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

Keybase and Stellar is live for everyone

keybase.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 84 posts

Re: Keybase and Stellar is live for everyone

#51

Post by astrolince »

gumby wrote: post #29
feanaro wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I associate crypto with shonk, which puts keybase.io in the "this is a crypto thing? Hmmm.... shonky." category. This is unnecessary bias, though. If you look past the drama, cryptocurrency is a powerful and useful invention.

> cryptocurrency is a powerful and useful invention. Can you explain? Intellectually interesting? No question. But powerful or useful (I consider them synonyms)? I'd like to see some actual examples. This is genuine curiosity, not snark. I'm on the board of a blockchain startup who has a legitimate application for a blockchain -- an aspirin. But this application could have been done 20 years ago if there hadn't been…

Of course you don't understand, because you don't need them, you can't understand freedom of expression if you never had anything to say, you can't understand privacy if you never had anything to hide, if you were living in a country like mine, Argentina, you would understand immediately the incredibly useful thing that Bitcoin is.

I have a Swiss bank in my pocket, in a country that steals all your savings every ten years and the central bank destroys you with inflation.

I have an international payment system, I can send and receive money in minutes to whomever I want, without asking permission from anyone, without the government or the bank stealing it from me. From a place where it is sinful to take your money out of the country.

It's the difference between existing or not in the world, and you have no idea how incredible it is to be able to pass an Argentine crisis without your family suffering hunger, no centralized system could give me something similar at such a low cost.

Re: Keybase and Stellar is live for everyone

#52

Post by qqn »

gumby wrote: post #29
feanaro wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I associate crypto with shonk, which puts keybase.io in the "this is a crypto thing? Hmmm.... shonky." category. This is unnecessary bias, though. If you look past the drama, cryptocurrency is a powerful and useful invention.

> cryptocurrency is a powerful and useful invention. Can you explain? Intellectually interesting? No question. But powerful or useful (I consider them synonyms)? I'd like to see some actual examples. This is genuine curiosity, not snark. I'm on the board of a blockchain startup who has a legitimate application for a blockchain -- an aspirin. But this application could have been done 20 years ago if there hadn't been…

> I'd like to see some actual examples.

I used Bitcoin to cover a flight a few years back when the only other options were PayPal or using a European bank deposit (0).

More recently I also paid for graduate studies in Bitcoin (1). Granted, it was for an MSc in cryptocurrency but the process was still just so... easy. I did it while in bed here in Canada to a university in Cyprus. It took about five minutes and the school converted the funds to euros right away. When I compare this to waiting 1-2 weeks to move funds from Canada to Europe for previous studies (as well as the ~€100 in fees), I can definitely see a bullish case for crypto, especially for bigger international payments.

0: https://www.airbaltic.com/en/payment-options

1: https://digitalcurrency.unic.ac.cy/admissions/financial-info...

Re: Keybase and Stellar is live for everyone

#53

Post by mirimir »

chrischen wrote: post #45
mirimir wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically, it's Internet money. So like the Internet, it's very difficult for governments to fsck with. They can try, of course, but there will always be levels of overlay networks that they can't touch. This is one aspect of the cypherpunk vision. Being ~anonymous online, cryptocurrencies are my only option for buying and selling stuff online. Leasing VPN services, servers, VPS, etc. Getting paid for writing and oth…

I’d rather call it internet “cash” rather than just internet money. We can use money online (credit card, paypal), but there’s so much consumer protection stuff that goes along with it that makes it hard to use like paper cash—irreversible, untraceable.m, unsanctioned usage. Perfect for things governments hate: illegal stuff like extortion and drugs.

> Perfect for things governments hate: illegal stuff like extortion and drugs.

That's true for anything that provides privacy and freedom.

Re: Keybase and Stellar is live for everyone

#54

Post by ricardobeat »

thanatos_dem wrote: post #44
icelancer wrote: post #41

I won't repost my entire comment here, but I noted in 2017 on Hacker News some pretty shady stuff going on with Stellar/XLM and their customer support team / developers. You can read the entire account here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15935583#15936174 It starts with this: --- I was given 6000 XLM and I left it in their official wallet for years. On May 12th, 2017 I wrote them an email asking why my wallet,…

Yup... I was part of one of the first XLM grants. I saved my credentials and stopped paying attention until recently when I tried to go to my account. There was some sort of wallet migration needed due to a security issue, and it needed to be done years ago, so it’s all just gone now. Stellar, like the rest of the cryptocurrencies, can go die in a fire as far as I’m concerned.

So you're angry that the virtual money you got as a handout, from a system in early development, was lost four years later after you failed to act on an upgrade announced months in advance. Sounds fair.

Re: Keybase and Stellar is live for everyone

#55

Post by k__ »

michaelsbradley wrote: post #23
api wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The defense is to point out some genuinely useful work going on in the space that doesn't revolve around speculation.

