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HN community definitely is an echo chamber when it comes to cryptocurrencies and its a shame. My question to my fellow HNers is do we see no merit in a censorsh

HN community definitely is an echo chamber when it comes to cryptocurrencies and its a shame. My question to my fellow HNers is do we see no merit in a censorship resistant framework which builds a trustless execution environment. I dont think any legitimate crypto dev pushes a narrative to move all cloud services to ETH As internet served as a conduit to open and accessible knowledge to the world, crypto has the potential to open value exchange globally without the need for trusted entities. Granted there are fast and established solutions available today for money transfer, however, they all rely on a trusted entity that under the right political pressure will compromise a user and thus is not censorship resistant.

mindfulplay 8y ago
That's not the criticism from HN. The technology itself is perhaps sound. It's the greed, 'high-horse' thinking that is of primary concern...
- randaouser 8y ago
  I agree with the greed, but any and all emerging markets will have opportunist attempt to capitalize on the asymmetry of information available to the average joe. Ask crypto devs (myself included) I welcome regulatory oversight. I also believe in working along side the banking industry to develop appropriate interfaces and adopting KYC/AML process where appropriate.
randaouser 8y ago
Further to this, I question how many persons commenting actually understand the underlying principles of each of the so called blockchain offerings. EOS relies on 11 elected validator nodes who have been shown to try to buy votes ETH is the only platform IMO that truly captures consensus and its move towards proof of stake will improve transaction throughput. All in all, the fact that I can complete a 1k transfer in 5mins for under 10 cents is unheard of in any banking workflow.
- spookthesunset 8y ago
  I would say the people shilling out crypto offerings are the ones who don't understand what their product offers. Almost every single positive feature to bitcoin or ethereum has proven to be bunk. It isn't trustless, it isn't censorship resistant, it gobbles massive amounts of electricy, it can't scale, it isn't anonymous, it isn't a good store of value, it isn't instant, it isn't free, it isn't immutable. Its advocates don't understand finance, business, government, politics, computer science, math, sociology, monetary policy, macro or micro economics, or human psychology. There is nothing left to pick apart. Bitcoin, Ethereum and the all mighty Blockchain are completely useless. The entire space is lead by some of the scummiest scum bags around and from top to bottom the only true motive for the technology is to Get Rich Quick. It is scams on top of scams on top of scams. The whole space is a joke. Except instead of being funny it is busy pissing away small nations worth of energy to enrich a few scummy people who got lucky and bought into the pyramid early.
  - randaouser 8y ago
    I agree with you on the personalities surrounding crypto in the mainstream, they dont do it any favors. However, I disagree that the industry is led by just scumbags; the aforementioned are merely the ones that jump at the opportunity at the spotlight. As we know, sensationalism sells. There are in fact some very reputable persons in the space:Tim Berners Lee, Andreessen Horowitz, Tim Draper to name a few. More so, to get a real feeling of the development community behind eth I say check out https://ethresear.ch/ https://ethresear.ch/. The devs on the project are very dedicated, transparent and post nearly daily updates on progress.
  - spir 8y ago
    I am someone who spends a great deal of my time reading about blockchain and attempting to separate hype from fundamentals. There is a growing body of nuanced evidence that it's not the case that "it is scams on top of scams" and "the whole space is a joke". (This isn't the same thing as saying "the price is going to the moon".) I'm involved with https://augur.net https://augur.net. In a few years time, Augur will be the backbone of a new generation of entertainment, trading, and forecasting products. These products will have lower capital requirements as they effectively outsource the financial bits to Augur. Users of these products have self-sovereign control of their assets (ie. private keys; the emerging phrase for this is "non-custodial") which is a benefit over centralized alternatives. Most products built on Augur will constitute a form of gambling, but unlike gambling on a dice roll, this gambling is more akin to trading stocks, with randomness and strategy. Also, Vitalik Buterin tweeted yesterday on non-financial applications of blockchains https://twitter.com/VitalikButerin/status/1072158957999771648 https://twitter.com/VitalikButerin/status/107215895799977164...
