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Kong has the useful property of peer-to-peer validation. Most paper currencies printed in your basement don't. Tokens loaded onto Kong Cash instruments and exc
by paulgerhardt 7y ago
Kong has the useful property of peer-to-peer validation. Most paper currencies printed in your basement don't.
Tokens loaded onto Kong Cash instruments and exchanged ephemerally in person between party A and party B are more anonymous than tokens sent directly from party A to party B electronically which will be recorded for everyone to see forever.
It's programmable money. It's cooler than non-programmable money. We're putting it out there as a toy.
- manigandham 7y agoIf you're handing off physically then just use cash. How is this any better? The exit to real currency will always reveal Kong transactions at some point. Real cash is more anonymous because it's seamlessly transacted everywhere.
- paulgerhardt 7y agoCurrent cash instruments are centralized.
- whb07 7y agoHmmmm and where do you get the machinery to create said Kong bills? Seems more convoluted than connecting a gaming pc to a network (please don’t say bitcoin can’t do that now, you could initially)
- paulgerhardt 7y agoI don't buy the argument that it's "turtles all the way down". Trust begins and ends at the chip level. I think its possible to make an open root of trust chip better than any solution on the market available today. I think the chips available on the market today are good enough for this specific application but not others.
- whb07 7y agoThe point of this I thought is to unify the virtual system with a physical product, in the pretty cash. So it isn’t just the chip now, is it? Otherwise why not just... use a hardware wallet and use bitcoin ? I do agree that people can’t picture or visualize in their mind a “bitcoin”, and so this solves that part. But then you’re left with the, how do people print this tangible pretty currency part.
- paulgerhardt 7y agoThe point is physical cash is really important to a functioning society. Cryptocurrencies are turning out to be really important but lack a physical cash instrument. Kong marries the two. Kong accomplishes that by minimizing trust down to the chip level - as opposed to the firmware or application level - so we can make these things trustlessly and cost effectively. Something like a Trezor is too expensive and dear to be treated like physical cash.
- whb07 7y agoSo kind of like how Samsung and HTC are starting to integrate hardware wallets into the phones? Couldn’t you imagine a world where this starts trending cheaper and cheaper and soon becomes a commodity ?
- arcticbull 7y agoThe difference is a crypto wallet on your Samsung phone when lost or stolen makes you bankrupt where google pay wallets shrug it off.
- torgian 7y agoAnd has the potential of being tracked by said companies and service providers
- arcticbull 7y ago
- manigandham 7y agoFor producing new bills? Why does that matter? What do you think will happen if anyone can create new bills?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- paulgerhardt 7y agoI'm not sure. Feels like opening Pandora's Box. Historically, taking big centralized things (like the Internet) and letting smaller players participate has interesting results. By taking a technology like printing currency, and innovating in the security domain so non-counterfitability is cryptographically guaranteed I would expect a cambrian explosion in cash-like instruments.
- manigandham 7y agoSo this is primarily physically currency that is hard to counterfeit? Cash (in the US) already has billions of R&D in defenses to the point that most people will never see it, and centralization ensures that cash is always accepted. I just don't see why people would switch to something to ensure 100% real bills and lose all the other benefits of cash. How is there going to be a cambrian explosion with an issue that affects almost no one?
- paulgerhardt 7y agoThis is primarily a demonstration of how cash instruments can be decentrally issued. Secondarily, it demonstrates how we can move validation from physical properties of cash instruments (such as fine printing and exotic inks) to cryptographic properties. We believe the latter to be superior and a path to ratchet down the cost overheads that go into securing cash issuance and payment channels.
- ljm 7y agoSo is crypto. The centralisation is in the algorithm that enforces scarcity as you mine more of the currency, slowing down the creation of new coins and the speed of verifying transactions. The only difference is that it isn’t a government or federal reserve doing the centralising. Then a company like Coinbase shows up and uses their resources to dominate the market as the de-facto app change. Centralised again. Crypto is just as abstract as the currency we currently use so only functions as legit currency because people are willing to buy and sell it from one side of the world to the other. Bitcoin for example has a single valuation, despite being decentralised. If you want true decentralisation then you’re looking at the pre-currency barter economy.
- api 7y agoSo I can print my own Kong?
- Grustaf 7y agoSomehow I don’t think people buying stuff with dollar bills mind that dollars are “centralised”. In fact I’d venture that this is exactly why dollar bills are accepted in so many places around the world. Not that Kong isn’t centralised. It’s just that it’s controlled by unknown nobodies, rather than the most powerful entity in the world.
- krick 7y ago> peer-to-peer validation Maybe kind of a valid point, but... I don't know, maybe that varies from place to place a lot, but fake money doesn't feel like a huge problem around here. I mean, unless I am a tax-paying entity with a cashier machine, I don't even really care if a bill is fake or not: it is not fake, if somebody else accepts it. And I'm pretty sure somebody will, if I accepted it after looking at it. It doesn't only concern how bill was actually printed: it happened more than once that I had to worry about a bill because of its condition (tears, dirt, etc.) > more anonymous than tokens sent directly Yeah, as much as dollar bills are. That's why Monero is better than Ethereum, BTW. > It's cooler ... Oh, come on.
- paulgerhardt 7y agoPeer-to-peer validation is the point of bitcoin. That we can extend that concept to cash is the point of Kong.
- bduerst 7y agoThis is either some of the best satire in the world or I still don't get it. Probably the latter.
- Terretta 7y agoDon’t discount the former. Or performance art. Or a test for next season’s plot from Pied Piper or Hooli. Are we not entertained?
- majortennis 7y agothere's no next season the finale was monday
- kickscondor 7y agoLol "it's programmable celery. It's cooler than non-programmable celery."
- rytill 7y agoI mean... would that not be cooler?
- seandougall 7y agoProgrammable means something can have bugs. I prefer my celery bug-free.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- seandougall 7y ago> We're putting it out there as a toy. And that right there is the honesty that the rest of this thread is missing.