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Ethereum set to become first blockchain to settle $1T in one year
- pixelpoet 6y agoIMO the only relevant milestone is when it stops doing all this godawful energy burning mining and switches to proof of stake. Then we can all legitimately applaud it.
- chapium 6y agoThis is a fundamental problem with blockchains, and it cannot be understated.
- googthrowaway42 6y agoBlockchains exist for situations in which the participants in a transaction or system as a whole do not trust one another. You will always pay a price for that. Centralized systems are much more efficient but they depend on trust. In the cases where that trust breaks down or shouldn't have been given in the first place, it tends to create problems that are astronomically more costly than if a trustless system was used in the first place.
- save_ferris 6y ago> In the cases where that trust breaks down or shouldn't have been given in the first place, it tends to create problems that are astronomically more costly than if a trustless system was used in the first place. Is this actually true? My mind immediately goes to credit card fraud as an example, which definitely isn't more costly than if a purely trustless system was introduced. The cost of fraud is baked into using a credit card, and credit card vendors have built ever-improving technology to cut down on fraud on their end. How is that more expensive than a trustless system that would require everyone to move to?
- googthrowaway42 6y agoIn the example of the credit card system, the misplaced trust I am talking about would be misplaced trust in the payment processing networks themselves (e.g. Visa, Mastercard). This could be fraud (unlikely I think) or pathological behavior such as banning people or organizations from their networks for political reasons (this already happens).
- save_ferris 6y agoSo organizations shouldn’t be able to remove people’s access to credit or accounts for any reason? If you take that away, you completely remove the ability to police money laundering and other kinds of financial crime (crypto is already a favorite technology of money launderers). Legislation can (and should be IMO) written to provide users of big software systems more rights, but completely removing authority creates conditions for limitless money laundering, no? How does a government govern a blockchain?
- JoeAltmaier 6y agoPart of the digital currency deal is, that kind of privacy. Legislation may have to adapt? 'Money laundering' is avoiding taxes or hiding income. So change the rules about taxing money. Maybe a 'transfer tax' or some such, to take a (very small) cut on every transaction.
- save_ferris 6y agoIf cryptocurrencies are private enough to obfuscate transactions to the point that authorities can’t monitor illegal financial activity, how can the system also be transparent enough to effectively tax users? Isn’t taxation a centralized financial construct, in that a central authority (government) assesses taxes? If the coins built today become the mainstays of crypto transactions and don’t have a concept of a transfer tax, how will one ever be added to the system? The entire system seems to be built from the perspective that it’s “our playground, our rules”, but why governments ever allow that?
- 6y ago
- rspeele 6y agoWhat caused me to get out of Bitcoin was that in reality, the level of trust Bitcoin required from me was much too high compared to traditional banking. I had a few thousand dollars worth and I became quite paranoid that my coins could be exfiltrated at any time due to: * The Bitcoin client software I downloaded (I didn't build from source, and even if I did, I wouldn't have read the entire source first, and even if I did, I could get Ken Thompson'd) * A computer virus delivered in a game I install, or hardware drivers I update, that would be virtually undetectable until it's too late * A fire that destroys my home / somebody compromising off-site backup of my private key (pick one or the other risk) * An untrustworthy exchange or an exchange that is unfortunately compromised at the moment I choose to transform them into Real Money(tm) -- while I kept my coins in a wallet off an exchange, I would still need to turn them into USD someday since the dream of paying for ordinary things directly with Bitcoin is wheezing on life support Some of those concerns can be mitigated with a hardware wallet, but not all, and you still must have faith in the people who designed the hardware wallet and the manufacturer who actually built it. At least with traditional banking, if my trust is violated I usually have some recourse by which I can recover my money. E.g. if my PC is hacked and the hacker transfers money from my bank account, as long as I see that happen within a few days I can probably have the bank stop it and get my money back. With crypto one false move and you lose your stuff, do not pass go. In short, the "trustlessness" protects me from a pretty low-risk problem -- I would say practically a hypothetical problem at least in the U.S. -- but exposes me to a high-risk problem.
- jdmichal 6y agoThis right here is IMO the fundamental heart of the argument. Things like reversible transactions and such are features that were built into the banking system, not bugs. It really comes down to a question of which feature set is valued more by an individual. The attempt to frame this in moralistic terms is just typical tech holy wars.
- rspeele 6y agoOn a philosophical basis I do like the idea that no one person, nation, or corporation has control over the currency. And the irreversable nature of transactions is something I could accept, if I felt it was possible for me to have complete confidence in the security of my wallet. But just the software-based ways that I could potentially be stolen from are too plausible to ignore. I have never felt that I could say with total certainty that my system is not compromised or vulnerable to compromise. Even a bug written with no malice could be my undoing. Working in the software industry has given me very little faith in the infallibility of software, both open and closed source. Of course many people hold large quantities of crypto and are fine. But a few have it lost or stolen. Even super simple attacks sometimes work, like the malware that would poll the system clipboard waiting for it to contain for a BTC public key, and if found, swap it with one owned by the virus-writer -- so that you inadvertently paste the thief's key in as the destination for the transfer you're about to initiate. When I first heard about that attack, I thought it was clever and had to really think: hmm, would I have fallen for that? Usually I double check, but if they were smart enough to generate a large set of wallet public keys so they could replace the destination with one that starts with the same few characters, I probably could've been duped at some moment of carelessness.
- endori97 6y agoBram Cohen's chia would disagree with you. Something to keep your eye on.
- chapium 6y agoThanks for the heads up!
- cryptica 6y agoThey don't all use a lot of electricity. Proof of Stake blockchains use very little electricity and don't require specialized hardware. Lisk (LSK) is DPoS and is a good example but there are many others like that.
- wskinner 6y agoHow much energy would be the right amount for Ethereum to use?
