why would we want a group of government bureaucrats to literally own our roads?

Because we don't want the road owner be able to demand extortionate fees to use their road?

Re: In defense of cryptocurrency

#226

Post by EdwardDiego »

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.

How do you defend against a 51% attack in an environment where Bitcoin mining is increasingly uneconomic?

Re: In defense of cryptocurrency

#227

Post by 2442267934sv »

lola-hart wrote: post #223
2442267934sv wrote: post #219

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 ine…

And I am surprised there are still so many illiterates who believe "blockchain technology" is in any way useful. Or indeed anything new.

And AI can get the senior discount at rite-aid. You don’t have an argument

Re: In defense of cryptocurrency

#228

Post by EdwardDiego »

e63f67dd-065b wrote: post #149
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…

Tell me you’ve never bought a house without telling me you’ve never bought a house. Buying houses are expensive because: - Realtors are a state-sanctioned monopoly for real estate transactions and suck up a % of the costs. They also provide the necessary service of aggregating information about the market and negotiating on your behalf - Due diligence on the state of the property. This means inspecting that there’s n…

> Realtors are a state-sanctioned monopoly for real estate transactions

You know you can buy a house without a single realtor involved yeah?

Re: In defense of cryptocurrency

#229

Post by lottin »

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…

In crypto, transaction fees don't reflect actual transaction costs, because transaction processors are being paid with newly minted coins in addition to the fees, so it's not really an accurate comparison.

Re: In defense of cryptocurrency

#230

Post by egeozcan »

I really don't want to be a downer but all I read in pro cryptocurrency posts are:

It's still new! It needs time! You need to follow the latest developments! It has a lot of potential!

It's time already that someone shows some of that potential and it better not be something like NFTs!

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