8 ms·

if this was a bank, he wouldve gotten it all back. decentralize for the sake of it is foolish.

by ziont 8y ago

onetimemanytime 8y ago
For Banks press 1. For Not-Banks press number 2 or stay on the line. The entire point of Bitcoin is decentralization, the rest is growing pains and price of doing business.
trophycase 8y ago
Ok? That's the trade off. Some people understand that having freedom has consequences.
xpaulbettsx 8y ago
It's bananas that people are downmodding you on this point. A financial system or security / commodity that literally has no recourse in the face of crime or even simple clerical error, is an unusable financial system. Can you imagine if everyone who had a credit card stolen was just liable for anything bought?
- Klathmon 8y ago
  And a financial system that allows some group somewhere to decide if i'm allowed to buy (or sell!) some things, can lock my funds at any time for many reasons, and can track and sell information about what and where I bought things to any number of various 3rd parties is also similarly "unusable" for some. It's a tradeoff like anything else. For some people, the risk is worth the benefit. For others it's not. Still more find the risk worth the benefits for a subset of their money, and not for the rest. All of these "financial systems" can happily coexist, and none of them are completely broken, they just prioritize different things and make different tradeoffs. Also, bitcoin doesn't require being a lawless land where everyone can do anything all the time. It's like cash, but electronic. If a thief breaks into your house and steals $10,000 in cash, will the police give you $10,000? If they find the guy and he still has it, sure! But what if he burned it? or spent it? now you are fucked. It's the same with bitcoin. if they catch the person who did this, the courts can force him to return the money with threat of lots of jail time and more. If he doesn't have it, then the users that had it stolen are fucked.
  - ziont 8y ago
    you are comparing apples to oranges.
- wan23 8y ago
  Cash has the same properties and people have been using it for millennia.
  - satsuma 8y ago
    cash is a physical entity, though -- i'm not sure there's a parallel to be drawn there
  - xpaulbettsx 8y ago
    I wouldn't advocate going to a 100% cash-only system either in 2018, and neither would any other reasonable individual
- ziont 8y ago
  lots of HN'ers bought into the FOMO and now they are caught holding bags a future which has no real use cases.
46456hfgfg 8y ago
Yes, and we would all pay for this persons mistakes through increased insurance premiums. What if I don't want to have to pay for someone elses mistakes? What if there was a world in which one had to take responsibility for their money? No do overs. This is cryptocurrency.
- giornogiovanna 8y ago
  Okay, but you realize that most people want insurance, right? In this case, it wasn't even the guy's fault that Electrum displayed the hacker's message as something official. Do you really want a society where some other person's stupid mistakes can destroy your life?
  - wallacoloo 8y ago
    > most people I’m pretty sure GP isn’t trying to say that everyone should use Bitcoin. The thing that gets annoying is that there is a crowd that campaigns this, and then other people (particularly in this comment section) fight back saying nobody should use Bitcoin. The obvious fact which I feel is somehow being overlooked here is that different people have different needs and there is no one-size-fits-all solution to banking today.
    - Nursie 8y ago
      And those people will be perfectly happy until it affects them. As a society, we tend to protect people from themselves because the other option is to let them die on the streets when they lose it all. Making people have insurance and using banks and payment systems that have built-in protection, is far cheaper than providing welfare for those that would otherwise be scammed out of every penny, irreversibly. You can be a self-serving ubermensch the same day you opt out of all social help.
      - feanaro 8y ago
        Opting out of all social help usually doesn't exist as an option at all.
lawn 8y ago
Not when it's the bank or government who takes your money.
- spookthesunset 8y ago
  > Not when it's the bank or government who takes your money. With Ethereum it was the core developers / top of the pyramid who stole wealth from the the DAO "hacker" who cleverly found a loophole in the "Code Is Law" contract everybody agreed to and used it to their advantage. The Ethereum devs, coupled with mob rule, clawed back all the transactions and literally stole the funds back. I'd rather have due process provided by a government than mob rule.

if this was a bank, he wouldve gotten it all back. decentralize for the sake of it is foolish.

by ziont 8y ago

if this was a bank, he wouldve gotten it all back. decentralize for the sake of it is foolish.

