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Bitcoin physical bearer instrument using NFC JavaCards

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Re: Bitcoin physical bearer instrument using NFC JavaCards

#101

Post by latchkey »

arcticbull wrote: post #96
latchkey wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sigh, your anti-crypto trope needs better analogies. We've been through this many times and you just keep repeating the same tired arguments in an effort to sound knowledgable and spread your one sided and often misguided and outdated opinions. > It's a statement of objective reality. No, it isn't. USDT, a crypto currency, is pegged to the dollar and doesn't have consistently huge swings in volatility. > The system i…

> No, it isn't. USDT, a crypto currency, is pegged to the dollar and doesn't have consistently huge swings in volatility. The one that's not backed? Whose money is supposedly in a bahamian bank run by the man who created Inspector Gadget? The one that settled with the CFTC and the NYAG for being unbacked? How you could possibly recommend this as a beacon of stability is beyond me. Especially when they don't even pay…

I mentioned something not volatile that I knew would trigger you to go off on some rant about the backing. That's the part where your trope is really tired.

> But not as a percentage of transactions.

Source? In your eyes, 100% of crypto is criminal, but that's not reality, by a long shot. So, if you're going to call it all criminal, I want a source for that. I know my transactions aren't and I pay all my taxes on it, so do what you will with that data point.

Re: Bitcoin physical bearer instrument using NFC JavaCards

#102

Post by mjburgess »

overthrow wrote: post #93
mjburgess wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think if people have working mobile phones then they're able to be sent electronic cash without a p2p system. Indeed, more easily than having a VPN and relevant skills to received crypto assets. The state here owns the network, rendering all the premises of peer-to-peer systems invalid and thus all of their guarantees. If the government there wanted to prevent receipt of USDC it well could, as much as it can comple…

> I think if people have working mobile phones then they're able to be sent electronic cash without a p2p system. Indeed, more easily than having a VPN and relevant skills to received crypto assets. Spoken like a true first-world armchair warrior. Maduro shut off the non-p2p systems, as dicussed. He then failed to stop crypto payments. Do you think it was his "preference" all along to fail to control the flow of mone…

> He then failed to stop crypto payments

lol..err, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petro_(token) -- the government has not tried to "stop" anything.

If any of these systems had any actual utility many states would spend the relatively trivial amounts of money to 51% attack them: https://www.crypto51.app/. Or force take over their miners. Or monpolise half the stake. Or control the (local) mining networks. Or one of a number of trivial actions.

These systems do not work. Their alleged properties are lies. They are not immutable, they are not decentralised, and they are not capable of supporting non-trivial economic transactions.

This is a scam. These stories are lies. They are told by people who are in on the scam. This is a manipulated market, these are manipulated ideas, this entire system is comprised of about 100,000 people around the world, 5% of whom benefit from it.

It is incapable of supporting millions of users, let alone how severely impoverished they'd be at the expensive of the present holders -- thank god such systems cannot scale.

Present holders, no doubt like you, desperate to bring cash into the system, more people in, so your present holdings can increase in value.

I find this reprehensible

Re: Bitcoin physical bearer instrument using NFC JavaCards

#103

Post by overthrow »

mjburgess wrote: post #102
overthrow wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think if people have working mobile phones then they're able to be sent electronic cash without a p2p system. Indeed, more easily than having a VPN and relevant skills to received crypto assets. Spoken like a true first-world armchair warrior. Maduro shut off the non-p2p systems, as dicussed. He then failed to stop crypto payments. Do you think it was his "preference" all along to fail to control the flow of mone…

> He then failed to stop crypto payments lol..err, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petro_(token) -- the government has not tried to "stop" anything. If any of these systems had any actual utility many states would spend the relatively trivial amounts of money to 51% attack them: https://www.crypto51.app/ . Or force take over their miners. Or monpolise half the stake. Or control the (local) mining networks. Or one of a…

Petro is an attempt at embrace-extend-extinguish. If that "Reception" section is to be believed, nobody is using it willingly. Do you have evidence to the contrary?

Look under "NiceHash-able", if the number is less than 100% it means (to an approximation) not enough idle hardware exists on the planet to perform an attack. This means any attack must start with a manufacturing project that must stay secret for a decade+, then outpace growth and eventually surpass the capacity of the private sector. And then you need the energy to actually run the chips - no country would ever consider diverting that much energy away from their population.

If it were possible to compromise a $xxx billion dollar system, with only $x million, don't you think it would have been done by now? Maybe even by some bored billionaire just for fun?

And trust me, I don't think posting in a dead HN thread will speed up or slow down crypto's success in any way, lmao. I just enjoy the banter.

