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Frankly, I can’t judge the merits of this article because I lack the knowledge required. But I think at this point we know that all cryptocurrencies are ‘great

Frankly, I can’t judge the merits of this article because I lack the knowledge required. But I think at this point we know that all cryptocurrencies are ‘greater fool’ “investments”. [1] They are in every way totally irrelevant and detrimental to society. Governments are unfortunately slow to crack down on the exchanges, although progress is being made. And that effort is essential to battle the cancer that is the ransomware epidemic. Anyone who follows the Lock Picking Lawyer on YouTube knows that with time, resources and dedication virtually all locks can be defeated and cryptocurrencies make ‘expensive’ attacks worthwhile on IT infrastructure. Frankly it hurts to see how cryptocurrencies have been ‘legitimized’ by HN & ycombinator’s coinbase. Because so many people will be hurt. [1]: https://twitter.com/smdiehl/status/1384055017003311106?lang=en https://twitter.com/smdiehl/status/1384055017003311106?lang=...

Joeboy 5y ago
> But I think at this point we know that all cryptocurrencies are ‘greater fool’ “investments” It seems to me to be very apparent that we do not all know that. It is in fact a point of significant controversy.
- louwrentius 5y ago
  I don’t think so. It’s quite simple: where do the profits come from? Other people, who by definition will lose money because crypto doesn’t create value. A large amount of people will hold the bags of worthless currencies while a few laugh their asses off in their lambo’s.
  - xiphias2 5y ago
    El Salvador's Bitcoin Beach project is a great example of people profiting from a debit based value network instead of a credit based financial system: even though both US and El Salvador had USD as the legal tender, it took $10 to remit $50 through the western union network. Lightning network (which is using Bitcoin as a settlement network) is both dramatically lowering the fees and provides instant debit transfer from an El Salvadorian living in US remitting money to his/her parents in their village (or directly paying the rent / gas bills) instead of the parents needing to travel hours by bus to the city.
    - nootropicat 5y ago
      LN isn't actually used - the way it actually works is: Strike holds dollars for the user. The user wants to send dollars to someone. Strike buys btc using dollars (from itself), sends btc via ln - to itself - and then sells btc for the same amount of dollars, again to itself, and credits the receiver. What's actually happening is that Strike is a normal payment provider like Paypal, Venmo, Revolut that fakes the btc transfer process because pretending to be only a btc wallet means less regulation than a full payment provider. They don't actually spell it as directly - they just claim an absurdity that buying btc and then selling btc is somehow cheaper than a direct transfer, which of course is impossible because it means taking the ask and then selling into the bid, and the actual spread on most liquid btc markets can be observed on biggest exchanges like Coinbase or Binance, and that's ignoring the fact that one part of the exchange is supposed to happen in a local illiquid market in El Salvador. The whole thing would be less convoluted if stablecoin tokens were sent directly using a payment channel without a fake trade step - using btc is a completely pointless for anything but marketing (Strike to btc holders and marketing btc itself).
      - SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
        I read that twice and now it makes less sense. What is the purpose of the fake transfer steps?
        axiosgunnar 5y ago
        > because pretending to be only a btc wallet means less regulation than a full payment provider.
      - xiphias2 5y ago
        You are totally right in each step, but there's 1 thing that makes it different from most exchanges: you can already transfer money in/out of it using LN, which makes it much more practical than using a Coinbase exchange account. Also, while Coinbase Pro has a 0.1-0.3% fee for market order, if you want guaranteed execution, Coinbase and its competitors take 3-4%. If you listened to talks from Jack Mallers, he was tracking lnd head instead of waiting for the full releases, and picking and testing pull requests by hand, fixing bugs that come up in practice (or giving feedback to lightning devs), that's one of Strike's advantages over other exchanges. Also the ,,less regulation'' is just not true generally, people have to go through KYC to link with bank accounts, they are communicating with regulators: https://jimmymow.medium.com/announcing-strike-public-beta-325877a79f87 https://jimmymow.medium.com/announcing-strike-public-beta-32...
  - Joeboy 5y ago
    > I don’t think so But the fact you don't disagree with yourself doesn't mean other people don't disagree with you.
  - echopurity 5y ago
    >where do the profits come from? Every heard a money printer go brrr?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
bouncycastle 5y ago
Attacks on IT infrastructure have other motives besides ransom too. For example. IP theft such as stealing the secret recepcie to the KFC herbs and spices, or stealing the soure code to a competitors product, or the user database. Moreover, attacks to ravage the target without the motive of ransom are common, see the Sony hack for example. The only solution against attacks is better security.
casi 5y ago
I equally find it strange that people continue to come to hackernews- the Silicon Valley VC startup land - and can’t grasp that the infrastructure for programmable money might have some value. And write off p2p communication and coordination tools as zero-sum/ fraudulent games. And then wish for the government to ban other people’s jobs and hobby’s and communities because they don’t like it. Blows my mind that people might spend their day coding, and night playing mmorpgs, and still not understand crypto. I guess we need better UX and storytellers.
- z3c0 5y ago
  To give the original commenter some credit, they did warn us that they lack knowledge on the subject.
- FabHK 5y ago
  You can easily (!) and efficiently (!) do "programmable money" without crypto[1]/blockchain/consensus (ie whatever Bitcoin and its descendants brought to the table), and guess what, people do. > Blows my mind that people might spend their day coding, and night playing mmorpgs, and still not understand crypto. Let's agree that you can lambast cryptocurrencies even despite understanding them, ok? [1] with good old cryptography, of course, but without "crypto"
- Jasper_ 5y ago
  Nobody has been able to tell me a single thing that this "programmable money" can do, despite having 12 years of gestation to think on it. Everyone just seems excited about the concept and assumes that because it's "natively programmable", it's somehow more useful than what we have right now, which is that we write programs which move around money. And please don't reply with DeFi, that's not taking advantage of the inherent programmability of Bitcoin, it's just a marketplace based on failed economics.
- Hokusai 5y ago
  > the infrastructure for programmable money might have some value And it has, Central Banks are creating their own digital currencies for digital wallets. They aware based on real needs for speed, volume, security, trazability, etc. > the infrastructure for programmable money might have some value I think that people understand cryptocurrencies quite well, and from that knowledge comes the skepticism. > wish for the government to ban other people’s jobs and hobby’s and communities because they don’t like it I want it banned because people with unsofisticated knowledge of economics and technology are being scammed out of their money by snake oil salesmen. But, that is not needed. As soon as normal accounting guaratees are required it probably will call by its own weight. I know people working hard jobs putting hard earned money into this scam trying too get money to better their lives. It breaks my heart to thing that they are being lied in such a way, this study suggests is all manipulation, and that is my experience with everything related to cryptocurrencies. The sooner it gets regulated the better.
MichaelBurge 5y ago
I tend to agree, but this rant has nothing to do with using Benford's law to detect Bitcoin manipulation.
SamPatt 5y ago
"at this point we all know..." Sorry that's an appeal to majority. You're wrong. Bitcoin is useful.
Geee 5y ago
Once you learn the externalities of fiat monetary systems, you will understand why we need Bitcoin. And you will realize that it is the most important innovation of our lifetime.

