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I wasted years of my life in crypto

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Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#541

Post by ErigmolCt »

spicyusername wrote: post #9

I've never understood the initial arguments about Bitcoin, no matter how many times they've been explained to me. The block chain is, and always was, an extremely inconvenient database. How anyone, especially many intelligent people, thought it was realistic to graft a currency on top of such a unwieldy piece of technology is beyond me. Maybe it goes to show how few people understand economics and anthropology and ho…

The funny thing is that a lot of early Bitcoin advocates did recognize the blockchain's inefficiency

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#542

Post by mothballed »

Almondsetat wrote: post #517
bdangubic wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a dual citizen. I wanted to buy a condo near my parents where I spend my summers with my family. I have never in my entire life felt like a criminal more than trying to buy something, with the money I made with my wife, going through regular financial system. after weeks of feeling like a criminal over coffee with my cousin who owns the company that was selling me the condo I was like “can I just fucking give yo…

Foreign property ownership is not like buying an Armani bag when you visit Italy. The financial regulations are complementary to the legal ones. Besides, even if you just sent 2 bitcoins, what about all the remaining documentation? It's not gonna fill out itself

And this is [part of] why Dubai has the highest per capita influx of high net worth individuals.

You can call them a dystopic theocracy, which is a bit true, but you can literally just fly over and buy a condo in a neighborhood with basically zero violent crime, with 2 bitcoins with essentially no questions asked.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#543

Post by user34283 »

dns_snek wrote: post #533
user34283 wrote: post #409

Earlier 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…

> We, the people, make the rules. Since when? We merely vote for politicians who promise to enact laws and regulations that are beneficial for us but they almost universally fail to do that, succumbing to self-interests and corruption. If a government implements authoritarian measures that curb our freedom in an unpopular manner, "we the people" can't do anything about it. In a few years we may or may not vote them o…

That's a bleak view on the state of democracy.

Whatever your feelings on the topic may be, we will not be giving up government control of the financial system in favor of a blockchain and profits for crypto-bros.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#544

Post by phplovesong »

l___l wrote: post #436
phplovesong wrote: post #363

The original promise of crypto was lost a LONG time ago. Instead of being a true rival to FIAT, it became a thing with a toxic-as-hell commumity, fraud, and basically its nothing more than a high risk stock. The risk is NOT only "will this go up or down" but you have a high risk of being robbed, as have happened to millions of people. Maybe there will be a better alternative in the future, but right now bitcoin is no…

> its nothing more than a high risk stock Nothing more? Proof-Of-Work wasn't innovative? With fiat you have high risk of losing 50% of USD's purchasing value within 2 years, which already happened, and which is not far from being robbed, as have happened to millions of people too.

Sure, but if i have investments they cant be stolen, and if they are im pretty much compensated (given im not straight up giving my account away, hell even then there is usually a 24h window with a limit on withdrawls).

Bottom line is no one takes responsibility in the world of bitcoin.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#545

Post by gr4vityWall »

yunohn wrote: post #431
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Sorry, which web shops demand governmental ID? I have never had to provide them mine in any of the countries I’ve lived in. If your concern is the webshop finding out your address, well I’m unsure how you solve this when you buy with crypto, but again ship to your home. If you have an alternative place to get it delivered for privacy, might as well do that with fiat transactions the same way.

> which web shops demand governmental ID?

Basically all web shops in Brazil require you to give a government ID to buy anything (usually your CPF number).

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#546

Post by Propelloni »

geysersam wrote: post #445
Dilettante_ wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a difference between "Freedom to do something " and "Freedom to not have something happen to you ". If we keep curtailing the former to serve the latter, we will end up perfectly safe from interruptions, doing nothing at all(aside from what the government dictates as 'serving the common good')

There's no difference. You can't formulate that distinction coherently. What's the difference between having the freedom to walk the street and having the freedom to not be hindered from walking the street?

Yes, you can, if you consider that liberty and freedom are functions of society and not nature. In this sense, dying from old age is not being unfree.

