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We have reached the "severed fingers and abductions" stage of crypto revolution

arstechnica.com

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Re: We have reached the "severed fingers and abductions" stage of crypto revolution

#41

Post by vkou »

danaos wrote: post #15

I went from early bitcoin adopter to early bitcoin skeptic and despite missing most of the gains I have no regrets. During the early days the crypto space was concentrated to small online communities. People were mostly interested about the technology and the talk of price was limited, in the context "mass adoption". Nowadays it's about the price and the memes. Add to that the money laundering, energy waste and these…

> Too many smart people work on these pointless projects instead of useful tech that benefits society.

To be fair, almost nothing that most techies work on benefits society.

Re: We have reached the "severed fingers and abductions" stage of crypto revolution

#42

Post by drdeca »

logicallee wrote: post #31

This happened to me, with the difference that nobody was abducted. Defense contractors associated with the U.S. military said they would sever fingers to make me "care more" here is a screenshot: https://imgur.com/a/eYP7Xsj or https://ibb.co/DD6XTppy This was sent over a Department of Defense channel.

What is this screenshot supposed to be demonstrating?

What’s with all the asterisks in the image?

Re: We have reached the "severed fingers and abductions" stage of crypto revolution

#43

Post by akimbostrawman »

0dayz wrote: post #35
akimbostrawman wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct which means it's even more important for that currency to be not public but private and even anonymous.

... Which means an even easier time for ransom criminals?

Just like encryption and cash. You wanna ban or discourage its use too?

Bad people can do bad things with good technology but that doesn't mean good people shouldn't use and benefit from that technology. I would think someone on HACKERnews would agree.

Re: We have reached the "severed fingers and abductions" stage of crypto revolution

#44

Post by eru »

TheDong wrote: post #6
eru wrote: post #2

Stealing most crypto money is about the dumbest thing ever, because all transactions (for most such currencies) are open to the public to scrutinise and de-anonymous at their leisure. And the police is included in 'the public'.

Even with a public ledger, it's harder to trace than, for example, forcing someone to wire the cash via the traditional banking system. With banking systems, each bank account has a unique address (private, but they'll cooperate with the government and police easily, and are experienced doing so), and that address is associated with a real person... and it operates slowly, which means the police can easily catch up t…

> Even with a public ledger, it's harder to trace than, for example, forcing someone to wire the cash via the traditional banking system.

Not really. From the comfort of my home, I as a member of the general public can trace any, say, bitcoin transaction I feel like, and work on de-anonymising it. And not only today's transactions, but all bitcoin transactions ever.

To trace bank transfers, you need to be part of established law enforcement and have something like a warrant. (Or whatever the legal requirements are in your country.) The transfer might go via multiple countries with different rules and perhaps less enthusiastic authorities. And the data might get lost.

Re: We have reached the "severed fingers and abductions" stage of crypto revolution

#45

Post by littlestymaar »

I'm honestly surprised this hasn't been more prevalent, especially since state actors (NK at least) have used cryptocurrencies to get foreign currency for several years now. No matter how rich and paranoid you are, there are really little you can do to protect yourself from a state actor that wants to get you, especially in an era of ubiquitous digital tracking from tech company that are willing to sell all the Intel they have about you to the highest bidder.

Re: We have reached the "severed fingers and abductions" stage of crypto revolution

#46

Post by Ekaros »

NoOn3 wrote: post #23
danaos wrote: post #15

I went from early bitcoin adopter to early bitcoin skeptic and despite missing most of the gains I have no regrets. During the early days the crypto space was concentrated to small online communities. People were mostly interested about the technology and the talk of price was limited, in the context "mass adoption". Nowadays it's about the price and the memes. Add to that the money laundering, energy waste and these…

If you think about it deeply, it's still not entirely clear who consumes more energy: the traditional banking sector and servicing of visa, mastercard, etc. cards, or cryptocurrency technologies. At least it seems to me that the difference is not that big.

