This just reminded me that cryptocurrencies is a thing, this has not been a prominent topic here for some time, I would say. Is the entire cryptocurrencies stuff eventually on the way out or would that be a misperception? Just checked Google trends, that also indicates a downward trend for terms like Bitcoin, cryptocurrency, NFT or Ethereum for the last year or two.
My thinking has always been that Bitcoin can solve the issue of continued printing of fiat money. Bitcoin and other crypto clearly introduces other problems but this fundamental weakness of fiat currency is still there and unsolved. Will bitcoin/crypto really go away if this issue with fiat currency is still unresolved?
Bitcoin has a critical issue looming with the security budget, as each halvening means less revenue for miners, and miners don’t get enough transaction fees to incentivize running ASIC mining farms.
> So why not? Or get a cheaper lawyer yourself that's more fair to the other side. Because that is money I could and should be able to use to defend myself. And should my defense be successful that's my retirement money and financial security. I don't care about fair for the government, they accused me of something I didn't do. There is a 0% chance that a states attorneys salary will get me a private attorney of the…
> There is a 0% chance that a states attorneys salary will get me a private attorney of the same caliber. But does the other side get the resources to have an attorney of the same caliber? If not, it's not a fair trial, and that's not how a justice system should work. In your system, the rich will always have better lawyers, and will get away with crimes, and that's precisely what I'm trying to say we need to change.…
When you talk about attorneys of a certain caliber, I think you neglect at the risk of your argument the fact that the thirty year old AUSA on a government salary and the forty year old hardcore defense lawyer making bank are frequently the same person.
History of economics disagrees with the last -- hopeful I will assume -- statement. The world was and is full of scammers and fraudsters. Also respectfully I am not sure I get the zero interest rates arguments. There seems to be a subgroup of HN community that believes low interest rates (below some arbitrary threshold?) to be immoral. Maybe there is a Crime, scams and ponzi schemes correlation study over hundreds of…
The zero interest rate comment has nothing to do with morality, it means that people were doing incredibly goofy, risky shit to get a return, which creates ripe ground for conmen and fraud.
ZIRP is somewhat overrated; the first dotcom bubble didn't have zero interest rates. But housing costs weren't as bad then as now, so maybe more room to mess up.
We just need to find some non-speculative and non-scammy uses for that tech.
A solution in search of a problem? Maybe they could apply it to something like protecting a person's online identity rather than a digital coin/currency. Or something along the lines of Distributed Apps instead of DeFi.
There aren't any use cases for crypto technology except crypto. It relies on so many specific assumptions that none of the components make sense when taken out of context.
This just reminded me that cryptocurrencies is a thing, this has not been a prominent topic here for some time, I would say. Is the entire cryptocurrencies stuff eventually on the way out or would that be a misperception? Just checked Google trends, that also indicates a downward trend for terms like Bitcoin, cryptocurrency, NFT or Ethereum for the last year or two.
My thinking has always been that Bitcoin can solve the issue of continued printing of fiat money. Bitcoin and other crypto clearly introduces other problems but this fundamental weakness of fiat currency is still there and unsolved. Will bitcoin/crypto really go away if this issue with fiat currency is still unresolved?
You can print new crypto by forking an existing chain, because if it suddenly gets a ton of new users, none of them have any reason to respect what the slow database says the current ones belong to.
Meanwhile, printing fiat money isn't a problem and is in fact the reason the system works. Crypto users and Austrians are deluded about the purpose of money, which is to facilitate transactions and not to keep score.
It is interesting, because while the shock does get weaker in relative terms it's getting stronger in absolute terms. i.e. a billion dollar shock to a billion dollar asset is relatively bigger than a 100 billion dollar shock to a 500 billion dollar asset (bitcoin's current "market cap"), but the latter requires 100x the size of wealth flow. The next supply shock will also be interesting in its own right, specifically…
This is great analysis. The only caveat I would add is that while bitcoin is commonly priced in $ (fiat USD) it is much more commonly bought and sold in USDT. In fact, if a bunch of actors decided to sell bitcoin there might be plenty of USDT for that but not US$. Some of that is due to the fact that exchanges don't due proper KYC and have trouble maintaining US banking arrangements. Some of it may be that the market…
Can miners generating new coins pay their electricity bills in USDT?
