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The Web3 Fraud

usenix.org

251–260 of 377 posts

Re: The Web3 Fraud

#251
post #248

I did an debate with the author 6/4/2018. He lost. https://youtu.be/I9Pxv1i9W7M?list=PLN0RF11rNdP0kkklAiif2pBLv... By the way Bitcoin was at $2530. Ethereum was at $590. Bitcoin went up $69,000 since then. Ethereum went to $5000. But pundits and critics seem to be immune to educate from years of progress, and now history. Quote from his article: "So why this hype? Because the cryptocurrency space, at heart, is simply…

> By the way Bitcoin was at $2530. Ethereum was at $590. Bitcoin went up $69,000 since then. Ethereum went to $5000. This is not a convincing argument to me. It tells me that the real utility is just speculation. Shiba Inu has a market cap of 10B. But you’re an idiot if you think Elon musk dog money is valuable to society. If I make a 1000000% return selling magic beans, does that mean the beans have actual utility?

Best performing asset in the history of mankind. Removes counterparty risk. Removes middlemen. Privacy (if you work for it.) Better uptime than your bank and credit card network. Is a better way to login to things, self sovereign usernames and passwords, which are easy to use across all platforms (if they would stop with the lock-in.) The most transparent trading in the world. The highest yields in the world for those that want to just provide liquidity and have less risk.

A platform for things I don't like, but others love, customer rewards programs, collectibles, proof of ownership, timestamping. Removing the government money printing press from free war funding, and perhaps requiring a war tax, would reduce military globally. An impossible to fake record of the past, if you pay to write to the db.

You can get loans 24 hours a day with no signup that allow you to pay less tax by not selling the asset and paying capital gains, and just living off the borrowed money (like the wealthy have been doing for decades.) Shall I continue, or will you be ignoring all these features and benefits anyway?

Re: The Web3 Fraud

#252
post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> By the way Bitcoin was at $2530. Ethereum was at $590. Bitcoin went up $69,000 since then. Ethereum went to $5000. This is not a convincing argument to me. It tells me that the real utility is just speculation. Shiba Inu has a market cap of 10B. But you’re an idiot if you think Elon musk dog money is valuable to society. If I make a 1000000% return selling magic beans, does that mean the beans have actual utility?

Best performing asset in the history of mankind. Removes counterparty risk. Removes middlemen. Privacy (if you work for it.) Better uptime than your bank and credit card network. Is a better way to login to things, self sovereign usernames and passwords, which are easy to use across all platforms (if they would stop with the lock-in.) The most transparent trading in the world. The highest yields in the world for thos…

> Removes counterparty risk.

Bitcoin does not remove counter-party risk. The counter-party is there, and it's risky:

* miners (can ditch Bitcoin; can censor your transactions)

* Bitcoin software (wallets; miners) (can have bugs which get your coins stolen)

* Bitcoin protocol (can have bugs which get your coins stolen)

* internet infrastructure (can censor Bitcoin)

Re: The Web3 Fraud

#253
post #187
post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same argument could have been made against TLSv1.3, IPv6 or HTTP 2/3. See how much of the web you can access on an old IE6 installation. I don’t think anything behind a LetsEncrypt certificate will, for example.

Companies like Microsoft, Apple, Google, et al, are absolutely never going to put this sort of hopeware alternative root into their operating systems.

The next OS vendor might.

Re: The Web3 Fraud

#254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Best performing asset in the history of mankind. Removes counterparty risk. Removes middlemen. Privacy (if you work for it.) Better uptime than your bank and credit card network. Is a better way to login to things, self sovereign usernames and passwords, which are easy to use across all platforms (if they would stop with the lock-in.) The most transparent trading in the world. The highest yields in the world for thos…

> Removes counterparty risk. Bitcoin does not remove counter-party risk. The counter-party is there, and it's risky: * miners (can ditch Bitcoin; can censor your transactions) * Bitcoin software (wallets; miners) (can have bugs which get your coins stolen) * Bitcoin protocol (can have bugs which get your coins stolen) * internet infrastructure (can censor Bitcoin)

I like this game. Security can't exist because you didn't compile your own keyboard controller firmware. Then just go all the way up the abstraction layers. Didn't audit and compile it yourself? I guess we're all hacked forever. Yet in fact it's a parade of imaginary horribles and the vast vast vast swathes of noobs remain unhacked for decades.

