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People should take responsibility for their own actions. A lot of ICOs are fluff and high risk. People should be aware of that before they invest. If they don't

People should take responsibility for their own actions. A lot of ICOs are fluff and high risk. People should be aware of that before they invest. If they don't do their research, they shouldn't blame lack of regulation for their laziness. How would regulation fix this? Who would enforce regulations? You would necessarily have to centralize things and hand over power to an authority. This would defeat the purpose of a dencentralized blockchain.

xwvvvvwx 9y ago
I'm very interested to see how far things can be decentralised. I have no real ideas what this would look like but I wonder if there are decentralised approaches to regulation that would work (community decides together who the bad actors are?)
- walterstucco 9y ago
  > I'm very interested to see how far things can be decentralised. a lot in theory very little in practice
  - bjelkeman-again 9y ago
    That isn't a a very popular opinion to hold on HN, as you may have noticed. I think that there is a strong faith in decentralisation and removing rules by many who frequent HN, that have yet to be proven to work well, if the goal is a higher living standard for as many people as possible as well as limiting damaging externalities.
    - joosters 9y ago
      I think there's many outright lies about decentralisation told in crypto circles. So many ethereum contracts turn out to have a central override that one party can control. 'Decentralised' systems often turn out to have a company in charge so that they can make money off of an app. Even blockchains are allegedly decentralised, and yet all it takes is a couple of mining pool owners to collaborate to gain overall control of the thing. Are there any real decentralised systems out there that couldn't be controlled or overruled by a few well-placed individuals working together?
      - CyberDildonics 9y ago
        You are mistaking a goal with claims that the goal has been 100% achieved. > Are there any real decentralised systems out there that couldn't be controlled or overruled by a few well-placed individuals working together? The internet is probably a good example.
        joosters 9y ago
        The internet is a great example. I look forward to any cryptocurrency project getting anywhere close to such a thing. (And calling yourself 'web 3.0', like ethereum, does not count :) As for decentralisation 'goals', the difference is not clear. Decentralisation is the buzzword that the sector loves, but I haven't seen much in the way of progress towards it.
- joosters 9y ago
  I'm very interested to see how far things can be decentralised. The problem is that crypto people seem overly keen on decentralising without thinking whether or not there is an actual advantage in doing so, or whether the advantages might outweigh the disadvantages. There is an unfortunate viewpoint that decentralisation is just always a "good thing".
  - ebcode 9y ago
    > There is an unfortunate viewpoint that decentralisation is just always a "good thing". Well, to put cryptocurrency in its historical context, the design-decision to make the architecture of the internet(/darpanet) decentralized was because of the very real and persistent possibility of global thermonuclear war. If you want your computer networks to stay up after NY, DC and SF have all been wiped off the map, decentralization is fairly key. So I would say yeah, the world has changed, and decentralization is now always a good thing. It's not just "crypto people", it's "people"[0] carrying on in "software"[1] what is already a decades-old trend in computer networking. [0,1] scare quotes because people and software are both scary
erikpukinskis 9y ago
> How would regulation fix this? Two ways I'm aware of: 1) Require documentation ahead of time that will make prosecution harder after the fact. Without documentation scammers can just say "oops, we lost our client database" or "oops, we never recorded a document for that investor". You can still commit fraud while submitting heavy documentation, but it gets harder not to paint yourself into a lie. 2) Firewalls between parts of an ecosystem. Maybe it's problematic for and exchange to trade a security it itself issued. You make that illegal, and then colluding entities need to communicate across corporate boundaries, which is harder to keep hidden. I sort of agree with you that this runs counter to decentralization. But the decentralization community has yet to implement voluntary versions of these things. Where's the crypto SEC that I can opt into which maintains strict reporting and audit requirements tied to the issuer's financial stake? Until we have credible versions of that I don't see how we can say we don't need the SEC.

xwvvvvwx 9y ago

I'm very interested to see how far things can be decentralised. I have no real ideas what this would look like but I wonder if there are decentralised approaches to regulation that would work (community decides together who the bad actors are?)

walterstucco 9y ago
> I'm very interested to see how far things can be decentralised. a lot in theory very little in practice
- bjelkeman-again 9y ago
  That isn't a a very popular opinion to hold on HN, as you may have noticed. I think that there is a strong faith in decentralisation and removing rules by many who frequent HN, that have yet to be proven to work well, if the goal is a higher living standard for as many people as possible as well as limiting damaging externalities.
  - joosters 9y ago
    I think there's many outright lies about decentralisation told in crypto circles. So many ethereum contracts turn out to have a central override that one party can control. 'Decentralised' systems often turn out to have a company in charge so that they can make money off of an app. Even blockchains are allegedly decentralised, and yet all it takes is a couple of mining pool owners to collaborate to gain overall control of the thing. Are there any real decentralised systems out there that couldn't be controlled or overruled by a few well-placed individuals working together?
    - CyberDildonics 9y ago
      You are mistaking a goal with claims that the goal has been 100% achieved. > Are there any real decentralised systems out there that couldn't be controlled or overruled by a few well-placed individuals working together? The internet is probably a good example.
      - joosters 9y ago
        The internet is a great example. I look forward to any cryptocurrency project getting anywhere close to such a thing. (And calling yourself 'web 3.0', like ethereum, does not count :) As for decentralisation 'goals', the difference is not clear. Decentralisation is the buzzword that the sector loves, but I haven't seen much in the way of progress towards it.
joosters 9y ago
I'm very interested to see how far things can be decentralised. The problem is that crypto people seem overly keen on decentralising without thinking whether or not there is an actual advantage in doing so, or whether the advantages might outweigh the disadvantages. There is an unfortunate viewpoint that decentralisation is just always a "good thing".
- ebcode 9y ago
  > There is an unfortunate viewpoint that decentralisation is just always a "good thing". Well, to put cryptocurrency in its historical context, the design-decision to make the architecture of the internet(/darpanet) decentralized was because of the very real and persistent possibility of global thermonuclear war. If you want your computer networks to stay up after NY, DC and SF have all been wiped off the map, decentralization is fairly key. So I would say yeah, the world has changed, and decentralization is now always a good thing. It's not just "crypto people", it's "people"[0] carrying on in "software"[1] what is already a decades-old trend in computer networking. [0,1] scare quotes because people and software are both scary

erikpukinskis 9y ago

> How would regulation fix this? Two ways I'm aware of: 1) Require documentation ahead of time that will make prosecution harder after the fact. Without documentation scammers can just say "oops, we lost our client database" or "oops, we never recorded a document for that investor". You can still commit fraud while submitting heavy documentation, but it gets harder not to paint yourself into a lie. 2) Firewalls between parts of an ecosystem. Maybe it's problematic for and exchange to trade a security it itself issued. You make that illegal, and then colluding entities need to communicate across corporate boundaries, which is harder to keep hidden. I sort of agree with you that this runs counter to decentralization. But the decentralization community has yet to implement voluntary versions of these things. Where's the crypto SEC that I can opt into which maintains strict reporting and audit requirements tied to the issuer's financial stake? Until we have credible versions of that I don't see how we can say we don't need the SEC.