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Cryptocurrency Bear?
- Shosty123 5y agoYeah, and we could waste billions of dollars and lives (in the future) on space exploration due to programmer errors. Guess we should stop that too.
- brink 5y agoWhile space exploration is great, it's not nearly as important as earth conservation; which crypto has also wasted a lot of.
- reedjosh 5y agoFiat finances all wars. Without money printers, people push back against the true levels of taxation involved in modern Geo-politics. US peeps like to mock other currencies that fall to inflation, and how the despotic governments were printing their way out of debts, but refuse to acknowledge money printing is used in much the same way here. We only get away with it as we're currently the top dog. Governmental military industrial complexes spend way more resources than Bitcoin. Bitcoin's energy expenditure is required to keep government's from killing it because of the risk it poses to their fiat based control. Bitcoin's energy expenditure is about reducing democide and drawing down military industrial complexes for a peaceful cooperative future.
- ivalm 5y agoSo if we all switch to crypto then the incentives to go to war would go away? How does that even supposed to work? We go to war for 1) land 2) resources 3) religion/various -isms. Crypto solves none of these (well, it potentially makes (2) worse).
- reedjosh 5y agoAs I said, it precludes the means of financing wars. If US citizens had to pay for the costs of hegemony directly, people would actually push back. Instead we get ever inflating and impossible to afford housing and a declining standard of living without understanding why.
- fancifalmanima 5y agoI don't think there's anything that would preclude the us government from selling bitcoin treasury bonds (accepting bitcoin with the promise to pay more back at a later date, basically). Even if the block chain didn't support it, the contract (bond) can still exist off-chain. If it took off, and non technical people became more engaged in the space, I really don't see a reason to assume that traditional banks wouldn't accept bitcoin deposits and offer off-chain loans (re-creating the fractional reserve system we have today as well). Unless there was some law preventing it.
- fancifalmanima 5y agoI don't think there's anything that would preclude the us government from selling bitcoin treasury bonds (accepting bitcoin with the promise to pay more back at a later date, basically). Even if the block chain didn't support it, the contract (bond) can still exist off-chain. If it took off, and non technical people became more engaged in the space, I really don't see a reason to assume that traditional banks wouldn't accept bitcoin deposits and offer off-chain loans (re-creating the fractional reserve system we have today as well). Unless there was some law preventing it. I think those two tools together would enable the US government to take on increasing debt loads in bitcoin, and to inflate the currency pool in one of the ways it's able to do with the dollar (the reserve ratio). So I'm sure they'll figure it out.
- ivalm 5y agoWars and debt happened before fiat money. In fact, all of the biggest wars were without fiat money.
- reedjosh 5y agoI was under the impression WW1 & WW2 were fought under fiat monetary regimes in most of the countries involved? I will try to do some reading.
- Shosty123 5y agoSure, but that's not the point they were trying to make in the post.
- bighitbiker3 5y ago> But even if they don’t, what happened to “code is law”. Wasn’t the “hacker” just executing the contract as it allowed? This has been bothering me for some time as well. How are these hacks prosecuted as wrongdoings?
- garethrowlands 5y agoThey aren't
- paulpauper 5y agostolen funds tend to sit dormant in wallets for years. cannot bring charges unless they try to cash out to fiat
- ac29 5y agoWrong. You aren't familiar with lawsuits with humorous (but serious) titles like "United States of America vs. Approximately 69,370 Bitcoin". https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/united-states-files-civil-action-forfeit-cryptocurrency-valued-over-one-billion-us https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/united-states-files-civ... (PDF link showing that exact title towards the bottom)
- jbverschoor 5y agoThis whole "code is law" thing came out of the following: Within programming, you have contracts, i.e. function definitions. This is taken by the non-tech people, blew up and got the attention of all people have 1) no idea how code works, 2) have no idea how the law works. While great for spreading the word, it also spread the WRONG word. This is one of the reasons why "nobody understands blockchain". It's because the communication is plain wrong.
- dogman144 5y agoDo you have a source? First I've heard of this angle
- delaaxe 5y agoOf course this is the only kind of crypto-related article that bubbles up on HN. What happened to HN?
- intev 5y agoHN is/has been very bearish on crypto in general.
