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Quickly skimming through the Wired piece, am I weird for not being that uncomfortable with companies like Coinbase managing your crypto? Or Namebase.io managing

by spurgu 5y ago

Quickly skimming through the Wired piece, am I weird for not being that uncomfortable with companies like Coinbase managing your crypto? Or Namebase.io managing Handshake domains? Most people don't care about self-hosting/self-managing their stuff and just want something that works and is easy to use. With both of these (Bitcoin & HNS) you can still have 100% control over it if you choose to. So what if 90% of people decide to instead trust a third party with their holdings (like 100% now do with banks)? A portion of Coinbases holdings are even insured[0], gasp. And with regular banks you're paying increasing amounts in "management fees" to maintain this insurance. Cryptocurrencies have proven that you don't have to have traditional layers of trust and that's where I see the technological breakthrough. Disclaimer: Somewhat neutral about crypto in general. [0] The USD/EUR holding rather than crypto IIRC

golemotron 5y ago
> am I weird for not being that uncomfortable with companies like Coinbase managing your crypto? It's almost like using git, a decentralized version control system, through GitHub.
- Sebb767 5y ago
  It's actually completely different. Your code can co-exist on GitHub and your PC, which coins (mostly) can not [0]. Git's decentralization is also just a side feature, most people use it for managing versions and collaborating. On the coin side, though, decentralization is the main selling point. When you manage your coins via regulated exchange your really don't have much more than stocks with some added payment functionality. The threat scenario is completely different. [0] Technically, your code could still be stolen from GitHub, but it won't be a total loss like coins would be.
AussieWog93 5y ago
>Most people don't care about self-hosting/self-managing their stuff and just want something that works and is easy to use. Crypto is no different to regular currencies in this regard. There's nothing stopping you from physically withdrawing all of your cash and stuffing it under your mattress. If you're concerned about the government devaluing your cash through dodgy bailouts of financial institutions, you can even convert a significant percentage of it to precious metals that you bury in your garden. The reality, though, is that people generally take the convenient option when presented with it.
- ekianjo 5y ago
  Buying precious metals is very regulated and not practical in numerous countries.
  - AussieWog93 5y ago
    Same applies to crypto. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-58678907 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-58678907
- syshum 5y ago
  >> you can even convert a significant percentage of it to precious metals that you bury in your garden. People tried that in the US once.. The government passed a law that made owning said metals illegal... Which was in effect from 1933 to 1974...
  - nobody9999 5y ago
    >People tried that in the US once.. The government passed a law that made owning said metals illegal... >Which was in effect from 1933 to 1974... And now it's almost 50 years later. Why is that relevant now?
    - syshum 5y ago
      Because history repeats itself? Why is this even a question? Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it, and you can bet if people started divesting from the USD into gold and silver, gold and silver would be quickly made illegal to own
      - nobody9999 5y ago
        >Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it, and you can bet if people started divesting from the USD into gold and silver, gold and silver would be quickly made illegal to own I'll bet you an ounce of gold that doesn't happen while I'm still alive. As such, I don't care.
differentView 5y ago
Many are just looking for a bookie to take their bets.
tmcw 5y ago
Individuals can care or not care about self-hosting wallets, but besides the practical or theoretical concerns about some company having control over it is the fact that the original Bitcoin whitepaper begins with: > A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution. The underlying sentiment here, at least for me, is that crypto churns through thesis after thesis, pitching different usecases and value systems and benefits, and all of them fall flat, and the only remaining reason to be in it is idiotic "number go up" economics, hence the "store of value" thesis which describes everything from gold to dollar bills to a ham sandwich, and demands and describes nothing of the technology.
tyre 5y ago