Joeboy 5y ago

> But I think at this point we know that all cryptocurrencies are ‘greater fool’ “investments” It seems to me to be very apparent that we do not all know that. It is in fact a point of significant controversy.

louwrentius 5y ago
I don’t think so. It’s quite simple: where do the profits come from? Other people, who by definition will lose money because crypto doesn’t create value. A large amount of people will hold the bags of worthless currencies while a few laugh their asses off in their lambo’s.
- xiphias2 5y ago
  El Salvador's Bitcoin Beach project is a great example of people profiting from a debit based value network instead of a credit based financial system: even though both US and El Salvador had USD as the legal tender, it took $10 to remit $50 through the western union network. Lightning network (which is using Bitcoin as a settlement network) is both dramatically lowering the fees and provides instant debit transfer from an El Salvadorian living in US remitting money to his/her parents in their village (or directly paying the rent / gas bills) instead of the parents needing to travel hours by bus to the city.
  - nootropicat 5y ago
    LN isn't actually used - the way it actually works is: Strike holds dollars for the user. The user wants to send dollars to someone. Strike buys btc using dollars (from itself), sends btc via ln - to itself - and then sells btc for the same amount of dollars, again to itself, and credits the receiver. What's actually happening is that Strike is a normal payment provider like Paypal, Venmo, Revolut that fakes the btc transfer process because pretending to be only a btc wallet means less regulation than a full payment provider. They don't actually spell it as directly - they just claim an absurdity that buying btc and then selling btc is somehow cheaper than a direct transfer, which of course is impossible because it means taking the ask and then selling into the bid, and the actual spread on most liquid btc markets can be observed on biggest exchanges like Coinbase or Binance, and that's ignoring the fact that one part of the exchange is supposed to happen in a local illiquid market in El Salvador. The whole thing would be less convoluted if stablecoin tokens were sent directly using a payment channel without a fake trade step - using btc is a completely pointless for anything but marketing (Strike to btc holders and marketing btc itself).
    - SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
      I read that twice and now it makes less sense. What is the purpose of the fake transfer steps?
      - axiosgunnar 5y ago
        > because pretending to be only a btc wallet means less regulation than a full payment provider.
    - xiphias2 5y ago
      You are totally right in each step, but there's 1 thing that makes it different from most exchanges: you can already transfer money in/out of it using LN, which makes it much more practical than using a Coinbase exchange account. Also, while Coinbase Pro has a 0.1-0.3% fee for market order, if you want guaranteed execution, Coinbase and its competitors take 3-4%. If you listened to talks from Jack Mallers, he was tracking lnd head instead of waiting for the full releases, and picking and testing pull requests by hand, fixing bugs that come up in practice (or giving feedback to lightning devs), that's one of Strike's advantages over other exchanges. Also the ,,less regulation'' is just not true generally, people have to go through KYC to link with bank accounts, they are communicating with regulators: https://jimmymow.medium.com/announcing-strike-public-beta-325877a79f87 https://jimmymow.medium.com/announcing-strike-public-beta-32...
- Joeboy 5y ago
  > I don’t think so But the fact you don't disagree with yourself doesn't mean other people don't disagree with you.
- echopurity 5y ago
  >where do the profits come from? Every heard a money printer go brrr?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

