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This is how ALL of Crypto works. A decentralized ledger means that you cannot call the CEO or CFO of the ledger and have a clearly fraudulent transfer revoked.

This is how ALL of Crypto works. A decentralized ledger means that you cannot call the CEO or CFO of the ledger and have a clearly fraudulent transfer revoked. That is the tradeoff.

xyzzy123 5y ago
What I think a lot of people don't appreciate yet is that computationally decentralised systems can still have legal single points of failure. Lots of chains have holding entities or foundations (nominally for governance, really to justify their premine or "reserves") and seem rather vulnerable, especially if they pay the core developers. The CEO of that entity won't take your calls but they are absolutely exposed to the whims of the legal system in their founding jurisdiction.
worik 5y ago
Yes. Trading off hundreds of years of experience and judicial tradition and precedent for a brand new shiny (just trust us programmers) system. If the former system were to be irretrievably corrupt, teetering on the edge of collapse, and the proposed replacement were capable of replacing it then it would be worthwhile. The existing international financial system is corrupt, the judiciary in most of our world is complicit, but it is not on the edge of collapse (look how brilliantly it sailed through the 2008 crises. It used its political power to get the middle classes to bail out the super rich). The proposed replacement (cryptro currencies) has no support from cryptographers (I am not one) nor finance geeks (that I have been). It is even worse that that which it proposes to replace. Additionally in most of the Western World we have the democratic institutions that can be put to use to fix the system. Economists are slowly coming around to recognising the catastrophic mess that the current system is, how it is sapping our vitality as a community, enriching the few (hi Unicorn founders - fly to Mars please) and impoverishing the middle classes. We can fix this. But we have to give up on single fixes (like crypto). This requires modern system thinking....
- jkhdigital 5y ago
  > has no support from cryptographers I am a PhD student in cryptography, and judging by the papers I've read there is plenty of support from cryptographers, many of whom are directly involved in research and development. Silvio Micali is practically a founder of modern cryptography (and Turing Award winner), and he co-created the blockchain Algorand. There is also plenty of opposition, as the subject elicits strong opinions, but the assertion that cryptocurrency has no support from cryptographers is just false.
  - worik 5y ago
    True. The universally quantified statement "No cryptographers thing X" is almost certainly going to be false. Hyperbole on my part, oops. Sorry about that. I am not a cryptographer, but I do pay attention to cryptographers. Well, some cryptographers. So thanks to your helpful comment I looked up Silvio Micali. He has rather faint endorsement, but endorsement it is.
  - Shorel 5y ago
    In fact, I can think of nothing more profitable for a cryptographer than designing a better cryptocurrency.
    - worik 5y ago
      The fundamentals are all wrong though. Money is, amoung other things, a web of trust. Trying to remove trust from it is taking away some of what makes it money. I do not think there is a solution in this space that works economically or financially. What we need is a unit of exchange that: holds its value reliably, allows a lot of transactions, has low over head, allows anonymous transactions. A central bank could build a system that does the first four, but they have no incentive to do the last.
- everfree 5y ago
  If the current financial system really can fix itself and become better than cryptocurrency through democracy, then I don't really get what it has to fear from cryptocurrency. Under that hypothetical, cryptocurrency would be inferior, nobody would use it and it would die out. Problem solves itself. And as a member of the middle class, I personally think it's a feature that cryptocurrency can't be inflated to bail out the rich. If banks knew that they weren't going to get bailed out, they wouldn't have taken as many risks and we would have avoided the whole crisis in the first place.
  - RandomLensman 5y ago
    Not sure big banks, brokers, etc. fear cryptocurrencies. They are already starting to happily make money of those and sell products around them. Banks worked happily in the past with decentralized/local currencies, for example. The concern might be more on the policy and regulatory side of the world.
- rglullis 5y ago
  > It is even worse that that which it proposes to replace. Aside from the vocal minority of BTC maxis that jerk off to the idea of making a crypto-revolution, no serious developer in crypto wants it to replace the existing systems and institutions. We "only" want to create an alternative for the times and places where the current institutions are insufficient or dysfunctional.
lmm 5y ago
Except when you can, e.g. the Ethereum DAO. Turns out crypto is just exchanging one shady cabal for an even shadier one.
- rglullis 5y ago
  No, not really. The Ethereum fork was successful because the majority of the users through absolutely decentralized consensus started following the forked chain. Vitalik did not pass any legally binding decree to get people to comply, and the worst thing that happened to people who disagreed with the change? They got left to play with the other chain.