1. You can mine your own transaction, and the chance that some miner somewhere is happy to do so is extremely high (Which is why no transaction has ever been censored to the best of my knowledge.) 2. You running the code of your own choice is not a counterparty risk. It's your own problem. It's the same problem you have when with physically securing your seed words. There's no reason to break the word counterparty. 3. The protocol never had that kind of bug, some mobile wallets did with bad RNG though. 4. Yes and? The network routes around that, see China banning mining, etc.

I will help you trash talk bitcoin though. It's fun. Uncensorable? Ask Ross Ulbricht how the Federal Marshalls auctioned off his bitcoin to Tim Draper. Inflation bugs twice where anyone could mine as many coins as they like, one executed, and one responsablity disclosed about 2 years ago. Have a list of vulnerabilities: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Common_Vulnerabilities_and_Exposu... Have a list of weaknesses: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Weaknesses Summary: The vast majority of users have no hacks at all, and far less problems than their banks give them, in my experience. P.S. Using your definition, is counterparty risk reduction even possible at all, and if so what would that look like? If you take the time to answer that, I think you'll see you're just trying to break a quite useful word.

Re: The Web3 Fraud

#255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then that'll be the day proof of stake cryptos rise to the occasion. Also, just use a friggin VPN.

How would proof of stake mitigate ISP blocks? These still communicate with other nodes over TCP/IP.

The fantasy of the block being rolled back because now they're doing something different.

Re: The Web3 Fraud

#256
post #240
post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no money or smart contracts involved in my scenario. I just want to host a random site. Put another way – is there a use case for Web3 which doesn't involve touting Web3? What is the "killer app" for the average user who isn't obsessed with crypto/blockchain?

If you just want to store and host files like a website, there's a few projects in that vein that I know of - Arweave ( https://www.arweave.org/ ), IPFS ( https://ipfs.io/ ), and Filecoin ( https://filecoin.io/ ). IMO these projects are aiming at a new form of sovereignty on the internet that doesn't/can't exist currently - the ability to have your data be permanently stored and accessible on the web. Google can deci…

If people aren't backing up their photos and emails, heck any data that they care about, it is only a matter of time until something happens to it.

Re: The Web3 Fraud

#257
Fraud or not fraud, that is pointless because so called Internet will die down very soon, I guess in less than 10 years, because when AR/VR/wearables replace the smartphone, people will soon rush into a recreational world, where everybody plays game everyday, sure, left 1% don't want to play games, they may use some traditional APPs, at that time, most those APPs do not need to implement Web3 tech stacks, so web3 has meanings, but very very few usage scenarios, IMHO.

Re: The Web3 Fraud

#258
post #221
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In fact in the history of the internet I cannot find a single example of any technology working better in a decentralized fashion compared to centralized for the end user For many use cases, BitTorrent is a superior file distribution mechanism compared to centralized alternatives.

BitTorrent is a terrible file distribution mechanism. I can't think of a single instance where I have had better performance downloading a torrent than a simple FTP/HTTP transfer or video stream from a web server or CDN.

Resilio Sync for Business worked way better for us than Dropbox and OneDrive with their CDN.

Re: The Web3 Fraud

#259

I don’t understand what problem web3 can solve that a trusted entity cannot. And let’s keep in mind your reply to this comment will be using a trusted entity. In fact in the history of the internet I cannot find a single example of any technology working better in a decentralized fashion compared to centralized for the end user

I don't understand what problem email can solve that mail cannot. Sorry to be sarcastic. I am still skeptical of most web3 use cases touted on twitter, but have personally experienced a few that have made me pause and be a bit more open minded. Personal experiences: - Transferring money was in seconds, compared to Fidelity/Venmo which took 3 days!!! - Very easy to loan money against crypto holdings vs stocks - Resear…

PayPal offers instant transfers in my experiences. Use it multiple times per week and have done for many years.

Re: The Web3 Fraud

#260
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get mostly the same features with self-hosted and local traditional apps for a fraction of the price and much lower general financial risk as well.

"mostly" being the key word :) If you're self-hosting, then your server is a weak point. It goes down, your app goes down. The additional cost and risk that comes with using blockchains provides a platform for your app to run on that you don't have to manage and is highly resistant to being shut down. Likewise, there always exists the possibility that your server can be compromised and the code can be altered. The im…

You pay a lot for that blockchain redundancy. You can buy a lot of conventional redundancy for that money. Comparing it to a cheap self-hosted server isn't apples to apples.

> The immutability of the blockchain guarantees that your code cannot be changed, with or without your knowledge.

There's been a lot of examples lately why this is not a desirable feature at all for most purposes.

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