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Everyone keeps shifting the goalposts. Are we comparing cash to cryptocurrency? Are we comparing banks to exchanges? You can't say "Cash is better than cryptocu

Everyone keeps shifting the goalposts. Are we comparing cash to cryptocurrency? Are we comparing banks to exchanges? You can't say "Cash is better than cryptocurrency because banks". If you want someone to safeguard your cryptocurrency, find a trustworthy custodian for it. The fact that banks won't hold cryptocurrency for you isn't the cryptocurrency's fault.

TeMPOraL 6y ago
The goalposts were mobile by design, that's how cryptocurrency promoters like them :). After all, it's not the skeptics that spread the idea that crypto should/will replace the whole fiat economy. One important problem of cryptocurrencies is blockchain's immutable nature. This is, of course, by design, but it's not something you actually want for real money. When I fuck up when banking, I can get the bank to reverse it. If the bank fucks up, they can easily undo it, or I can compel them to undo it by proxy of the court (or threat of it). In the fiat world, unmaking a transaction is a relatively cheap operation. On the blockchain, not so much. While we can start piling up social and technological abstractions on top of crypto to allow for decent UX, this also erases the whole selling point of crypto (decentralization, anarchy) - at which point one has to ask, why burn all that energy just to reimplement fiat, poorly?
- hanniabu 6y ago
  > When I fuck up when banking, I can get the bank to reverse it. Wire transfers
- andxor 6y ago
  You can implement all of this, including reversable transactions under specific conditions, via smart contracts, without sacrificing decentralization.
  - ludamad 6y ago
    When I can use a major chain and execute a smart contract for <$1 (on say a $100 contract) I'll be reasonably stoked. How are people playing with these when the fees are so high?
    - andxor 6y ago
      A lot of liquidity is moving to L2 Ethereum already and you can definitely execute smart contracts there for way less than $1 (e.g. on Polygon). As for why people are willing to pay high gas fees on L1 - have you considered the possibility that the opportunities and value that they're getting out of it are worth the cost?
      - ludamad 6y ago
        I am not debating that the value can be worth the cost; I really meant "playing". Thanks, I'll look into Polygon
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    Smart contracts should really be called "dumb contracts", as they're strictly dumber than traditional, old-school contracts. Here's something worth pondering: what happens if you trigger a bug in a smart contract? What options do you have to fix or undo it? Smart contracts are all bug-ridden by definition - formally codifying intent is a General-AI-complete problem, and since we are nowhere near close to making a human-level AI, it follows that a smart contract is just a crude approximation of the most obvious aspects of what you actually meant it to represent (no different than any other program here). Traditional contracts are smart enough to not even try - they don't codify intent, they just help achieve mutual understanding and pin down shared context for further reference. Interpretation, execution and debugging are all left to the general framework of common sense, tradition, regulations and accumulated case law.
- StavrosK 6y ago
  > When I fuck up when banking, I can get the bank to reverse it. No, you're comparing dissimilar things. Cryptocurrency is cash (with the benefit of not having to be close to someone for a transfer), and you can't "roll back" the giving of cash to someone (except compel them to give it back with the help of a court). If you want to compare a bank to something, you need to compare it to another custodial/off-chain solution.
  - Mordisquitos 6y ago
    > Cryptocurrency is cash (with the benefit of not having to be close to someone for a transfer) If not having to be close to the payee is the only benefit of cryptocurrency over cash, that problem has been solved for literally centuries by the concept of giro transfers.
    - StavrosK 6y ago
      Can I make a giro transfer without a third party intervening? Then it would be comparable, yes.
      - Mordisquitos 6y ago
        That is if you don't consider the public blockchain and its nodes as a "third party". Can you make a cryptocurrency exchange without a third party ever knowing that it took place or leaving any trace of it? You can with cash.
        StavrosK 6y ago
        Depending on which cryptocurrency you use, you can (e.g. Monero).
    - TeMPOraL 6y ago
      > that problem has been solved for literally centuries by the concept of giro transfers Tangential: From Wikipedia, "A giro transfer (...) is a payment transfer from one bank account to another bank account and initiated by the payer, not the payee. The debit card has a similar model." Maybe it's my European bias speaking, but how does that even deserve a weird name? Isn't this how normal paying works? Who else should initiate the transfer? The payee? Why?