Re: Bitcoin physical bearer instrument using NFC JavaCards

#104

Post by danShumway »

bb88 wrote: post #100
deweller wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a lot of change-the-world ideology around bitcoin ten years ago. No it has not lived up to those perfect visions. I don't think it is irrevocably broken. I for one think there is still a lot of potential in cryptocurrencies and public blockchains. I believe a credibly neutral store of value not in the control of any nation state is something that benefits the world. Why can't we celebrate what is good and t…

Basically your argument is "Don't let perfect be the enemy of the good." I think the issue I have is the crypto folk haven't wanted to fix any of it -- with the rare exception being ethereum moving to PoS. A lot of the "fixes" would break the "features".

Exactly. Perfect is the enemy of the good, but sometimes terrible is also the enemy of the good. It's not that perfectionists are holding back the ecosystem, it's that the community is satisfied with terrible.

Cryptocurrency communities are aggressively hostile to improvement. Every chance to make the ecosystem better is met with pushback. It's funny you bring up PoS, because how much energy was spent (pun absolutely intended) by the Ethereum community fighting that change?

It doesn't make sense to celebrate the good and fix the bad in cryptocurrency because a nontrivial portion of its userbase actively wants it to keep its terrible qualities and will fight anyone tooth-and-nail that tries to fix its problems. It's exhausting to even have conversations about what parts of the ecosystem need improvement.

I mean, this project is still using Bitcoin, right? So clearly we're not going to fix the bad parts of cryptocurrency, because if y'all in the cryto-community were willing to fix any of the bad parts, Bitcoin of all the implementations wouldn't still somehow inexplicably be your most popular coin. Cryptocurrency is a system with a lot flaws, but its biggest problem that gets in the way of it turning into something useful is that its community that has internalized those flaws as strengths.

And honestly, that's the charitable interpretation. The less charitable interpretation is that there are a lot of bad actors in cryptocurrency communities that aren't even interested in building something useful in the first place, they're purely interested in furthering whatever scam they're working on at the moment. How much of the PoS fight was about genuine academic disagreement about centralization, and how much of that "disagreement" was just a cloak over "I think I have pretty good thing going on with this GPU farm and how dare you mess with that"?

Re: Bitcoin physical bearer instrument using NFC JavaCards

#105

Post by danShumway »

brianf0 wrote: post #20
lobstrosity420 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it’s the same thing as government issued currency the moment you put it in paper. A corollary is that digital dollars on your banking app is just like crypto.

Not the same, BTC can't be created / devalued at will.

No one who has spent any time actually studying the price fluctuations in Bitcoin would ever believe that a fixed currency supply helps with stabilizing coins. Bitcoin itself is probably the best proof that fixed currency supply doesn't help with reducing currency volatility.

Re: Bitcoin physical bearer instrument using NFC JavaCards

#106

Post by overthrow »

arcticbull wrote: post #88
overthrow wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe instead of saying what people should and shouldn't be doing, you should ask yourself why they're using it anyway despite the obvious downsides. Lightning fees are less than $0.01 - much better than the alternative of $20 for cashing a check. And the volatility is a small price to pay for financial control, for someone who (with good reason) doesn't trust banks or the government that's failing them. Actually the…

> Maybe instead of saying what people should and shouldn't be doing, you should ask yourself why they're using it anyway despite the obvious downsides. They're not using it, at all. Trading volumes have plummeted, nobody uses it for exchange of value due to the volatility and the fees. You wouldn't say people are 'using Apple' because they're holding Apple stock, and you shouldn't say people are 'using Bitcoin' becau…

> They're not using it, at all.

This is obviously false. Just look at the transaction rates on the publicly available ledger.

And: Moneygram has all but publicly admitted that crypto remittances have grown large enough that it's affecting their core business, and they're trying to re-insert themselves as a middleman. https://my.linkedin.com/posts/moneygram-international_moneyg...

If you actually meant trading volumes (which matter zero for adoption btw), those haven't changed much either. Zoom out to 1w: https://bitcoinwisdom.io/markets/gdax/btcusd

> Lightning

The naive routing complexity is quadratic, yes. GPS routing is also quadratic. So is IP routing. But practical implementations use heuristics to decrease that complexity. In practice, you just need a good enough path, not the theoretically optimal path. The internet and lightning are still working fine as we speak.

> It's literally down 60% from a year ago

Bitcoin's current MVRV is 1.457[1], meaning the average holder current has a 45.7% profit. I guess if you cherry pick a high and low price you can imagine some losses, but anyone could cherry-pick numbers in the other direction too.

The 45% profit is nice, but for those living paycheck to paycheck it unfortunately isn't a huge help since many people wouldn't have been holding long enough for the gains to accumulate.

