261–270 of 578 posts
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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I'm experienced enough to read what papers and proofs have been published, have been a programmer for longer than not, but don't take my word for it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9nv0Ol-R5Q So they found one way to prevent Sybil attacks that has been a well-known problem. Big deal. Update A "blockchain" is not a novel concept. The PoW system used is one way to prevent Sybil attacks when distributing work among un…
I do find at least amusing to point out you started this thread with a comment that adamantly stated that "There's nothing unique or special about it [blockchains]" Only to immediately follow it up by conceding your main point > "he PoW system used is one way to prevent Sybil attacks when distributing work among untrusted peers, and that's it. Novel, neat, but useless" Ok, so you shifted the goal post from "there's n…
> Only to immediately follow it up by conceding your main point > "he PoW system used is one way to prevent Sybil attacks when distributing work among untrusted peers, and that's it. Novel, neat, but useless"
I don't see any goalpost moving. PoW is not blockchain.
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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…
Have a trusted third party transfer it back to you? Or give up your house to the hacker?
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it's not theoretical and I expect it to also become a larger percentage or the network over the next few years. it occurs mostly for economic reasons, it is somewhat accelerated by the common criticism but ironically mostly irrelevant while getting to the same outcome either way grid-reliant proof of work is probably going to get deprecated. (remote sites typically can connect to a grid to sell their own excess energ…
> it's not theoretical Can you gave examples of PoW using energy that would be wasted otherwise and is not something like reactivation of shut down fossil fuel power plants?
Bitcoin mining helps reduce natural gas flaring. Energy that would otherwise be wasted.[1]
Your next rebuttal will be that this simply incentivizes fossil fuels to be used for longer than would have been the case without Bitcoin mining.
My answer to that will be that fossil fuels will be with us for a long time still, flaring is currently happening whether you like it or not, and this is a way to reduce the environmental cost of flaring.
https://www.investing.com/news/cryptocurrency-news/oman-supp...
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!
Aside from NFT, stablecoins like USDC and DAI are also quite novel and interesting applications.
These applications are providing value and utility to those using them, and could potentially improve other parts of the world’s payment systems by providing a decentralized option alongside centralized processors.
Crypto will be eternally new, because we will keep finding new ways to build on top of it. A few years ago zkSNARKs we’re not feasible on a blockchain. Now they are becoming widespread and being put into use. A few years in the future, we will likely have new cryptographic primitives that will provide new applications and areas to build and develop.
"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…
> In other words, 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. once you have a trusted third party, though, you no longer need permissi…
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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 altco…
This really needs said louder. Writing off the entirety of cryptocurrency as "useless" betrays either stunning ignorance or immense privilege (or possibly even both). Even in the "developed" world (let alone "developing") there are countless people whom the legacy financial system does not serve yet is happy to exploit; cryptocurrency ain't some silver bullet, but it does address quite a few of the legacy system's injustices.
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.
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Bitcoin solves the problem of frozen fx reserves and seized assets. It's a neutral store of value. the TAM is 400+ trillion. Payments are low margin, low value business. Often even subsidized by the systemic banks. Do you really think it costs zero to secure the entire GDP, and the entire wealth, of an entire economy? zero cost SEPA transactions don't secure the EU economy. The US military and their nuclear weapons d…
A virtual token is literally useless. It's only worth something, so far as it can be traded for actual goods, so the availability of "secured" goods is quite essential as far as the value of cryptographic tokens go.
What do you mean by that? Backing?