Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Crypto Winter, or Crypto Ice Age?

technollama.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 167 posts

Re: Crypto Winter, or Crypto Ice Age?

#81

Post by nailer »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #30
nailer wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need to rent a safety deposit box for the gold to continue being your gold though.

> You need to rent a safety deposit box for the gold No, I don't. Where I keep my valuables is my business, and it depends on how much gold I have. People kept gold long before safety deposit boxes at banks were a thing. And, paraphrasing above: why is secure storage included for gold and not for Bitcoin in your analogy?

> Where I keep my valuables is my business, and it depends on how much gold I have. People kept gold long before safety deposit boxes at banks were a thing.

Sure but the other options often increase risk or have a different cost. Some Vietnamese friends used to keep money in their house and then had their homes invaded. I imagine that's not entirely uncommon.

> And, paraphrasing above: why is secure storage included for gold and not for Bitcoin in your analogy?

Oh that's my point - we should definitely take in storage costs for both.

Re: Crypto Winter, or Crypto Ice Age?

#82

Post by deepu256 »

p4bl0 wrote: post #64
deepu256 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, then show me a credible 3rd Party where I can store my ownership data apart from Government. (Most corporations which currently store my data proved that they cannot be trusted and they only look after their shareholders. Not users.)

> show me a credible 3rd Party where I can store my ownership data apart from Government Your "ownership data" does not have any intrinsic value. It only has value because an external authority (your Government's justice institutions) is able to enforce it. Writing something on a blockchain has no magical effect. You cannot remove necessary third-parties like that. > Most corporations which currently store my data pr…

"My ownership data" has value. perhaps not to you. But for people i interact with.

Example :- My education degree is something that I own. It can be very useful if I can quickly prove to the world that I indeed really have that degree. (like Twitter allows to prove you own an avatar NFT) . It would be super helpful if this was on a blockchain instead of some university database with a cumbersome process to avail transcripts.

Re: Crypto Winter, or Crypto Ice Age?

#83

Post by landemva »

asdajksah2123 wrote: post #14
snarfy wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crypto is basically gambling, and gambling is alive and well. This is why I don't see crypto dying anytime soon. It will die when a better gamble comes along.

Crypto in its current form is worse than gambling. With gambling, unless it's illegally rigged, you know your expected value will be say $0.90 for every $1 you put in. However, in return, there is a possibility that you may have a one in million chance of getting back $100 for the $1 you put in. Crypto, on the other hand, is a Ponzi scheme. It has no internal value and the current owners of crypto are paid entirely t…

> largely hoarded by early adopters

Agree with this in that chains like Solana and Ripple are controlled by the startup folks or the big VCs. I avoid these centralized money grabs.

Re: Crypto Winter, or Crypto Ice Age?

#84

Post by landemva »

lucideer wrote: post #46
masswerk wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding (1), the real statement here is, "many of us were there at the start of the Web, it was evident that it was going to change the world, and it was usable from the start." And it's mostly about the the Web (but you may include things like The Well, which were promising from the start.) The point is really about immediately apparent use. And, if you're going to date the Web back to the humble beginnings of ARP…

To be clear, I'm not disagreeing with the intent behind the article, I just think the execution is exceptionally poor. If you're going to argue against something, make your arguments compelling (your comment's first point is, the author's wasn't). On your second & third points: 2: Improving tech over time is good. Creating perfect tech on day 1 isn't realistic. The early internet was built on a lot of tech we no long…

> tying economic prosperity to inflating resource value based on scarcity instead of utility

Why would the store of value or the unit of account or the medium of exchange (the money) determine prosperity? The public accounting ledger provides transparency and auditability as a service which can reduce friction to economic prosperity. Neither gold nor Bitcoin creates a fun day at the beach - or whatever your measure of prosperity may be.

Re: Crypto Winter, or Crypto Ice Age?

#85

Post by landemva »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #10
lucideer wrote: post #5

Bitcoin is absolute garbage and in theory any critique is good, but it bothers me that half of the points in this article aren't even internally logically consistent: > “Blockchain is just like the early internet”. No, it isn’t. Satoshi Nakamoto’s paper was published in October 2008 ... . Nothing about the original statement is predicated on the age of the tech. Even if it did, I don't see what modern tech corps have…

> Why is mining excluded for gold and not for Bitcoin in your analogy? because: "Bitcoin needs to be maintained by miners using electricity" like they say? Gold doesn't need continued mining to continue being gold.

Bitcoin miners consume electricity to provide fast and affordable assay. For small value Bitcoin transfers, lightning network is even cheaper and faster.

Re: Crypto Winter, or Crypto Ice Age?

