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I wasted years of my life in crypto
481–490 of 1001 posts
Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto
#482Earlier quoted context omitted.
> but then you would face the penalty of having your entire balance confiscated by the other party. Only if the other party notices in time that you did this. You are reliant on active monitoring of the blockchain to know that your transactions actually happened. And the more you want to scale (i.e. the more transactions you do on a single Lightning channel without settling it on the BTC blockchain), the bigger the r…
If monitoring really is a problem isn't simple automation the solution?
This is automated, no one is proposing to manually look at BTC blocks to see if you are getting cheated. The problem is that you need to explicitly run code constantly to check if this happens - which means that if your monitoring agent goes offline for any reason (which an attacker could perhaps force), your BTC that you received in a Lightning channel may be stolen.
Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto
#483In recent months I changed views and shifted from the desilluioned "this is a casino" mindset that is described in this article to a "we need this now" one. An example in this article [1], the US can now unilateraly decide to prevent an individual anywhere in the world from having a functioning financial life and this because of the quasi (western) duopoly that is Visa and Mastercard. Nothing against the US in genera…
If, after all these years, Crypto has not become a stable store of value that can replace a fiat currency and let you buy your groceries with it, why do we suddenly 'need it' to do that now, and what would change that will enable that to happen?
It's still not possible because of the high speculative aspect (even though stable coins offer some form of alternative but since they are anchored on the dollar, not so much). Change will happen when more people are impacted by unilateral decisions. If all of a sudden the US decided you/your business/your political party/your government is not aligned with their views, they could make sure that Visa/Mastercard/Paypal/Stripe/... stop accepting payments for that given group. Then you realize there are very little alternatives ready to go in that case (for online payments there are, but for physical ones not so much). So far this hasn't seem like a possibility at all, but, in my view at least, this has changed this past year.
Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto
#484Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I want to buy subversive literature from someone I already trust not to rip me off Subversive literature printed on blotter paper. Outside of buying sex and drugs the only uses for cryptocoins are, and always has been, ransoms, scams and gambling.
Okay, tell me how I buy something over the internet without tying the purchase to my government ID. Your argument seems like "only criminals want privacy" which is a no.
Go buy eBay gift cards with cash?
Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto
#485Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, the argument is crypto is primarily used for crimes. Which is true. Also, if you want privacy, don't use crypto.
> No, the argument is crypto is primarily used for crimes. Which is true. The argument is right here: > Outside of buying sex and drugs the only uses for cryptocoins are, and always has been, ransoms, scams and gambling. It doesn't contain the word "primarily" which indeed makes it false, and the rebuttal to your different claim is this one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46190260 > Also, if you want privacy, d…
> Can you tell me another way of buying something over the internet without tying the purchase to a government ID?
By using a prepaid (debit|gift) card bought for cash in a convenience store? Much better anonymity that way. And much less volatility.
Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto
#486Earlier quoted context omitted.
To add to that, crypto is also a gift from heaven for criminals who need to receive ransoms.
Anonymous crypto, yes. But if you're suggesting blockchain is anonymous and payments are untraceable, that's not the case for bitcoin at least. It's a gift to law enforcement, if they cared enough to trace btc transactions.
This looks like a case of in theory yes, in practice no.
Tracing btc transactions to real persons can be quite some work and is a new kind of cat and mouse game.
Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto
#487Earlier quoted context omitted.
> but then you would face the penalty of having your entire balance confiscated by the other party. Only if the other party notices in time that you did this. You are reliant on active monitoring of the blockchain to know that your transactions actually happened. And the more you want to scale (i.e. the more transactions you do on a single Lightning channel without settling it on the BTC blockchain), the bigger the r…
Yes, but as long as you monitor, double spending is not possible. And it's possible to use tools to do that somewhat passively. There are conditions on every payment system. With bitcoin you also have something to do to prevent double spending: wait for some number of confirmations (and making sure you're on the right chain). And "double-spend protection guarantees of blockchains" is very dependent on the cost of doi…
My point is that Lightning has additional failure modes that BTC does not, and Lightning in itself does not offer the guarantees that Bitcoin does. It of course also suffers from all of BTC's failure points - if someone successfully does a 51% attack on BTC, they can implicitly also steal any Lightning funds as well. If you close a Lightning channel and then don't wait for enough confirmations, or you broadcast your cheating transaction and don't wait for enough confirmations, you can clearly lose your money.
The risk doesn't increase with the number of transactions on a channel, that was a wrong statement from my side. What I was thinking of is that the risk increases the more your transact through Lightning instead of regular BTC. Basically, the more of your BTC is caught up in Lightning channels, the higher the value of attacking you with a double spend attempt.
Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto
#488https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2024/01/31/end.html#section... Vitalik touched upon this briefly in an other-wise long and wide-reaching essay. I think its a good treatment of the topic that the author is talking about. He categorizes the ecosystem broadly into 4 cohorts- [token holders] (which includes investors, speculators, etc.), [pragmatic users] (actual end-users who spend crypto to buy stuff), [intellectuals]…
The only buyers are criminals, sanction evaders, and probably the dumbest people in the world given that the entire crypto ecosystem is focused on one thing and one thing only. Creating the most deflationary monetary system in history.
There are a lot of places in the world where crypto payments are now prevalent, not because users are the "dumbest people in the world" but because they have no better alternative for electronic finance. Either conventional banking is nonexistent/abysmal for this purpose or their national currencies are in such bad condition that it's better for them to hold and use cryptocurrencies.
Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto
#489Earlier quoted context omitted.
The financial system being under government control is the only proposition consistent with reality. We, the people, make the rules. Replacing our democratic processes with finance controlled by the one with the most computing power, control of the software, or having horded the most of the tokens, is in no way desirable or realistic. Even if the proposition wasn't borderline idiotic in the first place, there is no c…
I'm gonna first of all disagree with the notion that our entire democracy rests on control of the financial system, secondly point out that you seem to make some wild leaps about how decentralized currencies work, and thirdly ask how the hell you're getting the idea that early adopters would need to be "cashed out at a profit many times exceeding inflation"(Participation in the new system is the point of adopting it,…
I said the financial system must be controlled by our democratic system, not that democracy rests on control of the financial system.
No idea where I'm supposedly making "wild leaps" here. You on the other hand...
And guess where "the hell" I am getting the idea that early adopters would need to be cashed out at a profit many times exceeding inflation: reality. As cashing out at a large profit is exactly what has been happening for over a decade. It is the sole reason for virtually all participants joining the scheme in the first place.
Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto
#490Earlier quoted context omitted.
You forgot the money launderers, in both ecosystems. Casinos are the original tumbler.
'I'm shocked to find that gambling is going on in here.' https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0034583/quotes/?item=qt0429972
"I'm shocked! Shocked…"
(The double "shocked" is what makes the quote next-level.)