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And this right here is why the very basic principle of a cryptocurrency is a terrible idea. You don't want decentralized anonymous immutable transactions for y

by brazzy 7y ago

And this right here is why the very basic principle of a cryptocurrency is a terrible idea. You don't want decentralized anonymous immutable transactions for your money. You really, really don't.

bilekas 7y ago
> Don't want Thats not really an argument to make. Maybe you can say you "don't need" and make some arguments for that, but telling people what they don't want.. Doesn't seem helpful . Also > very basic principle of a cryptocurrency The BlockChain is a very good principle. But again I don't think you're sure the difference.
- jmull 7y ago
  That idiom isn’t really about telling people what they want or don’t want. It means literally something like “it is not in your self-interest”.
- brazzy 7y ago
  > Thats not really an argument to make. Maybe you can say you "don't need" and make some arguments for that, but telling people what they don't want.. Doesn't seem helpful. I stand by my statement. People certainly think they want those things, but they're wrong. Because they want them only until something like this happens and their money is gone because of an error someone else made. Then they suddenly want a way to get back their money a whole lot more, but it's impossible because of exactly those things they thought they wanted. > The BlockChain is a very good principle. It's a good principle for getting distributed, (possibly anonymous) immutable transactions. It's an absolutely terrible idea to apply that to money. I don't think anyone has yet found a practical application it's better suited for than all the alternatives. > But again I don't think you're sure the difference. I'm sure I understand the difference better than you.
Glosster 7y ago
Do you have any argument that makes sense?
- brazzy 7y ago
  If you need it spelled out: cryptocurrencies suck because you can lose all your money through no fault of your own with no way to get it back. And that is the result of exactly those properties that are unique to cryptocurrencies.
  - rafaelvasco 7y ago
    The no way to get it back is the critical part that scares me.
ajconway 7y ago
Cryptocurrency could become “electronic cash” (most of the time it kind of acts like one). Do we want electronic money that retain some of the features of cash?
- brazzy 7y ago
  That would mean that everyone has the understanding that you never keep large amounts of funds in this form because it's inherently dangerous to do so. But a) that's very much not how people treat cryptocurrencies now, and b) I don't see how you could replicate some other features of cash, namely that you can fairly dependably protect your cash by investing in physical security, and that there is inherently no such thing as a vulnerability that can be exploited at scale.
  - oarsinsync 7y ago
    > namely that you can fairly dependably protect your cash by investing in physical security If you've generated your private keys offline and store them on paper, that paper can be treated the same as cash of the same value, and secured in a similar mechanism > there is inherently no such thing as a vulnerability that can be exploited at scale Counterfeiting has been a problem for cash holders for a long time. It's definitely a more severe vulnerability for crypto holders tho.
  - mopsi 7y ago
    > there is inherently no such thing as a vulnerability that can be exploited at scale. There are, many. In the past 30 years, most European countries have gone through at least one monetary reform that made previously issued banknotes obsolete. The first wave was USSR's and its satellites' collapse in 1990s (with very unfavorable exchange rates to new currencies), and the second wave was the adoption of Euro in 2000s and 2010s. Germany's central bank converts the obsolete Deutsche Mark to Euro to this day, France stopped supporting the French franc in 2012. Full list: https://www.ecb.europa.eu/euro/exchange/html/index.en.html https://www.ecb.europa.eu/euro/exchange/html/index.en.html So if your elderly relatives overreacted and hid a stash of francs on the day planes hit WTC towers, and you discover it now, the money is worthless.
DennisP 7y ago
If you have programmability and an immutable base layer, you can build whatever mutability you want on top. The reverse doesn't work; if you don't have base-layer immutability, then there's no way to add any sort of immutability at all.
- brazzy 7y ago
  I deliberately wrote "decentralized anonymous immutable", not just "immutable". It's the combination of those features (which happens to be the selling point of cryptocurrencies) that is problematic. Because if transactions are not anoymous, you can (at least in principle) track down a thief and make them give back the money. And it they're not decentralized, the central authority can be made to add a reversing transaction.
  - DennisP 7y ago
    Yes, I include all three of those. On top of a blockchain like that, a smart contract can implement a token which enables a central authority able to reverse transactions or authorize users, if that's what we really want. We can do that and see exactly what capabilities the authority has, just by looking at the code. But there's no way to implement anything decentralized, anonymous, and immutable on top of a base layer which is not those things.
    - brazzy 7y ago
      > On top of a blockchain like that, a smart contract can implement a token which enables a central authority able to reverse transactions or authorize users, if that's what we really want. We can do that and see exactly what capabilities the authority has, just by looking at the code. ...and when that code has a bug, we're fucked. And until then we've spent a ridiculous amount of effort to get what we already have.
      - DennisP 7y ago
        Not necessarily fucked. If you want the authority to be able to handle that scenario, then you can give it the power to swap out the contract code. Some smart contracts on Ethereum do exactly that. But to the extent you want immutability, you can have it this way.