- Flatcircle 5y agoFor good reason, the recent Weisenthal article in Bloomberg (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-07/bitcoin-btc-vs-ethereum-eth-and-defi-there-s-a-big-difference https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-07/bitcoin-b...) did a good job of explaining some recent happenings in the crypto space. Lot of food for thought.
- verdverm 5y agoHN has always had healthy skepticism. What do you think happened to HN?
- abriosi 5y agoNowadays, crypto discussions are mixture of politics and technology. Most of the unhealthy skepticism is due to the politics parts
- verdverm 5y agoMost skepticism here comes from the point of view that the technology overcomplicates without providing commensurate ROI. The political part comes from blockchain ignoring basic social constructs and believing that they are ushering in some new glorious future. The constant portrayal of this is what turns off a bunch of people. But the root of it is that the technology is really only useful for finance. Trust breaks down at the transition point from real world to digital. Also, the only stuff which has meaningful usage has become centralized, thereby going against the ethos. There are expected social constructs from the greater society that blockchain will have a hard time meeting. Thus while being interesting from an academic standpoint, the vast majority seems like a pyramid scheme
- cal5k 5y ago> However, decentralized immutability means that nothing can be done should an unintended action occur with your account. The alternative is the current state of affairs. In Canada this means banks unilaterally decide what is mutable and what is not depending on what suits them. Merchant accepting payments? 100% mutable, merchant beware. Someone's bank account was compromised via credential-stuffing and money was wired to an offshore account? Sorry, immutable - pick a better password next time, dummy. It's not the bank's responsibility to, say, implement modern 2FA. Hacks and compromises are forcing these systems to improve at a rapid rate, whereas banks have been able to largely avoid such wholesale improvements via legal and political means. If it's in the contract, you're out of luck.
- clpm4j 5y agoMy bank accounts and credit cards have all essentially forced modern 2FA implementation over the past few years (USA). And the handful of times I've had fraudulent activity on my cards, it's been reversed and settled within a matter of days. From my perspective I actually think modern banking (again, USA-specific) has been improving pretty rapidly in terms of customer experience (shout out to Ally Bank).
- e40 5y agoDid you have fraudulent transactions on a non-CC? CC companies have rules on them that make it easy to fight fraud. Non-CC accounts... not so much.
- clpm4j 5y agoI've actually had an incident of e-commerce fraud related to my checking account quite a while ago, and Ally Bank conducted a week-long review and determined it was fraudulent, put the money back in my account, and sent me a new debit card. It was pretty painless from what I remember.
- graeme 5y agoI did. ATM skimming got my bank account in brazil. Took about a week, full reversal. Hardly any fuss.
- jedimastert 5y ago"anyone can read the code" Someone has to notice it first. Hope they're cool!
- m00dy 5y agoThere is something called "insurance" in Defi. You incentivize auditing for smart contracts. Checkout the company nexus mutual
- leifg 5y ago> Writing complex software without bugs is impossible. There are so many unexpected edge cases you will never think of them all no matter how large or small the team is. Yes and: Whenever you add new features you will create new edge cases for existing code. So even if you could evaluate all edge cases of existing code you would have to do that on your existing code base for all changes going forward.
- paulpauper 5y agoThe incentives for finding exploits is free, irreversible, almost-untraceable money. It is hard to beat that and is why these platforms keep being exploited no matter how hard devs try to find bugs.
- aaroninsf 5y agoLast week: learned ransomeware has blown up because of crypto. Today: learned it's blowing up fraudulent Craigslist sales and scams. BUt MaH lIbErTiEs (AnD gAiNs!!!!) I cannot wait for the bubble to pop forever.
- rawtxapp 5y agoThese hacks have always happened, the difference is that, in the past, the users data would get sold on the black markets, now instead these hackers can get paid directly by the company more easily. What you should blame instead is companies that can't do the bare minimum to protect themselves, that pipeline company for example didn't even bother revoking access from an ex-employee, literally bare minimum. Also, this shows why crypto is the perfect currency for the internet and you'll probably be disappointed if you keep waiting for "the bubble" to pop.
- rawtxapp 5y agoThe flip side of that is, any smart contract that has stood the test of time (say compound, makerdao, etc) should be expected to be rock solid, because the incentives to hack them are very strong.
