Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

'Minting' electronic cash (1999)

spectrum.ieee.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 90 posts

Re: 'Minting' electronic cash (1999)

#11

Post by wavefunction »

_Microft wrote: post #3

Side note: "Minting" sounds so much nicer than "mining". Minting evokes connotations of gold and kings and craftsmen doing skilled work. Mining on the other hand is dirty. I associate digging, holes in the ground, mining waste, depths and darkness with that. Maybe crypto [0] currencies would have had it a tiny bit easier to not look like an environmentally bad idea (this is purely about the looks of it , not reality)…

Minting has been throughout its long history associated with fraud. There's a reason people used to have to weigh the minted coins they received from transactions to make sure the minter was delivering the amount of gold or silver or other backing metal in the coin's alloy. Just another perspective on minting...

Re: 'Minting' electronic cash (1999)

#12

Post by arcticbull »

_Microft wrote: post #9
politician wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or recycling. "We recycle electrons into coins!"

Believe it or not but there are people who think that "Bitcoin is a battery" because it can turn energy into money (and "money is easily converted to energy again", Umm... STEM education, we need to have a word because it looks like you are not doing your job properly... ). Here is an example: https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1351214402167578626

Balaji's take is easily the worst, least coherent take on proof of work to date. An absolute carnival of ignorance motivated by self-interest. The lengths people will do to defend the indefensible because it'll make them rich continues to disappoint.

Re: 'Minting' electronic cash (1999)

#13

Post by bsamuels »

madars wrote: post #6
_Microft wrote: post #3

Side note: "Minting" sounds so much nicer than "mining". Minting evokes connotations of gold and kings and craftsmen doing skilled work. Mining on the other hand is dirty. I associate digging, holes in the ground, mining waste, depths and darkness with that. Maybe crypto [0] currencies would have had it a tiny bit easier to not look like an environmentally bad idea (this is purely about the looks of it , not reality)…

Minting implies exercising seigniorage authority, whereas mining physical commodities is naturally distributed (no central authority). The latter term is much more appropriate to describe issuance-via-PoW.

Miners technically do have seigniorage authority since they can collectively decide to change the underlying cryptocurrency.

Miner's de facto control of the network is a huge problem. It's why Bitcoin will never solve its energy use issue, and why Ethereum set up a "delayed difficulty bomb" to force miners to accept changes to the network.

Re: 'Minting' electronic cash (1999)

#14

Post by pjc50 »

_Microft wrote: post #9
politician wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or recycling. "We recycle electrons into coins!"

Believe it or not but there are people who think that "Bitcoin is a battery" because it can turn energy into money (and "money is easily converted to energy again", Umm... STEM education, we need to have a word because it looks like you are not doing your job properly... ). Here is an example: https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1351214402167578626

Not exactly an education issue, people can make up anything they want and education alone cannot stop them doing it; only shame and consequences can.

Re: 'Minting' electronic cash (1999)

#15

Post by kinghajj »

bsamuels wrote: post #13
madars wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Minting implies exercising seigniorage authority, whereas mining physical commodities is naturally distributed (no central authority). The latter term is much more appropriate to describe issuance-via-PoW.

Miners technically do have seigniorage authority since they can collectively decide to change the underlying cryptocurrency. Miner's de facto control of the network is a huge problem. It's why Bitcoin will never solve its energy use issue, and why Ethereum set up a "delayed difficulty bomb" to force miners to accept changes to the network.

> Miners technically do have seigniorage authority since they can collectively decide to change the underlying cryptocurrency.

The failure of the Bitcoin2x proposal and adoption of Segwit in 2017 demonstrated that miners do not have as much control as they might like to think. If node operators don't accept their blocks, they lose money.

Re: 'Minting' electronic cash (1999)

#16

Post by pjc50 »

Ooh, the original Chaum paper!

Chaum "coins" behave a lot more like bearer instruments or "free banking" notes; they're IOUs issued by a bank that can be traded.

The advantage over a database is that there's some ability to do offline transactions, although the double-spend prevention is done through the originating bank.

The advantage over bitcoin is that is uses a tiny fraction of the energy. It's also naturally a "stablecoin", rather than highly volatile.

Re: 'Minting' electronic cash (1999)

#17

Post by TacticalCoder »

_Microft wrote: post #3

Side note: "Minting" sounds so much nicer than "mining". Minting evokes connotations of gold and kings and craftsmen doing skilled work. Mining on the other hand is dirty. I associate digging, holes in the ground, mining waste, depths and darkness with that. Maybe crypto [0] currencies would have had it a tiny bit easier to not look like an environmentally bad idea (this is purely about the looks of it , not reality)…

I'm not so sure "cryptocurrencies" is a bad word: it's basically cryptography everywhere. But transforming "crypto" to mean "cryptocurrency" is bad I agree.

Ethereum seems to be very serious about moving to proof-of-stake. It is a big project and they don't seem very concerned about the papers saying that "proof of stake cannot possibly work". I don't know if PoS can work or not but it's going to be costly for attackers to try to find out (as they'll get they staked deposit slashed if they try to attack the blockchain).

Re: 'Minting' electronic cash (1999)

#18

Post by wyager »

pjc50 wrote: post #16

Ooh, the original Chaum paper! Chaum "coins" behave a lot more like bearer instruments or "free banking" notes; they're IOUs issued by a bank that can be traded. The advantage over a database is that there's some ability to do offline transactions, although the double-spend prevention is done through the originating bank. The advantage over bitcoin is that is uses a tiny fraction of the energy. It's also naturally a…

The disadvantage compared to Bitcoin is that it’s hardly meaningfully different from using Paypal or something.

Re: 'Minting' electronic cash (1999)

#19

Post by 1e-9 »

hprotagonist wrote: post #2

1995: https://www.electricinca.com/56/stephenson/simoleon.pdf

Fun and interesting work of foresight from 26 years ago! I assume the DigiCash promotion was part of the inspiration... or maybe it was vice versa? Either way, an interesting connection to the article's authors as well.

Re: 'Minting' electronic cash (1999)

#20

Post by helen___keller »

wyager wrote: post #18
pjc50 wrote: post #16

Ooh, the original Chaum paper! Chaum "coins" behave a lot more like bearer instruments or "free banking" notes; they're IOUs issued by a bank that can be traded. The advantage over a database is that there's some ability to do offline transactions, although the double-spend prevention is done through the originating bank. The advantage over bitcoin is that is uses a tiny fraction of the energy. It's also naturally a…

The disadvantage compared to Bitcoin is that it’s hardly meaningfully different from using Paypal or something.

How do you figure?
Post reply on HN