This is how ALL of Crypto works. A decentralized ledger means that you cannot call the CEO or CFO of the ledger and have a clearly fraudulent transfer revoked. That is the tradeoff.

xyzzy123 5y ago

What I think a lot of people don't appreciate yet is that computationally decentralised systems can still have legal single points of failure. Lots of chains have holding entities or foundations (nominally for governance, really to justify their premine or "reserves") and seem rather vulnerable, especially if they pay the core developers. The CEO of that entity won't take your calls but they are absolutely exposed to the whims of the legal system in their founding jurisdiction.

worik 5y ago

Yes. Trading off hundreds of years of experience and judicial tradition and precedent for a brand new shiny (just trust us programmers) system. If the former system were to be irretrievably corrupt, teetering on the edge of collapse, and the proposed replacement were capable of replacing it then it would be worthwhile. The existing international financial system is corrupt, the judiciary in most of our world is complicit, but it is not on the edge of collapse (look how brilliantly it sailed through the 2008 crises. It used its political power to get the middle classes to bail out the super rich). The proposed replacement (cryptro currencies) has no support from cryptographers (I am not one) nor finance geeks (that I have been). It is even worse that that which it proposes to replace. Additionally in most of the Western World we have the democratic institutions that can be put to use to fix the system. Economists are slowly coming around to recognising the catastrophic mess that the current system is, how it is sapping our vitality as a community, enriching the few (hi Unicorn founders - fly to Mars please) and impoverishing the middle classes. We can fix this. But we have to give up on single fixes (like crypto). This requires modern system thinking....

jkhdigital 5y ago
> has no support from cryptographers I am a PhD student in cryptography, and judging by the papers I've read there is plenty of support from cryptographers, many of whom are directly involved in research and development. Silvio Micali is practically a founder of modern cryptography (and Turing Award winner), and he co-created the blockchain Algorand. There is also plenty of opposition, as the subject elicits strong opinions, but the assertion that cryptocurrency has no support from cryptographers is just false.
- worik 5y ago
  True. The universally quantified statement "No cryptographers thing X" is almost certainly going to be false. Hyperbole on my part, oops. Sorry about that. I am not a cryptographer, but I do pay attention to cryptographers. Well, some cryptographers. So thanks to your helpful comment I looked up Silvio Micali. He has rather faint endorsement, but endorsement it is.
- Shorel 5y ago
  In fact, I can think of nothing more profitable for a cryptographer than designing a better cryptocurrency.
  - worik 5y ago
    The fundamentals are all wrong though. Money is, amoung other things, a web of trust. Trying to remove trust from it is taking away some of what makes it money. I do not think there is a solution in this space that works economically or financially. What we need is a unit of exchange that: holds its value reliably, allows a lot of transactions, has low over head, allows anonymous transactions. A central bank could build a system that does the first four, but they have no incentive to do the last.
everfree 5y ago
If the current financial system really can fix itself and become better than cryptocurrency through democracy, then I don't really get what it has to fear from cryptocurrency. Under that hypothetical, cryptocurrency would be inferior, nobody would use it and it would die out. Problem solves itself. And as a member of the middle class, I personally think it's a feature that cryptocurrency can't be inflated to bail out the rich. If banks knew that they weren't going to get bailed out, they wouldn't have taken as many risks and we would have avoided the whole crisis in the first place.
- RandomLensman 5y ago
  Not sure big banks, brokers, etc. fear cryptocurrencies. They are already starting to happily make money of those and sell products around them. Banks worked happily in the past with decentralized/local currencies, for example. The concern might be more on the policy and regulatory side of the world.
rglullis 5y ago
> It is even worse that that which it proposes to replace. Aside from the vocal minority of BTC maxis that jerk off to the idea of making a crypto-revolution, no serious developer in crypto wants it to replace the existing systems and institutions. We "only" want to create an alternative for the times and places where the current institutions are insufficient or dysfunctional.

lmm 5y ago

Except when you can, e.g. the Ethereum DAO. Turns out crypto is just exchanging one shady cabal for an even shadier one.

rglullis 5y ago
No, not really. The Ethereum fork was successful because the majority of the users through absolutely decentralized consensus started following the forked chain. Vitalik did not pass any legally binding decree to get people to comply, and the worst thing that happened to people who disagreed with the change? They got left to play with the other chain.