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Hard Problems in Cryptocurrency: Five Years Later

vitalik.ca

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Re: Hard Problems in Cryptocurrency: Five Years Later

#301

Post by jki275 »

Nursie wrote: post #290
jki275 wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd be surprised by the existence of m-pesa then, which has revolutionized finance among the unbanked in Africa. m-pesa isn't a cryptocurrency in the same mold that bitcoin is, but it's electronic money for the unbanked that you're arguing can't exist.

m-pesa fits virtually none of what the parent said about cryptocurrency.

The point of the OP was that he believes electronic money cannot benefit the unbanked.

It's wrong. The exact details of bitcoin aren't the right thing for it, but there are many cryptocurrencies that are more like m-pesa in their use requiremnts than they are bitcoin.

Re: Hard Problems in Cryptocurrency: Five Years Later

#302

Post by lawn »

ativzzz wrote: post #288
dorgo wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>How does an unbanked get their paper money into their cryptocurrency account without trusting a third party? Mining perhaps?

How do you expect someone who doesn't have access to banking to set be able to set up a mining rig? I'm not saying having a bank account is necessary, but the life conditions that prevent bank access (poverty, homelessness, addictions, abuse, violence, etc) will certainly prevent anyone from mining/

There are many examples of Venezuelans doing just this.

Re: Hard Problems in Cryptocurrency: Five Years Later

#303

Post by _7fvc »

ddrdrck_ wrote: post #291
_7fvc wrote: post #289

I consider myself fairly knowledgable with cryptocurrency. I create and run a crypto project myself. I read this post and maybe understand 10% of it. This is probably the rate of things I read from Vitalik. Either Vitalik is extremely smart or he just doesn't know what he's talking about. Overall, his opinions are just confusing and distracting like the whole Ethereum ecosystem. A warning for those who think getting…

Vitalik is extremely smart, but even people that are 10 times less smart than Vitalik can create a crypto project ...

Assessing crypto problem is itself a problem. Vitalik maybe 10 times smarter than me. But his track record is poor. He hasn't really proposed a solution that is worthy contribution to crypto.

I have solutions to some of the problems he lists.

10. Stable-value cryptoassets

13. Proof of excellence

My solution is to add inflation into supply. A percentage point inflation, not tail emission.

Inflation will discourage HODL behavior and stabilize token price. It's not perfectly stable. But it'll be more stable, more efficient than DAI and its financial engineering on top of Ethereum volatile price. That solves #10.

For #13, with inflation, we don't have to worry about bag holders. Everyone has incentive to drive the system. Otherwise, their tokens will worth less over time.

I designed a crypto that can help bootstrap inflation. My solutions are simpler. I think they'll work.

https://bitflate.org/post/2019/04/14/bitflate-cryptocurrency...

Re: Hard Problems in Cryptocurrency: Five Years Later

#304

Post by lawn »

Avamander wrote: post #181
lawn wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's actually funny is how people still believe that no use cases exist. Here are just some examples: * Uncensorable donations * No way for a third party to freeze your payments (internet is full of horror stories of PayPal) * Not all businesses can accept digital payments (marijuana stores or porn have trouble) * Credit cards and payment processors take a 2-4% cut, of all transactions. * You can use cryptocurrenci…

> Credit cards and payment processors take a 2-4% cut, of all transactions. Most payments regular people make every day are sub three-digit. On those payments 2-4% in the US is much cheaper than the current Bitcoin (and similar) transaction fees. That means crypto is rather unusable for most people. I won't even start talking how Bitcoin doesn't compete at all with European SEPA Instant payments for most use-cases. T…

> On those payments 2-4% in the US is much cheaper than the current Bitcoin (and similar) transaction fees.

Bitcoin is a horrible example. Bitcoin Cash for example have fees of less than a cent.

Re: Hard Problems in Cryptocurrency: Five Years Later

#305

Post by _7fvc »

jasonzemos wrote: post #300
_7fvc wrote: post #289

I consider myself fairly knowledgable with cryptocurrency. I create and run a crypto project myself. I read this post and maybe understand 10% of it. This is probably the rate of things I read from Vitalik. Either Vitalik is extremely smart or he just doesn't know what he's talking about. Overall, his opinions are just confusing and distracting like the whole Ethereum ecosystem. A warning for those who think getting…

> Either Vitalik is extremely smart or he just doesn't know what he's talking about. Overall, his opinions are just confusing and distracting like the whole Ethereum ecosystem. Vitalik started out years ago with writings consisting entirely of self-citing the Ethereum echo-chamber. Judging by the citations here he's starting to understand the value in the works of the established institutions, tenured university prof…

LOL. I can't stop. :)

I'm not going down the path of personal attack. Vitalik is smart. He lacks self criticism and focus. I do hope he'll find success.

