The Non-Innovation of Cryptocurrency • Hacker News Board

Re: The Non-Innovation of Cryptocurrency

#181

Post by jiriknesl » Sun, Jul 11, 2021, 8:26 PM UTC

creshal wrote: post #177

jiriknesl wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PoW is now done more with renewable energy than most of other sectors. Bitcoin is one of the most clean markets out there. In fact, Bitcoin is way better traceable than remittance systems used by terrorists. They smuggle cash, they use hawala, they use trade-based instruments (over and under invoicing), they use bank accounts on anonymous companies in tax havens. All these things are way more difficult to trace than…

> PoW is now done more with renewable energy than most of other sectors. Bitcoin is one of the most clean markets out there. A market for scams and scam accessories. If it stopped existing, we could shut down fossil fuel plants and put all those renewables to better use.

Supply, demand. People don't have better use for electricity than miners. If they did, they would buy it out. So your implication is false.

The fact you don't see value in cryptocurrencies doesn't equal for others it's the same.

Re: The Non-Innovation of Cryptocurrency

#182

Post by redpiller » Tue, Jul 13, 2021, 8:20 AM UTC

qeternity wrote: post #163

redpiller wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no single operator. The company is decentralised with each director having the same vote. Even if an insider started embezzling funds, we would be able to see it based on the absense of proof of profit on the blockchain. Since each person can verify the profits on-chain independently, it would raise raise flags if the amount if profits did not correspond to the expected amount of profits based on the assets…

I understand how you think the world works. I’m saying that it doesn’t work that way. You can verify what you _think_ the profits are. What I’m saying is that you’re verifying something that isn’t relevant. Do you think there aren’t sophisticated accounting systems, auditors, banking checks, etc to accomplish what you describe? And yet people will always find a way with enough incentive.

The buybacks can only be done with real money. This is not an opinion, it's a hard fact since buybacks are done on the open market. Sure, the directors who handle finance could fake profit by taking on debt and using it to buyback the token to drive up the price artificially... But there is no incentive for someone to commit such crime since the buybacks benefit the whole community and not specifically the attacker. Also, the community can see if a director is selling their tokens (since it's all on the blockchain and the director's wallet is known).

A director could potentially do something elaborate like buy a lot of tokens at a low price anonymously, then take a bank loan and use it to pump up the price through fake buybacks then dump for a higher price some years later hoping that they don't get caught by their bank in the meantime for misusing the credit... But then why would they use our blockchain and jeopardize the value of their own large director's stake (from their main wallet) with such scheme? Why not use a random token not affiliated with them and which has lower volume where this scheme would have more effect on price and where the attacker has nothing at stake?

No matter which way you look at it, this is a huge transparency improvement over shares.

Re: The Non-Innovation of Cryptocurrency

#183

Post by EGreg » Wed, Jul 14, 2021, 2:49 AM UTC

creshal wrote: post #153

mypastself wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m aware of only one case where a fossil fuel power plant partnered up with crypto miners. But I’m not denying PoW’s environmental impact, just its comparative scope and scale. Do you think we should ban other technologies reliant on dirty energy, such as motor vehicles? The Internet? Presumably you believe the benefits outweigh the drawbacks in those cases. If that’s the case, crypto (PoW, really) would then chiefl…

Yes. At the bare minimum, "crypto" "currencies" must be forced to move to Proof of Stake and stop dragging the entire world down with its madness.

Sadly that won't solve the problem. If 99% of Bitcoin is locked up in sidechains, the free 1% will become the new Bitcoin, so each Bitcoin will be far more expensive. As long as the price of Bitcoin rises faster than the mining rewards reduce, people will keep mining it.

And if you think that people dump a coin just because all the use cases have moved onto new coins, I present for your comment the "Ethereum Classic".