- jacobedawson 6y agoWouldn't the correct answer always be "no more than necessary / technically feasible"?
- wskinner 6y agoThat standard is not applied to many things. There are many cases where it makes sense to use a technology that uses more energy than technically feasible because it offers other benefits. For example, using java instead of assembly.
- intotheabyss 6y agoThis is actually a core principle in Ethereums community. It's called minimum viable issuance. Ethereum 2.0 is specifically designed with this principle in mind. No one wants to overpay or underpay for security, so market forces decide what level of issuance and risk is acceptable.
- est31 6y agoThe energy it uses right now for full nodes and all the other infrastructure minus the energy it uses for the proof of work. If the proof of work is replaced by another proof mechanism, like proof of stake, it could be applauded.
- Daishiman 6y agoAnd how much of that is reflected in productive activities that economic value instead of being scams, proofs of concept, funny money and manufactured spending?
- AbrahamParangi 6y agoAlso memes, but I think you can ask the same question about our legacy financial system
- Daishiman 6y agoI get paid in our "legacy" system and that keeps a roof on my head and the lights going, along with a few other billion people.
- intotheabyss 6y agoYou're conveniently leaving out half the worlds population that doesn't have access to this legacy system.
- Daishiman 6y agoThey have fiat currency that they use to exchange for goods and services. I do not know literally a single human being who uses BTC or ETH exclusively for exchanging legal goods and services.
- intotheabyss 6y agoWe're talking about financial primitives, not owning currency. These people do not have access to bank accounts, loans, mortgages, etc. Once you have identity systems on Ethereum, then no-collateral loans and mortgages will be offered to anyone with access to the internet.
- fsewe20 6y agoI get paid in dai in the ethereum system and that keeps a roof on my head and the lights going, along with a few other hundred?thousand? people. I still dont get why hackernews always has a bad reaction to cryptocurrencies. Disruption and innovation is praised, unless it challenges money. Experiments with computing and code is praised, but only if its a toy language. We're all on the same side :) just playing with different ways to do things.
- Proven 6y agoThere's a standard industry term for crypto turnover, "circle jerk". Of people who convert one crypto into another.
- istorical 6y agowould love it if someone could make a webpage to visualize the current pace of carbon emissions by proof of work systems in terms of the number of acres of forest that would need to be burned to release the same amount of carbon. or even just know the calculation.
- Mc_Big_G 6y agowould love it if someone could make a webpage to visualize the current pace of carbon emissions by banking and credit card systems in terms of the number of acres of forest that would need to be burned to release the same amount of carbon. or even just know the calculation.
- jdmichal 6y agoThis is a pretty bad-faith "what-about-ism" response. The energy consumption downsides of proof-of-work systems are pretty well known. And those particular downsides don't apply to the systems you listed. Sure, running those systems still takes energy, and there's probably an interesting comment about what a ratio between the two might look like. But your comment as written is not that.
- ajkdhcb2 6y agoIt is not a whataboutism. Complaints about energy usage are only meaningful in comparison to the alternatives. >The energy consumption downsides of proof-of-work systems are pretty well known. And those particular downsides don't apply to the systems you listed. What? I have no idea what you're talking about. Proof of Work energy requirements are not necessarily proportional to usage of the chain, while almost every single complaint about it has made invalid extrapolations under that assumption. It can easily be incredibly more efficient than the existing financial system.
- jdmichal 6y ago> What? I have no idea what you're talking about. OK. https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption > Carbon footprint per transaction: 312.24 kg, estimated at 780,602 VISA transactions.
- Ihfhcub 6y ago$1T of filthy token scams
- dang 6y agoPlease don't post like this to HN. You may not owe filthy token scams better, but you owe this community better if you're participating here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- Normille 6y agoOne thing that's often overlooked when people talk about crypto's shady image and lack of real world use cases is the fact that a huge number of world governments and financial institutions are doing everything in their power to hinder its wider adoption and prevent people from using it, without jumping through a ridiculous amount of regulatory hoops which pretty much undermine crypto's USP in the first place. Personally I think KYC is one of the most disgusting invasions of privacy that has ever been foisted upon us. As usual the "Terrorists, Paedos and Drug Dealers" [Ts, Ps & DDs] bogeymen have been trotted out to justify the state's self-proclaimed right to know exactly what money you have, where you keep it, who you give it to, what you spend it on and where and who you got it from in the first place [see also the increasing drive for us all to become cashless societies. A further erosion of the right to get and spend without 'The Man' knowing every detail]. The wider adoption of crypto promises to return financial privacy to the individual and this is why governments around the world are so aggressively opposed to it. Crypto allows the anonymity of cash but on a global scale. So, in order to discourage this, there's an increasingly impenetrable regulatory wall built around the entire crypto ecosystem. Government and big finance can't do much to prevent what happens inside the crypto bubble. But they're doing their damnedest to make sure that getting fiat into or out of that ecosystem is made as difficult as possible. One slight aside: Many of you will remember when the Panama Papers [0] scandal broke, a few years back. There were supposedly amongst them documents that showed that the then UK Prime Minister David Cameron's family were involved in moving large amounts of money around undeclared offshore bank accounts. David Cameron was asked about these allegations and, refusing to answer, he said "A family's finances are its own private affair". I often bring that quote up when people counter any mention of cryptocurrencies with the tired argument about them being used by "Ts Ps & DDs". Why is it OK for the rich and the ruling classes to move their money around anonymously in offshore tax havens and numbered Swiss bank accounts, but the ordinary Joe Bloggs in the street is expected to conduct all his financial dealings under the scrutiny of the government? And, if he dares to believe that his finances are 'his own private affair', he is practically branded a supporter of "Ts, Ps & DDs". [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_Papers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_Papers