Cryptocurrency in the 2020s • Hacker News Board

Re: Cryptocurrency in the 2020s

#111

Post by SkyMarshal » Sat, Jan 04, 2020, 2:04 AM UTC

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #91

aazaa wrote: post #72

The trouble with this article is that the author doesn't seem to know what Bitcoin is for. Notice the vague treatment of actual cryptocurrency applications. There are lots of predictions about startup activity, "flippenings" and venture capital, but little about the goods and services customers will actually be buying, or what specifically startups will be building. It's this kind of thinking that leads people into t…

I find it hilarious you think Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong doesn't "know what Bitcoin is for." Maybe you don't know what it is for. People that are sane like Mr. Armstrong and Satoshi Nakamoto intended it to be used as a currency. If Satoshi is still alive I'm sure he was quite disappointed when Bitcoin decided to not scale past its blistering 7 transactions per second. "Bitcoin can already scale much larger than tha…

It doesn't matter what Satoshi said five years ago, it matters what he would say now, given what we've learned about Bitcoin since. His old opinions are less and less informed each year.

Increasing block size utilization has series tradeoffs for decentralization, privacy and reliability. Each year we learn and understand those tradeoffs better. Pro block-size increase people never seem to directly address them though, just talk around them and imply they don't matter. They do matter, a great deal.

Re: Cryptocurrency in the 2020s

#112

Post by danans » Sat, Jan 04, 2020, 2:09 AM UTC

aazaa wrote: post #72

The trouble with this article is that the author doesn't seem to know what Bitcoin is for. Notice the vague treatment of actual cryptocurrency applications. There are lots of predictions about startup activity, "flippenings" and venture capital, but little about the goods and services customers will actually be buying, or what specifically startups will be building. It's this kind of thinking that leads people into t…

> It places Bitcoin on the side of personal freedom and on a collision course with some of the world's biggest governments, including the US.

And until and unless you can use it to purchase the goods and services needed for daily life, and the military and police forces needed to secure the supplies lines of those, it will be at best a theoretical form of personal freedom.

Even if Bitcoin doesn't rely on trust, the rest of the functions of human society do.

Re: Cryptocurrency in the 2020s

#113

Post by vinniejames » Sat, Jan 04, 2020, 2:11 AM UTC

kspacewalk2 wrote: post #37

v64 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly don't understand where the perception comes from that this technology is only useful for laundering and speculation. Certainly it is currently being used for those purposes. But to say there is no imaginable use outside of that seems unwarranted. I've commented in the past here that the use of public blockchains to automate the functions of clearinghouses and escrow services will be a huge cost reduction f…

>the use of public blockchains to automate the functions of clearinghouses and escrow services will be a huge cost reduction for many industries such as finance. But we don't want financial transactions to be fully automated and immutable. We want escrow services to be subject to laws, we want a judicial undo and modify button. So if you remove the whole "no one can change history" bit because it's an anti-feature, i…

"we" want these types of services only when the escrow and judicial systems can be trusted. That opinion changes rapidly when living under corrupt a regime

Re: Cryptocurrency in the 2020s

#114

Post by vinniejames » Sat, Jan 04, 2020, 2:13 AM UTC

99052882514569 wrote: post #79

v64 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are definitely cases where transactions need to be reversed, and this functionality can be built into a clearinghouse system. Immutability is a plus here because you have an unalterable audit log showing the original transaction and then the subsequent transaction that reverses the first. The cost savings comes from the fact that instead of having to hire independent auditors to verify the paper trail, the bloc…

>The cost savings comes from the fact that instead of having to hire independent auditors to verify the paper trail, the blockchain serves as an immutable audit log and can be verified programmatically. I don't know enough about the financial industry to know if a real actual problem is being solved here. I do assume that any bank in this industry is already required by law to keep a record of all transactions, and t…

Blockchain ledgers are nearly impossible to improperly modify. Once a transaction is made it is permanent and verified by all nodes in the system

Re: Cryptocurrency in the 2020s

#115

Post by vinniejames » Sat, Jan 04, 2020, 2:16 AM UTC

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #50

kspacewalk2 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>the use of public blockchains to automate the functions of clearinghouses and escrow services will be a huge cost reduction for many industries such as finance. But we don't want financial transactions to be fully automated and immutable. We want escrow services to be subject to laws, we want a judicial undo and modify button. So if you remove the whole "no one can change history" bit because it's an anti-feature, i…

> But we don't want financial transactions to be fully automated and immutable. And cryptocurrency does not provide immutability anyway. Remember the DAO Ethereum fiasco where they lost a bunch of money and decided to roll it back.

They didn't roll anything back. That ledger, with the loss, exists today unchanged.

What did happen was a superset of users decided to create a new ledger to run in parallel, containing transactions up until but not including the loss.

