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Cryptocurrency doesn’t address the hard parts of financial inclusion

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Re: Cryptocurrency doesn’t address the hard parts of financial inclusion

#131

Post by knorker »

_vvhw wrote: post #43
knorker wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not losing transactions with a database is not exactly terra incognita. > Because without distributed strict serializability Depends what you mean by "distributed". A simple 2-phase commit would do it. Or hell, just a write-ahead log on the application layer. > Postgres just doesn't seem like the best way to get distributed failover safely That may be so. But are you arguing in favour of blockchain? When was the last…

"But are you arguing in favour of blockchain?" No, please see my original comment, where I made this clear: "I don't mean to advocate for cryptocurrency in any way." By "modern distributed database", I don't mean blockchain. I just mean "modern distributed database", e.g. things like FoundationDB, Spanner, Aurora or CockroachDB. "A simple 2-phase commit would do it. Or hell, just a write-ahead log on the application…

Gotcha.

I'm also excited about the modern distributed databases. They're pretty awesome.

But yeah, a HN comment is not the right place to design a resilient DB setup. Like I said it's not terra incognita, but it's also not just "spin up a postgres".

Re: Cryptocurrency doesn’t address the hard parts of financial inclusion

#133

Post by lottin »

valcron1000 wrote: post #107
lottin wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't matter, all blockchains work the same way. They all depend on middlemen to process transactions.

Not in the same sense. If I use Paypal for example, I can only spend my funds in whatever they decide I should be able to spend it on. They can freeze my account at any point in time, no questions asked. With crypto, the blockchain is just the infrastructure and no one can stop me from using my money. Sometimes I wonder if people defending this kind of financial services are actually users. Doesn't seem so.

Paypal is a legal entity and therefore subject to the same laws as you and me. They can't just do whatever they please. If they did prevent their customers from spending their own money or they freezed their accounts for no apparent reason, they wouldn't have any customers.

Transaction processors on blockchains are not infrastructure, they are businesses and they can absolutely choose to not process your transactions.

Re: Cryptocurrency doesn’t address the hard parts of financial inclusion

#134

Post by 8note »

anonporridge wrote: post #109
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> where in order to buy energy you need to have bitcoin, there is no "buying" bitcoin So when you say "bitcoin is energy money," that's a tautology. It's energy money if oil is priced in bitcoin. > that doesn't depend on the enforcement of the monopoly on violence Violence relieves someone of their Bitcoin keys just as easily as it does their dollars or gold. (At the very least, you can permanently sequester them.)

> Violence relieves someone of their Bitcoin keys just as easily as it does their dollars or gold. Wrong. It is significantly more complicated to use violence to steal bitcoin from people than it is to use violence to steal dollars or gold. With bitcoin, I need to coerce you to give it to me. That could mean torture, sure, but do exist multisig key structures that make it impossible to steal bitcoin by coercing a sin…

Your multisig partners need to be psychopaths who are willing to let you die to maintain your wealth. Otherwise, they are coerced when you are by violence

Re: Cryptocurrency doesn’t address the hard parts of financial inclusion

#135

Post by el-salvador »

anonporridge wrote: post #91
el-salvador wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've tested the lightning in El Salvador to lightning payments and they work in 4/5 seconds in the merchants that accept them. There's also the local wallet QR codes which I haven't had the opportunity to try yet The volatility is what I like the least. Like one day realizing that the Wendy's hamburger I had for dinner was well timed, because a few hours later Bitcoin's value dropped. In El Salvador we've had an stab…

All true, however, by using the dollar as your primary currency, you are effectively a vassal state of the United States, your currency getting regularly devalued without getting any direct benefit of that devaluation like American citizens get, and also no representation in the government that controls that implicit tax that is currency debasement. I'm not Salvadorian, so it's obviously not my place to say what you…

I understand that other countries have the possibility of being more independent, but for us, due to historical reasons is more difficult

El Salvador is linked to the United States in many ways.

Currency is only one, but also 20% of our population lives in the U.S, 24% of our GDP comes from remittances from mainly the U.S., 42% of our imports and 34% of our exports, the second largest city by Salvadoran population is Los Angeles California, most of our airports flights are to the U.S, most of our internet is routed in Miami.

Using other currency than the USD would make every transaction and remmitance a little bit more expensive due to the exchange rate margin.

I'm also aware of the recent inflation in the U.S, which we can't really do much about.

In a longer term though, in the past 20 years, the USD has been a more stable currency than any other Latin American currency except perhaps the neighboring country's Guatemalan Quetzal (GTQ).[1]

We also have lower loan interest rates than neighboring countries, and can apply to longer term mortgages.

[1] There are other exceptions like the Belize Dollar and Panama Balboa which are pegged to USD. Or French Guyana which uses EUR.