pavlov 8y ago
Most people actually like their money to be handled by a trusted entity. That trust is a feature.
- Klathmon 8y ago
  And some don't like their money being handled by a trusted entity at all, and others don't want it handled by a trusted entity in some cases. None of those people are wrong, they just want different things and luckily they have solutions that can all coexist happily.
  - Daishiman 8y ago
    But it's pretty obvious that the value in that is waay lower than what crypto proponents claim.
    - tfha 8y ago
      That's a pretty empty argument, what makes it obvious that cryptocurrencies are not as valuable as many people believe?
      - Daishiman 8y ago
        The dramatic drop in market value and paltry transaction volumes for starters.
        tfha 8y ago
        That doesn't mean it has poor fundamentals, the internet also had paltry usage in the bbs days, and cryptocurrencies technologically are even earlier than that. A lot of people think 10 years is long enough but the road from arpanet to the www was multiple decades. Just because the hype hit faster doesn't mean we won't get as far as the internet did.
empath75 8y ago
It’s been 10 years. When do we stop taking about potential and start talking about failure.
- fastball 8y ago
  Remind me again when the internet first started? And how long after that did Facebook / Google / Amazon become some of the most valuable companies on earth?
  - spookthesunset 8y ago
    It was obvious the internet had value and potential. It took a while for technology and society to catch up but the use cases were pretty clear. What are the use cases for a data-structure like the blockchain? I can't name a single one.
    - fastball 8y ago
      I can't think of good uses for blockchain technology therefore there aren't any. Yeahhh, pretty sure that's not how it works.
    - davidwparker 8y ago
      Clear to who? Not world renowned economists! P. Krugman 1998, “The growth of the Internet will slow drastically, as the flaw in ‘Metcalfe’s law' becomes apparent: most people have nothing to say to each other! By 2005, it will become clear that the Internet’s impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine’s” I personally say it's too early to tell. And anyone who says yes or not to potential value doesn't actually have a clue.
      - spookthesunset 8y ago
        Give me something. Anything. Surely you can name a single use for The Blockchain. Its had 10 years. Its had enough time.
hudon 8y ago
> do we see no merit in a censorship resistant framework This is a loaded question... Cryptocurrencies are not "censorship resistant". If they were, maybe your complaint about HN's "echo chamber" would be warranted. Here are some censorship examples: 1. BTC: OFAC has listed Bitcoin addresses that you cannot legally send money to. If you do, expect fines/jail/interrogation/etc. 2. ETH: If you exploit a vulnerability in a contract, your transaction will be invalidated. 3. BTC: If the devs decide to abandon the longest chain like they did in 2013, any transaction on the forgotten chain will be effectively erased from history. There are more, but admittedly they require a bit of thinking to realize that they are in fact censorship. Everything is obfuscated when it comes to blockchain, which is why it's managed to fool so many smart people into taking its claims as granted.
- randaouser 8y ago
  1) OFAC can say what they want, no one is technically barred from sending funds to that account (albeit it may not be in the best interest of the party) 2) Just as a logical proposition is written in law and exploited by persons (Check how often tax laws are updated), unaudited smart contracts will pose a risk. The state of auditing is improving daily 3) This is a disingenuous comparison; in 2018 One ASIC has a mining power of approximately 12 tera-hashes per second. For comparison, in 2013, the total hash rate of the Bitcoin network on April 29, 2013, was 79.02 Th/s.
  - hudon 8y ago
    > OFAC can say what they want, no one is technically barred from sending funds to that account Are you saying there is a difference between "censorship" and "technical censorship"? You are demonstrating the obfuscation I called out in my post. Suppressing content is suppressing content. If you believe that Bitcoin will allow you to freely send money to OFAC-sanctioned addresses, please prove it by sending a transaction there and providing us with a verified signature. Until then, my point stands.
    - berberous 8y ago
