Cryptocurrency in the 2020s • Hacker News Board

Re: Cryptocurrency in the 2020s

#171

Post by trevelyan » Sat, Jan 04, 2020, 4:36 AM UTC

hanniabu wrote: post #167

trevelyan wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're thinking of Wimblemimble and ZK-snarks. They use cryptographic techniques where the signatures need to "add up" to what they should in order to be valid -- demonstrating that no new tokens have been added in the course of the new block. Quite cool approaches. The problem is that you can't attach data to transactions, so only useful for a subset of applications, those unlikely to create much bloat in th…

No neither of those are it, I'm familiar with those. I believe this would still be the same old Bitcoin, but there will clients that use these proofs to run a lightweight full node without relying on external sources or resorting to a lite wallet model.

Sounds interesting -- if you remember the details pls post.

Re: Cryptocurrency in the 2020s

#172

Post by NotASithLord » Sat, Jan 04, 2020, 4:40 AM UTC

hnews_account_1 wrote: post #139

vinniejames wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does a hacker newsish platform exist for the finance world?

I'm yet to find it. For a meme-ish sub /r/wallstreetbets is pretty good. Go there and have a laugh. But places like /r/economics and /r/finance are utter shit. The best resource is financial twitter (fintwit). The news breaks there, the discussion happens there, and loads of meme-ing also takes place (which is always a nice to-have in a serious place). The only drawback is that most of them lean exactly the way I do.…

Have a short list of worthy follows to start breaking into it?

Re: Cryptocurrency in the 2020s

#173

Post by seibelj » Sat, Jan 04, 2020, 4:42 AM UTC

Yet another thread for me to bookmark. Crypto is eating finance, and I can’t wait for a decade to pass to repost this thread. Good luck banks!

Re: Cryptocurrency in the 2020s

#174

Post by spir » Sat, Jan 04, 2020, 4:44 AM UTC

ianferrel wrote: post #29

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you look at what MakerDAO is doing with the Dai stablecoin, they've proven that it's possible to create a synthetic asset closely pegged to the dollar purely through financial incentives, and they did it all just using Ethereum v1. A holder of Dai can earn 4% APY through a Dai Savings Account, and a vote is currently in place to raise the rate to 6%. >I personally find it incredible that an asset exists on the b…

Seriously. The risk adjusted return on whatever that crazy contraption is is almost certainly negative, and probably incalculably so. The idea that any sane financial instrument could increase its return by two points by the holders of it voting to do so is... I haven't the words.

> whatever that crazy contraption is

The people who built "that crazy contraption" are pioneers in an industry that is going to help lift hundreds of millions out of poverty via cheap, non-predatory financial services and create trillions in wealth by further unifying the global market.

I am somebody who spends hundreds of hours per year reading about Ethereum and blockchain. I could stop doing this whenever I want, I'm not bound by my employer or anything.

I keep at it because the underlying technology and things being built with it are amazing and valuable.

If you take one thing away from this thread, let it be that Bitcoin is the "Ask Jeeves" of cryptocurrency and the future is actively being built on Ethereum.

Re: Cryptocurrency in the 2020s

#175

Post by spir » Sat, Jan 04, 2020, 4:50 AM UTC

TylerE wrote: post #80

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you look at what MakerDAO is doing with the Dai stablecoin, they've proven that it's possible to create a synthetic asset closely pegged to the dollar purely through financial incentives, and they did it all just using Ethereum v1. A holder of Dai can earn 4% APY through a Dai Savings Account, and a vote is currently in place to raise the rate to 6%. >I personally find it incredible that an asset exists on the b…

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

The interest rates are set by a governance group that collects data on supply/demand for the DAI stablecoin. The interest rates are a reactionary function of global spot supply and demand for DAI.

Their governance calls are open, you can join and watch them be money scientists.

Here's the link to the most recent governance call https://forum.makerdao.com/t/agenda-discussion-scientific-go...

Re: Cryptocurrency in the 2020s

#176

Post by imcoconut » Sat, Jan 04, 2020, 4:56 AM UTC

vinniejames wrote: post #134

hnews_account_1 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a finance professional, I can tell you without shame that much of my industry doesn't understand finance either. The mask of online anonymity simply emboldens people with no knowledge to come forth and spout. I keep moving platforms trying to get away from that shit. Reddit is horrible in this regard, so I only use it for memes. HN has full credibility professionals in programming, but its finance base is really n…

Does a hacker newsish platform exist for the finance world?

the forum section of wallstreetoasis is actually pretty good as sort of hn for finance. not as much good content/discussion as here but still enough.

Re: Cryptocurrency in the 2020s

#177

Post by ericb » Sat, Jan 04, 2020, 4:57 AM UTC

moduspol wrote: post #158

mundo wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct me if I'm misunderstanding things, but Lightning Network means off-chain transactions, right? Which can be be reneged on if one party is malicious, meaning they'll only occur between trusted parties? And in practice, that means traditional financial services companies and their KYC-compliant customers, which is the exact 180 degree opposite of the originally envisioned use case. From where I sit, it seems lik…

It's complicated, and I'm not sold on the Lightning Network as the future, but > Which can be be reneged on if one party is malicious, meaning they'll only occur between trusted parties? This is not correct. My understanding is essentially each party is tying up Bitcoin as being between them on the blockchain, then trading cryptographically verifiable assertions of each other off-chain about what the latest status of…

Ever meet someone with a startup idea that is really an insanely complicated way of achieving something people already can do? It's like, you want to tell them "people will never do steps m,n,o,p,q,r,s and t because that's not how people think, and they have other simpler ways to get what they want.

That's the Lightning Network.

Re: Cryptocurrency in the 2020s

#178

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jan 04, 2020, 4:58 AM UTC

v64 wrote: post #88

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand. Cash and other liquid assets are not typically used as collateral for a loan. Etherium is a crypto- currency , right? I.e. it's liquid? Collateral is almost always something like a house, or shares in a business. If you already have liquid assets in the amount you're borrowing, why are you taking a loan and paying interest as opposed to just using those liquid assets?

If you sell the Ether, you no longer have the Ether. If while you're holding the loan the price of Ether goes up, you benefit from that. Of course, if the price of Ether goes down, you're at risk of having your loan liquidated, but that's a requirement imposed by the system to maintain the Dai peg.

[deleted]

Re: Cryptocurrency in the 2020s

#179

Post by zhoujianfu » Sat, Jan 04, 2020, 5:06 AM UTC

duncan-donuts wrote: post #18

jrimbault wrote: post #14

I was thinking with some friends recently (new year's eve) : considering a bitcoin model with a fixed finite amount of currency, won't every coin be lost at some point due to storage failure/lost keys/etc ? Statistically ? And rather sooner than later, if my thinking is right ? Like the birthday problem ? There is a maximum of 21x10^6 bitcoins, imagining a 0.01 chance of losing 1 bitcoin/day ?

As the scarcity increase would they become more valuable or less valuable?

Typically in economics less supply increases price.

Re: Cryptocurrency in the 2020s

#180

Post by zhoujianfu » Sat, Jan 04, 2020, 5:08 AM UTC

waynecochran wrote: post #48

How do you fix their No. 1 problem: scalability? The blockchain updating, and certainly mining, are inherently slow.

The easy way is what bitcoin cash (BCH) did, and what Satoshi assumes would be done: raise the max block size.

The other easy way is to do what either win (ETH) did and change the average time between blocks from 10 minutes to say 10 seconds or so.