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I wasted years of my life in crypto

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Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#221

Post by lazide »

hirsin wrote: post #145
bdangubic wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a dual citizen. I wanted to buy a condo near my parents where I spend my summers with my family. I have never in my entire life felt like a criminal more than trying to buy something, with the money I made with my wife, going through regular financial system. after weeks of feeling like a criminal over coffee with my cousin who owns the company that was selling me the condo I was like “can I just fucking give yo…

What made you feel like a criminal? Buying a home is fairly straightforward and has almost no state verification of any piece of it, at least in the US. Was it something the state enforced, or something being done by the agents of the transaction (ie the mortgage company)?

That is because you’re working in the same financial system.

Now try buying some property in South America. Or Eastern Europe. Or Asia.

Be prepared for a similar experience OP documents.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#222

Post by lazide »

petesergeant wrote: post #120
bdangubic wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a dual citizen. I wanted to buy a condo near my parents where I spend my summers with my family. I have never in my entire life felt like a criminal more than trying to buy something, with the money I made with my wife, going through regular financial system. after weeks of feeling like a criminal over coffee with my cousin who owns the company that was selling me the condo I was like “can I just fucking give yo…

> after weeks of feeling like a criminal over coffee with my cousin who owns the company that was selling me the condo I was like “can I just fucking give you two bitcoins on a thumbdrive…” and he said no, because you also can't do this. Bitcoin has not solved any problem there.

Actually, in many places it would work fine. Some it would be immediate jail time.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#223

Post by lazide »

kec wrote: post #212
sumedh wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Crypto makes perfect sense if you just understand it's for doing illegal stuff. What happens when a country's banking system fails?

In what circumstance could the banking system collapse but leave the electric grid and all other infrastructure which supports the internet intact?

Venezuela?

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#224

Post by solumunus »

spicyusername wrote: post #9

I've never understood the initial arguments about Bitcoin, no matter how many times they've been explained to me. The block chain is, and always was, an extremely inconvenient database. How anyone, especially many intelligent people, thought it was realistic to graft a currency on top of such a unwieldy piece of technology is beyond me. Maybe it goes to show how few people understand economics and anthropology and ho…

I can send a billion dollars to someone in Uganda with no intermediary or oversight. This was not only impossible before but most likely would never have been a possibility. Being able to hold massive amounts of value in the ether and control it from anywhere, you don’t find that impressive? Sure, this is mostly used for nefarious activities, but let’s not pretend it’s solving no problems. It’s incredibly difficult to transfer money into a third world country without incurring massive fees, unless you use crypto.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#225

Post by HaZeust »

bawolff wrote: post #159
HaZeust wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always thought it was actually an ingenious solution to elections. There's absolutely no reason that a driver's license can't derive a hash that can only be proven and not reversed (for identity); and provides a one-time contribution to a blockchain that contains your vote - which you then receive your block's information when you finish voting. ANYONE can calculate the sums, anyone can verify and proof hashes, ide…

If you want that just use zero knowledge proofs and cryptographic accumulators. No block chain needed. Typically one of the properties people want from elections is the inability to prove to soneone how you voted, e.g. to stop someone from going, prove you voted for my candidate or i beat you up (or dont give you the bribe). Your scheme wouldn't support that.

>"If you want that just use zero knowledge proofs and cryptographic accumulators. No block chain needed."

Sure, I suppose. You'd need zero knowledge proofs for the reversals anyway.

>"one of the properties people want from elections is the inability to prove to soneone how you voted"

Your political party affiliations AND the fact on whether you voted is already public knowledge in our current electoral system; so 2/3 aren't supported now anyway. That said, my scheme DOES support all of those; it wouldn't tell you the identity of the person that voted for "Person A", so bribery or extortion is NOT in the cards.

If you somehow get access to someone's license, their hash won't tell you how they voted - just that they have already voted. And like I said to another commenter, if they beat you to a vote by using your ID (or whatever form of government ID is decided for the hash, they're all numbers anyway - we can just as well do social security), then in the current system that's bad - but id.me and real are already doing early-stage multi-factor authentication use cases for otherwise deterministic identification methods. Which is long overdue anyway, and I'm not sure too many people who would morally oppose such election reform if a byproduct of it being passed and enforced is an additional reform on deterministic identification.

If you give someone your block ID that says how you voted, then yeah ok - but you can do that today by taking a picture of your ballot. People brag all the time with photos of their ballot on election time - that's your choice.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#226

Post by HaZeust »

ramchip wrote: post #130
HaZeust wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always thought it was actually an ingenious solution to elections. There's absolutely no reason that a driver's license can't derive a hash that can only be proven and not reversed (for identity); and provides a one-time contribution to a blockchain that contains your vote - which you then receive your block's information when you finish voting. ANYONE can calculate the sums, anyone can verify and proof hashes, ide…

You're describing a transparency log, which doesn't require a blockchain.