#86

Post by dghlsakjg »

pavlov wrote: post #22
axg11 wrote: post #13

I live in Canada and recently invested a small amount in a startup via AngelList RUV. There were two funding options: (1) wire transfer, (2) transfer USDC via Ethereum network. One of these options is cheaper, faster, and more flexible than the other. Crypto has long been criticized for being gambling and lacking utility. I think utility is finally trickling in, although currently in limited settings. If you look at…

Wire transfers in North America are literally 40 years behind the evolution of bank transfers in EU and UK. Sending money in Europe is free and increasingly often instantaneous 24/7. It will be very difficult for crypto to reach the level of convenience available on unified infrastructure created through sensible regulation. Lacking that, maybe Americans will have to keep settling for all these clunky, incompatible i…

He lives in Canada.

Canadians don't live in the same country as Americans.

Canadians don't have the same banks as Americans.

Canadians can do money transfers instantly between any bank using e-transfer.

He was talking about transferring money out of the Canadian network of banks to a foreign entity (guessing based on it being denominated in USD).

As a European can you transfer money to, say, Vietnam without using clunky 40 year old technology like wires?

Re: Crypto Winter, or Crypto Ice Age?

#87

Post by p4bl0 »

deepu256 wrote: post #82
p4bl0 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> show me a credible 3rd Party where I can store my ownership data apart from Government Your "ownership data" does not have any intrinsic value. It only has value because an external authority (your Government's justice institutions) is able to enforce it. Writing something on a blockchain has no magical effect. You cannot remove necessary third-parties like that. > Most corporations which currently store my data pr…

"My ownership data" has value. perhaps not to you. But for people i interact with. Example :- My education degree is something that I own. It can be very useful if I can quickly prove to the world that I indeed really have that degree. (like Twitter allows to prove you own an avatar NFT) . It would be super helpful if this was on a blockchain instead of some university database with a cumbersome process to avail tran…

> "My ownership data" has value. perhaps not to you. But for people i interact with.

I don't think you understood what I meant. I said it has no intrinsic value, meaning that it has no value in itself.

> My education degree is something that I own. It can be very useful if I can quickly prove to the world that I indeed really have that degree.

The fact that it is written in a blockchain that you have a degree has no value in itself, it only works if a necessary trusted third-party, the university where you got that degree, approves it. You are not in a decentralized and fully adversarial setting. You do not need (nor want, for efficiency purpose mainly) a blockchain to solve this problem.

What you want is a cryptographic certificate (just like an X.509 SSL/TLS certificate) of your diploma signed by your university, which would play the role of a Certificate Authority, and which you can trust because the government that accredited your university to deliver actual diplomas has a root certificate (it acts as a Trusted Certificate Authority) and has signed the one of your university with it.

> like Twitter allows to prove you own an avatar NFT

Twitter is a central authority and could very well associate any "NFT avatar" with any of its users without relying on any blockchain.

Re: Crypto Winter, or Crypto Ice Age?

#89

Post by p4bl0 »

deepu256 wrote: post #53
stephc_int13 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have been saying that for quite some time now, but I don't see it. Why is it so difficult to find utility with this "tech"? As long are you are not a criminal, ownership and liquidity are not huge pain, what is the real, tangible benefit of decentralized banking? I am not convinced that monetary transactions should be above the Law, and for them to be lawful they have to be centrally regulated in some ways.

It's difficult because blockchains have not yet scaled the infra yet. The amount of data that we can currently put on most decentralised chains is very less. This will improve though and allow us to put a decent amount of data on the blockchain.

This will never solve the oracle problem, which is tied to the simple fact that things can happen outside of a given blockchain…

Re: Crypto Winter, or Crypto Ice Age?

#90

Post by acdha »

deepu256 wrote: post #82
p4bl0 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> show me a credible 3rd Party where I can store my ownership data apart from Government Your "ownership data" does not have any intrinsic value. It only has value because an external authority (your Government's justice institutions) is able to enforce it. Writing something on a blockchain has no magical effect. You cannot remove necessary third-parties like that. > Most corporations which currently store my data pr…

"My ownership data" has value. perhaps not to you. But for people i interact with. Example :- My education degree is something that I own. It can be very useful if I can quickly prove to the world that I indeed really have that degree. (like Twitter allows to prove you own an avatar NFT) . It would be super helpful if this was on a blockchain instead of some university database with a cumbersome process to avail tran…

Right, but think about what happens if there’s some question – say you ran for office and your opponent says you’re lying about your degree or GPA.

People will trust the institution – if a reporter calls them and they say “yes, they earned it” most people will not question it. If they say “never heard of them”, a record on a blockchain won’t help much because it disagrees with the canonical source and then you’ll be hearing about how that degree record was published in error or fraudulently, or that school is a diploma mill, etc.

Electronic records are nice but a 1970s public key signature works just as well at a fraction of the cost because ultimately it comes down to whether or not the reader trusts the issuer.

Post reply on HN