In defense of cryptocurrency • Hacker News Board

Re: In defense of cryptocurrency

#551

Post by everfree » Sat, Jun 11, 2022, 4:00 AM UTC

strofcon wrote: post #547

everfree wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not going to argue with you about how a Macbook is valuable to melt down, or has intrinsic value as a paperweight. Frankly I think that line of thinking is a dead-end for insight. I also don't believe it's helpful to ponder the value of objects in the context of societal collapse. If that's your definition of intrinsic value, I don't think it's useful or practical. All money falls into the greater fool category.…

I mean, sure, if you'd like to ignore the entire point of inherent or intrinsic value, then... go for it? Weird flex, but sure. And no, it's not circular - "negative sum game" is literally baked into the concept of a purely speculative unbacked "asset". More money has to go in than can possibly come out, and there's precisely zilch to show for it. Any place that accepts crypto is simply immediately selling it for fia…

> "negative sum game" is literally baked into the concept of a purely speculative unbacked "asset"

The dollar is also a negative sum game, a purely speculative unbacked "asset".

More effort has to go into keeping track of it than can possibly come out.

> Any place that accepts crypto is simply immediately selling it for fiat, and making the customer pay more than they otherwise would in fees and headache.

Crypto payment processor fees are usually about 1%, which is less than half of the typical credit card processor fee. As for "headache", you'll have to elaborate on that.

Re: In defense of cryptocurrency

#552

Post by everfree » Sat, Jun 11, 2022, 4:01 AM UTC

strofcon wrote: post #550

everfree wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not going to argue with you about how a Macbook is valuable to melt down, or has intrinsic value as a paperweight. Frankly I think that line of thinking is a dead-end for insight. I also don't believe it's helpful to ponder the value of objects in the context of societal collapse. If that's your definition of intrinsic value, I don't think it's useful or practical. All money falls into the greater fool category.…

Wait did you actually say "all money falls into the greater fool category"? You... Really ought to look up what greater fool theory is. And maybe money, too, while you're at it.

Well, don't just sit there and hand-wave. I want to hear why you believe non-state-backed currencies categorically fall into the greater fool theory, but state-backed currencies categorically don't.

Re: In defense of cryptocurrency

#553

Post by cy_overlord » Sat, Jun 11, 2022, 4:07 AM UTC

GTP wrote: post #428

cy_overlord wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"you can ask the bank to give you the money back" "you can take them to court" Which like the article argues, is not something that can be solved by any ledger, distributed or not. Even if banks reverses records, they don't change the data which is already on the database/record, instead they just issue a new transaction from the backend or withdrawing it from a legit reserve that they own. In any case, no reversing…

> What if instead of taking the bank to the court, we have something in place for it that runs based on certain "if statements" or "switch case" As I said in my comment, the problem is that if you have a bug in the statements that should protect you, then there is no recourse for your lost money.

No computer programs are perfect, there will be bugs and exploits.

The question then comes to whether we want to deal with unpredictable human "bug" or consistent computer bug. For the later, we can engineer our way to a minimum risk model, where it become punishing to exploit a bug.

We are doing the same thing with the current system, it's just that different banks and companies are responsible for different systems. There are bugs and exploits in systems of our finacial institution and we rely on human to mitigate the risk.

Will computer be better than human or can we build a hybrid system? That's the question we need to answer.

Re: In defense of cryptocurrency

#554

Post by mckmk » Sat, Jun 11, 2022, 4:12 AM UTC

cableshaft wrote: post #524

mckmk wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like, whenever there is an issue with the representations of blockchain the answer is to ignore the blockchain. (Shoot, our smart contract was a little too limited for the service we want to offer “Hey everyone don’t use that NFT!”) Where as a traditional database the answer is to fix the database or code. I look at any process involving NFTs and have to wonder how they aren’t more easily and cheaply accompl…

There are ways to make upgradeable smart contracts but it wasn't really formalized until recently (there's now open contracts you can import into your projects to enable upgrades). Additionally, a lot of the community are against upgradeable contracts because they theoretically can be upgraded to something totally different, and they prefer immutability, with all its potential warts. Some projects use upgradeable con…

Thank you cableshaft. I appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts.

FWIW I also think general protocols on long lived platforms and IPFS are great.

BUT, I really don't think the blockchain has a role to play solving any of the issues you laid out. The reason the game you mentioned was able to continued to be played was because Apple was providing the network. The minimum ETH write fee is almost always at least $1 and frequently cost $3.50. Would people still be interested in playing the game if each write cost that much? Same goes for your archiving plans. IPFS is great but it's not a guarantee that that data will be seeded forever. For that you'd need to write it to one of the chains you're confident will survive. ETH data costs somewhere in the thousands of dollars per MB range? I'm not sure it's a real solution to that. I'm not dismissing the issues of very long term code and data longevity. They are real issues but in my opinion still quite unsolved.

Re: In defense of cryptocurrency

#555

Post by dmitriid » Sat, Jun 11, 2022, 5:45 AM UTC

cy_overlord wrote: post #549

dmitriid wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In an ideal world There are ponies and magical unicorns that grant you wishes. > Abstraction layers will be built. And those abstractions will definitely be built and will be different from any existing ones because? And once again we will have to trust people building them that they are built correctly. > I'm excited about innovative opportunities that it enabled. And those innovative opportunities are what exactl…

An opportunity to do things differently. The Internet today have flaws and we had exhausted all the possible way to build a better one on existing technology. Blockchain present us with a new way to coordinate online activities and transactions. It's the right path forward? We don't know, at least not until we exhaust all the possible options and therein lies a lot of opportunities for technical breakthroughs that co…

> An opportunity to do things differently. The Internet today have flaws and we had exhausted all the possible way to build a better one on existing technology.

