Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pecunia_non_olet
Money doesn't stink, but your hands might.
nah
We have reached the "severed fingers and abductions" stage of crypto revolution
71–80 of 121 posts
Re: We have reached the "severed fingers and abductions" stage of crypto revolution
#72I 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…
Stablecoins are actually the future of remittances, the problem is which stablecoin is safe and has enough adoption. (When a big or central bank decides to have a stablecoin, things will change a lot) I work in “traditional” (as in, non crypto) payment systems, and i can tell you that plenty of companies are looking into using cryto rails for complex remmitance routes. The problem is swift network/correspondent/inter…
> The problem is swift network/correspondent/intermediary banking. When you want to send money abroad to badly connected banks of badly connected countries, you might have a big route chain (multiple times intermediaries), fees can be huge , and settlement can take a long time.
But why is this complicated? Isn't it mostly about regulations / KYC / AML, rather than anything technical?
Stablecoins are much simpler because they don't do anything with respect to regulations, they're just a dumb ledger. For those who don't want to bypass regulations and the legal system, stablecoins bring as much as yet another database / ledger, which are not the problem in the first place.
Re: We have reached the "severed fingers and abductions" stage of crypto revolution
#73The best part in all this is that once the transaction goes through, the kidnappers can definitively verify that they've received the ransom that they were asking for, and that they no longer have any use for loose ends or witnesses.
Or any reason to actually free the hostages.
Re: We have reached the "severed fingers and abductions" stage of crypto revolution
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Too many smart people work on these pointless projects instead of useful tech that benefits society Decentralization doesn't benefit society? umh...
"Decentralization" is a generic principle and a very selective choice in this case. What was the specific practical implementation that was so beneficial to society to this day? Centralization is what enabled today's societies to thrive. So when talking about decentralization you have to get into the specifics to show the value.
Tell third-world countries that centralization is good :)
Centralization could be good, sometimes (if it works idk). The problem is that the financial world has been monopolized by certain entities and the barrier of entry is enormous. It is never fair to not play by the same rules when regulation favors big institutions, etc... Access to credit is difficult sometimes and unfair. But that is just a reason you could give in the US.
Decentralization ensures that countries that condemn their citizens to raising inflation can access other types of income. Some argentinians get paid in USDC, because their currency is just worthless in other countries, and they would never be able to access USD in their banks.
Decentralization (I have in mind something like Hyperliquid or even BTC) ensures that everybody in the world have access to the same economy without intermediaries asking for a fee. Which means, a person in Indian can access to income the same way a person in the US would. Or you could do a transfer overseas with less fees or regulation problems.
Re: We have reached the "severed fingers and abductions" stage of crypto revolution
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thus, other blockchains emerged
requiring much higher resources to run a node and making them much less decentralized.
Which one are you referring to? What do you want to get all the freedom in the world and no effort for running a decentralized node?
Staking blockchains don't require much resources.
Re: We have reached the "severed fingers and abductions" stage of crypto revolution
#76I 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…
After MtGox the trajectory was pretty clear imo. And when Tethers emerged the whole pyramid was exposed for all to see. It's just pure gambling at this point.
Re: We have reached the "severed fingers and abductions" stage of crypto revolution
#77I 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 Decentralization doesn't benefit society? umh...
Decentralization benefit society. Trust-less systems - don't. Trust-less systems lead to libertarianism and anarcho capitalism, both are just fancy words for feudalism. We all know how that works, there are even modern day re-enactment which all end up massive fraud and crime. I prefer semi-trusted democracy to the feudalism any time.
Re: We have reached the "severed fingers and abductions" stage of crypto revolution
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Too many smart people work on these pointless projects instead of useful tech that benefits society Decentralization doesn't benefit society? umh...
Decentralization benefit society. Trust-less systems - don't. Trust-less systems lead to libertarianism and anarcho capitalism, both are just fancy words for feudalism. We all know how that works, there are even modern day re-enactment which all end up massive fraud and crime. I prefer semi-trusted democracy to the feudalism any time.
I don't see how a trustless & decentralized system would cause feudalism. On the other hand, I see how our current "democratic" system evokes in neo-feudalism. We are all slaves to the government and the few conglomerates they favor, paying taxes to be more restricted. No thanks, I'd rather have a libertarian system and close to 0% tax, if not zero and practically no government.
No, you don't need to worship Amazon in a libertarian system, Amazon lives thanks to regulation (Amazon supports raising the min wage), and other import fees & tax exemptions that smaller businesses can't afford to bypass.
Re: We have reached the "severed fingers and abductions" stage of crypto revolution
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Thus, other blockchains emerged
Yes, we only need checks notes 3,500 other coins to match the clearance rate of Visa.
Re: We have reached the "severed fingers and abductions" stage of crypto revolution
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Decentralization" is a generic principle and a very selective choice in this case. What was the specific practical implementation that was so beneficial to society to this day? Centralization is what enabled today's societies to thrive. So when talking about decentralization you have to get into the specifics to show the value.
Tell third-world countries that centralization is good :) Centralization could be good, sometimes (if it works idk). The problem is that the financial world has been monopolized by certain entities and the barrier of entry is enormous. It is never fair to not play by the same rules when regulation favors big institutions, etc... Access to credit is difficult sometimes and unfair. But that is just a reason you could g…
> Decentralization (I have in mind something like Hyperliquid or even BTC) ensures that everybody in the world have access to the same economy without intermediaries asking for a fee. Which means, a person in Indian can access to income the same way a person in the US would.
And do they? In practice? The theory is always sweet, but in practice once you take away "crime" and "hold to sell high" you'll be hard pressed to see too many, or widespread instances of usefulness. You don't make society better by just building a taller peak for a few if at the same time you're digging even deeper troughs for the many.
> Or you could do a transfer overseas with less fees or regulation problems.
Every time someone gets swindled out of their "deregulated, decentralized" money, every time someone loses a finger for their million dollar wallet, you have one more voice asking a centralized organization for protection, maybe with some regulation.
You handwave away all the obvious problems, even though technology or time won't solve any of them. Without protection most people will be screwed out of their belongings. Ask that person in India if they're eager to "access to income the same way a person in the US would" (whatever that means) if this means there's no recourse when they lose the money.