Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: Kong – Physical Cryptocurrency

kong.cash

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

371–380 of 395 posts

Re: Show HN: Kong – Physical Cryptocurrency

#371

Post by darawk »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #322
darawk wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1% of 1% (so .01%). Is refusing large bills an effective countermeasure? If so, then yeah — not really an issue. Our economy somehow grinds along just fine. So refuse large Kong notes. Why would you assume the economy finds workarounds for cash but not this? > In what sense? The whole idea here is that I can exchange a physical note to transact with someone. Ya, and for most transactions you will. If you're suspici…

Why do you assume only large Kong notes will be easily falsified? The scenario I foresee is if printing notes becomes decentralized, a malicious printer makes any note likely to be duplicated. Re: finding workarounds, we’re talking about money — we shouldn’t be “testing in production”, so to speak. IMO the government should come down hard on this.

> Why do you assume only large Kong notes will be easily falsified?

I don't. I assume that, exactly like cash, only large notes will be worth falsifying.

Re: Show HN: Kong – Physical Cryptocurrency

#372

Post by darawk »

UncleMeat wrote: post #369
darawk wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people believe that government control of the money supply is a form of theft. It's certainly a form of indirect taxation (via inflation), and it forces you to rely on the responsibility of your government. Some people believe that eliminating the need to rely on the responsibility of other humans is a terminal good.

And some people believe that wifi causes cancer. A startup selling wifi repelling clothes to prevent cancer would be rightfully criticized.

That's s strange comparison. Wifi cancer is an empirical question. The question I articulated was a values question. They're not really comparable.

Re: Show HN: Kong – Physical Cryptocurrency

#373

Post by easytiger »

james_s_tayler wrote: post #92
paulgerhardt wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bills are intended to be spent hand-to-hand in meatspace with cryptographic validation. See section 2.1 [1] The innovation of Bitcoin was decentralized electronic peer-to-peer cash. Kong does not remove any of those elements and makes the overhead of the peer-to-peer bit easier. Physical cash is still the dominant form of payment. The advancement here is figuring out how to issue physical cash without needing a c…

>The bills are intended to be spent hand-to-hand in meatspace with cryptographic validation. Then what problem is it solving? >Physical cash is still the dominant form of payment. The advancement here is figuring out how to issue physical cash without needing a central entity. It has to be physically manufactured. You're now the entity.

In the world of smartphones this is pointless

Re: Show HN: Kong – Physical Cryptocurrency

#374

Post by CptFribble »

paulgerhardt wrote: post #237
CptFribble wrote: post #225

If I can't take your space money down to the diner and buy a plate of bacon and eggs with it, then as far as I'm concerned it's not real. There's a chicken-and-egg problem that I think goes missed or unmentioned by all these crypto startups trying to piecemeal a "solution" to the centralized banking problem: in the monetary system, individuals have absolutely no power, because we're at the bottom of the hierarchy of…

By that definition, any foreign currency isn't real. I might suggest an alternate definition: Money is a transferable record of debt valid for a period of time and amongst a network of peers. Generally we think of money as local to a country and its government. However, one could imagine a 'minimum viable money' that could work in a space as small as a table and with only a handful of people - and for the purposes of…

I get where you're coming from, and I do like the idea of a self-contained centralized physical currency powered by whatever kind of tech, but I think the minimum viable money is much, much larger than the scale of your initial announcement/launch seems to indicate you think it is.

The Monopoly example is interesting, because there's enough currency in the box to pick up the entire system and operate it. In that context, the money isn't the point, it's just a tool to operate the Monopoly game-system. Similarly, for us money isn't the point, it's just a tool that powers the human society-system.

I think it's better to frame it in terms of the minimum viable society. Figure out how much system it takes for an arbitrary group of humans to operate a society that is indistinguishable from any given slice of modern life, and then derive how much new money you'll need to make and distribute to make it possible to switch all at once.

