4 ms·

> But in practice, the supernodes can freeze your money. What? What part of "there's no counterparty-risk in layer2" didn't you understand? The only thing the

by knocte 9y ago

> But in practice, the supernodes can freeze your money. What? What part of "there's no counterparty-risk in layer2" didn't you understand? The only thing they could do is become uncooperative, and the worst thing that this could cause is that you need to wait for your payment-channel to expire to claim your locked deposit, but you would eventually get your money back, and then decide not use that payment hub anymore, and use one that doesn't employ censorship to you.

EGreg 9y ago
The part where it's not true lol. Take bitcoin. Is it actually decentralized? You need someone to record your transaction on the blockchain. There are, in practice, like 5 gatekeepers - the minkng pools. You are lucky that they currently accept your transaction, but you already see they jacked up the fees. The fees will only get larger as there is more transaction volume and as the # of bitcoins awarded to miners goes down. There you go. You are once again back to paying the miners to be your trusted financial intermediaries. It's just called "miners" instead of "banks" but the database is nearly centrally controlled by a group of five mining pools who have most of the hash rate. Arms races always lead to centralization! PS: sure you are protected in terms of current ownership, which is valuable, but at any time your account can be frozen.
- knocte 9y ago
  > The fees will only get larger as there is more transaction Which means, every opportunity to try to censor someone will make them not be able to get the fees from that act of censorship. Are you really bringing up a conspirancy in which 5 big entities such as the main mining pools would conspire against some certain bitcoin address? (Remember: in an HD wallet you control many addresses, not one, so it would be really difficult that they actually can identify all addresses of the certain person/entity they want to censor; let alone get together and conspire against that person at the same time.) > PS: sure you are protected in terms of current ownership, which is valuable, but at any time your account can be frozen. If you keep saying a lie a thousand times, it will not become truth.
  - EGreg 9y ago
    Yes I am really bringing it up. You think this is the first time cartels have figured out they can raise fees to participate in a network? Look at the Chinese government able to shut down exchanges to prevent people from exchanging bitcoin for yuan. Look at ICE shutting down websites via a simple takedown note to a domain registrar or an ISP. Many governments are concerned about money laundering via Bitcoin, or North Korea's stash etc. Do you really think five mining pools can't be easy targets for freezing someone's account? Come on. Now, as far as diversifying your holdings into many accounts and currencies -- this is, and has ever been -- the way to try and escape the State seizing / freezing all your assets. Nothing new under the sun. Just because you call it a lie and downvote me doesn't make it so. Use substantive argument and tell me why the five mining pools CAN'T freeze someone's account, rather than just calling it a lie. Having many anonymous accounts is a different matter -- and it's not easy to keep many anonymous identities totally separate btw. You know, I really do think permissionless currencies are possible. A database is permissionless to the extent that at least ONE entity authorized to enter your transaction will do it, in a reasonable amount of time. If there are many independent such entities (call them miners, banks, whatever) then the chance that one will "defect" and let you pay someone is higher. It's just that Proof of Work is a terrible way to make that happen sustainably because, as I said, arms races always lead to centralization. (In fact that's how states and empires formed in the first place!) And since Bitcoin had Proof of Work, it was inevitable that it would come to be controlled by some mining pools in an area where energy is cheap. And I also told you that while you as an individual may not be interesting to China, the BANKS do not want to tie up billions of dollars in a medium where it could be frozen by a few foreign entities. This is not even talking about the volatility etc. As for you as an individual, the ability to deny you access to pay someone (ie add a transaction to the blockchain) is represented by the rising fees. It's not 0 to Frozen in one step, it's what an intermediate step looks like organically. They can make the fees really high so as to make small transactions infeasible. Now, you want to be really permissionless? Use credit-money, like Ripple or Trustlines.network . There is no double-spend problem and no need for third parties to approve any transactions between two people. However, credit can only take you so far. Large payments will require a ledger of some kind. Many good protocols exist now that are far more permissionless than bitcoin. Why is bitcoin the best? It just has the most money invested in it for now (market cap). That's like saying MySpace is the best because it's the first.
- ChemicalWarfare 9y ago
  Not sure why he's getting downvoted. for a "decentralized" currency bitcoin is quite centralized and is not that hard to control "IRL" so to speak. We're talking like 10 subpoenas/cease and desist orders to bring the whole thing down. Or one executive order to block a couple of ports on the great firewall of China (I'm oversimplifying but not by much actually).
  - rothbardrand 9y ago
    You're wrong.
    - ChemicalWarfare 9y ago
      ok, so 4 pools have over 50% of the hashing power, add 4 more pools right under them and you're at >70%. (https://blockchain.info/pools https://blockchain.info/pools). if that's not centralized I don't know what is. the only argument I can think of here is that BTC isn't currently used for "important"/"mission critical" stuff, tx volumes are negligible compared to fiat methods of payment and ppl who use it are mostly crypto enthusiasts, so if hypothetically these pools go offline and it takes forever for their txs to be processed these users would be ok with that. Along the lines of what happened couple of years ago during the DDOS attack.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
hndamien 9y ago
Something, something, time value of money.

