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Molly White Tracks Crypto Scams. It’s Going Just Great

wired.co.uk

171–180 of 326 posts

Re: Molly White Tracks Crypto Scams. It’s Going Just Great

#172
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I send money across borders to friends an organizations via blockchain. And that transaction is completely public, and can be traced back to both of you.

can send private transactions on ZK rollups https://railgun.org/ https://app.umbra.cash/ https://spillways.finance/ https://mystiko.network/ https://cyclone.xyz/ https://www.privacypools.com/

and Tornado Cash ... oh wait,

Re: Molly White Tracks Crypto Scams. It’s Going Just Great

#173
post #106

I never know how to feel about folks that make a career out of saying "This new trend is dumb". I sometimes enjoy listening to Molly White's show, but it feels kind of unsatisfying to me to listen to a show just about dunking on people who are trying out new ideas. But I guess I agree that scams are rampant in the crypto space, so maybe the downsides of the tech aren't obvious to everyone, and it is good to have some…

> a show just about dunking on people who are trying out new ideas.

this is like calling CP "just a string of ones and zeroes"

Re: Molly White Tracks Crypto Scams. It’s Going Just Great

#174
post #135
post #56

I send money across borders to friends an organizations via blockchain. And millions of other people do, especially in countries with volatile financial systems. I much prefer crypto to anything else in this case. Hearing "no legitimate use case" arguments is awfully annoying when you get objective use from the thing being criticized.

Which countries?

Choose almost any two countries in the world that don’t share the same union. eg: From GBP to CAD with Wise, transfer cost is > $5 (sometimes much more) and takes multiple days; compare with USDC on a rollup which is near-instant and < $0.50 regardless of the transaction amount.

Re: Molly White Tracks Crypto Scams. It’s Going Just Great

#175
post #96
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Web hit the scene in 1991. By 2003 how we shopped, worked, consumed media, communicated with friends and family, and interacted with information was in the process of changing radically. A million "little ambitions" to replace catalogue shopping and how hotel reservations were made were transforming how the world worked. Bitcoin hit the scene in 2011. By 2023 crypto's mostly a failed get-rich-quick scheme with a…

I don’t think comparing the timelines of vastly different technologies like this is helpful. Prior to the web, in the 1960s/1970s we had packet-switching networks, such as ARPANET which were the basis of modern computer networking. The original ARPANET (precursor to the internet)was just used to connect computers at research institutions. I.e it wasn’t used by that many people relatively speaking. It took another 20…

>Is Bitcoin, a very low level protocol, more analogous to ARPANET or the web? Even if you dislike crypto, is this comparison really helpful?

ARPANET knew who it was for and what it was for: for researchers to share data and compute resources that would otherwise be expensive to do across vast distances. Audience and use case. What's the equivalent for cryptocurrency?

>Building a secure, scalable, sufficiently decentralized distributed computer system is hard.

Who actually wants that, and for what practical purpose?

Re: Molly White Tracks Crypto Scams. It’s Going Just Great

#176

I've crossed swords with Molly a couple of times. I was the release coordinator for Ethereum, and I've been active in the space a long long time. Here's what it boils down to: freedom is messy. The early days of the dotcom space were filled with carnage of a type which makes crypto look pretty normal. Amazon stock dropped >90% and a trillion and a half in value vanished from the market overall. https://en.wikipedia.o…

I really don't see any reason why someone working in cryptocurrency, but clear eyed about the possibility of down sides would "cross swords with Molly". She is an incredible source, as far as I can tell the *best* at finding and highlighting what's going wrong. That's incredibly valuable. rekt.news is also quite good, but skewed towards less reporting but more in depth. IMO Molly should be getting public good funding…

I agree with you everywhere but here:

> IMO Molly should be getting public good funding from the ETH ecosystem for being such a good & reliable source

It's a generous thought, but it's very bad optics to take a bunch of money from someone that you report on. Yes I know this happens all the time in bigger media circles, but they're big enough that it's either not going to be a dominant revenue stream or the appearance of integrity is irrelevant (the ur-example being Fox News and their claims of being "entertainment")

Re: Molly White Tracks Crypto Scams. It’s Going Just Great

#177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried wise some time ago. I wanted to send Euros to them, convert it to USD and then send it from my wise account to an American Bank account. To my dismay, I found that wise doesn't do Swift transactions in USD to bank accounts in the USA. I actually thought that was the whole idea behind wise, but apparently not? The other option was to pay my bank an additional 40€+ fee for each Swift transaction, which is too m…

I'm not a banking person but if you have a US bank account can't you do an ACH transfer from Wise to your bank?

I have a German Bank.

I wanted to to the following:

German Bank -€-> Wise - convert Euro to USD -$-> US Bank.

German Bank to Wise is a SEPA transfer. That worked fine. But it didn’t allow me to send USD to a US bank (only Euros/other currencies). ACH is only available from within the US on wise(?).

Re: Molly White Tracks Crypto Scams. It’s Going Just Great

#178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a banking person but if you have a US bank account can't you do an ACH transfer from Wise to your bank?

Yeah, I don’t know why you’d want to use Swift, as that’s more an international rail. ACH or Wire are the standards inside the US, along with some of the newer proprietary stuff like Zelle.

Wire costs 40€ from my bank which I didn’t want to pay.

Re: Molly White Tracks Crypto Scams. It’s Going Just Great

#179
post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue I have here is that someone turning down a request to be on your podcast does not, actually, mean that "she refuses to engage on these topics"; it may seem like a major litmus test for you, but in fact people are busy and we have to make choices about how to spend our time all the time. I'm sure that if she said yes to every crypto-enthusiast who messaged her "debate me!" she'd have no time for her own proj…

Have you seen her on any discussion ever, engaging with the issues or opposing views? Has she come on someone else's show or something? You're being very generous in your interpretations, not even Molly offered such explanations, she just went silent. The typical interpretation is that there is a reason she'd rather not get into further. And I can guess what that reason is. Her "crowd" wouldn't like it if she appeare…

The entitlement dripping from this post demonstrates exactly why she didn't engage any further with you.
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