Live data from Hacker News

On anti-crypto toxicity

blog.mollywhite.net

441–450 of 734 posts

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Use the state to fix failures of the state? There's a weird cyclic optimism here that I don't think can really be supported by the facts. After all, those who write a law can just as easily add addendum to that law, or remove it all together. Even with equal banking laws, there's always going to be an individual who the state deems as less equal than others. That's just how it's always been. Its bizarre that this is…

Any fix for a failure in human organization(s) is going to come from ... humans. There are no hall monitors here, and there's also no magic wand. When things are of a large enough scope, the way that humans tend to organize to get things done, or get things fixed, is called "a state". Just like all human efforts, the outcome will likely not be perfect. But there actually isn't another way. Sure, you can suggest the i…

> Any fix for a failure in human organization(s) is going to come from ... humans.

Sometimes the best fix is a disassembly.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Use the state to fix failures of the state? There's a weird cyclic optimism here that I don't think can really be supported by the facts. After all, those who write a law can just as easily add addendum to that law, or remove it all together. Even with equal banking laws, there's always going to be an individual who the state deems as less equal than others. That's just how it's always been. Its bizarre that this is…

Any fix for a failure in human organization(s) is going to come from ... humans. There are no hall monitors here, and there's also no magic wand. When things are of a large enough scope, the way that humans tend to organize to get things done, or get things fixed, is called "a state". Just like all human efforts, the outcome will likely not be perfect. But there actually isn't another way. Sure, you can suggest the i…

Let me change the context and see if you still believe that argument: Countries like Russia and China don't need a global internet; they should just fix their censorship problems. VPN operators are scammers taking money from ordinary citizens.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#443
> Despite crypto’s unquestionably right-libertarian roots

Citation needed.

(This is actually me being charitable; it's not remotely "unquestionable", and in my view it's not even supported by the evidence available.)

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are no hall monitors here, and there's also no magic wand. Right, and saying "just pass a law" is asking the hall monitors to wave a wand.

No. It's asking society to correct itself via legislation (we've done that before). It's slower and less sexy than new-tech and has a better track record.

> via legislation (we've done that before).

it would be helpful to me if you could cite an example. i don't actually think this is true.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#445
post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In one corner we have types who want to send > arbitrarily large amounts of money and in the other corner we have the types who know about and enforce AML and KYC legislation. How is this possibly going to end well for the first group?

It turns out there are actually things that lawmakers don't really have the power to effectively ban, drugs and prostitution and gambling and cash transactions principally among them. A lot of people don't seem to integrate this fact. The practical power of a lawmaking body is not unlimited. There are certain things they simply cannot stop, no matter how many laws are passed. It won't "end" for either group, really.…

This would be one way to do this, yes, and I think it would be overall good for society if there was a clear association of cryptocurrencies and crime.

There would still be shady cryptocurrency things (just like we still have illegal drugs and gambling and prostitution), but at least we won't have smart people proudly announcing that they made new crypto system (just like we don't have people proudly announcing they made a new kind of illegal drug today).

Because for each person who genuinely believes into monetary anarchy and/or does not trust the government, there are lots more (thousands? tens of thousands?) people who read about it in New York Times and want to earn their money. It is the second group which is fueling the first, and so getting rid of it will make crypto harmless again.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> None of their claims have materially panned out. * Starknet is running a Turing complete VM using nothing but zero knowledge proofs. It's now possible and practical to trustlessly prove general purpose computation with O(logN) proof sizes. * Uniswap processes nearly $2 billion of trading volume a day. For reference that's about as much as the Australian stock exchange. In an entirely decentralized, non-custodial, t…

> * Uniswap processes nearly $2 billion of trading volume a day. For reference that's about as much as the Australian stock exchange. In an entirely decentralized, non-custodial, trustless manner. An overwhelming majority of these are bot trades. > * The Solana network processes 65,000 transaction, about equivalent to the entire Visa network. Visa does 597 million consumer transactions per day. Not only is that magni…

> An overwhelming majority of these are bot trades.

Likely the same is true on the Australian stock exchange. Not that this is a bad thing. There is a person behind every bot - and in the case of Uniswap, the arbitrage is what makes it work in the first place.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#447
post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem pretty focused on this idea of "blind trust" of the government which nobody is advocating. So perhaps you should take your own advice? I didn't assume you supported crypto. I was pointing out that crypto has all the problems you specified as bad or worse.

I'm not sure how the advice of "just pass a law" is anything other than blind trust. If you didn't think I was advocating crypto, then what purpose does: > And crypto isn't dominated by the wealthy and being used to serve their ends? Open your eyes my friend serve? Why would you mention something completely unrelated to their point, then tell them to open their eyes? To me it sounds like you're retroactively recastin…

> "just pass a law"

If I search for that phrase you are quoting/referencing in this thread, you are the only one using it.

I explained what point I was making. Do you have anything to contribute beyond attacking your strawman over and over?

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More like that's how democracies fail. Our current method of "fixing" failures of the state involves layering more and more legislation and regulation on top of the broken legislation and regulation. We do nothing to address the root causes of those failures because that would mean closing a lot of the loop holes that allow politicians to get rich by leveraging their positions aka corruption. Why else would we need b…

> Our current method of "fixing" failures of the state involves layering more and more legislation and regulation on top of the broken legislation and regulation. The UK is the perfect example. Hundreds of years of out-dated laws layered on top of each other to the point where nobody can tell what is law and what is a joke.

>The UK is the perfect example. Hundreds of years of out-dated laws layered on top of each other to the point where nobody can tell what is law and what is a joke.

Literal nonsense.

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#449

Unfortunately, given: "How can we create a more equitable financial system, where everyone has access to banking services? How can we reduce the power that a small few currently hold over the web? How can we improve data privacy and ensure that people have control over their personal information? How can we create reasonable privacy in the financial system? How can we make information more available to everyone? How…

Relevant: https://www.citadel21.com/why-the-yuppie-elite-dismiss-bitco...

Re: On anti-crypto toxicity

#450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you haven't seen it, you were not interested in looking and I doubt that any "evangelist" is going to change your mind This is disingenuous. (Also, ENS appears to be functionally similar to App.net [1]. I'm open to being challenged on this.) One thing pervasively lacking from Web3 is compelling fiction. Not "this and that trustlessly," but a functional narrative of someone doing something useful or compelling they…

[flagged]

Respectfully, pointing at the Unlock protocol and justifying it with "poor people dealing with hyperinflation" is a bit disingenuous. The unlock protocol (and, to a lesser degree, ENS) is not about or for poor people. It's for socialites in first world countries with money to burn.
Post reply on HN