321–330 of 578 posts
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.)…
"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…
And it is fine to build systems with trusted parties on top of a permissionless network. The article cites USDC which does this, it is one of many applications users can choose to transact with. Attempting to bake reversibility into the protocol would lead to a tightly permissioned system with only a few trusted authorities. A loose analogy might be the internet, which aims to be a decentralized global protocol that…
In other words, if you allow an organisation to change things like refund you, then they might as well just manage their own leger like they do at the minute.
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.)…
That's just one example - sometimes you need technology which is out of hands of authorities. Cash or Gold bars have similar properties but you literally have to physically take it with you if you want to send it somewhere.
Leaving payments aside - ENS domains, exchanges, insurance, lending borrowing and bunch of other products which are equally accessible to a farmer in Nigeria as it is to a Wall Street suit. You don't see a value in that?
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.)…
It wouldn't be better "in every way", though. A blockchain is much more resilient; the equivalent would be to have hundreds or thousands of redundant SQL databases around the world and somehow keep them all in sync. By the time you've done that, you've very likely reinvented a blockchain, at many times the cost of just using an already-existing public blockchain. > monitoring and reversing payment transactions I disa…
Just wait until a few years from now when cash money will be phased out and replaced by CBDC's. That's when suddenly all those critics will wake up in horror and realize that money as we know it ceases to exist. What money is CBDC's than? Well, it's credits, social credits to be more precise, controlled by smart contracts, controlled by governments.
So with these government controlled smart contracts in place, how are you going to give your kid a 1000 bucks? If the government only allows you to give a maximum of 100, than that 100 limit will be programmed into the smart contract and your 1000 bucks transfer will be rejected. Or imagine you want to go a second time on holiday in a year. The smart contract might be programmed to only allow you 1 holiday a year due to carbon footprint, now you cannot book your flight. This is just the tip of the iceberg, when you just take a little time to think about all the ramifications, you should get worried. They are even planning to control how and on what you can spend the money you earn, it's written in publications, and no it's not a conspiracy..
The total control of humanity that CBDC's will bring is a horror story. It's comparable to the Chinese Social Credit System, but then on steroids. Much of the smart contracts will be run by AI. So, what are you going to do when for whatever flaw in the system or whatever reason your credits are blocked? You don't own money, have no wallet, you might not even be able to buy a piece of bread, whatever you credit score was before. That's what's in store for you crypto currency critics.
So please, do your due diligence and think twice before criticizing crypto currencies.
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And this violates the spec that is already in force in each jurisdiction.
I don't get your point here, there's not a legally required minimum fee being skipped.
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Crypto is antiprivacy. All of the transactions are public, it just offers psuedo-anonymity. If we used crypto for all transactions you could see when I go to my local watering hole and wait for me to close out my tab.
Do you know who is operating under the pseudonym of Satoshi Nakamoto then?
It's literally a public ledger. It's harder to hide see: https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/crypto-bitcoin-money-lau...
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No, the Mac is worth something in and of itself . It is a tool of productivity, entertainment, education, creation, etc. And, failing all of that, it's valuable for its parts. A bitcoin is an ID number pointing to pretend money. It has zero intrinsic value.
Productivity, entertainment, education, and creation are all subjective, just like the value of an entry in a ledger. I could say "I don't use Macs because I find I can't be productive with them." That's a subjective statement. Or I could say "I don't find it entertaining to sit in front of a Mac," or "I don't learn anything when I use a Mac," "I can't create anything valuable using a Mac." None of the properties you…
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NFT is quite a novel and interesting application on its own. For an application of NFT, see Tezos Domains and ENS (Ethereum). 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 centra…
None of your examples are good ideas though. DNS requires proof of identity and a mechanism for settling disputes (e.g. so you can't buy google.com if you're not named Google; and also can't buy g0ogle.com, gooogle.com, gOogle.com etc) to be a useful system. Minting NFTs simply can't give you that, and once you involve a party that can settle disputes, all advantages of NFTs disappear. Not to mention, most NFTs as us…
Hah. Like giving Meta the ability to create legal disputes against long-standing companies that happen to share its new name. This is a system that rewards those with the funds to pay the legal fees, or settle disputes outside of court with large lump sums. Not all users want a system where Meta can take a domain you own simply because they now have a trademark that loosely correlates with it.
> Not to mention, most NFTs as used in reality are 100% vapourware. As the owner of an NFT, you sometimes don't even have the right to reproduce the thing the NFT signs yourself (as in the case of the NBA moments NFTs).
I am talking about ENS, not NBA moments or apes. NFT is permissionless tech, so there will be a lot of dumb and stupid ideas built on top of it.
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.)…
That's how you end up with Google, Apple, and Facebook, Twitter, etc. They may start out as providing a service that works, but over time as they get bigger the incentive structure pushes them towards monetizing your data, locking you in, building boundaries around who can access what (e.g.Twitter APIs), and sharing data with parties you don't want to share it with. One way to avoid this lock-in is to change the unde…