For Banks press 1. For Not-Banks press number 2 or stay on the line. The entire point of Bitcoin is decentralization, the rest is growing pains and price of doing business.

trophycase 8y ago

Ok? That's the trade off. Some people understand that having freedom has consequences.

xpaulbettsx 8y ago

It's bananas that people are downmodding you on this point. A financial system or security / commodity that literally has no recourse in the face of crime or even simple clerical error, is an unusable financial system. Can you imagine if everyone who had a credit card stolen was just liable for anything bought?

Klathmon 8y ago
And a financial system that allows some group somewhere to decide if i'm allowed to buy (or sell!) some things, can lock my funds at any time for many reasons, and can track and sell information about what and where I bought things to any number of various 3rd parties is also similarly "unusable" for some. It's a tradeoff like anything else. For some people, the risk is worth the benefit. For others it's not. Still more find the risk worth the benefits for a subset of their money, and not for the rest. All of these "financial systems" can happily coexist, and none of them are completely broken, they just prioritize different things and make different tradeoffs. Also, bitcoin doesn't require being a lawless land where everyone can do anything all the time. It's like cash, but electronic. If a thief breaks into your house and steals $10,000 in cash, will the police give you $10,000? If they find the guy and he still has it, sure! But what if he burned it? or spent it? now you are fucked. It's the same with bitcoin. if they catch the person who did this, the courts can force him to return the money with threat of lots of jail time and more. If he doesn't have it, then the users that had it stolen are fucked.
- ziont 8y ago
  you are comparing apples to oranges.
wan23 8y ago
Cash has the same properties and people have been using it for millennia.
- satsuma 8y ago
  cash is a physical entity, though -- i'm not sure there's a parallel to be drawn there
- xpaulbettsx 8y ago
  I wouldn't advocate going to a 100% cash-only system either in 2018, and neither would any other reasonable individual
ziont 8y ago
lots of HN'ers bought into the FOMO and now they are caught holding bags a future which has no real use cases.

46456hfgfg 8y ago

Yes, and we would all pay for this persons mistakes through increased insurance premiums. What if I don't want to have to pay for someone elses mistakes? What if there was a world in which one had to take responsibility for their money? No do overs. This is cryptocurrency.

giornogiovanna 8y ago
Okay, but you realize that most people want insurance, right? In this case, it wasn't even the guy's fault that Electrum displayed the hacker's message as something official. Do you really want a society where some other person's stupid mistakes can destroy your life?
- wallacoloo 8y ago
  > most people I’m pretty sure GP isn’t trying to say that everyone should use Bitcoin. The thing that gets annoying is that there is a crowd that campaigns this, and then other people (particularly in this comment section) fight back saying nobody should use Bitcoin. The obvious fact which I feel is somehow being overlooked here is that different people have different needs and there is no one-size-fits-all solution to banking today.
  - Nursie 8y ago
    And those people will be perfectly happy until it affects them. As a society, we tend to protect people from themselves because the other option is to let them die on the streets when they lose it all. Making people have insurance and using banks and payment systems that have built-in protection, is far cheaper than providing welfare for those that would otherwise be scammed out of every penny, irreversibly. You can be a self-serving ubermensch the same day you opt out of all social help.
    - feanaro 8y ago
      Opting out of all social help usually doesn't exist as an option at all.

lawn 8y ago

Not when it's the bank or government who takes your money.

spookthesunset 8y ago
> Not when it's the bank or government who takes your money. With Ethereum it was the core developers / top of the pyramid who stole wealth from the the DAO "hacker" who cleverly found a loophole in the "Code Is Law" contract everybody agreed to and used it to their advantage. The Ethereum devs, coupled with mob rule, clawed back all the transactions and literally stole the funds back. I'd rather have due process provided by a government than mob rule.