SBF down, Do Kwon down, Su Zhu down, many many more to go... I've been amazed at how slow the law seems to be in apprehending the most egregious scammers from that era.
I wish they jail all the celebrities and influences peddling crypto and NFTs. Tom Brady, Gisele Bündchen, Stephen Curry, Naomi Osaka, David “Big Papi” Ortiz, Kevin O'Leary and thousands of influencers.
Merkle trees, yes! That was just an example of a technique that can be well hidden vs in the user's face. Newer techniques like Verkle trees, SNARKs, STARKs, &c are.... well, new.
The way I see it, "blockchain" (NFTs, etc) are less technologies and more business-plans to make money--perhaps in a slightly more-literal sense than usual--from available tools. It's kind of like ride-share services: They didn't invent cars or databases or dispatching systems or phone-apps, and while their investment might have spurred some new tools/libraries/algorithms they use, the broader usefulness of those inv…
> They didn't invent cars
Can we really call the car an "invention"? After all, both the wheel and the steam engine already existed.
Those techniques were already invented and in-use long beforehand.
Here's a rebel idea: In court cases, have the scoreboard weighted by the AGI of the lawyers. define pro = accuser, con = accused If the "pro" side has 10 points and the "con" side has 5 points, and the con side's lawyer makes 1/3 the salary of the pro side's lawyer, the con side wins the case. Another rebel idea: If either side chooses to not use lawyers, the other side is also not allowed to use lawyers. If either s…
Let's say I have something like $1M to my name (total assets) and I'm accused of a serious crime. I'm ready to spend it all to not go to prison for decades, but the AGI of the prosecutor is like 1/3 of my respectable private attorney. State prosecutors make garbage so this isn't far fetched. I now have to fund the government and give a significant percent of my assets just to defend myself? Making somebody fund their…
It is more effective to fund death angels like Mexican cartels and Clintons. In many countries in Asia, a lot of rich people take these route. You can also routinely find prosecutors and some other businessmen killed in region coubtries in ASEAN. Most countries especially the richer one in ASEAN have government orders to media not to report these kind of news. Even if needs to, they will put in inner less critical media page and as non desceiptive as possible. The going rate is aroun 5000 usd...and that is market rate for amateur level death angels. It is incredibily effective sometime even CIA are scared to retaliate (remember many law enforcers have family members and near impossible to protect them). Philipines previous president actually use this method to tame the crooks there. In Asia, there is a saying where bigger dog eat smaller dog. And that is why China governance employ this. Look up their Jin dynasty and Ming dynasty assassinations histories. GoT is a pale fictional rewrite of those real history. Even Saudi's Khosoggi incident is too amaterish. The closest best implementation was probably Putin's. The west make such a big deal of it. If you got the time read up how entire family or just the childrens getting "sent off" by death angels years later. Heck even Goujin king in ancient China demonstrated how to do revenge in the most gentleman way. Moral of the story, if you are rich always groom your own death angels. Prosecutors may be fearless but they do care of their children and grandchildren untimely deaths decades later.
> some from people who operate outside of the law... also from people who lack access to good banking and payments infrastructure What do you suppose that ratio to be in terms of e.g. transaction volume? Personally I think it's >90 : <10 (scams : sympathetic). Others seem to think the balance is very different, or that it _could_ be different some day and that alone is a reason to "leave it alone".
I personally don’t have an opinion on the ratio, but there are many reports estimating that the illicit to legal ratio is much lower than you suspect. Either way I actually don’t care that much, I think access to the financial system is a human right, and not one that governments or US corporates should be able to arbitrarily remove. Crypto is the only thing we have that is remotely close to preserving the rights tha…