Privately owned or rented homes, food purchased from a store, utilities, transportation, entertainment; all the things that being a human in society entails. All of it needs to be present and purchasable with the new money, or else the new money will have to be converted back to traditional fiat, which as many have said defeats the purpose and introduces a boat of security problems.

I like where you all are taking the concept of money, I like the Kong experiment, and I wish there was One Weird Trick to get past the adoption phase and into usefulness, but idk it just seems like all we have are ten thousand interesting experiments.

Re: Show HN: Kong – Physical Cryptocurrency

#376

Post by pedalpete »

Jamwinner wrote: post #204
pedalpete wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you expect to get this into the market? And what market do you expect to get this into? Cash has an inherent agreement as to locality. When I'm in Australia, I use Australian dollars, when in the US, they have US dollars. Though you may be solving this problem, I can use Kong everywhere, you need to somehow seed the market. How do you see that happening? As you state, crypto is mostly a store of value atm. The…

I use almost exclusively cash and never get that response. Usually a smile as I sail out of the cashiers way faster than our abrtion of a chip+pin system customers possibly could. What part of the world are you in?

I'm in Australia, so we just have tap, only need to enter a pin for large purchases.

I just spent a few months in the US and didn't use cash once (LA, SF, NYC).

I went to many places that no longer accepted cash in the US, maybe we're just in different areas.

Re: Show HN: Kong – Physical Cryptocurrency

#377

Post by james_s_tayler »

darawk wrote: post #365
james_s_tayler wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those things arent currencies. And it seems people have solutions to hedge against inflation already. That use case isn't the point. Point is it being not tied to a state level actor is only useful if you can use it to get out from underneath the control of an oppressive regime by not being beholden to it's financial system. So far we haven't seen a crypto succeed at that. So... so what if it has that property? Doesn…

> Those things arent currencies. And it seems people have solutions to hedge against inflation already. That use case isn't the point. The point is that there is a use-case for decentralized assets. > Point is it being not tied to a state level actor is only useful if you can use it to get out from underneath the control of an oppressive regime by not being beholden to it's financial system. Or if you don't want the…

They solve imaginary problems and already solved problems, but poorly.

Re: Show HN: Kong – Physical Cryptocurrency

#378

Post by hanniabu »

iudqnolq wrote: post #362
hanniabu wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually yes because there's still capital gains.

I could not find a single reference about individuals paying cap gains tax on foreign transactions to buy goods & services in foreign countries, because that's absurd. Here's a quote that shows even companies don't have to pay it if they're using the normal currency of where they are and aren't doing anything weird with it > To reduce the number of currency conversions required, the tax code uses the standard of FAS…

First off this references businesses not individuals, but regardless:

> do not have to be accounted for unless the fluctuations change the cash flow for the business

If there is a change in value then it needs to be reported. It's the same concept as if you were forex trading.

Re: Show HN: Kong – Physical Cryptocurrency

#379

Post by Aeolun »

ace32229 wrote: post #336
Aeolun wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can they even not accept cash? It’s legal tender anywhere in the UK right?

Of course, why wouldn't they?

Because bills and cash are the cornerstone of all in-person payments? I honestly have a hard time imagining it as a secondary form of payment.

Re: Show HN: Kong – Physical Cryptocurrency

#380

Post by iudqnolq »

hanniabu wrote: post #378
iudqnolq wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could not find a single reference about individuals paying cap gains tax on foreign transactions to buy goods & services in foreign countries, because that's absurd. Here's a quote that shows even companies don't have to pay it if they're using the normal currency of where they are and aren't doing anything weird with it > To reduce the number of currency conversions required, the tax code uses the standard of FAS…

First off this references businesses not individuals, but regardless: > do not have to be accounted for unless the fluctuations change the cash flow for the business If there is a change in value then it needs to be reported. It's the same concept as if you were forex trading.

You are right on both counts. I realize in retrospect my source is inadequate. I am trying to prove a negative, however. Do you have any evidence for your claim individuals should report profits and losses on their foreign currency transactions abroad?
Post reply on HN