The market determined the new ledger to be more valuable

Re: Cryptocurrency in the 2020s

#116

Post by hnews_account_1 » Sat, Jan 04, 2020, 2:19 AM UTC

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #91

aazaa wrote: post #72

The trouble with this article is that the author doesn't seem to know what Bitcoin is for. Notice the vague treatment of actual cryptocurrency applications. There are lots of predictions about startup activity, "flippenings" and venture capital, but little about the goods and services customers will actually be buying, or what specifically startups will be building. It's this kind of thinking that leads people into t…

I find it hilarious you think Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong doesn't "know what Bitcoin is for." Maybe you don't know what it is for. People that are sane like Mr. Armstrong and Satoshi Nakamoto intended it to be used as a currency. If Satoshi is still alive I'm sure he was quite disappointed when Bitcoin decided to not scale past its blistering 7 transactions per second. "Bitcoin can already scale much larger than tha…

Every single crypto that has tried to pass that limitation has remained centralised in one way or another. You can either:

1) have centralisation

2) assume storage space will expand exponentially since the entire point of bitcoin is many many copies of its ledger

3) come up with a new method more secure than PoW but still decentralised

Good luck with (3). (1) and (2) are not good choices. So they moved it off the chain into lightning network.

Re: Cryptocurrency in the 2020s

#117

Post by nradov » Sat, Jan 04, 2020, 2:19 AM UTC

aazaa wrote: post #72

The trouble with this article is that the author doesn't seem to know what Bitcoin is for. Notice the vague treatment of actual cryptocurrency applications. There are lots of predictions about startup activity, "flippenings" and venture capital, but little about the goods and services customers will actually be buying, or what specifically startups will be building. It's this kind of thinking that leads people into t…

Bitcoin is for wealthy Chinese people to evade currency controls and get their wealth out to politically safer countries. Buy mining hardware and electricity with Renminbi, get Bitcoins, sell in a foreign country for hard currency.

Re: Cryptocurrency in the 2020s

#118

Post by James-primitive » Sat, Jan 04, 2020, 2:21 AM UTC

aazaa wrote: post #72

The trouble with this article is that the author doesn't seem to know what Bitcoin is for. Notice the vague treatment of actual cryptocurrency applications. There are lots of predictions about startup activity, "flippenings" and venture capital, but little about the goods and services customers will actually be buying, or what specifically startups will be building. It's this kind of thinking that leads people into t…

>The trouble with this article is that the author doesn't seem to know what Bitcoin is for.

Does anyone? It was invented by John Romero for G_d's sake.

> The ability to print money is a fantasy of many people from a young age.

This is the problem Bitcoin exists to solve.

> bootstrapping censorship-resistant money is a one-time deal.

But what about Wei Dai, Nick Szabo and Ethereum? They all created Bitcoin-twice.

>Only the genuine scammers are left to continue the exercise.

Such as one "Mencius Szabo"...fisked and enumerated!

>flies in the face of what Bitcoin was designed to do.

Which is what, exactly?

::enumerate and fisk -- (anon) Goulding

Re: Cryptocurrency in the 2020s

#119

Post by hendzen » Sat, Jan 04, 2020, 2:21 AM UTC

v64 wrote: post #82

TylerE wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paying 6%, or even 4%, on a savings account is a MASSIVE red flag to anyone with a bit of financial sense.

Those with loans in the system will have to pay a 6% interest rate. Since not all holders of Dai have savings accounts, this allows for the system to use the interest charged to loan holders to pay out the savings rate while accumulating a surplus. A 6% interest rate on USD would be a red flag, but Dai isn't USD. As far as I know, no banks allow you to use Ether as collateral for a USD loan, so the comparison isn't a…

Why would someone agree to take out a loan with a 6% interest rate when the fed funds rate (not incl spread for various retail products etc) is 400+ bps lower. Even with the spread you are going to be paying less than that for a regular margin loan for trading, which is what I assume these loans are used for.

Re: Cryptocurrency in the 2020s

#120

Post by vinniejames » Sat, Jan 04, 2020, 2:24 AM UTC

induetimesir wrote: post #68

wpietri wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. It has been 10+ years since the Bitcoin paper. No cryptocurrency has significant consumer adoption. [1], [2] Except for light financial crime (ransomware, money laundering, gambling, theft, etc), it has no demonstrated advantage over alternative technologies. I don't think it will go away, any more than Ponzi and Make Money Fast schemes have gone away. But like you, I expect it will fade into the background…

"no demonstrated advantage" - said by someone who doesn't remember what it's like to wait for a large check to clear. or hasn't tried to fund their IRA via an ACH transfer but their bank won't allow it bcs rules.. or hasn't wanted to wire money (or receive a wire) for a fraction of the price (and hassle) of a wire transfer. I have sent hundreds of bitcoin transactions. And I admit that it's not perfect. There's lots…

A good number of these negative arguments appear to have a similar line of thinking. "I don't know much about Bitcoin, or finance in general, but I can adamantly tell you Bitcoin has no benefit, something something money laundering"