4 ms·

How would a hyperinflation on the US dollar cause civilization to stop? In any case, crypto trading since 2017 has been nothing but people buying and selling i

How would a hyperinflation on the US dollar cause civilization to stop? In any case, crypto trading since 2017 has been nothing but people buying and selling imaginary ticker symbols on unregulated exchanges. For example, XVG and ETC has been subject to successful 51% attacks more than once and every time the price was hardly affected. And each time the "solution" to deep chain reorg involved the exchanges freezing all trading while developers rushed to add a hardcoded checkpoint. Once the "correct" version of history has been manually restored, everybody sing kumbaya and goes back to paying real cash for monopoly money. Crypto need no proof of anything (PoS is still vaporware - debate me if you want), other than a shared delusion of value headed by the bucket shops.

swinglock 6y ago
> PoS is still vaporware Why is that? Aren't Cardano and Polkadot PoS as they claim or doesn't it work?
- Laforet 6y ago
  No PoS algorithm has yet managed to solve the Nothing-at-stake problem, nor are they any more resistant to the abovementioned kind of hostile takeover by the nation state player compared to PoW. I can't speak for every PoS coin out there but Cardano/Ouroborous explicitly assumes partial synchrony which is arguably never a good idea for a supposedly permissionless blockchain.
  - StavrosK 6y ago
    So PoS is vaporware because it hasn't solved a problem where the miners can act against their economic best interests and mine a fork? How does "there's a theoretical issue, and also it shares a problem with PoW" follow from "PoS is vaporware"?
    - gruez 6y ago
      > So PoS is vaporware because it hasn't solved a problem where the miners can act against their economic best interests and mine a fork? Not exactly. The point of "nothing as stake" attack is that you can pull off the attack while having... "nothing a stake".
      - StavrosK 6y ago
        Except the trust of the currency itself, as if you're attacking a currency you have a lot of stake in, you reduce the value of your stake because you attacked it.
        Laforet 6y ago
        I'm pretty sure short selling crypto is still a thing. Loss of stake is jut another cost of business.
    - Laforet 6y ago
      There are no miners in a PoS chain, and PoS participants technically have nothing to lose through double forging. There are myriad different ways to find and punish the bad actors in such a situation. I don't claim to know about all of them, however they all make the same assumption you made that staked validators are rational people who look after their interest on the blockchain. But what if they are not rational, or worse, could make gains by disrupting the chain? This is far from a solved problem, and this is the reason why PoS coins exist mostly on the fringe and ETH is taking very slow baby steps towards a ETH2. Nobody is certain that PoS will stand the test of time and my prediction is that it never will. One might argue that they don't have to worry about anything judging from how well exchanges has been able to coordinate with the developers to pick a side whenever a major fork is spotted. But then it calls into the question whether we actually need a blockchain when a couple of interested party are the ones who gets to decide which fork is valid.
  - bouncycastle 6y ago
    Nothing-at-stake problem is solved with slashing & inactivity leaks.
ericb 6y ago
> PoS is still vaporware - debate me if you want Tezos has a fully working Proof of stake system, and there are others. Feel free to share whatever you're on about, but I have a feeling "the debate" will be an exercise in goalpost moving.
- Laforet 6y ago
  Baseless accusations aside, please see my reply elsewhere in this thread for a response.
  - ericb 6y ago
    Isn't calling currencies that people are already transacting hundreds of millions of dollars in volume on daily "vaporware" a baseless accusation?
shadowgovt 6y ago
> How would a hyperinflation on the US dollar cause civilization to stop? The dollar is the value used to denominate world debt via the IMF. It's also (partially related to this fact) the "mattress currency" of a lot of nations... Nations hoard US dollars to back-stop their own economies, since if their currency starts to tank, they can use dollars to pay their international debts. A worthless US dollar would have wide-ranging international currency disruption.
- tonfa 6y ago
  But then the IMF actually uses a basket of currency: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_drawing_rights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_drawing_rights (which has some similarity to the original libra proposal from FB)
- FridgeSeal 6y ago
  Every now and then I get the impression that crypto currency advocates have seriously and repeatedly underestimated and/or misunderstood the complexity and scale of real-world economics.
hanniabu 6y ago
> For example, XVG and ETC Try using projects that aren't "shitcoins" as an example
eru 6y ago
> In any case, crypto trading since 2017 has been nothing but people buying and selling imaginary ticker symbols on unregulated exchanges. You can trade regulated BTC futures. (Regulation by itself isn't much of a feature. But it can be a good indicator to see how well something is integrated into mainstream finance.) > [...] other than a shared delusion of value headed by the bucket shops. You shouldn't dismiss the original bucket shops like that.

swinglock 6y ago

> PoS is still vaporware Why is that? Aren't Cardano and Polkadot PoS as they claim or doesn't it work?

