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

Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy

concerned.tech

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 149 posts

Re: Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy

#81

Post by notinfuriated »

alaricus wrote: post #72
notinfuriated wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What do you propose to do with those of us who... Not my problem. It's your life and your money. And of course you know that not everyone who has purchased it has deemed it "useful" beyond the use of hodling until you sell to someone else for more money. I've used BTC myself, to buy drugs 10 years ago. Sadly, it seemed more useful then than it is now. Anyway, I don't think anything should be done to dramatically af…

Quoted post unavailable.

You are misconstruing what I wrote, which is that it's not my problem. I don't care what happens to their money, just as I don't think anyone should care what happens to mine. Although, sure, I wish ill on anyone who is using crypto to scam others.

Were you planning on sharing your gains with me? No, right?

Re: Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy

#82

Post by anon2020dot00 »

tatertots1234 wrote: post #79
hnthrow1010 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Crypto has its uses. No, this is wrong. By itself it has no uses besides speculative gambling. The technology fundamentally doesn't enable anything else, if you take that out it's just a really niche and inefficient distributed database. You may be suggesting that some companies have been able to build useful things on top of a blockchain. That might be true but out of all the examples you gave, they're useful in sp…

> By itself it has no uses besides speculative gambling. And the earth is flat, and I refuse to accept any evidence to the contrary. A simple example of crypto being useful is as a timestamped, censorship-resistant and tamper-proof ledger of cryptographically signed messages. That is one use case for it besides gambling, ergo your statement is easily refuted. I presume you will move the goalposts, though.

Don't you get tired of the endless recycling of pro and con crypto arguments? It's the same thing every time ad-infinitum.

Re: Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy

#83

Post by hnthrow1010 »

tatertots1234 wrote: post #79
hnthrow1010 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Crypto has its uses. No, this is wrong. By itself it has no uses besides speculative gambling. The technology fundamentally doesn't enable anything else, if you take that out it's just a really niche and inefficient distributed database. You may be suggesting that some companies have been able to build useful things on top of a blockchain. That might be true but out of all the examples you gave, they're useful in sp…

> By itself it has no uses besides speculative gambling. And the earth is flat, and I refuse to accept any evidence to the contrary. A simple example of crypto being useful is as a timestamped, censorship-resistant and tamper-proof ledger of cryptographically signed messages. That is one use case for it besides gambling, ergo your statement is easily refuted. I presume you will move the goalposts, though.

Well first of all, cryptocurrency isn't "censorship-resistant" any more than any other encrypted distributed system, so you can take that phrase out. Take a look at Tor or Freenet to see how this is done without the ponzi tokens.

Second of all, you can easily build a timestamped and tamper-proof ledger without making people pay to access it using speculative tokens. The aspect of trying to assign money value to these tokens is the problem, not the tamper-proof part. Conflating all these concepts together under the roof of "blockchain" is one of the many sins of web3 companies, but it's not true. Another sin is this constant attempt by people to "refute" critics. You don't need to do that, the fact that it happens so often should tip you off that the technology is not the focus of the discussion here. If you ever find yourself getting hostile about this, you're falling for the trap that the marketers are setting.

Re: Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy

#84

Post by tatertots1234 »

anon2020dot00 wrote: post #82
tatertots1234 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> By itself it has no uses besides speculative gambling. And the earth is flat, and I refuse to accept any evidence to the contrary. A simple example of crypto being useful is as a timestamped, censorship-resistant and tamper-proof ledger of cryptographically signed messages. That is one use case for it besides gambling, ergo your statement is easily refuted. I presume you will move the goalposts, though.

Don't you get tired of the endless recycling of pro and con crypto arguments? It's the same thing every time ad-infinitum.

Yep, every time crypto is on the front page you have nocoiners and web3 pumpers making the same ridiculous blanket statements, and then some people in between trying to discern the reality of the situation.

Re: Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy

#85

Post by maccard »

tatertots1234 wrote: post #79
hnthrow1010 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Crypto has its uses. No, this is wrong. By itself it has no uses besides speculative gambling. The technology fundamentally doesn't enable anything else, if you take that out it's just a really niche and inefficient distributed database. You may be suggesting that some companies have been able to build useful things on top of a blockchain. That might be true but out of all the examples you gave, they're useful in sp…

> By itself it has no uses besides speculative gambling. And the earth is flat, and I refuse to accept any evidence to the contrary. A simple example of crypto being useful is as a timestamped, censorship-resistant and tamper-proof ledger of cryptographically signed messages. That is one use case for it besides gambling, ergo your statement is easily refuted. I presume you will move the goalposts, though.

That's not a use of crypto, that's what it does. What is a use for that? I'm with OP on this, I've yet to see a use for it that isn't speculative gambling.