- ARandumGuy 5y agoEh, I wouldn't be so sure. Just because no one has found it, doesn't mean it's not there. There have been major exploits discovered in widely used applications that had been sitting there for years (Heartbleed comes to mind). While you can certainly be more confident with older smart contracts, that confidence will never reach 100%.
- 5y ago
- Udik 5y agoDecentralisation, guaranteed immutability, entirely trustless system are the things that made a bitcoin worth tens of thousands with a market cap of hundreds of millions. Otherwise it would be worth nothing, it's just a record in a public database. There are people (many, smart people) literally paying millions or billions to add a simple record to that database; there's many more- hackers, organised criminals, state agencies, that would love to able to change that record. The amount of pressure that that simple database is able to withstand, and the amount of trust that has been able to gain, are mind blowing. So that's a success, I'd say.
- bob33212 5y agoHistory repeats itself. In 2000 I saw the same enthusiasm of young people around how much money they are going to make on the Internet. The parallel that is important to understand is that Pets.com went bankrupt, but the idea that people would buy their groceries (including pet food) on the internet was correct and very common 20 years later. No one should be surprised if Bitcoin may goes down to 5k. But you should be surprised if no-one is using distributed ledgers 20 years from now.
- harryh 5y agoThe use case for buying groceries on the internet was clear (getting food without having to go pick it up yourself). It was just a question of things getting big enough for the economics to work. The use case for distributed ledgers is not at all clear, after over a decade of tinkering. You could be right, but I wouldn't be surprised either way.
- stOneskull 5y agofor buying stuff on silk rd?
- NicoJuicy 5y agoThat's a terrible comparison. You could use that logic for anything that failed. Amazon is older than 2000 and became the clear victor. There's no winner in cryptocurrency after a decade.
- simonw 5y agoI hadn't heard about BurgerSwap: https://burgerswap.gitbook.io/burgerswap-en/ https://burgerswap.gitbook.io/burgerswap-en/ - "BurgerSwap is a democratized AMM on Binance Smart Chain with the following main functions: Swap, Liquidity Pool, Governance, ERC20-BEP20 token transfer [cross] Bridge, Burger Shack, Farm, and IFO. BurgerSwap strives to provide the most decentralized and democratic user experience for DeFi believers all around the world. Users can earn rewards by providing liquidity and participating in governance on BurgerSwap. On BurgerSwap, users control the assets and the platform." And then... https://www.rekt.news/burgerswap-rekt/ https://www.rekt.news/burgerswap-rekt/ - "At around 3 am on May 28th (UTC+8), $7.2M was stolen from #BurgerSwap in just 14 servings. [...] This exploit was made possible by the fact that the attacker could do reentrance and make a second swap before reserves, which are used to calculate the number of tokens in swaps, were updated."
- gremloni 5y agoI don’t know how you can call anything built on Binance chain decentralized since the protocol itself is centralized. This is why all transactions cost like $0.10 on it.
- cure 5y agoDescribing code review as an 'inefficiency' doesn't seem right. Developing code without review is not more efficient than with code review. It may be faster (at first) to skip code review, but the output is going to be lower quality. You're just cutting a corner, and it's going to bite you in the future. Nothing efficient about that.
- cocktailpeanuts 5y ago> However, decentralized immutability means that nothing can be done should an unintended action occur with your account. All that's needed is an elegant identity system that privately ties identity with transactions so that only the stakeholders can share their transactions while the ledger itself is public. That way "Decentralized Immutability" can co-exist with mutability through law in case something terrible happens. You don't need to change the history, you simply need to make a court order to create an additional transaction that reverts the disaster. Just like how when a hacker gets caught stealing money, they are forced to send the money back (additional transaction) instead of deleting the original stealing transaction from the bank account and rewriting as if nothing happened. The thing is, pseudo-Turing complete blockchains like Ethereum (and all EVM-like blockchains) are not really fit for this purpose because the entire logic is on chain. UTXO based blockchains like Bitcoin is optimized for this since each transaction can act as evidence trail.
- fancifalmanima 5y agoHow does a 3rd party (a court) make that transaction happen without either physically compelling the criminal (not necessarily possible in other countries), or having some kind of master key (which breaks decentralization). With a bank, they have a financial incentive to stay a part of the international banking system at least.
