6 ms·

I’m still trying to understand why it is so evil that a centralised authority controls a transaction ledger. Why, exactly, is this a bad thing?

wyck 5y ago
"so evil that a centralised authority controls", repeat your own sentence a few times.
- chris_wot 5y ago
  I by and large think the Reserve Bank if Australia is benign.
jMyles 5y ago
Among the many reasons: because they can censor the ledger to make it impossible for you to pay for the vegetables you prefer to smoke.
- andai 5y ago
  Or shut off your PayPal, or block your business from taking credit cards, because they personally find your business unsavory, and soon you won't be able to take cash because there's a worldwide push to get rid of it, and many other reasons.
  - rantwasp 5y ago
    lol Paypal: https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/ua/acceptableuse-full https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/ua/acceptableuse-full You may not use the PayPal service for activities that: * violate any law, statute, ordinance or regulation. * relate to transactions involving (a) narcotics, steroids, certain controlled substances or other products that present a risk to consumer safety, (b) drug paraphernalia, (c) cigarettes, (d) items that encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to engage in illegal activity, (e) stolen goods including digital and virtual goods, (f) the promotion of hate, violence, racial or other forms of intolerance that is discriminatory or the financial exploitation of a crime, (g) items that are considered obscene, (h) items that infringe or violate any copyright, trademark, right of publicity or privacy or any other proprietary right under the laws of any jurisdiction, (i) certain sexually oriented materials or services, (j) ammunition, firearms, or certain firearm parts or accessories, or (k) certain weapons or knives regulated under applicable law. * relate to transactions that (a) show the personal information of third parties in violation of applicable law, (b) support pyramid or ponzi schemes, matrix programs, other "get rich quick" schemes or certain multi-level marketing programs, (c) are associated with purchases of annuities or lottery contracts, lay-away systems, off-shore banking or transactions to finance or refinance debts funded by a credit card, (d) are for the sale of certain items before the seller has control or possession of the item, (e) are by payment processors to collect payments on behalf of merchants, (f) are associated with the sale of traveler's checks or money orders, (g) involve currency exchanges or check cashing businesses, (h) involve certain credit repair, debt settlement services, credit transactions or insurance activities, or (i) involve offering or receiving payments for the purpose of bribery or corruption. * involve the sales of products or services identified by government agencies to have a high likelihood of being fraudulent. Look at what you need approval for: https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/ua/acceptableuse-full https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/ua/acceptableuse-full
- AndrewUnmuted 5y ago
  How's PorcFest going?
  - jMyles 5y ago
    Oh, it's so absolutely lovely. (Do we know each other? Or did you just read somewhere that I was going? Or just divine it from comments?) Although this is my 4th, I haven't been to the last seven in a row. From 2014 to 2021, it has changed substantially in some ways (many more women and people of color, for example) and stayed almost identical in others (feral children starting businesses to be able to buy toys and ice cream, etc). This is the first time I've had the bus, so we have a little more creature comfort than before. Have you been before? I highly, highly recommend it. Hard to find a place to surround yourself with a higher concentration of loving / accepting energy.
babaganoosh89 5y ago
It's as evil as you think the centralized authority is now or will be in the future. Some will also argue any entity having complete power over your life is inherently evil.
jayd16 5y ago
Its not. We use federated authorities and chains of trust all over the place. But now its actually possible to have a distributed ledger so we're searching for problems to solve with this solution.
- rantwasp 5y ago
  sure thing. we have invented something and now we are trying to apply it /s how did the authorities and the chains of trust emerge in the first place? Is a system that uses a central authority more or less stable than a system that does not rely on the said authority?
  - jayd16 5y ago
    Most consumer safety/encryption uses some kind of certificate chain with trusted roots. Its used from app installs to SSL to credit transactions. Seems to be very efficient, cheap and effective.
    - rantwasp 5y ago