Re: Hard Problems in Cryptocurrency: Five Years Later

#306

Post by capableweb »

flowless wrote: post #270
capableweb wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's even more funny to leave a comment like this without even elaborating on the argument and not contributing to the overall discussion. Why would this blog post mention Cardano?

Because Cardano is what ETH might have been if done right. They did a tons of (actually scientific) research on the topics mentioned in this article but the author won't mention Cardano as it is his direct competition (even nicknamed Ethereum killer).

What does "actually scientific" and "real research" (mentioned by jki275) mean? I'm pretty sure most people doing research in the cryptocurrency space are trying to use the scientific method as much as they can.

Re: Hard Problems in Cryptocurrency: Five Years Later

#307

Post by omarchowdhury »

gerikson wrote: post #113
Zamicol wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The minimum stake of 32 eth is probably going to require something like a laptop to run. Those with larger stakes are going to need to devote more computer resources to the network.

32 ETH is ~$4,800 at today's price of $151.07[1]. What's the expected "payout" for this stake? [1] CoinMarketCap used as source.

More than the interest paid on savings accounts.

Re: Hard Problems in Cryptocurrency: Five Years Later

#308

Post by notahacker »

jki275 wrote: post #301
Nursie wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

m-pesa fits virtually none of what the parent said about cryptocurrency.

The point of the OP was that he believes electronic money cannot benefit the unbanked. It's wrong. The exact details of bitcoin aren't the right thing for it, but there are many cryptocurrencies that are more like m-pesa in their use requiremnts than they are bitcoin.

No, my point is that unlike M-Pesa, cryptocurrencies do not have a trained, regulated agent in every village who will reliably exchange them for local cash at a fixed rate. The centralisation is fundamental to its success - probably only the mobile providers or maybe a money transfer network like Western Union could have pulled it off.

M-Pesa would not have succeeded in helping the unbanked if people living in remote villages needed to set up a mining rig or navigate to Coinbase.com and enter debit card details to obtain it. There'd be no reliable way for most unbanked people to get it or get rid of it. And since the unbanked world needs the network of regulated agents offering cash conversion and really can't afford for their assets to be backed by speculator optimism rather than legal tender in a trusted party's bank account or vault, there's really not much advantage in building that trusted centralised entity's database in something as computationally expensive as a blockchain. Certainly it's not lack of blockchain technology that's been the obstacle to people from creating more electronic money transfer service for the unbanked.

Re: Hard Problems in Cryptocurrency: Five Years Later

#309

Post by omarchowdhury »

solveit wrote: post #125
skohan wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there are some use cases where it makes sense. For instance, I have somewhat of a split life between the US and Europe, and I really wanted cryptocurrency to succeed as a cheap way of moving money between currencies. I played around with bitcoin a bit in 2015, and it back then it was a pretty good experience. Transactions were quick and cheap. The problem is it seems to have gotten less usable in almost every…

Bitcoin certainly got enormously slower. But the other major currencies (ethereum, xrp, etc) are both much faster and more liquid than BTC was in 2015.

> Bitcoin certainly got enormously slower.

https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-confirmationtim...

Average block time data doesn't agree with you, or are you talking about something else?

Re: Hard Problems in Cryptocurrency: Five Years Later

#310

Post by donbindner »

lalaland1125 wrote: post #48
hodder wrote: post #8

The biggest problem is actual uptake for real transactions, as opposed to speculation and black markets. The 2 biggest barriers to be solved are: -lack of trust/ease of use for the layman -volatility These problems may or may not sort themselves out with time.

There is an even bigger problem: -a lack of reason to use cryptocurrencies when centralized alternatives perform much better for non-illegal usecases

Even bigger than that is the treatment of dollar-denominated "value" of crypto as a capital gain. Tax adherence trumps volatility by far.
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