A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency • Hacker News Board

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#101

Post by hrdwdmrbl » Mon, Feb 18, 2019, 5:00 PM UTC

DenisM wrote: post #87

This gets asked often, but in case something changed recently - what are the use cases of cryptocurrencies that are not: - Attempts to side-step the law (however misguided the law is) - Trivial to do using a typical centralized database (e.g. Federal Reserver or VISA) - Tantamount to waiting for a greater fool to buy out the current players I am not looking for answers of the form "well whenever you want to avoid a t…

A few uses:

- micropayments: the products that that enables - web-native currency: Makes it easier for apps to integrate money. Games, chat, maybe torrents we're told - easier to transfer money between institutions (maybe easy in the US but it's super hard in Canada)

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#102

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Feb 18, 2019, 5:00 PM UTC

DenisM wrote: post #87

This gets asked often, but in case something changed recently - what are the use cases of cryptocurrencies that are not: - Attempts to side-step the law (however misguided the law is) - Trivial to do using a typical centralized database (e.g. Federal Reserver or VISA) - Tantamount to waiting for a greater fool to buy out the current players I am not looking for answers of the form "well whenever you want to avoid a t…

[deleted]

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#103

Post by pjc50 » Mon, Feb 18, 2019, 5:01 PM UTC

neokantian wrote: post #98

DenisM wrote: post #87

This gets asked often, but in case something changed recently - what are the use cases of cryptocurrencies that are not: - Attempts to side-step the law (however misguided the law is) - Trivial to do using a typical centralized database (e.g. Federal Reserver or VISA) - Tantamount to waiting for a greater fool to buy out the current players I am not looking for answers of the form "well whenever you want to avoid a t…

Imagine 3 parties: buyer, seller and third-party shipper. When the buyer has paid to a specific address, he will also email an irrefutable, digital proof of payment to the shipper, who will then ship the goods. It is trivial to look up the signed transaction to the specific address in the digital currency's blockchain. Hence, the shipping company can handle that situation. On the other hand, try to get an irrefutable…

Why does the shipper care that you've paid a third party?

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#104

Post by westurner » Mon, Feb 18, 2019, 5:02 PM UTC

naveedi wrote: post #38

Full disclosure: I work on the cryptocurrency in this article, Algorand. There are a lot of questions and speculation here about this paper and Algorand. I would be happy to try an answer them to your satisfaction. Some context may be helpful first, though. This paper is an innovation about one aspect of our technology. Algorand has a very fast consensus mechanism and can add blocks as quickly as the network can deli…

Are there reasons that e.g. Bitcoin and Ethereum and Stellar could not implement some of these more performant approaches that Algorand [1] and Vault [2] have developed, published, and implemented? Which would require a hard fork?

[1] https://www.algorand.com/

[2] https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/117821

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#105

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Feb 18, 2019, 5:02 PM UTC

smokeyj wrote: post #100

DenisM wrote: post #87

This gets asked often, but in case something changed recently - what are the use cases of cryptocurrencies that are not: - Attempts to side-step the law (however misguided the law is) - Trivial to do using a typical centralized database (e.g. Federal Reserver or VISA) - Tantamount to waiting for a greater fool to buy out the current players I am not looking for answers of the form "well whenever you want to avoid a t…

I don't know if you've realized this, but HN is religiously against crypto and anything that rhymes with it. Like, irrationally mad. If you want to explore the utility of crypto go check out different online communities that focus on that, some decent ones on reddit. The level of discussion on HN is usually "crypto baaad, centralized goood". As an economist I'm sure you expect more. Unless you want those ideas reinfo…

[deleted]

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#106

Post by pjc50 » Mon, Feb 18, 2019, 5:03 PM UTC

eastendguy wrote: post #97

DenisM wrote: post #87

This gets asked often, but in case something changed recently - what are the use cases of cryptocurrencies that are not: - Attempts to side-step the law (however misguided the law is) - Trivial to do using a typical centralized database (e.g. Federal Reserver or VISA) - Tantamount to waiting for a greater fool to buy out the current players I am not looking for answers of the form "well whenever you want to avoid a t…