      nah. you're talking the tech. I'm talking about the actual authority. What if someone decided that they would not issues you a cert? How would you do business at that point? But it's so efficient you says... Also, it's efficient up to the point where you have to revoke a certificate. At that point the fun starts.
rantwasp 5y ago
when you understand that a centralized authority decides what is okay and what is not okay and after that bans transactions that pay for the "not okay" items you will understand why a centralized authority is evil. The magic keywords are "Prohibited Products and Services" Plug that into google + your favorite payment gateway. Here are some samples: https://www.nextpay.com/list-prohibited-industries.html https://www.nextpay.com/list-prohibited-industries.html https://stripe.com/restricted-businesses https://stripe.com/restricted-businesses https://support.wix.com/en/article/wix-payments-prohibited-products-and-services https://support.wix.com/en/article/wix-payments-prohibited-p... http://support.worldpay.com/support/kb/gg/billdesk/content/prohibitedmerchantcategories.htm http://support.worldpay.com/support/kb/gg/billdesk/content/p...
- grey-area 5y ago
  The problem with this argument is that governments still have jurisdiction over your decentralised blockchain, the developers, the miners, and anyone else involved in it. If you sincerely and seriously want to dismantle that power structure, that's fine, but please start in the right place, with government. It's naive and ultimately fruitless to throw out all the good things that centralised payments bring (fast transactions, fraud control, etc etc) in the hope that you'll be able to get rid of a thing they don't actually have ultimate jurisdiction over (what is ok and not ok to buy).
  - rantwasp 5y ago
    yes, but no. how would enforcing such jurisdiction even look like? you cannot take something off the blockchain. Can you shutdown miners? sure. So what? The mining will happens somewhere else. Can you really prohibit developers from working on the tech? If it comes down to this we're in full anarchy mode (and even at that point there are going to be people working on it). Who said anything about throwing away all the good things centralized payments bring? How about we take a decentralized payments system and actually add those things (or even better, build a system that has them out of the box)
    - Retric 5y ago
kovek 5y ago
When pornhub wanted to start working with Visa, they had to shut down all pornhub non-verified accounts. Visa's terms.
- mattzito 5y ago
  As I recall, the issue was that it turned out that a lot of underage and non-consenting people were in videos on pornhub, and then MasterCard/visa said they would pull their support unless they fixed it.
cmckn 5y ago
I think a legitimate downside to blockchain is privacy. Sure, Stripe can (try to) prevent you from buying marijuana, but with crypto you’re required to announce that you’ve bought something from Dr. Chronic on the public ledger. Doesn’t that create an opportunity for discrimination/censorship/prosecution post-purchase? At least with Visa, you have a reasonable expectation that the transaction is private between you and the merchant. If you actually made the majority of your purchases on a blockchain, you’re publicizing a ton of information about yourself.
- uncomputation 5y ago
  I have the same question. Usually the response is something about using randomly generated IDs/addresses with your “wallet” program managing all these pseudonyms and tying them to your actual identity for your convenience, but I don’t understand how that is any better than our current system where things just are private by nature. I don’t expect people to be okay with their purchase histories being public knowledge.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - bruce343434 5y ago
    Monero solves this with cryptographic methods which are beyond me. But it works. Bitcoin indeed not so much - as soon as you can link a bitcoin address to somebody's identity it's over for them.
- ashishmax31 5y ago
  I'm no expert in crypto. But how would people know that your public key belongs to "you" ?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - rwbhn 5y ago
    The other party in any transaction knows enough to "deliver" whatever you purchased. In the world where all your transactions happen on a blockchain, that's everyone from Amazon to the corner pizza shop.
6gvONxR4sf7o 5y ago
It only seems like a problem to me in a monopolistic setting. If it's easy to go from visa to mastercard to your bank's debit card to venmo and easy for newcomers to enter, I don't see the problem. It's a big if :(
gpsx 5y ago
A central authority means not only trust but responsibility, and in turn risk. Why require so much responsibility when it is not necessary? The possible problems are not only malicious actions from the central authority but accidental actions and also susceptibility to malicious third parties. [Edit - problems]

wyck 5y ago

"so evil that a centralised authority controls", repeat your own sentence a few times.