A transparency log, as I understand them, requires a centralized actor; which makes it easier to fudge numbers and introduce false participants.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#227

Post by tsimionescu »

HaZeust wrote: post #117
fsh wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an ingenious solution to achieve a "trustless" currency that prevents double-spending without a central authority. Unfortunately, this solves the wrong problem. Spending money usually involves getting a good or service in return, which inherently requires "trust" (as does any human interaction). Your fancy blockchain is not going to help you if you order something with Bitcoin and no package arrives.

I always thought it was actually an ingenious solution to elections. There's absolutely no reason that a driver's license can't derive a hash that can only be proven and not reversed (for identity); and provides a one-time contribution to a blockchain that contains your vote - which you then receive your block's information when you finish voting. ANYONE can calculate the sums, anyone can verify and proof hashes, ide…

Others have shown why most of your other points are wrong or don't need blockchain, but this is also important:

> ANYONE can calculate the sums, anyone can verify and proof hashes

This is completely false. In fact, at the scale of a country, almost no one can actually do this. 95+% of the population doesn't have the knowledge required to do something like this and understand why it works. And while in principle they could learn to do it, they don't have the time and energy and other resources to spend on this.

And this is a deal breaker, as having the population believe and easily able to convince themselves that their elections are free is an extremely important part of democracy, especially when things are not that rosy.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#228

Post by HaZeust »

jenadine wrote: post #182
HaZeust wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always thought it was actually an ingenious solution to elections. There's absolutely no reason that a driver's license can't derive a hash that can only be proven and not reversed (for identity); and provides a one-time contribution to a blockchain that contains your vote - which you then receive your block's information when you finish voting. ANYONE can calculate the sums, anyone can verify and proof hashes, ide…

What if one doesn't have a car and a driver's license? > identity is kept secret, Except to anyone who sees your driver license.

I said this in a response to someone else:

>"If you somehow get access to someone's license plate, their hash won't tell you how they voted - just that they have already voted."

If they beat you to your drivers license information (or whatever form of government ID is decided for the hash, they're all numbers anyway - we can just as well do social security), then in the current system that's bad, but id.me and real are already doing early-stage multi-factor authentication use cases for otherwise deterministic identification mediums. Which is long overdue anyway, and I'm not sure too many people who would morally oppose such election reform if a byproduct of it being passed and enforced is an additional reform on deterministic identification.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#229

Post by tiku »

solumunus wrote: post #224
spicyusername wrote: post #9

I've never understood the initial arguments about Bitcoin, no matter how many times they've been explained to me. The block chain is, and always was, an extremely inconvenient database. How anyone, especially many intelligent people, thought it was realistic to graft a currency on top of such a unwieldy piece of technology is beyond me. Maybe it goes to show how few people understand economics and anthropology and ho…

I can send a billion dollars to someone in Uganda with no intermediary or oversight. This was not only impossible before but most likely would never have been a possibility. Being able to hold massive amounts of value in the ether and control it from anywhere, you don’t find that impressive? Sure, this is mostly used for nefarious activities, but let’s not pretend it’s solving no problems. It’s incredibly difficult t…

A lot of countries don't have access to bank-accounts, by not having valid id's for example. But they do have cellphones so they can download crypto apps to accept payment for jobs etc. And then there is the money receiving from relatives in other countries, yes.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#230

Post by solumunus »

ryandvm wrote: post #110
spicyusername wrote: post #9

I've never understood the initial arguments about Bitcoin, no matter how many times they've been explained to me. The block chain is, and always was, an extremely inconvenient database. How anyone, especially many intelligent people, thought it was realistic to graft a currency on top of such a unwieldy piece of technology is beyond me. Maybe it goes to show how few people understand economics and anthropology and ho…

Crypto makes perfect sense if you just understand it's for doing illegal stuff. No moral judgement, but the only viable use case for the blockchain is doing things with money that the authorities don't want you to do. Other than that, no, there is no use for a distributed database because doing financial transactions with people you can't even trust to abide by the law is generally a bad idea.

This utility is what helps stabilise its value, but the side effect of that is that it is a good store of wealth. These two facts make BTC go up. People say Bitcoin isn’t used for anything when in reality it’s being used every day to store and move wealth between big financial players (many of them being organised crime). Why wouldn’t they continue using this useful technology and therefore why won’t its value hold/increase? Is it moral to piggy back off this? That’s for you to decide. It’s worth considering that many major banks have been involved with organised crime since forever…
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