      There are big differences: how easy is it to censor a transaction, who can censor the transaction, on what basis, how far does the censor's power go, etc. If you rely on VISA/Mastercard, you could be "censored" for any number of arbitrary reasons -- go google the number of legitimate businesses that have had issues using those platforms. With Bitcoin, sure, a government can use its criminal laws to ban certain transactions, but keep in mind that: (1) they need to use valid legal process, (2) the reach of their laws only go so far, etc. Also, the OFAC banned addresses were easily tracked since they re-used addresses. Today, best practices dictate a new address for each transaction. You also have Monero, Zcash and others working on further privacy enhancements, as well as wallets like Wasabi that mix Bitcoin transactions.
schmichael 8y ago
> crypto has the potential to open value exchange globally without the need for trusted entities While the protocols and algorithms may be trustless, there is a huge amount of trust inherent in performing financial transactions between two parties even when using cryptocurrencies: 1a. At least the sender must trust an exchange to purchase crypto 1b. At least the sender must trust mining software and/or hardware to create crypto 2a. You must trust wallet software to hold and transfer crypto 2b. You must trust an exchange to hold and transfer crypto 3. You must trust nodes to forward transactions in a timely manner 4. You must trust miners to include your transaction in a block in a timely manner 5. You must trust the receiver to acknowledge the receipt of the transaction #3 has historically been fairly reliable, but there's no intrinsic reason nodes couldn't collaborate to censor addresses. #4 can at least be accomplished by more or less increasing the fee sent. #5 may be secured through traditional means (law enforcement) if both addresses are provably tied to external entities (eg humans, corps, orgs, etc) and the transaction follows relevant laws and regulations in both parties' jurisdictions. Obviously this introduces a huge amount of trust. #5 isn't a concern for donations which is partially why cryptocurrencies have seen some success at funding terrorist organizations (eg altright and isis). #5 isn't a concern for transactions fully handled by smart contracts, although then you must audit or trust the smart contract code. Also many contracts are mutable by an administrator which may introduce additional trust requirements.
whyte_mackay 8y ago
Early adopters are silent, because they have nothing to prove and are too busy enjoying their wealth. Holders are positive, partly because they have financial motive to do so. Nocoiners are negative, partly because they are kicking themselves for not cashing in on one of the biggest opportunities of the last decade. They like to see crypto fail so they can say: See, I told you so! and feel better about missing out. Then there is the perversion of the cryptopunk community, where it became all about greed and hype, and much less about the technology and vision. I wouldn't mind if the greedy folk dropped crypto and it became more about sticking it to the man (because I already largely cashed out, and kinda feel bad for the environment and taking last year's mom-pops Christmas money). It pays to revisit the very first post on Bitcoin on HN and maybe realize that what HN thinks about crypto is not so relevant as it may seem: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=599852 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=599852 > Well this is an exceptionally cute idea, but there is absolutely no way that anyone is going to have any faith in this currency. - May 2009
- bhaak 8y ago
  > It pays to revisit the very first post on Bitcoin on HN and maybe realize that what HN thinks about crypto is not so relevant as it may seem: HN can be wrong at times. The canonical example is "Show HN, Dropbox". Time will tell if HN was wrong about cryptocurrencies as well. We are still way too early to pass final judgement. The combined market cap of the cryptocurrencies didn't even reach dotcom niveau. Looking at cryptocurrencies I have a feeling like looking at something from the future out of the corner of my eyes but not completely being able to grasp it. There is a gut feeling about a tremendous potential to change the direction of the future but I don't know what exactly. I haven't had that feeling in decades. But I do know that if there is a killer app for cryptocurrencies it is not currency.
asdfoinionio 8y ago
ETH is just an oligarchy. It is run based on the consensus of the biggest miners. They can decide to ignore what the smart contracts say at a whim. This has already happened, which is why ETC exists. It's not magic God-math free of all human imperfections. It's just another government, and not a terribly good one.
Temasik 8y ago
ETH is controlled by vitalik