This is the whole thing with crypto. The only benefits thus far that have come to widespread fruition are illicit purchases and speculation. For it to be broadly accepted, it has to lose the rest. Anonymity? People are unsurprisingly very in favor of KYC so we can apply anti–money laundering and terrorism laws. For it to be trusted you have to insure deposits. Those fly-by-night exchanges going poof with everyone's coins aren't what the public are looking for. I have never met a human being who is anti–FDIC (what insures bank deposits in the US up to $250k). For it to be used as regular currency you have to have price stability. No one wants to go to the grocery store and find out that they lost 10% of their budget on the walk over. People don't know how to manage private and public keys. Anyone who has built SaaS knows that reset password requests are one of the most common issues users have. Now they're being pitched something that losing a file or losing the password to that file loses all of their money (???) Of course you want a third party! Immutability? Well that's fine until there are exploits. And then you either have to live with a DAO losing millions of dollars or you have to hard fork. The former is terrible publicity and bad for the people who hold most of the money, while the latter violates the spirit of the whole thing. Guess which wins? It's all so silly. People are re-inventing the wheel and building something worse. Have people made a ton of money? Might it still get adoption? Sure. But there's a hell of a lot of problems in the world and a hell of a lot of bright people building bullshit.
- askmike 5y ago
  > Anonymity? People are unsurprisingly very in favor of KYC so we can apply anti–money laundering and terrorism laws. This doesn't scale any further than a website ran by a company providing services. Most eyes are on DeFi which is a world of smart contracts and dapps - which at some point (hopefully, because else there is little point) will run without anyone having any authority to change/stop them. > For it to be trusted you have to insure deposits. Those fly-by-night exchanges going poof with everyone's coins aren't what the public are looking for. I have never met a human being who is anti–FDIC (what insures bank deposits in the US up to $250k). It's not about being anti FDIC, it's about forcing all software to be managed by an American company that is registered and managed in a very particular way. > For it to be used as regular currency you have to have price stability. No one wants to go to the grocery store and find out that they lost 10% of their budget on the walk over. I think we are at the stage where very few people actually believe everyone is going to stop using any type of fiat and store all their wealth in crypto currency, even for everyday spending. So in that perspective this is like telling people not to buy an iPhone because Apple stock might go down (they are very separate). > People don't know how to manage private and public keys. Anyone who has built SaaS knows that reset password requests are one of the most common issues users have. Now they're being pitched something that losing a file or losing the password to that file loses all of their money (???) Of course you want a third party! Yes, not everyone cares about this but some do, that's like saying there is no point in WhatsApp to be e2e encrypted or Signal to exist at all because most people don't care if authorities read their messages. > Immutability? Well that's fine until there are exploits. And then you either have to live with a DAO losing millions of dollars or you have to hard fork. The former is terrible publicity and bad for the people who hold most of the money, while the latter violates the spirit of the whole thing. Guess which wins? We are early days for sure, the "ETH hardfork" one in that instance but there are many instances where it didn't.
dreyfan 5y ago
People trusted Mt Gox for 4 years and it handled 70% of the world's bitcoin trading until it abruptly shut down and everyone's bitcoin more-or-less disappeared with it.
- spurgu 5y ago
  They were not a publicly traded company though, and/or with clear intent from the beginning to follow rules and regulations.
psutor 5y ago
Coinbase can disable your withdrawal/sending ability at any time on a whim. Their support is email-only and has a backlog of months. Try taking a look at /r/coinbase for examples. There are some very good reasons to put your crypto somewhere you control. I am in the process of moving everything I had off of Coinbase after they silently disabled my send/sell ability, but not purchase/receive, without ever providing a reason. Others were not so lucky as I was for them to reply to my support ticket after only 6 weeks of this status. None of their FAQs or support emails acknowledged the exact problem correctly or plausibly answered any of my questions as to why.
- roguesherlock 5y ago
  Can you recommend me a good private wallet ? It’s tricky to bring physical wallet in my country
  - spurgu 5y ago
    To manage your own coins I'd recommend something like Trezor. The one I bought in 2016 is still supported and getting active updates.
ayngg 5y ago
It may not be that people are afraid of custodians, more so that they have just lost faith in traditional institutions (banks, fed, politicians etc) to such a degree that has allowed things like cryptocurrencies and their transparent policy to be alluring. The success of cryptocurrencies is for the most part only possible because of the failures of these institutions.
