101–110 of 121 posts
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'.
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> 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 beca…
No. It’s about connectivity. Payments basics: Simplest scenario (details overly simplified) When you send money from account A on bank X to account B on bank Y, what happens is that Bank X debits account A on its system and credits bank Y’s account on bank X (let’s say it’s Xy account) Then bank X sends message to Bank Y to credit account B, so Bank Y debits X’s bank account (Yx) and credits B. As you can see this is…
I don't see how a stablecoin solves this. You still need all the actors involved to agree on the stablecoin, just like you'd need them to agree on any non-blockchain-based system. You added an extra step, namely going through this new currency, which presumably is backed 1:1 to an existing one, but that adds some overhead on its own. Every country using USD (or equivalent stablecoin) would remove some friction, but it's not like this will happen.
> EU has TARGET from ECB for settlement of euros across EU. > But there is no central bank of the whole world of every currency.
So how come one exists and not the other yet? And why do you expect the whole world to agree on a stablecoin-based solution if they can't or don't want to agree on a TARGET-like one?
Besides, we usually don't even know how much it'd cost to just use a stablecoin for everything, since there are so few actual legit uses. I'm not sure you'd even end up being competitive with current solutions.
Right now as a consumer (meaning for lower amounts), I can trivially convert between most currencies using wise.com. The fees are not negligible but fine for one-offs, and I can get much lower going through IBKR and I guess others. I'm still to hear of a stablecoin-based solution beating that.
Another hint that the stablecoin solution you describe is not one is that it wouldn't require a public blockchain, since it'd be between actors knowing each other. Quoting https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2019/02/blockchain_an...:
> Private blockchains are completely uninteresting. (By this, I mean systems that use the blockchain data structure but don’t have the above three elements.) In general, they have some external limitation on who can interact with the blockchain and its features. These are not anything new; they’re distributed append-only data structures with a list of individuals authorized to add to it. Consensus protocols have been studied in distributed systems for more than 60 years. Append-only data structures have been similarly well covered. They’re blockchains in name only, and—as far as I can tell—the only reason to operate one is to ride on the blockchain hype.
In other words, the solution you seem to describe could have been implemented way before Bitcoin was even invented; the fact that it's not indicates that it's not actually the missing piece.
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…
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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.
The capped emission certainly encourages FOMO and speculation. A fixed block reward would still provide scarcity in the long term while strongly discouraging speculation [1]. [1] https://tromp.github.io/blog/2020/12/20/soft-supply
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The capped emission certainly encourages FOMO and speculation. A fixed block reward would still provide scarcity in the long term while strongly discouraging speculation [1]. [1] https://tromp.github.io/blog/2020/12/20/soft-supply
Doesn't seem like a hard cap when every BTC is almost infinitely divisible into smaller amounts of "satoshis".
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…
memecoins have nothing to do with BTC. Talk about the price was always a thing because BTC is a currency, thus price is key. The tech is good, or it was at the time. I don't see the case for money laundering in BTC, only one could be XMR and mixers in ETH. Apart from that, in general cryptocurrency is not good for laundering since the blockchain can be tracked.
The big narrative I keep hearing about bitcoin the past ~8 years is that it's no longer considered a currency even by the true believers.
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No. It’s about connectivity. Payments basics: Simplest scenario (details overly simplified) When you send money from account A on bank X to account B on bank Y, what happens is that Bank X debits account A on its system and credits bank Y’s account on bank X (let’s say it’s Xy account) Then bank X sends message to Bank Y to credit account B, so Bank Y debits X’s bank account (Yx) and credits B. As you can see this is…
> As you can see this is an issue, it means that every bank has to have an account on every other bank in order to have funds moving around, and even keep liquidity there. I don't see how a stablecoin solves this. You still need all the actors involved to agree on the stablecoin, just like you'd need them to agree on any non-blockchain-based system. You added an extra step, namely going through this new currency, whi…
I didn't read anything about tm-guimaraes "expecting the whole world to agree on a stablecoin-based solution" and you didn't bother to quote him, if he did say it. In fact, multiple stable coins and quick arrangements between individual banks are a big part of the value provided by stable coins.
The point here is that stables do provide a lot of value and convenience for banking, two banks can agree and use a stable in no time at all, they are traded 24x7 on multiple exchanges where every bank has accounts.
I'm not sure what are you trying to argue, the convenience and speed of stables is there for all to see. They have one slight problem, namely they might not be properly regulated and introduce some risks. However, how much can you trust regulations themselves, given that unstable coins, being de facto criminal fraud, are not only legal but perpetrated at the highest level of government.
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memecoins have nothing to do with BTC. Talk about the price was always a thing because BTC is a currency, thus price is key. The tech is good, or it was at the time. I don't see the case for money laundering in BTC, only one could be XMR and mixers in ETH. Apart from that, in general cryptocurrency is not good for laundering since the blockchain can be tracked.
> because BTC is a currency The big narrative I keep hearing about bitcoin the past ~8 years is that it's no longer considered a currency even by the true believers.
There's certain medication that's cheaper for me to buy online from overseas than it is in the US (where I live) even with my insurance. Those from whom I've bought it only accept payment in Bitcoin. I'm going to admit that it seems kind of sketchy, but I'm grateful for the existence of BTC because of it, and I think it really does seem like a good decentralized currency in that situation.
Maybe skeptics would label this money laundering or criminal activity, but I'm using it to buy medication I have a prescription for; if this is illicit, it feels like it shouldn't be.
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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…
Regulation is key, quality decentralized finance can only happen with quality regulation. Ditto for plain old centralized banking. My question is, why we don't have anything of reasonable quality?
That lack is the reason fraudsters can peddle their fraud-coins and bait people with bombastic arguments like "the value of decentralization". Crime is decentralized, does that make it good?
>>(by grr19) everybody in the world have access to the same economy without intermediaries asking for a fee.
There is a fee, quite high in fact, and energy cost.
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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.
Ironic your name is "strawman" when you constructed one. And this has nothing to do whenever the tech is good or bad, this is literally about how "untraceable" tech will make it easier for criminals to turn the supporters into helpless victims. Since the irony is with your absolutist argument that it goes the other way too, if we have a proper surveillance state for instance there would be clear and obvious benefits…
>it's whenever or not it's worth having an anonymous currency given all the implications
And I think it is worth the same way privacy or autonomy is worth the "risk". Maybe you should ask people in less safe and stable countries if they trust there state with there money or people in unsafe environments auch as abuse victims, journalists, whistleblowers or activists.
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
>So far it seems that people have moved away from crypto due to that reason, and instead it's mostly seen as a speculative market.
I'm talking about crypto where the word currency means something not speculative assets like with btc. And those i can assure you are doing better than ever regardless what opinion you or anybody else has because they are, by design, censorship and tyranny resistant. the hacker spirit.