by knocte 9y ago

EGreg 9y ago

The part where it's not true lol. Take bitcoin. Is it actually decentralized? You need someone to record your transaction on the blockchain. There are, in practice, like 5 gatekeepers - the minkng pools. You are lucky that they currently accept your transaction, but you already see they jacked up the fees. The fees will only get larger as there is more transaction volume and as the # of bitcoins awarded to miners goes down. There you go. You are once again back to paying the miners to be your trusted financial intermediaries. It's just called "miners" instead of "banks" but the database is nearly centrally controlled by a group of five mining pools who have most of the hash rate. Arms races always lead to centralization! PS: sure you are protected in terms of current ownership, which is valuable, but at any time your account can be frozen.

knocte 9y ago
> The fees will only get larger as there is more transaction Which means, every opportunity to try to censor someone will make them not be able to get the fees from that act of censorship. Are you really bringing up a conspirancy in which 5 big entities such as the main mining pools would conspire against some certain bitcoin address? (Remember: in an HD wallet you control many addresses, not one, so it would be really difficult that they actually can identify all addresses of the certain person/entity they want to censor; let alone get together and conspire against that person at the same time.) > PS: sure you are protected in terms of current ownership, which is valuable, but at any time your account can be frozen. If you keep saying a lie a thousand times, it will not become truth.
- EGreg 9y ago
  Yes I am really bringing it up. You think this is the first time cartels have figured out they can raise fees to participate in a network? Look at the Chinese government able to shut down exchanges to prevent people from exchanging bitcoin for yuan. Look at ICE shutting down websites via a simple takedown note to a domain registrar or an ISP. Many governments are concerned about money laundering via Bitcoin, or North Korea's stash etc. Do you really think five mining pools can't be easy targets for freezing someone's account? Come on. Now, as far as diversifying your holdings into many accounts and currencies -- this is, and has ever been -- the way to try and escape the State seizing / freezing all your assets. Nothing new under the sun. Just because you call it a lie and downvote me doesn't make it so. Use substantive argument and tell me why the five mining pools CAN'T freeze someone's account, rather than just calling it a lie. Having many anonymous accounts is a different matter -- and it's not easy to keep many anonymous identities totally separate btw. You know, I really do think permissionless currencies are possible. A database is permissionless to the extent that at least ONE entity authorized to enter your transaction will do it, in a reasonable amount of time. If there are many independent such entities (call them miners, banks, whatever) then the chance that one will "defect" and let you pay someone is higher. It's just that Proof of Work is a terrible way to make that happen sustainably because, as I said, arms races always lead to centralization. (In fact that's how states and empires formed in the first place!) And since Bitcoin had Proof of Work, it was inevitable that it would come to be controlled by some mining pools in an area where energy is cheap. And I also told you that while you as an individual may not be interesting to China, the BANKS do not want to tie up billions of dollars in a medium where it could be frozen by a few foreign entities. This is not even talking about the volatility etc. As for you as an individual, the ability to deny you access to pay someone (ie add a transaction to the blockchain) is represented by the rising fees. It's not 0 to Frozen in one step, it's what an intermediate step looks like organically. They can make the fees really high so as to make small transactions infeasible. Now, you want to be really permissionless? Use credit-money, like Ripple or Trustlines.network . There is no double-spend problem and no need for third parties to approve any transactions between two people. However, credit can only take you so far. Large payments will require a ledger of some kind. Many good protocols exist now that are far more permissionless than bitcoin. Why is bitcoin the best? It just has the most money invested in it for now (market cap). That's like saying MySpace is the best because it's the first.
ChemicalWarfare 9y ago
Not sure why he's getting downvoted. for a "decentralized" currency bitcoin is quite centralized and is not that hard to control "IRL" so to speak. We're talking like 10 subpoenas/cease and desist orders to bring the whole thing down. Or one executive order to block a couple of ports on the great firewall of China (I'm oversimplifying but not by much actually).
- rothbardrand 9y ago
  You're wrong.
  - ChemicalWarfare 9y ago
    ok, so 4 pools have over 50% of the hashing power, add 4 more pools right under them and you're at >70%. (https://blockchain.info/pools https://blockchain.info/pools). if that's not centralized I don't know what is. the only argument I can think of here is that BTC isn't currently used for "important"/"mission critical" stuff, tx volumes are negligible compared to fiat methods of payment and ppl who use it are mostly crypto enthusiasts, so if hypothetically these pools go offline and it takes forever for their txs to be processed these users would be ok with that. Along the lines of what happened couple of years ago during the DDOS attack.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

hndamien 9y ago

Something, something, time value of money.