How about pure development work to build tools that can be used to experiment with and build atop decentralized technologies such as IPFS and Ethereum blockchain, etc.? https://embark.status.im/ https://github.com/embark-framework/embark

IPFS seems to solve an actual problem without too much overhead tho...

Re: Keybase and Stellar is live for everyone

#56

Post by michaelsbradley »

k__ wrote: post #55
michaelsbradley wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about pure development work to build tools that can be used to experiment with and build atop decentralized technologies such as IPFS and Ethereum blockchain, etc.? https://embark.status.im/ https://github.com/embark-framework/embark

IPFS seems to solve an actual problem without too much overhead tho...

See: https://github.com/MetaMask/metamask-extension/pull/4405.

Re: Keybase and Stellar is live for everyone

#57

Post by vermilingua »

drawnwren wrote: post #49
xur17 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

* Bitcoin's lightning network * Stable coins (Dai, USDC, etc) * What Keybase just built (much easier way to manage keys for wallets) * Makerdao's decentralized loan system The first 2 enable you to transfer value over the internet in a cheap and non-revokable way (internet cash). The third one simplifies wallet management for the first two. The last one opens up a bunch of new opportunities for borrowing money withou…

I agree that crypto could be valuable. But, (1) the lightning network has been repeatedly attacked as unworkable trash and (2) there needs to be a reason to make crypto transactions other than drugs or vaguely crypto-anarchist philosophy. (b) Tether's recent scandal has made all stable coins fairly suspect. (d) The makerdao system has some pretty serious problems. High liquidation rates and skyrocketing fees both com…

As to point (2), I think this keybase/stellar integration is the solution to the problem that crypto has been looking for.

If I want to give a friend money, I can hand them cash, but I have to be in the same room as them. I can transfer that cash in other ways, but I need to trust the middlemen. I can also use a bank to send them money, but I have to know their details, which are sensitive information. I can use one of the plethora of money-transfer apps, but that involves putting my money under someone else’s direct control (someone who may go insolvent by the end of the year).

Or, if I have them on keybase (or any number of platforms, ideally) I can now just send it with a simple text message.

Additionally, what if I really appreciate something you said on HN, or twitter; or you made a really valuable contribution to one of my projects on GH? If you have your keybase proof on there, I can send you my appreciation in a matter of seconds. Imagine trying to do that using cash, PayPal, etc.

Despite the fact that until now, crypto has had far more overhead than cash and credit transactions, this and successor programs may have the potential to make transfers far more convenient.

Re: Keybase and Stellar is live for everyone

#58

Post by fourstar »

api wrote: post #20
xur17 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I associate crypto with shonk, which puts keybase.io in the "this is a crypto thing? Hmmm.... shonky." category. I'm sorry to hear that. There is a lot of scammy behavior in the space, but there is also a lot of interesting work going on. It just turns out that the shitty people speak the loudest, so they're the ones you hear about, rather than all of the people heads down working hard on interesting problems. I do…

The defense is to point out some genuinely useful work going on in the space that doesn't revolve around speculation.

You just described literally anything new.

Re: Keybase and Stellar is live for everyone

#59

Post by phyzome »

astrolince wrote: post #51
gumby wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> cryptocurrency is a powerful and useful invention. Can you explain? Intellectually interesting? No question. But powerful or useful (I consider them synonyms)? I'd like to see some actual examples. This is genuine curiosity, not snark. I'm on the board of a blockchain startup who has a legitimate application for a blockchain -- an aspirin. But this application could have been done 20 years ago if there hadn't been…

Of course you don't understand, because you don't need them, you can't understand freedom of expression if you never had anything to say, you can't understand privacy if you never had anything to hide, if you were living in a country like mine, Argentina, you would understand immediately the incredibly useful thing that Bitcoin is. I have a Swiss bank in my pocket, in a country that steals all your savings every ten…

It sounds like Stellar would be a bad fit for your use-case, then, even while Bitcoin is useful.

Re: Keybase and Stellar is live for everyone

#60

Post by Aeolun »

ricardobeat wrote: post #54
thanatos_dem wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup... I was part of one of the first XLM grants. I saved my credentials and stopped paying attention until recently when I tried to go to my account. There was some sort of wallet migration needed due to a security issue, and it needed to be done years ago, so it’s all just gone now. Stellar, like the rest of the cryptocurrencies, can go die in a fire as far as I’m concerned.

So you're angry that the virtual money you got as a handout, from a system in early development, was lost four years later after you failed to act on an upgrade announced months in advance. Sounds fair.

I don’t know about you, but the bank cannot arbitrarily decide that my money is gone because I didn’t deign to respond to them within a certain time period.

The moment the bank starts doing that it’s not a bank any more, it’s a scam.

Post reply on HN