Demagoguery

> Blockchain present us with a new way to coordinate online activities and transactions.

No it doesn't. Blockchain is a distributed spend-only log. There are very few if any applications for it.

> therein lies a lot of opportunities for technical breakthroughs that could possible solve all the concerns we had, technically.

Yeah, yeah, magical blockchain will solve all the issues, we just have to believe hard enough.

Re: In defense of cryptocurrency

#556

Post by tsimionescu » Sat, Jun 11, 2022, 7:03 AM UTC

bradwood wrote: post #518

tsimionescu wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is the very definition of "the underlying physical asset".

The state would have to legislatively enact the fact the their land registry database is now an NFT based blockchain.

Sure, I was taking that for granted more or less.

But that doesn't mean anyone will buy a house by browsing some site and buying an NFT, even if this were prefectului legally worked out.

And that is because a house and piece of land are complex real world objects that don't live on-chain, and can be arbitrarily different from when the NFT was minted. Perhaps there was flooding and the house is now damaged. Perhaps there is some insect infestation. Perhaps the land is in the process of being expropriate for highway construction. Perhaps a nearby high-rise is obscuring all the sunlight and the house is to dark for your tastes.

The complexity in real-estate transactions comes from appraising all of these sorts of things, not from the need of keeping the lands registry up to date. To buy a house, you need to have an expert appraise it's status. You also need a contract that gives you some protection from hudden huge issues that your expert may have missed. These things take the majority of the time and effprt, and NFTs do nothing to help with them.

Re: In defense of cryptocurrency

#557

Post by lottin » Sat, Jun 11, 2022, 7:10 AM UTC

landemva wrote: post #535

lottin wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the roads are privately-owned and the owners can charge road users anything they want. Such a system is only in the interest of the road owners, since they have monopoly power. Everybody else loses.

Nobody but Google monetizing street view is losing, or even grumbling about any problems. Everyone in town has reciprocal easement to/from all the other landowners to use the strip of private property that looks like a road. I am curious how anyone other than maybe Google street view is losing. Who do you think is losing? Who is there to charge, as the people using the roads live there and have the easement for use.…

Everybody loses because there aren't multiple road networks competing to provide access to the same places. There is just one network, right? This means the it's a monopolistic market, and in a monopolistic market everybody loses except the monopolist.

In a small town privately-owned roads can work because there aren't many outsiders using the roads, therefore the road owners are themselves the main road users, and so they may have the right incentives to do adequate road maintenance, and they don't charge anything because they have a reciprocal agreement, but a large road network that is privately owned would lead to a "monopoly equilibrium" where roads would be poorly maintained and road users would be charged high fees.

Re: In defense of cryptocurrency

#558

Post by lottin » Sat, Jun 11, 2022, 7:50 AM UTC

ephbit wrote: post #538

lottin wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> The answer to dysfunctional governments is not get rid of the government. As you're probably aware, central banks are usually intended to operate somewhat indepentently from governments. (One could argue to which degree it's actually the case, though.) Which means that monetary systems are supposed to be somewhat indepentent from governments. Assuming that Bitcoin were to be adopted as some kind of reserve currency…

Central banks are public institutions in charge of conducting monetary policy, they have a public mandate and are accountable to the legislative branch. They're therefore part of the government, even if they have some degree of independence.

Bitcoin undermines governments. For example, bitcoin adoption would seriously limit the government's ability to manage the economy via monetary policy. It would also affect its ability to prevent unrestricted movement of capitals in and out of the country, and within its borders. Financial regulations would be harder to enforce, and a larger chunk of the economy would go underground. So, clearly, it would weaken governments. I don't know that anyone disputes this.

Re: In defense of cryptocurrency

#559

Post by RandomLensman » Sat, Jun 11, 2022, 8:51 AM UTC

shakow wrote: post #537

RandomLensman wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me that creates two big questions: (1) Do we really want high frequency markets in real estate? Is that socially and economically desirable? (2) Land and property records so far have survived centuries (if not millennia), can we hope that an NFT solution will have the same long-term compatibility?

> Land and property records so far have survived centuries (if not millennia) Not really, no. Just taking the European example, there have been countless cases of litigious states of affair after e.g. invasions, revolutions, nationalizations, privatizations, etc. E.g. a house in Romania post Ceaucescu fall, a noble family's domain in Russia in 1917 or France in 1790, a German estate in East Prussia in 1945, a propert…

So France 1790 is kind of making my point - if that was the last break it's more than 200 years ago. And, yes, well aware of post socialism etc. issues. Not all have to do with records themselves but rather whether certain transfers of property were legal or not - which is different from pure record keeping.

Where I live in Europe nothing litigious for about 200+ years and I can easily pull records for my place beyond 100 years without any need for reading/parsing technology.

Re: In defense of cryptocurrency

#560

Post by tromp » Sat, Jun 11, 2022, 11:06 AM UTC

toolz wrote: post #420

tromp wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If he wanted to make clear his intention to never ever cash out, he could have burned those bitcoins.

are you aware of what it means to "burn" bitcoin? It's simply putting the coins in a wallet and destroying the keys. For all we know, these coins have already been "burned"

No, burning is sending coins to an obviously unspendable address.