Re: Cryptocurrency doesn’t address the hard parts of financial inclusion

#136

Post by knorker »

jimmydorry wrote: post #126
knorker wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not losing transactions with a database is not exactly terra incognita. > Because without distributed strict serializability Depends what you mean by "distributed". A simple 2-phase commit would do it. Or hell, just a write-ahead log on the application layer. > Postgres just doesn't seem like the best way to get distributed failover safely That may be so. But are you arguing in favour of blockchain? When was the last…

Pretty regularly [1], depending on the bank. Every year, there will be several hour-long outages or out right data loss incidents (not all get publicized). https://www.wcjb.com/2020/08/05/bank-of-america-glitch-accou... Would you also class going to pay for something and not being able to because the payment network is down as "forgetting your bank balance"? Because those happen even more frequently; the cause being…

Having an outage is not the same as forgetting your bank balance, even if you see a scary $0 when you log in during the outage.

But I agree it's definitely a thing that can prevent you accomplishing the thing you want to do with your money, during the outage.

But if we're talking "outage" then bitcoin fees going over $25 is probably also fair to classify as an outage as a currency. And that happens too.

Re: Cryptocurrency doesn’t address the hard parts of financial inclusion

#137

Post by _vvhw »

knorker wrote: post #131
_vvhw wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"But are you arguing in favour of blockchain?" No, please see my original comment, where I made this clear: "I don't mean to advocate for cryptocurrency in any way." By "modern distributed database", I don't mean blockchain. I just mean "modern distributed database", e.g. things like FoundationDB, Spanner, Aurora or CockroachDB. "A simple 2-phase commit would do it. Or hell, just a write-ahead log on the application…

Gotcha. I'm also excited about the modern distributed databases. They're pretty awesome. But yeah, a HN comment is not the right place to design a resilient DB setup. Like I said it's not terra incognita, but it's also not just "spin up a postgres".

"Gotcha. I'm also excited about the modern distributed databases. They're pretty awesome."

Awesome!

"HN comment is not the right place to design a resilient DB setup."

Why not?

In my experience, HN is always the place to talk about building stuff, running stuff, and how to do that better. :)

Re: Cryptocurrency doesn’t address the hard parts of financial inclusion

#138

Post by tablespoon »

jimmydorry wrote: post #115
tablespoon wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Cryptocurrencies have never claimed they address the hardest parts of financial inclusion. Cryptocurrencies solve the issue of trust. Uh, what now? They actually do a worse job than traditional finance. What happens if I pay for something with a credit card and the vendor fails to deliver? Why I dispute the transaction and get my money back. It's less important that I have absolute trust in the vendor, because I ha…

>What happens if I pay for something with a credit card and the vendor fails to deliver? You are comparing crypto to a service that a third party provides on top of fiat. It's not a fair comparison as there is nothing stopping third parties providing the same service on top of crypto (and the third party does not necessary need human intervention to function when both parties act in good faith). The more accurate com…

> You are comparing crypto to a service that a third party provides on top of fiat. It's not a fair comparison as there is nothing stopping third parties providing the same service on top of crypto (and the third party does not necessary need human intervention to function when both parties act in good faith).

You're missing the point: the GGP said "cryptocurrencies solve the issue of trust" but they clearly haven't in any practical sense.

It also a fair comparison, because I don't share the ideological obsessions that motivate cryptocurrency, nor have I made a speculative bet on it where I feel the compulsion to shill for it to save my own skin. As a practical matter, cryptocurrency is stupid and compares poorly to non-cryptocurrency alternatives in nearly all use caseses. It may make sense in some unusual ridiculously contrived use case, but that proves my point.

> Keeping track of balances is a tough problem that did not (and still doesn't) have a good solution for after many decades of operation.

That's not true: it has a sufficiently good solution that nearly the entire economy runs off of it. Meanwhile, the supposed "better" solutions are less scalable and use more electricity than Argentina to perform operations that a typical desktop PC is powerful enough to do.

Re: Cryptocurrency doesn’t address the hard parts of financial inclusion

#139

Post by verdverm »

anonporridge wrote: post #77
verdverm wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin is too volatile, when will it become stable enough to be used for pricing IRL goods?

Did you not read my GP comment?

Yes, the logic doesn't add up, it's a chicken egg problem. It has to be stable before it's used for pricing any serious amount of IRL goods. Given how it's usage has evolved, I don't see a path to a stable Bitcoin.

Re: Cryptocurrency doesn’t address the hard parts of financial inclusion

#140

Post by endisneigh »

seibelj wrote: post #12
endisneigh wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source?

https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-cryptocurrency-tec... > “It’s certainly a first,” said Bennett Tomlin, who investigates cryptocurrency scams and hosts the podcast Crypto Critic’s Corner. “We’ve never seen a sovereign nation fund their defense efforts in crypto before. It does prove out a lot of the crypto argument.”

This doesn’t support your claim…
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