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

Ray Dillinger: If I'd Known What We Were Starting

linkedin.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 92 posts

Re: Ray Dillinger: If I'd Known What We Were Starting

#41

Post by qyv »

lallysingh wrote: post #13
CJefferson wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't imagine blockchains ever satisfying all legal requirements. At some point I expect some court to say "X shares were illegally transferred from person A, give them back". If we don't know where they went, it's impossible on block-chain to give them back, unless we assume the existence of someone who has the rights to make arbitrary changes, at which point there is no point having a blockchain.

Why can't you require that each wallet be signed by a party that identifies the person behind it? Then you find where the money went and you force them to give it back. But I think really the statement of interest is here: > ... at which point there is no point having a blockchain. Lots of people have different reasons for liking block chains. Their reasons may disagree with yours.

I think the point is if you have to trust someone then using a blockchain is no better than using centralized ledgers.

Re: Ray Dillinger: If I'd Known What We Were Starting

#42

Post by klank »

sp527 wrote: post #36
CJefferson wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't imagine blockchains ever satisfying all legal requirements. At some point I expect some court to say "X shares were illegally transferred from person A, give them back". If we don't know where they went, it's impossible on block-chain to give them back, unless we assume the existence of someone who has the rights to make arbitrary changes, at which point there is no point having a blockchain.

This happens surprisingly often when reasoning about blockchains: you start with some concern and follow the trail of logic to some form of necessary centralization. For example, when someone on Twitter raised the problem of collaterizing smart contracts (no one is going to lock capital away in extended escrow, which creates an obvious enforceability problem), Naval Ravikant argued in response that a third party guar…

A third party guarantor is different from THE third party guarantor though, no?

I only follow blockchain/ICO events from the peripheries so I'm sorry if I'm grossly misunderstanding.

Re: Ray Dillinger: If I'd Known What We Were Starting

#43

Post by [deleted] »

paulddraper wrote: post #29
a_d wrote: post #2

"What else ticks me off about this, is that there is absolutely nothing wrong with issuing stock in your company as tokens on a block chain instead of through brokers on a standard exchange. Just do it legally, for Pete's sake! Go to the SEC, or whoever the appropriate regulatory authority in your jurisdiction is, and get authorization to issue stock! Hire somebody to implement shareholder voting as block chain trans…

> Ironically, the first "ICO" to do it with full compliance, useful tech and good business model, will be huge. We're a long ways off on all counts. Just look transaction rate: BTC: 4 trans/sec Etherum: 20 trans/sec Visa: 2,000 trans/sec I'm not saying it's impossible to improve by orders of magnititude, but I don't think it will happen next year or the year after that or the year after that.

[deleted]

Re: Ray Dillinger: If I'd Known What We Were Starting

#44

Post by wyldfire »

carlisle_ wrote: post #40
wyldfire wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why can't you require that each wallet be signed by a party that identifies the person behind it? Then you find where the money went and you force them to give it back. And what if they refuse [despite consequences]? > Lots of people have different reasons for liking block chains. Their reasons may disagree with yours. I'd say the common/paramount feature is "decentralized, trustless ledger w/distributed consensus.…

> And what if they refuse [despite consequences]? I feel like this is a problem that is pretty commonly exercised in our legal system and incarceration is usually a strong last resort motivator.

That's why I added "despite consequences". Ok, now they're in jail and they still refuse. Now what? Ugh, lets go convince the peers contributing to consensus that we need to fork the chain and delete this transaction (like Ethereal).

This is just the tip of the iceberg BTW. What if they die or have a brain injury? Their password securing the wallet is now lost to the world. Now there's no way to reverse this transaction. We accept this risk with the trustless system of currency. But real estate, equities, this kinda stuff -- it just doesn't map well at all.

Re: Ray Dillinger: If I'd Known What We Were Starting

#45

Post by just_one_time_ »

optimuspaul wrote: post #33
AceJohnny2 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A cursory search reveals guy who was involved in BitCoin from the very start. For example, here's an exchange he had in 2008 with Satoshi over the design of Bitcoin: http://satoshi.nakamotoinstitute.org/emails/cryptography/5/

Wow, Satoshi was incredibly naive, dishonest, or just didn't have any idea how quickly it would get out of control.