mindfulplay 8y ago

That's not the criticism from HN. The technology itself is perhaps sound. It's the greed, 'high-horse' thinking that is of primary concern...

randaouser 8y ago
I agree with the greed, but any and all emerging markets will have opportunist attempt to capitalize on the asymmetry of information available to the average joe. Ask crypto devs (myself included) I welcome regulatory oversight. I also believe in working along side the banking industry to develop appropriate interfaces and adopting KYC/AML process where appropriate.

randaouser 8y ago

Further to this, I question how many persons commenting actually understand the underlying principles of each of the so called blockchain offerings. EOS relies on 11 elected validator nodes who have been shown to try to buy votes ETH is the only platform IMO that truly captures consensus and its move towards proof of stake will improve transaction throughput. All in all, the fact that I can complete a 1k transfer in 5mins for under 10 cents is unheard of in any banking workflow.

spookthesunset 8y ago
I would say the people shilling out crypto offerings are the ones who don't understand what their product offers. Almost every single positive feature to bitcoin or ethereum has proven to be bunk. It isn't trustless, it isn't censorship resistant, it gobbles massive amounts of electricy, it can't scale, it isn't anonymous, it isn't a good store of value, it isn't instant, it isn't free, it isn't immutable. Its advocates don't understand finance, business, government, politics, computer science, math, sociology, monetary policy, macro or micro economics, or human psychology. There is nothing left to pick apart. Bitcoin, Ethereum and the all mighty Blockchain are completely useless. The entire space is lead by some of the scummiest scum bags around and from top to bottom the only true motive for the technology is to Get Rich Quick. It is scams on top of scams on top of scams. The whole space is a joke. Except instead of being funny it is busy pissing away small nations worth of energy to enrich a few scummy people who got lucky and bought into the pyramid early.
- randaouser 8y ago
  I agree with you on the personalities surrounding crypto in the mainstream, they dont do it any favors. However, I disagree that the industry is led by just scumbags; the aforementioned are merely the ones that jump at the opportunity at the spotlight. As we know, sensationalism sells. There are in fact some very reputable persons in the space:Tim Berners Lee, Andreessen Horowitz, Tim Draper to name a few. More so, to get a real feeling of the development community behind eth I say check out https://ethresear.ch/ https://ethresear.ch/. The devs on the project are very dedicated, transparent and post nearly daily updates on progress.
- spir 8y ago
  I am someone who spends a great deal of my time reading about blockchain and attempting to separate hype from fundamentals. There is a growing body of nuanced evidence that it's not the case that "it is scams on top of scams" and "the whole space is a joke". (This isn't the same thing as saying "the price is going to the moon".) I'm involved with https://augur.net https://augur.net. In a few years time, Augur will be the backbone of a new generation of entertainment, trading, and forecasting products. These products will have lower capital requirements as they effectively outsource the financial bits to Augur. Users of these products have self-sovereign control of their assets (ie. private keys; the emerging phrase for this is "non-custodial") which is a benefit over centralized alternatives. Most products built on Augur will constitute a form of gambling, but unlike gambling on a dice roll, this gambling is more akin to trading stocks, with randomness and strategy. Also, Vitalik Buterin tweeted yesterday on non-financial applications of blockchains https://twitter.com/VitalikButerin/status/1072158957999771648 https://twitter.com/VitalikButerin/status/107215895799977164...

pavlov 8y ago

Most people actually like their money to be handled by a trusted entity. That trust is a feature.

Klathmon 8y ago
And some don't like their money being handled by a trusted entity at all, and others don't want it handled by a trusted entity in some cases. None of those people are wrong, they just want different things and luckily they have solutions that can all coexist happily.
- Daishiman 8y ago
  But it's pretty obvious that the value in that is waay lower than what crypto proponents claim.
  - tfha 8y ago
    That's a pretty empty argument, what makes it obvious that cryptocurrencies are not as valuable as many people believe?
    - Daishiman 8y ago
      The dramatic drop in market value and paltry transaction volumes for starters.
      - tfha 8y ago
        That doesn't mean it has poor fundamentals, the internet also had paltry usage in the bbs days, and cryptocurrencies technologically are even earlier than that. A lot of people think 10 years is long enough but the road from arpanet to the www was multiple decades. Just because the hype hit faster doesn't mean we won't get as far as the internet did.

empath75 8y ago

It’s been 10 years. When do we stop taking about potential and start talking about failure.

fastball 8y ago
Remind me again when the internet first started? And how long after that did Facebook / Google / Amazon become some of the most valuable companies on earth?
- spookthesunset 8y ago
  It was obvious the internet had value and potential. It took a while for technology and society to catch up but the use cases were pretty clear. What are the use cases for a data-structure like the blockchain? I can't name a single one.
  - fastball 8y ago
    I can't think of good uses for blockchain technology therefore there aren't any. Yeahhh, pretty sure that's not how it works.
  - davidwparker 8y ago
    Clear to who? Not world renowned economists! P. Krugman 1998, “The growth of the Internet will slow drastically, as the flaw in ‘Metcalfe’s law' becomes apparent: most people have nothing to say to each other! By 2005, it will become clear that the Internet’s impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine’s” I personally say it's too early to tell. And anyone who says yes or not to potential value doesn't actually have a clue.
    - spookthesunset 8y ago
      Give me something. Anything. Surely you can name a single use for The Blockchain. Its had 10 years. Its had enough time.

hudon 8y ago

> do we see no merit in a censorship resistant framework This is a loaded question... Cryptocurrencies are not "censorship resistant". If they were, maybe your complaint about HN's "echo chamber" would be warranted. Here are some censorship examples: 1. BTC: OFAC has listed Bitcoin addresses that you cannot legally send money to. If you do, expect fines/jail/interrogation/etc. 2. ETH: If you exploit a vulnerability in a contract, your transaction will be invalidated. 3. BTC: If the devs decide to abandon the longest chain like they did in 2013, any transaction on the forgotten chain will be effectively erased from history. There are more, but admittedly they require a bit of thinking to realize that they are in fact censorship. Everything is obfuscated when it comes to blockchain, which is why it's managed to fool so many smart people into taking its claims as granted.

