431–440 of 451 posts
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HN is flooded with overprivileged richkids with no connection to reality
I mean yeah but that describes a vast amount of cryptobros (or at least the more successful ones rather than the ones left holding the bag).
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There is a ton of trusted third parties involved. You're trusting: - The KYC of your exchange, and any exchange in the coins path - The wallet you're using - The recipient to provide the correct address - The exchange rate And you're trusting all of that hasn't been tampered with, which involves even more trusted parties. It requires an order of magnitude less trust to send cash in the mail. It's cheaper, too.
Maybe take others advice and stop commenting on this topic because everything you said is wrong. I’ll contradict all your points using specific personal examples of my usage. I’ve bought Bitcoin many times without any KYC. In old days localbitcoins and these days ATMs in many countries. There aren’t any “exchange in the coins path”. I’ve exchanged paper fiat currency at Starbucks, in a hotel lobby. The wallets I use…
Oh lord.
> I’ve bought Bitcoin many times without any KYC. In old days localbitcoins and these days ATMs in many countries ... There aren’t any “exchange in the coins path”. I’ve exchanged paper fiat currency at Starbucks, in a hotel lobby.
Sure, ok. Now take just one tiny step forward. Think about what happens next. Those coins have extremely high odds of passing through a KYC system in the near future. That can, will, and frequently has been used to trace users who are dumb enough to think "I paid for bitcoin for cash, I'm now anonymous".
> The wallets I use are open source 100%.
And nothing nefarious has ever slipped into open source software, right? Do you have no idea what a supply chain attack is?
You use NPM, you really ought to.
> There is no third party. only your operating system, the internet connection and the source code.
And, of course, your OS and the internet can be trusted. This is a great example of the level of critical thinking cryptobros achieve.
> I also broadcast my transaction over the ToR network so my internet provider and the Bitcoin network has no visibility.
Ok, so you mitigate the announce IP, which is one of the least useful ways to do analysis. Cool.
> yesterday I bought my lunch for my wife and I, $21 using by Bitpay debit card. I loaded the card 2 mins before with those dollars by sending Litecoin ...
So it has objectively worse utility, UX, and more dependencies than fiat?
This is not a good example.
> Years ago I met an artist from Argentina on an internet forum. She was painting what I thought were nice paintings. She was selling professional prints of those. I sent her Bitcoin and she sent me the prints.
Ok. This is still not useful. Western Union, Paypal, SWIFT, all cheaper and in some cases faster.
> I’ve hired a developer in Crimea to work on a security software and he was paid for his work in Bitcoin
Protip: if someone is willing to be paid in bitcoin, they are not worth the bitcoin you're sending.
> When my sister in law had a baby shower I bought all the gifts at Buy Buy Baby using a digital gift card purchased 30 mins earlier using Bitcoin.
As above: "So it has objectively worse utility, UX, and more dependencies than fiat?"
> Bitcoin is revolutionary and has a decent shot at bringing fiat government currencies to their knees so they are forced to act responsibly and not brr brr money print.
You have absolutely no idea what a central bank does, do you? Well, I mean, you obviously think you do. But you really don't. A basic class on economics would do you a world of good.
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Now we're moving the goalposts from: > one mankind’s most important inventions to merely > useful consequences Sure, maybe there are useful consequences, especially if you need to defy governments or whatever. But surely not something in the same league of importance as, say, fire, the wheel, writing, powered flight, the hammer, steel, math, or even Quicksort.
"The grain mill was merely an application of the wheel and uninteresting by itself". Absolute embittered curmudgeons.
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I'm fairly certain most people outside of the US never even heard of that form at all, as most people don't work with/in US companies, nor deal with the US government at all.
W-8BEN has nothing to do about dealing with US companies or government. If you open investment account to buy any US stock, index funds or a some other US-based financial instruments you have to fill W-8BEN. Otherwise you might be charged 30% tax on your investment income by IRS. So even if you open brokerage account in UK, EU, India, Russia or any other country you'll surely know about this form.
> If you open investment account to buy any US stock, index funds or a some other US-based financial instruments you have to fill W-8BEN
You seem to directly contradict yourself. Dealing with any US-based financial instrument obviously has to do with dealing with something US related.
In contrast, if I only invest in any non-US financial instruments, I don't have to deal with W-8BEN.
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Which of these do not happen when using conventional money?
You're missing the point. Cryptocurrencies are specifically designed to evade regulations. Everything else —efficiency, cost, convenience, usability— is sacrificed in order to achieve this goal.
No, most are not. (I'd go as far to argue that even monero is not specifically designed to evade regulation.)
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And facilitating organized crime, terrorism, and investment scams.
And human trafficking.
I mean just think about it. A FULL 3%* of all cryptocurrency transactions are related to criminal activities! If we ban those 3% (and the other 97% because why not), we will stop all human trafficking or at least make a noticeable dent in it because most traffickers rely on cryptocurrency and absolutely don't use traditional currency as the main way to transact.
Perhaps if cryptocurrencies do finally get banned, it would at least help certain individuals to think more critically, or perhaps start thinking at all. One can only wish.
[*]: 3% because it's the most extreme reputable statistic out there. Most reputable studies place transactions related to illicit activities well bellow 1%.
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What harm was done with that photo? Was even one woman turned away from an industry bc of it? Absurd.
we don't know the harm, because we don't know how many women encountered this image and may have been made uncomfortable because of it. we also don't know how many men felt encouraged in their sexism upon encountering this image. while the image didn't make men sexist, it undoubtedly helped normalize that view among those coming across it during their work. context matters. if you read playboy at home, that's on you,…
The part that was cropped looks like a normal portrait photo.
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Maybe take others advice and stop commenting on this topic because everything you said is wrong. I’ll contradict all your points using specific personal examples of my usage. I’ve bought Bitcoin many times without any KYC. In old days localbitcoins and these days ATMs in many countries. There aren’t any “exchange in the coins path”. I’ve exchanged paper fiat currency at Starbucks, in a hotel lobby. The wallets I use…
> Maybe take others advice and stop commenting on this topic because everything you said is wrong. Oh lord. > I’ve bought Bitcoin many times without any KYC. In old days localbitcoins and these days ATMs in many countries ... There aren’t any “exchange in the coins path”. I’ve exchanged paper fiat currency at Starbucks, in a hotel lobby. Sure, ok. Now take just one tiny step forward. Think about what happens next. Th…
However it’s seems doubtful you will even be willing to acknowledge your flawed understanding and perhaps even unlikely you will see my response give how HN works.
The interesting thing here is that I don't believe the Bitcoin whitepaper was released with any license. If someone could prove themselves to be the author they'd probably be able to make a case for a lot of money from Apple.
Further, Satoshi explicitly reassigned copyright over the entirety of Bitcoin essentially to posterity by rewriting the licensing. That, similarly, includes the bitcoin whitepaper.
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Meh, being able to synchronise an append-only tamper proof linked list and control who gets to put what on it in a decentralized way is pretty cool. Not to mention it's far easier to implement with limited means, than 5nm chips, or large tansformer models. (Also implementing money on it does seem pretty intelligent -- its a scarcity device -- peoble just seem to do stupid stuff with it)
Git (and any merkle tree) already implements a tamper proof linked list, there’s no reason to burn electricity in a proof of work algorithm to accomplish this. Controlling who gets to put things in it in a decentralized way isn’t as important as many people think, at the end of the day almost all applications (other than currency) can just use a central authority to publish hashes.