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Why I’m Cryptophobic

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Re: Why I’m Cryptophobic

#401

Post by once_inc »

tsimionescu wrote: post #304
yellowapple wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no way in any number of Hells that I'd trust PornHub with my banking info.

Why not? They're a far more reputable business than many online stores, for example.

They are also a far more interesting target because of their size. Imagine downloading all customer information of paying pornhub clients. Assume it holds basic information (name, address, email, payment info), and not any usage data.

I could use that data to extort at least 10% of those people easily (religious people, celebrities, politicians, etc). This is disregarding the price that I'd get for just leaking the other 90%.

Now imagine the fallout of somebody downloading the same info for a local brewery, a big tech company like Atlassian, a household brand like Staples, or even great big Amazon.

Re: Why I’m Cryptophobic

#402

Post by once_inc »

babypuncher wrote: post #193
mjburgess wrote: post #4

There needs to be some basic economics here.. Money has value because of the value of the economic transactions in which its conducted. Government-backed currencies are forced to have value in the sense they force people to use it for their taxes. The US, additionally, forces the world to use it for oil trades. Value is in those economic transactions. A currency is just a "liquifying" of that value, to make it easier…

Just using BTC to replace all of McDonald's daily debit/credit card transactions would completely destroy the system. I don't know why people think they are refuting your argument by pointing out low-volume examples like porn sites.

It would. Agreed 100%.

This is why second layer solutions are being built, which offer the option of settling on-chain at the user's request. Second layer systems allow you to transact within that system without needing to publish each transaction. Block space is valuable, and your 1c purchase probably isn't worth putting on everyone's hard disk for all eternity.

Bitcoin is actively managed to prevent bloat to keep it decentralized. A layered system allows you to scale massively, much like the OSI model used by the internet.

Re: Why I’m Cryptophobic

#403

Post by once_inc »

tablespoon wrote: post #243
mjburgess wrote: post #4

There needs to be some basic economics here.. Money has value because of the value of the economic transactions in which its conducted. Government-backed currencies are forced to have value in the sense they force people to use it for their taxes. The US, additionally, forces the world to use it for oil trades. Value is in those economic transactions. A currency is just a "liquifying" of that value, to make it easier…

> The US, additionally, forces the world to use it for oil trades. That is not true. The US isn't forcing anyone to use the dollar, e.g.: https://www.wsj.com/articles/saudi-arabia-considers-acceptin...

They have strong-armed their petrodollar system since 1971, and have invaded a number of oil-producing countries that toyed with the idea to price oil in value other currencies.

Saudi Arabia only get to price in Yuan, because the US can't afford to invade China. The unipolar world is fraying at the seams, and one wonders what will happen to the dollar when the US government can no longer lean on the petrodollar to enforce it's world reserve status.

Check Lyn Alden's piece on the history of the US Dollar as world reserve asset [0] for a vastly superior exposition of facts regarding this matter.

[0]: https://www.lynalden.com/fraying-petrodollar-system/

Re: Why I’m Cryptophobic

#404

Post by once_inc »

throwaway413 wrote: post #248
MacsHeadroom wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Real value doesn't matter. "Marginal" value is what matters. Breathable air and drinkable water have the greatest real value of anything, but their marginal values are zero and near zero respectively for a number of reasons (chiefly scarcity).

Marginal value itself is unstable compared to real value. Sure, the amount of air you require may change, albeit insignificantly. Marginal value can go +/- total value at any moment due to external factors. > Breathable air and drinkable water have the greatest real value of anything, but their marginal values are zero and near zero respectively for a number of reasons Case in point. Sure, abundant now. But when they…

The counter to this point is that if (through monetary mismanagement) the amount of dollars exponentially rises, the value of those dollers drop. Fiat isn't backed by a hard asset; it can be arbitrarily increased/decreased in value through organisations and unelected officials.

The original QE decision by the fed was taken during a meeting that has meeting notes that can be downloaded. I highly advise you to do so if you are under the illusion that the decision was made by highly competent experts basing their decisions on hard data and well-made, objective models.