TeMPOraL 6y ago

The goalposts were mobile by design, that's how cryptocurrency promoters like them :). After all, it's not the skeptics that spread the idea that crypto should/will replace the whole fiat economy. One important problem of cryptocurrencies is blockchain's immutable nature. This is, of course, by design, but it's not something you actually want for real money. When I fuck up when banking, I can get the bank to reverse it. If the bank fucks up, they can easily undo it, or I can compel them to undo it by proxy of the court (or threat of it). In the fiat world, unmaking a transaction is a relatively cheap operation. On the blockchain, not so much. While we can start piling up social and technological abstractions on top of crypto to allow for decent UX, this also erases the whole selling point of crypto (decentralization, anarchy) - at which point one has to ask, why burn all that energy just to reimplement fiat, poorly?

hanniabu 6y ago
> When I fuck up when banking, I can get the bank to reverse it. Wire transfers
andxor 6y ago
You can implement all of this, including reversable transactions under specific conditions, via smart contracts, without sacrificing decentralization.
- ludamad 6y ago
  When I can use a major chain and execute a smart contract for <$1 (on say a $100 contract) I'll be reasonably stoked. How are people playing with these when the fees are so high?
  - andxor 6y ago
    A lot of liquidity is moving to L2 Ethereum already and you can definitely execute smart contracts there for way less than $1 (e.g. on Polygon). As for why people are willing to pay high gas fees on L1 - have you considered the possibility that the opportunities and value that they're getting out of it are worth the cost?
    - ludamad 6y ago
      I am not debating that the value can be worth the cost; I really meant "playing". Thanks, I'll look into Polygon
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  Smart contracts should really be called "dumb contracts", as they're strictly dumber than traditional, old-school contracts. Here's something worth pondering: what happens if you trigger a bug in a smart contract? What options do you have to fix or undo it? Smart contracts are all bug-ridden by definition - formally codifying intent is a General-AI-complete problem, and since we are nowhere near close to making a human-level AI, it follows that a smart contract is just a crude approximation of the most obvious aspects of what you actually meant it to represent (no different than any other program here). Traditional contracts are smart enough to not even try - they don't codify intent, they just help achieve mutual understanding and pin down shared context for further reference. Interpretation, execution and debugging are all left to the general framework of common sense, tradition, regulations and accumulated case law.
StavrosK 6y ago
> When I fuck up when banking, I can get the bank to reverse it. No, you're comparing dissimilar things. Cryptocurrency is cash (with the benefit of not having to be close to someone for a transfer), and you can't "roll back" the giving of cash to someone (except compel them to give it back with the help of a court). If you want to compare a bank to something, you need to compare it to another custodial/off-chain solution.
- Mordisquitos 6y ago
  > Cryptocurrency is cash (with the benefit of not having to be close to someone for a transfer) If not having to be close to the payee is the only benefit of cryptocurrency over cash, that problem has been solved for literally centuries by the concept of giro transfers.
  - StavrosK 6y ago
    Can I make a giro transfer without a third party intervening? Then it would be comparable, yes.
    - Mordisquitos 6y ago
      That is if you don't consider the public blockchain and its nodes as a "third party". Can you make a cryptocurrency exchange without a third party ever knowing that it took place or leaving any trace of it? You can with cash.
      - StavrosK 6y ago
        Depending on which cryptocurrency you use, you can (e.g. Monero).
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    > that problem has been solved for literally centuries by the concept of giro transfers Tangential: From Wikipedia, "A giro transfer (...) is a payment transfer from one bank account to another bank account and initiated by the payer, not the payee. The debit card has a similar model." Maybe it's my European bias speaking, but how does that even deserve a weird name? Isn't this how normal paying works? Who else should initiate the transfer? The payee? Why?