Wow, these Core Trolls are everywhere, any chance to shit on Satoshi and push the new, Bitcoin is a Settlement layer agenda.

Re: Ray Dillinger: If I'd Known What We Were Starting

#46

Post by fiatjaf »

I can't agree more with most of the article, but can't disagree more with the claim that everything is horrible, but would be fine and awesome if only done through the SEC.

The whole idea of crypto-anarchy was to avoid the SEC from the beggining. Of couse there will be scammers, but some people, or some other form of organization, will appear and do the job that SEC should do (and, frankly, doesn't) but in a way that fits the new model.

There are a lot of scams in the real world, and the government isn't capable of preventing them. In fact, the government itself is a giant scam, and you're not criticizing it.

Re: Ray Dillinger: If I'd Known What We Were Starting

#48

Post by fiatjaf »

Theodores wrote: post #7

On a more day to day level, a few years ago a lot of e-commerce pay-by-bitcoin options existed. You would not put this on the checkout next to PayPal because nobody was doing bitcoin then. What I don't understand is why this never took off. People know bitcoin through the news, it is not new. In this time Apple Pay has come along nicely but not bitcoin. Bitcoin has gone off on a tulips tangent. This seems at odds wit…

See my https://trackingco.de for a useful, simple service that accepts payments only in Bitcoin.

Re: Ray Dillinger: If I'd Known What We Were Starting

#49

Post by wakamoleguy »

wyldfire wrote: post #44
carlisle_ wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And what if they refuse [despite consequences]? I feel like this is a problem that is pretty commonly exercised in our legal system and incarceration is usually a strong last resort motivator.

That's why I added "despite consequences". Ok, now they're in jail and they still refuse. Now what? Ugh, lets go convince the peers contributing to consensus that we need to fork the chain and delete this transaction (like Ethereal). This is just the tip of the iceberg BTW. What if they die or have a brain injury? Their password securing the wallet is now lost to the world. Now there's no way to reverse this transact…

Forking the chain or otherwise building consensus may be necessary to recover the coins from those particular transactions, but it's not clear that we would need to do that. As an analogy from traditional currency, consider what happens if somebody dies while in debt. Their estate can be used to settle the debt, but if the money isn't there, creditors will go unpaid. There's no guarantee that all of the transactions that occurred with that money can be reversed.

One other potential problem is that if an owner of some Bitcoin dies, there may not be access to their wallet at all. However, if there is considerable wealth in that wallet, they should have incentive to pass that on to their heirs, in which case they may have set up a will or otherwise passed on instructions for how to recover the money. Whoever that money is recovered to can then be approached for settling the estate or what-have-you.

In the end, though, laws and the consequences for breaking them are (in principle) set up to incentivize behavior that is good for society. If you break laws, you face consequences. If you avoid those (e.g. court orders you to pay and you refuse), you face other/worse consequences (e.g. garnished wages, contempt of court). If the consequences still aren't strong enough or enforceable enough to maintain the peace, then society has a problem and new laws can be passed.

Re: Ray Dillinger: If I'd Known What We Were Starting

#50

Post by jerkstate »

wyldfire wrote: post #44
carlisle_ wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And what if they refuse [despite consequences]? I feel like this is a problem that is pretty commonly exercised in our legal system and incarceration is usually a strong last resort motivator.

That's why I added "despite consequences". Ok, now they're in jail and they still refuse. Now what? Ugh, lets go convince the peers contributing to consensus that we need to fork the chain and delete this transaction (like Ethereal). This is just the tip of the iceberg BTW. What if they die or have a brain injury? Their password securing the wallet is now lost to the world. Now there's no way to reverse this transact…

The receiver of ill-gotten gains refusing/being unable to pay them back is not a new legal problem and certainly not unique to blockchain.
Post reply on HN