My favorite future use case is electronic cash with privacy . There are many LEGAL activities that people do not want to show up in a central database. For example, think of many things related to love and relationships. "tantamount to waiting for a greater fool to buy out the current players" <= this is like investing works in general, or? ;-)

> many LEGAL activities that people do not want to show up in a central database

Unfortunately cryptocurrencies aren't just a central database they're a distributed database - all transactions are public. You can try using a tumbler service but since these are obviously money laundering havens they're not going to last long.

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#107

Post by jcfrei » Mon, Feb 18, 2019, 5:03 PM UTC

DenisM wrote: post #87

This gets asked often, but in case something changed recently - what are the use cases of cryptocurrencies that are not: - Attempts to side-step the law (however misguided the law is) - Trivial to do using a typical centralized database (e.g. Federal Reserver or VISA) - Tantamount to waiting for a greater fool to buy out the current players I am not looking for answers of the form "well whenever you want to avoid a t…

One possible use case: A notary for digital goods. Crypto currencies have a built-in incentive mechanism that keeps a ledger running and verifiable. This allows for a decentralized way to verify ownership of digital goods. More concrete, you could verify that you are the owner of a very rare sword you obtained in an online RPG. Even when the company goes out of business or stops the servers you could still prove that you own it. In other words, owners of valuable digital items might want their ownership to be stored on a public blockchain rather than a database by a private entity.

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#108

Post by pepesza » Mon, Feb 18, 2019, 5:03 PM UTC

DenisM wrote: post #87

This gets asked often, but in case something changed recently - what are the use cases of cryptocurrencies that are not: - Attempts to side-step the law (however misguided the law is) - Trivial to do using a typical centralized database (e.g. Federal Reserver or VISA) - Tantamount to waiting for a greater fool to buy out the current players I am not looking for answers of the form "well whenever you want to avoid a t…

Visa is very expensive. How about that?

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#109

Post by weego » Mon, Feb 18, 2019, 5:04 PM UTC

neokantian wrote: post #98

DenisM wrote: post #87

This gets asked often, but in case something changed recently - what are the use cases of cryptocurrencies that are not: - Attempts to side-step the law (however misguided the law is) - Trivial to do using a typical centralized database (e.g. Federal Reserver or VISA) - Tantamount to waiting for a greater fool to buy out the current players I am not looking for answers of the form "well whenever you want to avoid a t…

Imagine 3 parties: buyer, seller and third-party shipper. When the buyer has paid to a specific address, he will also email an irrefutable, digital proof of payment to the shipper, who will then ship the goods. It is trivial to look up the signed transaction to the specific address in the digital currency's blockchain. Hence, the shipping company can handle that situation. On the other hand, try to get an irrefutable…

That isn't and has never been an issue needing solving in day to day business for shipping companies. Their business isn't giving a shit about the upstream business situation.

Re: A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency

#110

Post by ovi256 » Mon, Feb 18, 2019, 5:05 PM UTC

lixtra wrote: post #94

DenisM wrote: post #87

This gets asked often, but in case something changed recently - what are the use cases of cryptocurrencies that are not: - Attempts to side-step the law (however misguided the law is) - Trivial to do using a typical centralized database (e.g. Federal Reserver or VISA) - Tantamount to waiting for a greater fool to buy out the current players I am not looking for answers of the form "well whenever you want to avoid a t…

Banks are highly regulated and risk averse. They won’t transfer 100 USD to some country when it takes them more than some percentage of the transfer to do compliance for it. So the transfer is legal but banks can not do it compliant and efficient. I know of Ukrainian developers being paid in ETH for that reason. Adult cam models in some countries are another example.

>to do compliance for it

FWIW, complianceless payments are dejure illegal by definition. So any economic activity being made possible by them is roadkill of the current regulatory environment, legally speaking. A nice example of Bastiat's "That which is not seen".