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Show HN: Kong – Physical Cryptocurrency

kong.cash

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Re: Show HN: Kong – Physical Cryptocurrency

#171

Post by zelly »

drudu wrote: post #162

I hate crypto currency and I love this. It's a way to project all the insanely bad parts of crypto (if you hold it you own it) into the physical world. If general btc/eth transactions are a very very complex version of SWIFT this is the same for paper money. I can buy coke with my bitcoins but I can't do a cool in person coke buy with bitcoins(and/or ETH). Kong solves my problem.

> I can't do a cool in person coke buy with bitcoins

Why not? Each of you can have Bitcoin wallets on your phones. I'm sure coke heads can figure out something to talk about for 10 minutes waiting for 1 confirmation.

Re: Show HN: Kong – Physical Cryptocurrency

#172

Post by ccamrobertson »

Animats wrote: post #103

From the "white paper": "An additional 7,340,032 Kong was issued to the Kong project for discretionary Kong noteprinting and distribution. The upper bound for Kong token created after five years (the point at which only the recurring lockdrop rewards remain) is roughly 72,700,000 Kong." So, the promoters of this skimmed off 10% before launch. Or, more like 20% of the first year's production. Now, if this was set up s…

That's not quite fair; at launch 20% of Ethereum went to the foundation. A massive amount of Bitcoin it still held in the wallets of its creator(s).

If Kong develops a market of its own (???) then having some token for the project to fund the very real costs of making more Kong is helpful.

Re: Show HN: Kong – Physical Cryptocurrency

#173

Post by arcticbull »

darawk wrote: post #147
arcticbull wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right but asking people to verify every single note they receive is a regression in usability. It also makes the notes less reliable to store than a gold coin or a paper note, which can't be damaged by things like water, high-voltage or microwaves.

You could make this same criticism of cash, though. It's not a usability regression, they just both have the same flaw. People pass off counterfeit currency as real all the time.

Sure but cash isn’t affected by water, freezing, bending, pressure, moderate temperatures above whatever the 70C limit is on these ICs, static electricity, ionizing radiation and microwaves.

People don’t pass off counterfeit currency as real all the time either, that’s a false lead. Currently 0.01% of currency is fake and it’s actively sought out and removed from circulation [1]. That’s almost guaranteed way less than Kong bills that will become damaged and destroyed in the most ordinary of ways. We’re extending SFYL to IRL.

[1] https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.frbsf.org/education/publica...

Re: Show HN: Kong – Physical Cryptocurrency

#174

Post by bananabreakfast »

aazaa wrote: post #49

I really like the concept of physical electronic cash, but in practice nobody has figured out how to make it work. There are many attacks to consider. The most obvious is to obtain the private key. If you did so, you could give the note to someone else in an environment lacking network access. This would enable double-spending - the main problem Bitcoin solves. The attack can range in complexity from breaking into th…

Why would you suspect they haven't thought of simple attacks like these^? You haven't even read their paper and are already jumping to conclusions

Re: Show HN: Kong – Physical Cryptocurrency

#175

Post by bananabreakfast »

Jaxkr wrote: post #65

Have you considered how this will fare in the current regulatory environment? European countries banned Libra because they didn't want it to compete with the Euro and the U.S. showed hostility to pre-crypto complementary currencies. Have you considered licensing the tech to governments to make counterfeit-proof bills?

And have governments rely on Ethereum for official validation? It would collapse nearly immediately

Re: Show HN: Kong – Physical Cryptocurrency

#176

Post by newguy1234 »

elil17 wrote: post #108

I see so many people here frustrated with the fact that the creators are giving nonsense answers. It's important to remember that this is a money-making scam. Asking them how their technology provides any value to users is like asking a Nigerian prince about the philosophy behind constitutional monarchies.

The concept of a cryptocurrency backed physical paper note is definitely not a scam.

As far as this specific project. The creators will probably need to show some physical notes, how they work and so on.

This appears to be an early-stage project idea so cut them some slack here.

Re: Show HN: Kong – Physical Cryptocurrency

#177

Post by kickscondor »

paulgerhardt wrote: post #100
krick wrote: post #62

I don't get it. Is it some sort of concept art? What's the point? Sure, it can be used as money (assuming what authors say is correct). Virtually any physical items that are hard to fake can be used as money, as long as people believe it's worth something. And if we are okay with complicated and rather expensive manufacturing process (since Kong isn't something you find in the forest), it really is a non-problem to c…

Kong has the useful property of peer-to-peer validation. Most paper currencies printed in your basement don't. Tokens loaded onto Kong Cash instruments and exchanged ephemerally in person between party A and party B are more anonymous than tokens sent directly from party A to party B electronically which will be recorded for everyone to see forever. It's programmable money. It's cooler than non-programmable money. We…

Lol "it's programmable celery. It's cooler than non-programmable celery."

Re: Show HN: Kong – Physical Cryptocurrency

#178

Post by bananabreakfast »

cortesoft wrote: post #107
neiman wrote: post #35

I understand many people here, and in the world, don't like cash anymore. But there are many others, like me, that still think that physical money gives them a better feeling of their spending. So in my eyes Kong is a really nice take on the cash technology, not to mention it's beautifully executed.

So why not just use regular cash?

Unverifiable compared to simply checking an NFC

Re: Show HN: Kong – Physical Cryptocurrency

#179

Post by newguy1234 »

pimlottc wrote: post #153

Who is the audience for this product? The page is certainly not written for the general public. Heck, I'm a developer and I don't really understand how this works or why it's better than existing hard currency.

I think the audience is 3rd world countries that don't have reliable internet, electricity and so on. They can use these paper notes instead of United States dollars or their domestic currency which might be in hyperinflation.

Re: Show HN: Kong – Physical Cryptocurrency

#180

Post by paulgerhardt »

Uptrenda wrote: post #169

From the whitepaper: "Kong notes do not use a secure element that allows for general programmability." Looks like they thought this through more than a typical drive-by 'blockchain' project. With a limited secure circuit you'll be able to call functions that generate ECDSA key pairs on the card but without exposing an interface to retrieve the private key. Without this basic property you would have to fully trust tha…

The NFC challenge only takes a second and ATM like machines could probably go much quicker than that. A broader goal with ARX is to bake bounties into "licensing fees" (or accurately, manufacturing costs) for secure elements that would validate keys couldn't actually be extracted.

Putting (very) public bounties at various reward tiers lets one establish something like a demand curve but for security.

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