chris_wot 5y ago
I by and large think the Reserve Bank if Australia is benign.

jMyles 5y ago

Among the many reasons: because they can censor the ledger to make it impossible for you to pay for the vegetables you prefer to smoke.

andai 5y ago
Or shut off your PayPal, or block your business from taking credit cards, because they personally find your business unsavory, and soon you won't be able to take cash because there's a worldwide push to get rid of it, and many other reasons.
- rantwasp 5y ago
  lol Paypal: https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/ua/acceptableuse-full https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/ua/acceptableuse-full You may not use the PayPal service for activities that: * violate any law, statute, ordinance or regulation. * relate to transactions involving (a) narcotics, steroids, certain controlled substances or other products that present a risk to consumer safety, (b) drug paraphernalia, (c) cigarettes, (d) items that encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to engage in illegal activity, (e) stolen goods including digital and virtual goods, (f) the promotion of hate, violence, racial or other forms of intolerance that is discriminatory or the financial exploitation of a crime, (g) items that are considered obscene, (h) items that infringe or violate any copyright, trademark, right of publicity or privacy or any other proprietary right under the laws of any jurisdiction, (i) certain sexually oriented materials or services, (j) ammunition, firearms, or certain firearm parts or accessories, or (k) certain weapons or knives regulated under applicable law. * relate to transactions that (a) show the personal information of third parties in violation of applicable law, (b) support pyramid or ponzi schemes, matrix programs, other "get rich quick" schemes or certain multi-level marketing programs, (c) are associated with purchases of annuities or lottery contracts, lay-away systems, off-shore banking or transactions to finance or refinance debts funded by a credit card, (d) are for the sale of certain items before the seller has control or possession of the item, (e) are by payment processors to collect payments on behalf of merchants, (f) are associated with the sale of traveler's checks or money orders, (g) involve currency exchanges or check cashing businesses, (h) involve certain credit repair, debt settlement services, credit transactions or insurance activities, or (i) involve offering or receiving payments for the purpose of bribery or corruption. * involve the sales of products or services identified by government agencies to have a high likelihood of being fraudulent. Look at what you need approval for: https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/ua/acceptableuse-full https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/ua/acceptableuse-full
AndrewUnmuted 5y ago
How's PorcFest going?
- jMyles 5y ago
  Oh, it's so absolutely lovely. (Do we know each other? Or did you just read somewhere that I was going? Or just divine it from comments?) Although this is my 4th, I haven't been to the last seven in a row. From 2014 to 2021, it has changed substantially in some ways (many more women and people of color, for example) and stayed almost identical in others (feral children starting businesses to be able to buy toys and ice cream, etc). This is the first time I've had the bus, so we have a little more creature comfort than before. Have you been before? I highly, highly recommend it. Hard to find a place to surround yourself with a higher concentration of loving / accepting energy.

babaganoosh89 5y ago

It's as evil as you think the centralized authority is now or will be in the future. Some will also argue any entity having complete power over your life is inherently evil.

jayd16 5y ago

Its not. We use federated authorities and chains of trust all over the place. But now its actually possible to have a distributed ledger so we're searching for problems to solve with this solution.

rantwasp 5y ago
sure thing. we have invented something and now we are trying to apply it /s how did the authorities and the chains of trust emerge in the first place? Is a system that uses a central authority more or less stable than a system that does not rely on the said authority?
- jayd16 5y ago
  Most consumer safety/encryption uses some kind of certificate chain with trusted roots. Its used from app installs to SSL to credit transactions. Seems to be very efficient, cheap and effective.
  - rantwasp 5y ago
    nah. you're talking the tech. I'm talking about the actual authority. What if someone decided that they would not issues you a cert? How would you do business at that point? But it's so efficient you says... Also, it's efficient up to the point where you have to revoke a certificate. At that point the fun starts.