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  > allowed things like cryptocurrencies and their transparent policy to be alluring Genuinely: lol, what? How many exchange exit scams have we seen over the past few years? The idea that crypto institutions are "transparent" and trustworthy makes absolutely no sense. If there's any institution that should have no public trust, it should be crypto exchanges. No, most people are buying crypto because number goes up. It's pure gambling, nothing else.
ashtonkem 5y ago
> am I weird for not being that uncomfortable with companies like Coinbase managing your crypto? Since you're neutral to crypto, no, this is not weird. There is an overwhelming chance you use a trusted intermediary for your personal finance, so accepting that for crypto is an ideologically consistent position for you to take. The issue is that it's a bit two faced for the crypto crowd, who for years have been saying "be your own bank" and hyping crypto's ability to destroy traditional banks and financial institutions. That's why those of us who are negative on crypto (like me) will regularly point out how crypto has basically started recreating a parallel financial structure to traditional finance, only worse.
anonu 5y ago
Crypto is supposed to be about DeFi... but to your point, its just a rehash of CeFi. (Centralized Finance) The major paradox here is that Coinbase, a company that has banked its success on crypto for the masses, derives most of its marketcap through listing on the NYSE. Go figure...
sillysaurusx 5y ago
When Mt Gox went under and it took my father's $11k gift to me along with it, it messed me up for awhile. The idea that my father had worked so many years to save up for me, and that I had squandered it in one day... it took a long, long time to make peace with that. "Not your keys, not your coin" is trite, but true. I was an ardent, outspoken critic of Coinbase for a long time. I was also wrong. Coinbase didn't lose the crypto. I don't know how they managed not to, but it was an excellent reminder that the most successful startups in history often seem like terrible ideas at the start. I'm weirdly proud of them, because I understand how difficult of an achievement that was to pull off at scale. Just remember that the losers like me are forgotten in the sands of history. For every winner, there were dozens of horror stories you never hear about. Keep control over the assets that matter to you.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
Sebb767 5y ago
> Cryptocurrencies have proven that you don't have to have traditional layers of trust and that's where I see the technological breakthrough. Are you sure about that? Crypto forums are littered with posts of people having lost their coins due to some stupid mistake, be it a harddrive crash, a malformed transaction, a scam or even an actual hacker. Now, I'm not saying banks are perfect, but you at least have some hope to get your money back. With crypto, it's quite easy to loose it in the void. And if your money is in an insured, legal exchange, managed by someone else, you're using a fancy stock brokerage with some extra payment options. It's cool, yes, but not a paradigm shift.
SavantIdiot 5y ago
> am I weird for not being that uncomfortable with companies like Coinbase managing your crypto Maybe don't skim the article? Because that is literally what it is about: trust. You claim to blindly trust a single point of failure. But traditional banks aren't the same: there are multiple levels of recourse and regulation.
lamontcg 5y ago
I've run my own e-mail for the past 20 years, including setting up DKIM and all of that. Why do nearly all of you use some corporate service like gmail?
- WelcomeShorty 5y ago
  Convenience & (for me personally) superbe sender reputation and spam filtering.
  - lamontcg 5y ago
    That was a rhetorical question really. Although I think we do need trimmed down easy to use personal/home mailservers/dnsservers -- which are easy to deploy and configure and totally inappropriate for running a Fortune 500 company -- and those need to be incorporated into consumer electronic boxes (similar to a home NAS) to make them easy to deploy to dramatically drop the barrier to ditching gmail. I've also never had an issue with sender reputation -- but I have an .org domain and its run DKIM+SPF for years so the last time I got forged bounce spam must have been a decade or more ago. Sender reputation is probably a bit overblown and possibly even a bit of a lie by google to keep you locked into gmail. If you are in a TLD that people have to trust and have a domain which is secured, then your e-mails will go through, even if your mail volume is low. Spam filtering is a bit annoying though, DNS blackhole lists tend to shitcan quite a bit of necessary e-mail that some neckbeard has gotten themselves in a twist over.
johnthescott 5y ago
"Quickly skimming through the Wired piece, am I weird for not being that uncomfortable with companies like Coinbase " can not "you" verify said "correctness"? -j