To stay with your example, one is bascically the absence of limitations (negative freedom), ie. the freedom to walk the street. The other is the presence of possibilities (positive freedom), ie. there needs to be a street to walk it.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#547

Post by OneDeuxTriSeiGo »

gavinsyancey wrote: post #178
NickNaraghi wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love watching the HN comment hivemind speedrun the history of blockchain innovation every time this comes up. You just reinvented smart contracts on Ethereum, keep going :-)

No amount of smart contracts can solve the situation where one party says "I shipped you the widgets you ordered; pay me" and the other says "I received a box with a brick in it" -- you need some trusted third party to decide based on reasonable heuristics who is trying to commit fraud, based on e.g. is this the first or the tenth time this has happened.

That's exactly the point of smart contracts.

The contract can hold the money in escrow such that it can only be sent either to the seller or returned to buyer.

The seller and buyer can then both walk the contract through a state machine on agreement (i.e. confirm shipping, confirm delivery, potentially also confirmation for a return process) and when the buyer and seller come to a disagreement (ex: seller attests they've shipped the product and it should be delivered but the buyer asserts they havent/the tracking on shipping is invalid) or one of the participants is non-responsive for a certain amount of time then the contract moves into arbitration.

In arbitration one or more third parties then step in to serve as arbiters/oracles that decide in the favor of one party or the other and commit those decisions to the contract and the contract then derives consensus from those decisions and proceeds to the corresponding state/action of the contract (i.e. refund vs close).

Now your arbiters/oracles/third parties have reputations and you can reason about how trustworthy they are before you enter into the contract.

This means all parties can evaluate their risk tolerance and trust levels before entering the contract/on agreement.

-------

TLDR: Trust is inherent to any system reliant on the physical world. The point of smart contracts, etc is to formally encode those trust assumptions and the procedures of the contract in as trustless of a way as possible and to allow distribution of that trust across parties with most of the coordination overhead being automated/abstracted away.

And importantly smart contracts provide an extremely low friction happy path. In the happy path where all parties are satisfied, it's extremely efficient and responsive. But in every other path, the conflicts, incentives, and resolution procedures are clearly defined for all parties involved.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#548

Post by watwut »

Aardwolf wrote: post #523
cryptonym wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a casino you have - The gamblers spending a lot on the casino - The people coming in for the fun and spending little money - The owners/C-levels - The operational team Someone from the operational team just learned that business relies only on the first group to be successful.

> Someone from the operational team just learned that business relies only on the first group to be successful. Is there any possibility the presence of the people who are there just for fun still encourages/increases the size of the first group?

Imo, yes. There are where gamblers come from. They are also providing plausible deniality to gamblers.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#549

Post by mothballed »

lazide wrote: post #221
hirsin wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What made you feel like a criminal? Buying a home is fairly straightforward and has almost no state verification of any piece of it, at least in the US. Was it something the state enforced, or something being done by the agents of the transaction (ie the mortgage company)?

That is because you’re working in the same financial system. Now try buying some property in South America. Or Eastern Europe. Or Asia. Be prepared for a similar experience OP documents.

It's incredibly common in Argentina to buy a property with a suitcase of cash. In fact I think it's about the only way it's done. Argentina has a tax on bank transfers, plus by various measures the tax on profit of business can be above 100% so no one actually uses the traditional finance system for more than a minority fraction of their use.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#550

Post by troupo »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #467
troupo wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deflationary "currencies" like crypto are significantly worse (why spend when you can HODL). Regular crypto "currencies" will have the exact same effects.

> why spend when you can HODL You touch upon an important point: the entire foundation of our current economic system is built on high velocity of money. You are incentivized to spend rather than hold because without it, there's no mindless conspicuous consumption. A deflationary currency will grind this system to a halt But the question you need to ask is: has all this mindless consumption really done us any real go…

Lol. All you have to do is think about five seconds without going into rants about over consumption.

Let's take Bitcoin. It has a predefined limited supply. That is, it already has an artificial deficit built-in. On top of that, obtaining bitcoin becomes exponentially more expensive over time (until it becomes impossible once all the bitcoin has been "mined"). Now you have to spend many magnitudes more resources to obtain even a tiny fraction of a bitcoin.

So even in the absence of any external world to compare to (e.g. without denominating Bitcoin in USD) why would anyone spend a limited resource they obtained? Especially considering that even today getting even a single bitcoin through traditional mining is nearly impossible except for the filthy rich miners running industrial-scale data centers.

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