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Show HN: Kong – Physical Cryptocurrency

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Re: Show HN: Kong – Physical Cryptocurrency

#381

Post by darawk »

james_s_tayler wrote: post #377
darawk wrote: post #365

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. 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.

If you think inflation is an imaginary problem, sure. But literally all of finance would disagree with you.

Re: Show HN: Kong – Physical Cryptocurrency

#382

Post by james_s_tayler »

darawk wrote: post #381
james_s_tayler wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If you think inflation is an imaginary problem, sure. But literally all of finance would disagree with you.

I think it's a real problem already solved by hedging with real non-crypto things. Don't need crypto for that.

Re: Show HN: Kong – Physical Cryptocurrency

#383

Post by darawk »

james_s_tayler wrote: post #382
darawk wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think inflation is an imaginary problem, sure. But literally all of finance would disagree with you.

I think it's a real problem already solved by hedging with real non-crypto things. Don't need crypto for that.

All of the other mechanisms of hedging inflation have issues. Crypto has issues too, of course, but the important point is that it's issues are different and uncorrelated to traditional inflation hedges. If you can hedge the same risk in more than one way, you should, because it will reduce your overall volatility.

Re: Show HN: Kong – Physical Cryptocurrency

#384

Post by hanniabu »

iudqnolq wrote: post #380
hanniabu wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It really doesn't matter if it's spent in the US or abroad. At the time it is spent, you need to take the difference in transaction rates. It's the same concept as if you are making payments in something like Bitcoin. Unfortunately I don't have any sources on hand, but I have a friend that forex trades and I myself have been following the cryptocurrency regulation scene and the same rules transfer to here.

However, this is one of those things where the government isn't going to come knocking your door down for since it's petty cash.

Re: Show HN: Kong – Physical Cryptocurrency

#385

Post by iudqnolq »

hanniabu wrote: post #384
iudqnolq wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It really doesn't matter if it's spent in the US or abroad. At the time it is spent, you need to take the difference in transaction rates. It's the same concept as if you are making payments in something like Bitcoin. Unfortunately I don't have any sources on hand, but I have a friend that forex trades and I myself have been following the cryptocurrency regulation scene and the same rules transfer to here. However, t…

What you say makes logical sense but I couldn't find any supporting sources for the idea that spending money abroad on foreign goods is equivalent to forex trades for tax purposes.

Re: Show HN: Kong – Physical Cryptocurrency

#386

Post by CosmicShadow »

darawk wrote: post #241
CosmicShadow wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that what you want, Macroeconomics 101? Control inflation, interest, growth by creating or limiting the currency floating around your system? I mean yeah you could roll this out to places that perhaps didn't understand this and/or fucked up real bad like Zimbabwe, but otherwise who cares? If you can't trust your government so bad that your cash no longer works, you've got bigger problems and whatever system you…

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.

I don't know if even sci-fi could imagine 7 billion people not needing to rely on anyone even remotely fathomable. If you don't want to rely on anyone, become a hermit somewhere in the deep woods.

I guess if your government is a royal family taxing you to line their own pockets that would seem like theft, but otherwise seems hard to believe it could be true, but people will believe anything. The world is complex, the economy is complex, and stopping a country's economy from tumbling out of control with all the internal and external variables is non-trivial.

Re: Show HN: Kong – Physical Cryptocurrency

#387

Post by arcticbull »

darawk wrote: post #371
jakelazaroff wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The other thing to consider is the pragmatic aspect. A US bill costs an average of 10.3c to print [1]. A US $1 bill is 2.61 by 6.14 inches (16 square inches). I don't have bulk flex PCB costs on hand, but bulk FR4 rigid is $0.05c/sqin and flex is definitely more. That prices you at minimum $0.80 in PCB. An NFC antenna is a specialized piece of kit that adds cost, tuning, etc. A Dual-Interface NFC/EMV card costs $2. Adding all that flex means we're talking $3.

Now your bills cost over 30X what a traditional bill costs. Since counterfeiting is only 0.01% of US bills, to stop that, you're proposing we pay a 30X premium on the manufacture of those bills?

The treasury prints 38M notes per year, totaling $541M dollars. That's a material cost of $3.9M. If 0.01% of that $541M is counterfeit, that's an additional cost of just $54,000, bringing our total just under $4M. Even if you chose to include "2% inflation" as a cost (and to be clear, you shouldn't) that's still just $10.82M.

To print the same 38M notes in Kong we'd be paying $106M. That means to eliminate $4M in printing and counterfeiting costs we'd have to pay $106M. You're proposing we pay 10-27X as much per year to manage our currency. [2] Not to mention the sheer electricity cost of creating and locking up the value on the Ethereum blockchain. Then, mechanical stress/strain and failure of the secure elements over time takes value out of both the Kong real-world supply and also out of Ethereum, which is already subject to massive breakage.

This is basically why we don't verify signatures on checks. It's cheaper to eat the fraud cost.

[1] https://www.investopedia.com/news/fed-will-print-more-50-bil...

[2] https://www.factmonster.com/math/money/facts-about-us-money

Re: Show HN: Kong – Physical Cryptocurrency

#388

Post by fnord77 »

paulgerhardt wrote: post #355
fnord77 wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The point is physical cash is really important to a functioning society. Not really. There's a couple northern european economies that are almost entirely cashless.

"Less cash but not cashless" is the motto of those northern european countries. Both the UK and the Netherlands for instance have issue reports[1][2] to ensure cash does not go away as it serves a vital purpose for protected classes. [1] https://www.accesstocash.org.uk/media/1087/final-report-fina... - from the UK report "17% of the population would struggle in a cashless society" [2] https://www.dnb.nl/en/binaries/D…

I'm talking Sweden where it is next to impossible to pay with cash in most places. And impossible to find an ATM.

Re: Show HN: Kong – Physical Cryptocurrency

#389

Post by lazzlazzlazz »

ccamrobertson wrote: post #29
lazzlazzlazz wrote: post #18

Is Kong stabilized/a stablecoin or is it a commodity-style asset?

No, there is nothing backing the Kong token. See section 4 in the paper for more of a discussion on the token issuance. We considered various stablecoin constructions, but most of them effectively pin to fiat which (1) seems to defeat the original intent of cryptocurrencies (i.e. think back to 2009) as not subject to the whims of central banks and (2) seems to just duplicate fiat currencies in a more expensive format…

You mentioned two stablecoin methods, but not the interesting and somewhat successful MakerDAO approach. What do you think about that?

Re: Show HN: Kong – Physical Cryptocurrency

#390

Post by appleshore »

elil17 wrote: post #108

I see so many people here frustrated with the fact that the creators are giving nonsense answers. It's important to remember that this is a money-making scam. Asking them how their technology provides any value to users is like asking a Nigerian prince about the philosophy behind constitutional monarchies.

This seems incredibly disingenuous. Unless the founders have a history of fraud, your comment is way out of line.

And yea it is cool, this overriding principle defies any predefined business model or use case. Novel things come from new things not incremental improvements like “Apple Pay”. Which those are explicable money making scams and schemes to control people’s banking info and insert yet another middle man to profit off the mere act of transacting.

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