by spurgu 5y ago

golemotron 5y ago

> am I weird for not being that uncomfortable with companies like Coinbase managing your crypto? It's almost like using git, a decentralized version control system, through GitHub.

Sebb767 5y ago
It's actually completely different. Your code can co-exist on GitHub and your PC, which coins (mostly) can not [0]. Git's decentralization is also just a side feature, most people use it for managing versions and collaborating. On the coin side, though, decentralization is the main selling point. When you manage your coins via regulated exchange your really don't have much more than stocks with some added payment functionality. The threat scenario is completely different. [0] Technically, your code could still be stolen from GitHub, but it won't be a total loss like coins would be.

AussieWog93 5y ago

>Most people don't care about self-hosting/self-managing their stuff and just want something that works and is easy to use. Crypto is no different to regular currencies in this regard. There's nothing stopping you from physically withdrawing all of your cash and stuffing it under your mattress. If you're concerned about the government devaluing your cash through dodgy bailouts of financial institutions, you can even convert a significant percentage of it to precious metals that you bury in your garden. The reality, though, is that people generally take the convenient option when presented with it.

ekianjo 5y ago
Buying precious metals is very regulated and not practical in numerous countries.
- AussieWog93 5y ago
  Same applies to crypto. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-58678907 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-58678907
syshum 5y ago
>> you can even convert a significant percentage of it to precious metals that you bury in your garden. People tried that in the US once.. The government passed a law that made owning said metals illegal... Which was in effect from 1933 to 1974...
- nobody9999 5y ago
  >People tried that in the US once.. The government passed a law that made owning said metals illegal... >Which was in effect from 1933 to 1974... And now it's almost 50 years later. Why is that relevant now?
  - syshum 5y ago
    Because history repeats itself? Why is this even a question? Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it, and you can bet if people started divesting from the USD into gold and silver, gold and silver would be quickly made illegal to own
    - nobody9999 5y ago
      >Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it, and you can bet if people started divesting from the USD into gold and silver, gold and silver would be quickly made illegal to own I'll bet you an ounce of gold that doesn't happen while I'm still alive. As such, I don't care.

differentView 5y ago

Many are just looking for a bookie to take their bets.

tmcw 5y ago

Individuals can care or not care about self-hosting wallets, but besides the practical or theoretical concerns about some company having control over it is the fact that the original Bitcoin whitepaper begins with: > A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution. The underlying sentiment here, at least for me, is that crypto churns through thesis after thesis, pitching different usecases and value systems and benefits, and all of them fall flat, and the only remaining reason to be in it is idiotic "number go up" economics, hence the "store of value" thesis which describes everything from gold to dollar bills to a ham sandwich, and demands and describes nothing of the technology.

tyre 5y ago

This is the whole thing with crypto. The only benefits thus far that have come to widespread fruition are illicit purchases and speculation. For it to be broadly accepted, it has to lose the rest. Anonymity? People are unsurprisingly very in favor of KYC so we can apply anti–money laundering and terrorism laws. For it to be trusted you have to insure deposits. Those fly-by-night exchanges going poof with everyone's coins aren't what the public are looking for. I have never met a human being who is anti–FDIC (what insures bank deposits in the US up to $250k). For it to be used as regular currency you have to have price stability. No one wants to go to the grocery store and find out that they lost 10% of their budget on the walk over. People don't know how to manage private and public keys. Anyone who has built SaaS knows that reset password requests are one of the most common issues users have. Now they're being pitched something that losing a file or losing the password to that file loses all of their money (???) Of course you want a third party! Immutability? Well that's fine until there are exploits. And then you either have to live with a DAO losing millions of dollars or you have to hard fork. The former is terrible publicity and bad for the people who hold most of the money, while the latter violates the spirit of the whole thing. Guess which wins? It's all so silly. People are re-inventing the wheel and building something worse. Have people made a ton of money? Might it still get adoption? Sure. But there's a hell of a lot of problems in the world and a hell of a lot of bright people building bullshit.