Laforet 6y ago
No PoS algorithm has yet managed to solve the Nothing-at-stake problem, nor are they any more resistant to the abovementioned kind of hostile takeover by the nation state player compared to PoW. I can't speak for every PoS coin out there but Cardano/Ouroborous explicitly assumes partial synchrony which is arguably never a good idea for a supposedly permissionless blockchain.
- StavrosK 6y ago
  So PoS is vaporware because it hasn't solved a problem where the miners can act against their economic best interests and mine a fork? How does "there's a theoretical issue, and also it shares a problem with PoW" follow from "PoS is vaporware"?
  - gruez 6y ago
    > So PoS is vaporware because it hasn't solved a problem where the miners can act against their economic best interests and mine a fork? Not exactly. The point of "nothing as stake" attack is that you can pull off the attack while having... "nothing a stake".
    - StavrosK 6y ago
      Except the trust of the currency itself, as if you're attacking a currency you have a lot of stake in, you reduce the value of your stake because you attacked it.
      - Laforet 6y ago
        I'm pretty sure short selling crypto is still a thing. Loss of stake is jut another cost of business.
  - Laforet 6y ago
    There are no miners in a PoS chain, and PoS participants technically have nothing to lose through double forging. There are myriad different ways to find and punish the bad actors in such a situation. I don't claim to know about all of them, however they all make the same assumption you made that staked validators are rational people who look after their interest on the blockchain. But what if they are not rational, or worse, could make gains by disrupting the chain? This is far from a solved problem, and this is the reason why PoS coins exist mostly on the fringe and ETH is taking very slow baby steps towards a ETH2. Nobody is certain that PoS will stand the test of time and my prediction is that it never will. One might argue that they don't have to worry about anything judging from how well exchanges has been able to coordinate with the developers to pick a side whenever a major fork is spotted. But then it calls into the question whether we actually need a blockchain when a couple of interested party are the ones who gets to decide which fork is valid.
- bouncycastle 6y ago
  Nothing-at-stake problem is solved with slashing & inactivity leaks.

ericb 6y ago

> PoS is still vaporware - debate me if you want Tezos has a fully working Proof of stake system, and there are others. Feel free to share whatever you're on about, but I have a feeling "the debate" will be an exercise in goalpost moving.

Laforet 6y ago
Baseless accusations aside, please see my reply elsewhere in this thread for a response.
- ericb 6y ago
  Isn't calling currencies that people are already transacting hundreds of millions of dollars in volume on daily "vaporware" a baseless accusation?

shadowgovt 6y ago

> How would a hyperinflation on the US dollar cause civilization to stop? The dollar is the value used to denominate world debt via the IMF. It's also (partially related to this fact) the "mattress currency" of a lot of nations... Nations hoard US dollars to back-stop their own economies, since if their currency starts to tank, they can use dollars to pay their international debts. A worthless US dollar would have wide-ranging international currency disruption.

tonfa 6y ago
But then the IMF actually uses a basket of currency: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_drawing_rights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_drawing_rights (which has some similarity to the original libra proposal from FB)
FridgeSeal 6y ago
Every now and then I get the impression that crypto currency advocates have seriously and repeatedly underestimated and/or misunderstood the complexity and scale of real-world economics.

hanniabu 6y ago

> For example, XVG and ETC Try using projects that aren't "shitcoins" as an example

eru 6y ago

> In any case, crypto trading since 2017 has been nothing but people buying and selling imaginary ticker symbols on unregulated exchanges. You can trade regulated BTC futures. (Regulation by itself isn't much of a feature. But it can be a good indicator to see how well something is integrated into mainstream finance.) > [...] other than a shared delusion of value headed by the bucket shops. You shouldn't dismiss the original bucket shops like that.