- alkonaut 5y agoPublic and irreversible doesn't have to mean decentralized. The court orders the bank to reverse it on their ledger just like they reverse it today in the accounts - only the ledger requires a public and immutable reversal.
- devops000 5y agoCrypto is cool only because prices went up. If price falls nobody cares.
- hereme888 5y agoWell, the price fell drastically and the Bitcoin 2021 conference still happened (the biggest crypto conference ever), El Salvador still decided to recognize Bitcoins as legal tender, Paraguay is on the way to do the same, Miami still wants to become the crypto/bitcoin capital of the world, and senators attended the Bitcoin conference in support of it (I understand there's plenty of opposition as well).
- NicoJuicy 5y agoTransaction costs here ( a stable country) costs 10 cents. Bitcoin is currently at 4,5 $. I wouldn't buy any bread with it. Online platforms also didn't care about crypto after they implemented it in 2017. History repeats itselves. And i think the problems of those countries are bigger and won't be solved by Bitcoin. Guess we'll just have to wait and see about adoption, just like in 2017 when it never happened.
- devops000 5y agoStill not clear why use BTC to send money versus Venmo/PayPal. Less fees, better UX and a customer support.
- NicoJuicy 5y agoYeah, neither do I. Keeping your Bitcoin on a "hot wallet" would be what most people do and it's definitely not safe. Governments here also guarantee till 100 k. Which can't be replicated with a cryptocurrency ( yet? ) Because of lack of centralization.
- devops000 5y agoI doubt a country like El Salvador can afford 100$ fees for transaction or deal with BTC private key. A lot of people there even have a bank account with fancy mobile UI and phone support for pwd recovery.
- Traster 5y agoWhat I find kind of funny is >Writing complex software without bugs is impossible. I agree it's almost impossible to acheive bug free code (let alone unexploitable code that an adversary can experiment with) but look at crypto. Now go look at any industry where safety is important. Automative. Aviation. Look at the procedures in place for putting software in an ASIL-D application or take a look at the mind-numbing procedures specified in DO-254. It's not like these guys are actually making any attempt to actually write bug-free applications.
- rkagerer 5y agoWhat crypto lacks and has underpinned all large-scale commerce throughout the history of civilization is a robust justice system. Mistakes will always be made and bad actors will always endeavor to exploit them. To date it's generally fallen to software updates to make things right, which entails a huge amount of friction and risk of hard forks (diluting capital and your users). I have a hunch the tech will evolve toward a cryptocurrency which integrates an effective, decentralized judicial system of some sort. With a mechanism for dispute arbitration and a culture inclined to correct obvious system errors or severe abuse. Hitting the right balance will be tricky but it could prove more robust over the long term and really supercharge the decentralized economy.
- jl2718 5y agoThis is not about cryptocurrency, but smart contract transparency, which actually has very little to do with cryptography. There are standard interfaces like ERC-20 and ERC-721, and there are marginally-standard contract templates like OpenZeppelin, and there are ways to verify the code generated by a certain compiler, but every implementation of the standard has unique code. This is absolutely silly, and a major oversight by the Foundation. Certik does great work (usually), but they really should not have nearly the level of business they do. A smart contract standard should specify the exact code used for deployment, and only allow variance in deployment data. This should be easily determinable from a wallet or smart contract itself, whether direct or by proxy. And execution behavior should be specified exactly, prior to signature, or rejected with minimal cost, and no benefit to the miner. There is some of this in the intent of EIP 1559, but, to my mind, the burn fee is too high to enable safe rejection of exploitive behavior. Also, nothing has been done about transaction ordering. This would be easy to fix by setting the order by the same random beacon that selects the validator, or perhaps a moderately difficult VDF puzzle starting from the beacon entropy. It seems that 1559 is moving in the direction of institutionalizing MEV and dark pooling. I don't see this as necessary to secure the network - although maybe it helps the price by boosting the validator yield. Okay, I've rambled long enough - could go longer. All this is and was both predictable and preventable.
- Geee 5y agoThe purpose of Bitcoin is to decentralize central banks and to create money that is separated from nation states - money that cannot be controlled by nation states - the freedom money. The only way to do that is to use a blockchain with proof-of-work. Blockchain went wrong when it started looking at other problems to solve. There are none. There are no monopolies that need to be broken down.