rantwasp 5y ago

when you understand that a centralized authority decides what is okay and what is not okay and after that bans transactions that pay for the "not okay" items you will understand why a centralized authority is evil. The magic keywords are "Prohibited Products and Services" Plug that into google + your favorite payment gateway. Here are some samples: https://www.nextpay.com/list-prohibited-industries.html https://www.nextpay.com/list-prohibited-industries.html https://stripe.com/restricted-businesses https://stripe.com/restricted-businesses https://support.wix.com/en/article/wix-payments-prohibited-products-and-services https://support.wix.com/en/article/wix-payments-prohibited-p... http://support.worldpay.com/support/kb/gg/billdesk/content/prohibitedmerchantcategories.htm http://support.worldpay.com/support/kb/gg/billdesk/content/p...

grey-area 5y ago
The problem with this argument is that governments still have jurisdiction over your decentralised blockchain, the developers, the miners, and anyone else involved in it. If you sincerely and seriously want to dismantle that power structure, that's fine, but please start in the right place, with government. It's naive and ultimately fruitless to throw out all the good things that centralised payments bring (fast transactions, fraud control, etc etc) in the hope that you'll be able to get rid of a thing they don't actually have ultimate jurisdiction over (what is ok and not ok to buy).
- rantwasp 5y ago
  yes, but no. how would enforcing such jurisdiction even look like? you cannot take something off the blockchain. Can you shutdown miners? sure. So what? The mining will happens somewhere else. Can you really prohibit developers from working on the tech? If it comes down to this we're in full anarchy mode (and even at that point there are going to be people working on it). Who said anything about throwing away all the good things centralized payments bring? How about we take a decentralized payments system and actually add those things (or even better, build a system that has them out of the box)
  - Retric 5y ago

kovek 5y ago

When pornhub wanted to start working with Visa, they had to shut down all pornhub non-verified accounts. Visa's terms.

mattzito 5y ago
As I recall, the issue was that it turned out that a lot of underage and non-consenting people were in videos on pornhub, and then MasterCard/visa said they would pull their support unless they fixed it.

cmckn 5y ago

I think a legitimate downside to blockchain is privacy. Sure, Stripe can (try to) prevent you from buying marijuana, but with crypto you’re required to announce that you’ve bought something from Dr. Chronic on the public ledger. Doesn’t that create an opportunity for discrimination/censorship/prosecution post-purchase? At least with Visa, you have a reasonable expectation that the transaction is private between you and the merchant. If you actually made the majority of your purchases on a blockchain, you’re publicizing a ton of information about yourself.

uncomputation 5y ago
I have the same question. Usually the response is something about using randomly generated IDs/addresses with your “wallet” program managing all these pseudonyms and tying them to your actual identity for your convenience, but I don’t understand how that is any better than our current system where things just are private by nature. I don’t expect people to be okay with their purchase histories being public knowledge.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- bruce343434 5y ago
  Monero solves this with cryptographic methods which are beyond me. But it works. Bitcoin indeed not so much - as soon as you can link a bitcoin address to somebody's identity it's over for them.
ashishmax31 5y ago
I'm no expert in crypto. But how would people know that your public key belongs to "you" ?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- rwbhn 5y ago
  The other party in any transaction knows enough to "deliver" whatever you purchased. In the world where all your transactions happen on a blockchain, that's everyone from Amazon to the corner pizza shop.

6gvONxR4sf7o 5y ago

It only seems like a problem to me in a monopolistic setting. If it's easy to go from visa to mastercard to your bank's debit card to venmo and easy for newcomers to enter, I don't see the problem. It's a big if :(

gpsx 5y ago

A central authority means not only trust but responsibility, and in turn risk. Why require so much responsibility when it is not necessary? The possible problems are not only malicious actions from the central authority but accidental actions and also susceptibility to malicious third parties. [Edit - problems]