At least banking I believe if someone went out and said we could save 100 million on energy cost by spending 10 million. They would at least consider doing it, if it looked realistic enough.

On other hand efficiency for BTC mining does not matter. The energy expenditure always approaches the value of mined coins. When efficiency increase same energy is spend just to do more hashes, which are really not useful.

Re: We have reached the "severed fingers and abductions" stage of crypto revolution

#47

Post by jazzyjackson »

onion2k wrote: post #39
danaos wrote: post #15

I went from early bitcoin adopter to early bitcoin skeptic and despite missing most of the gains I have no regrets. During the early days the crypto space was concentrated to small online communities. People were mostly interested about the technology and the talk of price was limited, in the context "mass adoption". Nowadays it's about the price and the memes. Add to that the money laundering, energy waste and these…

Too many smart people work on these pointless projects instead of useful tech that benefits society. Hindsight is 20/20. In the early days of crypto the promise of decentralized finance outside of the scrutiny of governments and financial institutions was seen as far from pointless. It only went awry when speculators turned up trying to make a profit from an ostensibly useful idea, and they took it so far that the or…

Bitcoin was invented with a number go up mechanic, and the idea that a single Bitcoin would be immensely valuable were the currency to gain traction was a point of discussion from the start

Fact is it became popular with speculators faster than it did with anybody else, but the hodlers weren't doing anything to stop people from using it to buy pizza.

Re: We have reached the "severed fingers and abductions" stage of crypto revolution

#48

Post by Dlemo »

onion2k wrote: post #39
danaos wrote: post #15

I went from early bitcoin adopter to early bitcoin skeptic and despite missing most of the gains I have no regrets. During the early days the crypto space was concentrated to small online communities. People were mostly interested about the technology and the talk of price was limited, in the context "mass adoption". Nowadays it's about the price and the memes. Add to that the money laundering, energy waste and these…

Too many smart people work on these pointless projects instead of useful tech that benefits society. Hindsight is 20/20. In the early days of crypto the promise of decentralized finance outside of the scrutiny of governments and financial institutions was seen as far from pointless. It only went awry when speculators turned up trying to make a profit from an ostensibly useful idea, and they took it so far that the or…

The flaws of crypto were clear very early on.

Major issues, still existing, were never solved

Re: We have reached the "severed fingers and abductions" stage of crypto revolution

#49

Post by matkoniecz »

NoOn3 wrote: post #23
danaos wrote: post #15

I went from early bitcoin adopter to early bitcoin skeptic and despite missing most of the gains I have no regrets. During the early days the crypto space was concentrated to small online communities. People were mostly interested about the technology and the talk of price was limited, in the context "mass adoption". Nowadays it's about the price and the memes. Add to that the money laundering, energy waste and these…

If you think about it deeply, it's still not entirely clear who consumes more energy: the traditional banking sector and servicing of visa, mastercard, etc. cards, or cryptocurrency technologies. At least it seems to me that the difference is not that big.

> At least it seems to me that the difference is not that big.

in total? or per transaction?

How many transaction BTC makes compared to Visa/Mastercard/bank transfers?

Re: We have reached the "severed fingers and abductions" stage of crypto revolution

#50

Post by noosphr »

Dlemo wrote: post #48
onion2k wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too many smart people work on these pointless projects instead of useful tech that benefits society. Hindsight is 20/20. In the early days of crypto the promise of decentralized finance outside of the scrutiny of governments and financial institutions was seen as far from pointless. It only went awry when speculators turned up trying to make a profit from an ostensibly useful idea, and they took it so far that the or…

The flaws of crypto were clear very early on. Major issues, still existing, were never solved

The surest way to get flamed out of any crypto mailing list was to ask what the effective clearance rate for the coin was, then following it up with how it could be sped up.

Today the bitcoin network is still stuck at ~7 transactions a second.

This is not what the white paper promised.

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