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Coinbase to Suspend Trading in XRP

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101–110 of 209 posts

Re: Coinbase to Suspend Trading in XRP

#101
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lightning is not reliable the way Bitcoin is, and correspondingly has not seen any real-world adoption. It is effectively dead.

>and correspondingly has not seen any real-world adoption. It is effectively dead. but https://blog.kraken.com/post/7225/a-need-for-speed-kraken-to... and https://coingate.com/lightning-network

> In 2021

So they are still putting money into the project and promising things in the future. Years ago, before venture capital took over BTC, I could buy games on Steam with Bitcoin. Can I buy video games with Lightning?

https://blog.kraken.com/post/7225/a-need-for-speed-kraken-to...

> https://coingate.com/lightning-network

Ok. What can I actually buy with it? There's tons of venture capital going into this project and no commerce happening. Bitcoin had more real commerce 5 years ago than BTC and Lightning combined do today.

Re: Coinbase to Suspend Trading in XRP

#102
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blockstream bought out most of the the btc devs who had commit ability. Their end goal is to cripple btc to where it is today. The goal of this is to build an unnecessary product they can charge for on a second level. Think skimming money like charge cards do, but offering no real advantage or service beyond that. So far they have found building a new network neigh impossible. Hence the memes: Lightning only 18 month…

>The goal of this is to build an unnecessary product they can charge for on a second level. [...] Hence the memes: Lightning only 18 months away, after 3 years of "development." Can you elaborate on this? Isn't lightning free and open source? I'm not sure how that's going to be monetized.

Yes it is FOSS and multiple different implementations from different development groups / companies are available including c-lightning, LND, and eclair (I'm probably missing one or two).

The claim is truly a meme -- one that can only be laughed at when faced with the reality that I mentioned above.

Re: Coinbase to Suspend Trading in XRP

#103
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think there are any major implications. The point of blockchain currencies is to be decentralized so hacking a random github repo shouldn't have major implications. It's not even the only bitcoin node implementation out there at this point.

Before wall street involvement there was a single fork of Bitcoin that was a viable currency with low transaction fees. After Wall Street involvement there are at least 3 forks, the biggest of which had fees spiking at 60 USD per transaction making it nonviable for anything but speculators, and the others having very low adoption. The protocol was decentralized but enough of the community that controlled it was bough…

Unused blockchains have no / low transaction fees.

>When people started using Bitcoin, fees went up!

That's how it is supposed to work.

Re: Coinbase to Suspend Trading in XRP

#104
post #99
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If ethics exists it must be universal - otherwise ethics is just = power. If ethics is universal, rules apply equally to anyone. Let’s say theft is not moral, unlike receiving a gift. Both are cases of receiving without payment - the difference being that “giver” giving voluntarily or not. The same goes for how sex is moral, but rape is the furthest from moral, or how work is moral but slavery isn’t. Tax is money col…

Something I struggle with personally is how much money I give the government despite having significant ethical concerns over how my money is being spent. I know my taxes have contributed to the death and suffering of countless people. I try to remind myself that it also helps some people, but I still struggle to justify my lack of resistance knowing that at least some amount will be used in ways I consider evil. I t…

If you are interested in universal morals, the effects of incentives, and a world without coercion, I’d recommend checking out the website of the Mises Institute or the podcast of Stefan Molyneux. Good night from a small socialist European country!

Re: Coinbase to Suspend Trading in XRP

#105
post #91
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just an outright lie and malicious defamation from top to f*king bottom. Hateful nonsense by scam promoters like you turns HN into a toxic enviroment.

For those that don’t know nullc is Greg Maxwell, a former Blockstream employee. He is infamous in crypto circles.

That doesn't change the fact the claim is a laughable lie.

Re: Coinbase to Suspend Trading in XRP

#106
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

lol, how do you propose to power your mining rig and connect to the internet without a government?

Assuming free people could not create internet and electricity infrastructure is like an East German assuming free markets could not provide a Trabant alternative

Individual's could not build nor maintain the infrastructure that underpins the internet, for that you need government.

Re: Coinbase to Suspend Trading in XRP

#107
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just an outright lie and malicious defamation from top to f*king bottom. Hateful nonsense by scam promoters like you turns HN into a toxic enviroment.

Could you expand on why you think that? I very much agree with the substantive arguments made by chemmail, and would like to hear yours.

Because it's just pure nonsense, untrue, and totally unsubstantiated (and thoroughly off-topic for the thread). Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it.

Rather than any substantive argument, it merely lists a set of wild allegations.

But since you asked nicely I'll break it down sentence by sentence.

> Blockstream bought out most of the the btc devs who had commit ability

Blockstream hired myself and Pieter, two of six people at the time that had commit access to the Bitcoin software project at a time when none of the many "bitcoin companies" of the day were willing to fund developers. Though I was independently wealthy at that point, supporting my own work on Bitcoin meant spending down my Bitcoin or not working on it most of the time, so being able to get funded to work on Bitcoin and well aligned technology was appealing. Two people is not most of by any measure.

The Bitcoin software has no particular control over the Bitcoin system, but none the less we took measures to reduce any potential conflict of interest: We were substantially paid denominated in Bitcoin (pre-purchased when the company was founded), so our compensation was directly tied to Bitcoin's value. The company took no copyright interest in our work on Bitcoin, and released all our patents for public use (both under defensive licensing and the IPA). Pieter and I both had employment agreements that allowed us to quit at and continue to get paid for a year as additional insurance against any unethical conduct by the company. I also dropped my commit access.