Re: Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy

#86

Post by politician »

TimPC wrote: post #39
politician wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am allowed to be disappointed in his advocacy of a position that undermines his life’s work. That his major accomplishments are cryptographic in nature is precisely why I called him out specifically, and not some random hack. Don, sometimes people can find themselves advocating for policies that accidentally undermine their long held positions in other areas. Without the man coming on HN and explaining his apparent…

It’s only your weird interpretation of what he’s saying that undermines this though. He’s saying systems where you could lose your life savings to a forgotten password are unsafe. This is clearly true. He hasn’t proposed a specific solution but I think it’s far more likely he believes in “use other systems” than inserting a back door into the system he’s identified as fatally flawed.

Why is this a weird interpretation?

1) Bruce says systems that result in catastrophic loss from loss of a password are unsafe. 2) Reading at face value, Bruce's idea of a safe system is one where your passwords are recoverable. 3) Bruce knows that wallets are secured by asymmetric cryptography, not "passwords". Therefore, he must be simplifying for a general audience. 4) Reconciling the previous two points results in an argument for mandatory private key escrow.

It does not make sense that Bruce would advocate for mandatory key escrow, and yet, that is the logical endpoint of the argument he made in his tweet for supporting this letter.

Re: Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy

#87

Post by tatertots1234 »

hnthrow1010 wrote: post #83
tatertots1234 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> By itself it has no uses besides speculative gambling. And the earth is flat, and I refuse to accept any evidence to the contrary. A simple example of crypto being useful is as a timestamped, censorship-resistant and tamper-proof ledger of cryptographically signed messages. That is one use case for it besides gambling, ergo your statement is easily refuted. I presume you will move the goalposts, though.

Well first of all, cryptocurrency isn't "censorship-resistant" any more than any other encrypted distributed system, so you can take that phrase out. Take a look at Tor or Freenet to see how this is done without the ponzi tokens. Second of all, you can easily build a timestamped and tamper-proof ledger without making people pay to access it using speculative tokens. The aspect of trying to assign money value to these…

re: censorship, prove to us how you would go about censoring an Ethereum transaction please?

re: timestamp, prove to us how easy it is to build a distributed and tamper-proof append-only ledger without a BFT consensus mechanism?

The technology is absolutely the focus of this discussion here.

Re: Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy

#88

Post by hnthrow1010 »

tatertots1234 wrote: post #84
anon2020dot00 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't you get tired of the endless recycling of pro and con crypto arguments? It's the same thing every time ad-infinitum.

Yep, every time crypto is on the front page you have nocoiners and web3 pumpers making the same ridiculous blanket statements, and then some people in between trying to discern the reality of the situation.

The reality of the situation is that blockchains are a mostly useless and inefficient datastructure that by and large don't solve any real problems. I find it insulting that I can't say this without someone labeling me a "nocoiner." Yes you can make money with them, that isn't the point. Sometimes an algorithm can just be bad. If you can't look at an algorithm objectively, maybe consider that you're not trying to discern the reality of the situation?

Re: Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy

#89

Post by hnthrow1010 »

tatertots1234 wrote: post #87
hnthrow1010 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well first of all, cryptocurrency isn't "censorship-resistant" any more than any other encrypted distributed system, so you can take that phrase out. Take a look at Tor or Freenet to see how this is done without the ponzi tokens. Second of all, you can easily build a timestamped and tamper-proof ledger without making people pay to access it using speculative tokens. The aspect of trying to assign money value to these…

re: censorship, prove to us how you would go about censoring an Ethereum transaction please? re: timestamp, prove to us how easy it is to build a distributed and tamper-proof append-only ledger without a BFT consensus mechanism? The technology is absolutely the focus of this discussion here.

>censorship, prove to us how you would go about censoring an Ethereum transaction please?

Very simple, throw the wallet holder in jail. I don't know why you're asking this question, you should be able to answer the same question about Tor or Freenet and extrapolate from there.

>re: timestamp, prove to us how easy it is to build a distributed and tamper-proof append-only ledger without a BFT consensus mechanism?

I also don't know why you're asking this question or what it has to do with cryptocurrency or what I said at all. There are BFT consensus mechanisms that don't require the use of speculative tokens. BFT algorithms are by and large, good and useful; the problem comes in when people try to solve this by handing out tokens and convincing people to use them as money. In that way web3 is actually very intellectually lazy to me, the only proposed solutions it appears that most of them have for this is to simply mint more and more tokens.

Re: Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy

#90

Post by Ar-Curunir »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #61
tatertots1234 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This line is drawn by society. At one point we did not see the need for E2EE or peer-to-peer file sharing, and now some of us do. At one point we did not see the need for privacy preserving digital currencies and peer-to-peer transactional systems, and now some of us do.

> we did not see the need for privacy preserving digital currencies and peer-to-peer transactional systems, and now some of us do Fair enough. I think it's time for those who do to make their case. We've run the experiment. The downsides are documented and tangible. There should be a way to thread the needle whereby the downsides can be limited without strangling all of the upside.

The vast, vast majority of money laundering and illicit financial activity happens within the confines of the traditional banking system. Why don’t we start with regulating that properly first?
Post reply on HN