[1]: https://www.blockchain.com/explorer/charts/mvrv

Re: Bitcoin physical bearer instrument using NFC JavaCards

#107

Post by mjburgess »

overthrow wrote: post #103
mjburgess wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He then failed to stop crypto payments lol..err, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petro_(token) -- the government has not tried to "stop" anything. If any of these systems had any actual utility many states would spend the relatively trivial amounts of money to 51% attack them: https://www.crypto51.app/ . Or force take over their miners. Or monpolise half the stake. Or control the (local) mining networks. Or one of a…

Petro is an attempt at embrace-extend-extinguish. If that "Reception" section is to be believed, nobody is using it willingly. Do you have evidence to the contrary? Look under "NiceHash-able", if the number is less than 100% it means (to an approximation) not enough idle hardware exists on the planet to perform an attack. This means any attack must start with a manufacturing project that must stay secret for a decade…

States can afford billions. A 5bn attack is cheap.

Also, all these "market cap" numbers are made up. These are heavily manipulated markets. There are about 100k users, and almost no buyers -- this stuff is trivial to bring down.

It's a scam.

Re: Bitcoin physical bearer instrument using NFC JavaCards

#108

Post by overthrow »

mjburgess wrote: post #107
overthrow wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Petro is an attempt at embrace-extend-extinguish. If that "Reception" section is to be believed, nobody is using it willingly. Do you have evidence to the contrary? Look under "NiceHash-able", if the number is less than 100% it means (to an approximation) not enough idle hardware exists on the planet to perform an attack. This means any attack must start with a manufacturing project that must stay secret for a decade…

States can afford billions. A 5bn attack is cheap. Also, all these "market cap" numbers are made up. These are heavily manipulated markets. There are about 100k users, and almost no buyers -- this stuff is trivial to bring down. It's a scam.

This message is devoid of evidence lol

Look how hard some governments have tried to stop this movement, and none have succeeded. That's real life evidence that they simply aren't capable.

I think this cloud will outlast the old men yelling at it.

Also: I hope one day someone calls my company a failure because it "only" has hundreds of thousands of users

Re: Bitcoin physical bearer instrument using NFC JavaCards

#109

Post by mjburgess »

overthrow wrote: post #108
mjburgess wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

States can afford billions. A 5bn attack is cheap. Also, all these "market cap" numbers are made up. These are heavily manipulated markets. There are about 100k users, and almost no buyers -- this stuff is trivial to bring down. It's a scam.

This message is devoid of evidence lol Look how hard some governments have tried to stop this movement, and none have succeeded. That's real life evidence that they simply aren't capable. I think this cloud will outlast the old men yelling at it. Also: I hope one day someone calls my company a failure because it "only" has hundreds of thousands of users

I can't tell if you're gullible, or in on the scam. Either way, spreading this around is immoral.

Regulators are well-aware this is a scam which is why they're afraid of regulating it: as soon as they say "put up or shut up" the whole things collapses. they dont want to be blamed for that collapse.

As for politicians, they're corrupt. Trump and his cabinet were scam artists (betsy devos the wife of the head of a pyramid scheme, etc.); and likewise senior figures in the dems have historically been deeply connected to pyramid schemes.

This will all go to zero. The fastest way there is anyone actually trying to use it for money.

At the moment, it's one closed-off casino with a handful of people gambling with each other -- that's the total amount which any of this tech can support.

Regulators are hoping it will collapse in on itself without prompting.

I think the only law required here is "do something useful for real people" -- with that law this entire ecosystem will collapse and be exposed for the inherent fraud it is.

I encourage anyone with assets here to divest, and never to promote any of this -- do not rope people into holding the bag.

Re: Bitcoin physical bearer instrument using NFC JavaCards

#110

Post by overthrow »

mjburgess wrote: post #109
overthrow wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This message is devoid of evidence lol Look how hard some governments have tried to stop this movement, and none have succeeded. That's real life evidence that they simply aren't capable. I think this cloud will outlast the old men yelling at it. Also: I hope one day someone calls my company a failure because it "only" has hundreds of thousands of users

I can't tell if you're gullible, or in on the scam. Either way, spreading this around is immoral. Regulators are well-aware this is a scam which is why they're afraid of regulating it: as soon as they say "put up or shut up" the whole things collapses. they dont want to be blamed for that collapse. As for politicians, they're corrupt. Trump and his cabinet were scam artists (betsy devos the wife of the head of a pyra…

> I think the only law required here is "do something useful for real people"

It did something useful for the Venezuelans. But you don't care about that because, why? Because you made up a story in your head that someone somewhere probably scammed everyone, somehow? And even with complete transparency and a publicly auditable ledger, they've kept it a secret for years?

All publicly available information points to the project being a success. Is there even a shred of evidence for your accusations? Or do you not need evidence to ignore events that don't fit your worldview?

---

https://www.reuters.com/technology/lse-teams-with-digital-tr...

What about the London Stock Exchange? Do you think they're just a bunch of filthy scammers as well?

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