bouncycastle 5y ago

Attacks on IT infrastructure have other motives besides ransom too. For example. IP theft such as stealing the secret recepcie to the KFC herbs and spices, or stealing the soure code to a competitors product, or the user database. Moreover, attacks to ravage the target without the motive of ransom are common, see the Sony hack for example. The only solution against attacks is better security.

casi 5y ago

I equally find it strange that people continue to come to hackernews- the Silicon Valley VC startup land - and can’t grasp that the infrastructure for programmable money might have some value. And write off p2p communication and coordination tools as zero-sum/ fraudulent games. And then wish for the government to ban other people’s jobs and hobby’s and communities because they don’t like it. Blows my mind that people might spend their day coding, and night playing mmorpgs, and still not understand crypto. I guess we need better UX and storytellers.

z3c0 5y ago
To give the original commenter some credit, they did warn us that they lack knowledge on the subject.
FabHK 5y ago
You can easily (!) and efficiently (!) do "programmable money" without crypto[1]/blockchain/consensus (ie whatever Bitcoin and its descendants brought to the table), and guess what, people do. > Blows my mind that people might spend their day coding, and night playing mmorpgs, and still not understand crypto. Let's agree that you can lambast cryptocurrencies even despite understanding them, ok? [1] with good old cryptography, of course, but without "crypto"
Jasper_ 5y ago
Nobody has been able to tell me a single thing that this "programmable money" can do, despite having 12 years of gestation to think on it. Everyone just seems excited about the concept and assumes that because it's "natively programmable", it's somehow more useful than what we have right now, which is that we write programs which move around money. And please don't reply with DeFi, that's not taking advantage of the inherent programmability of Bitcoin, it's just a marketplace based on failed economics.
Hokusai 5y ago
> the infrastructure for programmable money might have some value And it has, Central Banks are creating their own digital currencies for digital wallets. They aware based on real needs for speed, volume, security, trazability, etc. > the infrastructure for programmable money might have some value I think that people understand cryptocurrencies quite well, and from that knowledge comes the skepticism. > wish for the government to ban other people’s jobs and hobby’s and communities because they don’t like it I want it banned because people with unsofisticated knowledge of economics and technology are being scammed out of their money by snake oil salesmen. But, that is not needed. As soon as normal accounting guaratees are required it probably will call by its own weight. I know people working hard jobs putting hard earned money into this scam trying too get money to better their lives. It breaks my heart to thing that they are being lied in such a way, this study suggests is all manipulation, and that is my experience with everything related to cryptocurrencies. The sooner it gets regulated the better.

MichaelBurge 5y ago

I tend to agree, but this rant has nothing to do with using Benford's law to detect Bitcoin manipulation.

SamPatt 5y ago

"at this point we all know..." Sorry that's an appeal to majority. You're wrong. Bitcoin is useful.

Geee 5y ago

Once you learn the externalities of fiat monetary systems, you will understand why we need Bitcoin. And you will realize that it is the most important innovation of our lifetime.