randaouser 8y ago
1) OFAC can say what they want, no one is technically barred from sending funds to that account (albeit it may not be in the best interest of the party) 2) Just as a logical proposition is written in law and exploited by persons (Check how often tax laws are updated), unaudited smart contracts will pose a risk. The state of auditing is improving daily 3) This is a disingenuous comparison; in 2018 One ASIC has a mining power of approximately 12 tera-hashes per second. For comparison, in 2013, the total hash rate of the Bitcoin network on April 29, 2013, was 79.02 Th/s.
- hudon 8y ago
  > OFAC can say what they want, no one is technically barred from sending funds to that account Are you saying there is a difference between "censorship" and "technical censorship"? You are demonstrating the obfuscation I called out in my post. Suppressing content is suppressing content. If you believe that Bitcoin will allow you to freely send money to OFAC-sanctioned addresses, please prove it by sending a transaction there and providing us with a verified signature. Until then, my point stands.
  - berberous 8y ago
    There are big differences: how easy is it to censor a transaction, who can censor the transaction, on what basis, how far does the censor's power go, etc. If you rely on VISA/Mastercard, you could be "censored" for any number of arbitrary reasons -- go google the number of legitimate businesses that have had issues using those platforms. With Bitcoin, sure, a government can use its criminal laws to ban certain transactions, but keep in mind that: (1) they need to use valid legal process, (2) the reach of their laws only go so far, etc. Also, the OFAC banned addresses were easily tracked since they re-used addresses. Today, best practices dictate a new address for each transaction. You also have Monero, Zcash and others working on further privacy enhancements, as well as wallets like Wasabi that mix Bitcoin transactions.

schmichael 8y ago

> crypto has the potential to open value exchange globally without the need for trusted entities While the protocols and algorithms may be trustless, there is a huge amount of trust inherent in performing financial transactions between two parties even when using cryptocurrencies: 1a. At least the sender must trust an exchange to purchase crypto 1b. At least the sender must trust mining software and/or hardware to create crypto 2a. You must trust wallet software to hold and transfer crypto 2b. You must trust an exchange to hold and transfer crypto 3. You must trust nodes to forward transactions in a timely manner 4. You must trust miners to include your transaction in a block in a timely manner 5. You must trust the receiver to acknowledge the receipt of the transaction #3 has historically been fairly reliable, but there's no intrinsic reason nodes couldn't collaborate to censor addresses. #4 can at least be accomplished by more or less increasing the fee sent. #5 may be secured through traditional means (law enforcement) if both addresses are provably tied to external entities (eg humans, corps, orgs, etc) and the transaction follows relevant laws and regulations in both parties' jurisdictions. Obviously this introduces a huge amount of trust. #5 isn't a concern for donations which is partially why cryptocurrencies have seen some success at funding terrorist organizations (eg altright and isis). #5 isn't a concern for transactions fully handled by smart contracts, although then you must audit or trust the smart contract code. Also many contracts are mutable by an administrator which may introduce additional trust requirements.

whyte_mackay 8y ago

Early adopters are silent, because they have nothing to prove and are too busy enjoying their wealth. Holders are positive, partly because they have financial motive to do so. Nocoiners are negative, partly because they are kicking themselves for not cashing in on one of the biggest opportunities of the last decade. They like to see crypto fail so they can say: See, I told you so! and feel better about missing out. Then there is the perversion of the cryptopunk community, where it became all about greed and hype, and much less about the technology and vision. I wouldn't mind if the greedy folk dropped crypto and it became more about sticking it to the man (because I already largely cashed out, and kinda feel bad for the environment and taking last year's mom-pops Christmas money). It pays to revisit the very first post on Bitcoin on HN and maybe realize that what HN thinks about crypto is not so relevant as it may seem: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=599852 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=599852 > Well this is an exceptionally cute idea, but there is absolutely no way that anyone is going to have any faith in this currency. - May 2009

bhaak 8y ago
> It pays to revisit the very first post on Bitcoin on HN and maybe realize that what HN thinks about crypto is not so relevant as it may seem: HN can be wrong at times. The canonical example is "Show HN, Dropbox". Time will tell if HN was wrong about cryptocurrencies as well. We are still way too early to pass final judgement. The combined market cap of the cryptocurrencies didn't even reach dotcom niveau. Looking at cryptocurrencies I have a feeling like looking at something from the future out of the corner of my eyes but not completely being able to grasp it. There is a gut feeling about a tremendous potential to change the direction of the future but I don't know what exactly. I haven't had that feeling in decades. But I do know that if there is a killer app for cryptocurrencies it is not currency.

asdfoinionio 8y ago

ETH is just an oligarchy. It is run based on the consensus of the biggest miners. They can decide to ignore what the smart contracts say at a whim. This has already happened, which is why ETC exists. It's not magic God-math free of all human imperfections. It's just another government, and not a terribly good one.

Temasik 8y ago

ETH is controlled by vitalik