Neither of us continue to work for blockstream, I haven't for three years now.

> Their end goal is to cripple btc to where it is today.

Blockstream hasn't done anything to "cripple" bitcoin, nor would it have made any financial sense for its employees (100% of whom were (and I believe still are) substantially compensated in Bitcoin). Quite the opposite: Blockstream's purpose was to build on-ramps to Bitcoin to help the impedance mismatch with traditional finance systems, and to monetize Bitcoin unrelated applications of the same technology (e.g. private systems) and use that to fund development work in the public interest (particularly at a time when no one else was doing so).

> The goal of this is to build an unnecessary product they can charge for on a second level. Think skimming money like charge cards do, but offering no real advantage or service beyond that. So far they have found building a new network neigh impossible.

I can't even figure out what this is attempting to talk about.

> Lightning only 18 months away, after 3 years of "development."

Lightning is a large Bitcoin industry effort involving dozens of independent developers and a half dozen companies. It isn't blockstream specific. It's just the logical progression of the payment channel idea initially described by Satoshi and baked into Bitcoin since day one. (And for a weird on-topic tangent: It's a secure implementation of the "Ripple" concept which Ripple labs bought the name of and stuck on an entirely unrelated system.)

It's not "18 months away" it exists now, it's widely used, and it works pretty well.

However, cryptocurrency for small retail payments remains a pretty uncompelling use case: It is extremely tax disadvantaged in many jurisdiction's, including the US: mandatory per transaction gains tax reporting. And retail transactions are extremely well addressed by existing solutions-- would you prefer to pay with the hardest money available, or would you prefer to pay with a credit card that is already accepted virtually everywhere, provides substantial anti-fraud protection, and extends you 28 days of credit with several percent negative fees for debt in constantly debased fiat? It's important that people have the option-- and they do-- but expecting widespread use in this application over night is fantasy.

(And not a particular problem for Blockstream, which doesn't make any fees off transactions using lightning, contrary to the parent posters allegations)

> You can find hilarious round table interviews with Adam Back where one asks how they can use btc for transactions like at bars with the fees dwarfing the regular transaction. Adam Back suggested using an IOU network out of paper or maybe build an IOU app for that.

I have no idea the context there but I can only imagine that someone asked about buying single drinks with Bitcoin and he mentioned that it's customary for people at a bar to open a tab and settle up at the end of the night. Kind of ironic that Adam, who's a teetotaler, is more aware of how bars commonly work than his critics. :)

In any case, Bitcoin is a global broadcast network whos long term decentralized security is utterly and totally dependant on getting large amounts paid in transaction fees. That has always been part of the trade-off: Centralized systems can offer extremely low fees. The only arguments about avoiding market rate fees in Bitcoin have also been argument to unlimit the supply of coins and pay for security through debasement, which is an obvious non-starter.

To the extent that there was ever even any debate over that, it long pre-dated blockstream's existence (e.g. https://en.bitcoin.it/w/index.php?title=Scalability&action=h... ).

Re: Coinbase to Suspend Trading in XRP

#108
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly makes XRP worth anything, though? Isn't it theoretically pegged to the USD?

Yes, XRP is a bad example of what makes cryptocurrencies useful/interesting for many reasons. I'm just speaking to them in general

Well, okay, what makes BTC inherently worth anything, then? Who cares that someone, somewhere, some time ago, solved some useless math problem? Why dedicate the equivalent of 7 nuclear power plants' worth of electricity[0] to it, when we could use that electricity to offset fossil fuel consumption?

I have literally have yet to have anyone explain this adequately beyond the level of "there's a market for it, so, obviously people think it's worth something."

---

[0]: https://news.bitcoin.com/the-bitcoin-network-now-consumes-7-...

Re: Coinbase to Suspend Trading in XRP

#109
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is also why the SEC can sue Ripple but not, say, Vitalik Buterin. They specifically do not consider BTC, ETH and other currencies as securities.

Correct - they explicitly said BTC and ETH are not securities. However ETH's launch was conducted via ICO, where people sent BTC in return for ETH, and the exact same launch style was later declared de-facto illegal security sales with companies being penalized. The SEC essentially caved to the crypto industry and said (paraphrasing) "Yes, ETH was launched as a security, but it became 'decentralized enough' where it…

I read that more as the SEC saying "We didn't reall know what we were dealing with at the time." And their thinking and policy decisions have evolved.to fit both their understanding and evolving crypto scene.

Re: Coinbase to Suspend Trading in XRP

#110
post #98

They never should have allowed it in the first place. By testing the waters of trading custodial currencies they were really pushing the limits. BTC has been a joke ever since the GitHub repo was hijacked by Blockstream and Adam Back. The only interesting cryptocurrencies are Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash and Monero. The rest are either obvious scams or dead ends at this point. A lot of people were holding out hope for dece…

Just to note: the "Bitcoin was hijacked by " is a running joke at this point and not to be taken seriously. Ask anyone to provide verifiable proof of this and they will respond with hyperbole or conspiracy theory.

I'm seeing a lot of valid concerns and criticisms of Blockstream's actions and methods. I dont think they can be dismissed with ad hominems.
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