Re: Why I’m Cryptophobic

#405

Post by pcthrowaway »

adastra22 wrote: post #394
pcthrowaway wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the person you're responding to was talking about Bitcoin L2 chains, probably more specifically the lightning network. I actually agree with that about Bitcoin. Web3 is generally done on EVM or cosmos chains, some of which are L2s (and some of which are loosely considered L2s). But most of them are still separate chains, so not L2s in the sense that the Lightning network is an L2. If you're looking at EVM cha…

How is lightning “a ploy to enrich its creator”?

Basically it leads to hubs forming where lightning nodes with large amounts of funds are better able to facilitate transactions, and also benefit from that due to transaction fees.

Re: Why I’m Cryptophobic

#406

Post by clintonwoo »

silentsea90 wrote: post #384
clintonwoo wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure but how many people need to worry about their life savings being seized? Out of 300 million in the US for example? Maybe just criminals? Also I don't think civilization falling is really much to worry about. It would take years for civilization to fall, and if it does we can just buy gold or something with a real tangible value. Or maybe we can move to a crypto after it falls, which is something we can do after…

Nothing personal but your view of Govt is very very trust based, while mine is of skepticism. Executive order 6102[1] where the US Govt seized Gold from rank and file citizens is an example of the State's power when they chose to exercise it. This was back in the day when USD was pegged and the Govt didn't have money. So no, not just criminals, in fact, holding gold was criminal. BTC being seizure proof is critical a…

I'm not actually born/raised in US, only moved here 5 years ago. Thanks for the response as I wasn't aware of the gold seizures.

I would still say based on the practicality if you look at any cryptocurrency it would falter under the load of transactions as large as the whole US for example. So it's a bit early to bet the farm on any one of them. Also if a govt will support cryptocurrency they will create their own one so they can profit off their own ponzi, so to speak. They wouldn't be in favor of enriching Bitcoin whales just to take advantage of the 1s and 0s previously established in the btc Blockchain

Re: Why I’m Cryptophobic

#408

Post by ipaddr »

ben_w wrote: post #337
ipaddr wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people did not have a car in the early 1900s. Not everyone can go into space today, it doesn't scale. BTC may have a maximum number of transactions today but many are using bitcoin and the big advantage is it doesn't matter how much you move you pay the same transaction fee. It is not ready for micro payments but works great for larger payments.

What size transaction do you think it helps with? My transaction fees are usually zero, even internationally, with the only exception being trivial costs when I visited the USA. Conversely, when I bought a flat I was legally required to add the much larger in-all-but-name transaction fee of having a lawyer sign off that I and my money and my payment of it and the flat itself and the seller I was buying it from were a…

Your transaction fees are zero. Most people sending money through western union don't share that rate and western union requires id and travel to a pickup place.

Re: Why I’m Cryptophobic

#409

Post by aaaaaaaaata »

mattnewton wrote: post #242
MacsHeadroom wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are dozens of dApps where anyone with an internet connection and money can buy/sell puts and other options on BTC anonymously. They have full openly auditable reserves and all their code is open source and visible on their respective smartchains. Wanting an institution to provide a sub-par solution for this is a cop-out. Put up or shut-up.

With a centralized service I don’t need a law degree, I can quickly ask an expert what my rights are and understand an option, and there is a (limited and slow, but existant) method to make myself whole in the event of a problem. Each dApp is its own special setup and it can be quite complicated to figure out exactly how it behaves, who to sue if it doesn’t, and who to pay money to find these things out for me. I hop…

Stop outsourcing protecting yourself.

Re: Why I’m Cryptophobic

#410

Post by aaaaaaaaata »

adastra22 wrote: post #393
babypuncher wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you're trusting some central authority to manage your money along with that of countless others. You're right back in the same situation you presumably wanted to avoid with fiat and banks, only with exponentially greater environmental impact and no regulations in place to protect your money when things go FUBAR.

The L2 systems built on bitcoin have faults, but centralization is not one of them. You don’t go custodial when you put bitcoin into a lightning channel.

and the L2 systems on ETH have even fewer faults.
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