by brazzy 7y ago

And this right here is why the very basic principle of a cryptocurrency is a terrible idea. You don't want decentralized anonymous immutable transactions for your money. You really, really don't.

bilekas 7y ago

> Don't want Thats not really an argument to make. Maybe you can say you "don't need" and make some arguments for that, but telling people what they don't want.. Doesn't seem helpful . Also > very basic principle of a cryptocurrency The BlockChain is a very good principle. But again I don't think you're sure the difference.

jmull 7y ago
That idiom isn’t really about telling people what they want or don’t want. It means literally something like “it is not in your self-interest”.
brazzy 7y ago
> Thats not really an argument to make. Maybe you can say you "don't need" and make some arguments for that, but telling people what they don't want.. Doesn't seem helpful. I stand by my statement. People certainly think they want those things, but they're wrong. Because they want them only until something like this happens and their money is gone because of an error someone else made. Then they suddenly want a way to get back their money a whole lot more, but it's impossible because of exactly those things they thought they wanted. > The BlockChain is a very good principle. It's a good principle for getting distributed, (possibly anonymous) immutable transactions. It's an absolutely terrible idea to apply that to money. I don't think anyone has yet found a practical application it's better suited for than all the alternatives. > But again I don't think you're sure the difference. I'm sure I understand the difference better than you.

Glosster 7y ago

Do you have any argument that makes sense?

brazzy 7y ago
If you need it spelled out: cryptocurrencies suck because you can lose all your money through no fault of your own with no way to get it back. And that is the result of exactly those properties that are unique to cryptocurrencies.
- rafaelvasco 7y ago
  The no way to get it back is the critical part that scares me.

ajconway 7y ago

Cryptocurrency could become “electronic cash” (most of the time it kind of acts like one). Do we want electronic money that retain some of the features of cash?

brazzy 7y ago
That would mean that everyone has the understanding that you never keep large amounts of funds in this form because it's inherently dangerous to do so. But a) that's very much not how people treat cryptocurrencies now, and b) I don't see how you could replicate some other features of cash, namely that you can fairly dependably protect your cash by investing in physical security, and that there is inherently no such thing as a vulnerability that can be exploited at scale.
- oarsinsync 7y ago
  > namely that you can fairly dependably protect your cash by investing in physical security If you've generated your private keys offline and store them on paper, that paper can be treated the same as cash of the same value, and secured in a similar mechanism > there is inherently no such thing as a vulnerability that can be exploited at scale Counterfeiting has been a problem for cash holders for a long time. It's definitely a more severe vulnerability for crypto holders tho.
- mopsi 7y ago
  > there is inherently no such thing as a vulnerability that can be exploited at scale. There are, many. In the past 30 years, most European countries have gone through at least one monetary reform that made previously issued banknotes obsolete. The first wave was USSR's and its satellites' collapse in 1990s (with very unfavorable exchange rates to new currencies), and the second wave was the adoption of Euro in 2000s and 2010s. Germany's central bank converts the obsolete Deutsche Mark to Euro to this day, France stopped supporting the French franc in 2012. Full list: https://www.ecb.europa.eu/euro/exchange/html/index.en.html https://www.ecb.europa.eu/euro/exchange/html/index.en.html So if your elderly relatives overreacted and hid a stash of francs on the day planes hit WTC towers, and you discover it now, the money is worthless.

DennisP 7y ago

If you have programmability and an immutable base layer, you can build whatever mutability you want on top. The reverse doesn't work; if you don't have base-layer immutability, then there's no way to add any sort of immutability at all.

brazzy 7y ago
I deliberately wrote "decentralized anonymous immutable", not just "immutable". It's the combination of those features (which happens to be the selling point of cryptocurrencies) that is problematic. Because if transactions are not anoymous, you can (at least in principle) track down a thief and make them give back the money. And it they're not decentralized, the central authority can be made to add a reversing transaction.
- DennisP 7y ago
  Yes, I include all three of those. On top of a blockchain like that, a smart contract can implement a token which enables a central authority able to reverse transactions or authorize users, if that's what we really want. We can do that and see exactly what capabilities the authority has, just by looking at the code. But there's no way to implement anything decentralized, anonymous, and immutable on top of a base layer which is not those things.
  - brazzy 7y ago
    > On top of a blockchain like that, a smart contract can implement a token which enables a central authority able to reverse transactions or authorize users, if that's what we really want. We can do that and see exactly what capabilities the authority has, just by looking at the code. ...and when that code has a bug, we're fucked. And until then we've spent a ridiculous amount of effort to get what we already have.
    - DennisP 7y ago
      Not necessarily fucked. If you want the authority to be able to handle that scenario, then you can give it the power to swap out the contract code. Some smart contracts on Ethereum do exactly that. But to the extent you want immutability, you can have it this way.