askmike 5y ago
> Anonymity? People are unsurprisingly very in favor of KYC so we can apply anti–money laundering and terrorism laws. This doesn't scale any further than a website ran by a company providing services. Most eyes are on DeFi which is a world of smart contracts and dapps - which at some point (hopefully, because else there is little point) will run without anyone having any authority to change/stop them. > For it to be trusted you have to insure deposits. Those fly-by-night exchanges going poof with everyone's coins aren't what the public are looking for. I have never met a human being who is anti–FDIC (what insures bank deposits in the US up to $250k). It's not about being anti FDIC, it's about forcing all software to be managed by an American company that is registered and managed in a very particular way. > For it to be used as regular currency you have to have price stability. No one wants to go to the grocery store and find out that they lost 10% of their budget on the walk over. I think we are at the stage where very few people actually believe everyone is going to stop using any type of fiat and store all their wealth in crypto currency, even for everyday spending. So in that perspective this is like telling people not to buy an iPhone because Apple stock might go down (they are very separate). > People don't know how to manage private and public keys. Anyone who has built SaaS knows that reset password requests are one of the most common issues users have. Now they're being pitched something that losing a file or losing the password to that file loses all of their money (???) Of course you want a third party! Yes, not everyone cares about this but some do, that's like saying there is no point in WhatsApp to be e2e encrypted or Signal to exist at all because most people don't care if authorities read their messages. > Immutability? Well that's fine until there are exploits. And then you either have to live with a DAO losing millions of dollars or you have to hard fork. The former is terrible publicity and bad for the people who hold most of the money, while the latter violates the spirit of the whole thing. Guess which wins? We are early days for sure, the "ETH hardfork" one in that instance but there are many instances where it didn't.

dreyfan 5y ago

People trusted Mt Gox for 4 years and it handled 70% of the world's bitcoin trading until it abruptly shut down and everyone's bitcoin more-or-less disappeared with it.

spurgu 5y ago
They were not a publicly traded company though, and/or with clear intent from the beginning to follow rules and regulations.

psutor 5y ago

Coinbase can disable your withdrawal/sending ability at any time on a whim. Their support is email-only and has a backlog of months. Try taking a look at /r/coinbase for examples. There are some very good reasons to put your crypto somewhere you control. I am in the process of moving everything I had off of Coinbase after they silently disabled my send/sell ability, but not purchase/receive, without ever providing a reason. Others were not so lucky as I was for them to reply to my support ticket after only 6 weeks of this status. None of their FAQs or support emails acknowledged the exact problem correctly or plausibly answered any of my questions as to why.

roguesherlock 5y ago
Can you recommend me a good private wallet ? It’s tricky to bring physical wallet in my country
- spurgu 5y ago
  To manage your own coins I'd recommend something like Trezor. The one I bought in 2016 is still supported and getting active updates.

ayngg 5y ago

It may not be that people are afraid of custodians, more so that they have just lost faith in traditional institutions (banks, fed, politicians etc) to such a degree that has allowed things like cryptocurrencies and their transparent policy to be alluring. The success of cryptocurrencies is for the most part only possible because of the failures of these institutions.

ashtonkem 5y ago
> allowed things like cryptocurrencies and their transparent policy to be alluring Genuinely: lol, what? How many exchange exit scams have we seen over the past few years? The idea that crypto institutions are "transparent" and trustworthy makes absolutely no sense. If there's any institution that should have no public trust, it should be crypto exchanges. No, most people are buying crypto because number goes up. It's pure gambling, nothing else.

ashtonkem 5y ago

> am I weird for not being that uncomfortable with companies like Coinbase managing your crypto? Since you're neutral to crypto, no, this is not weird. There is an overwhelming chance you use a trusted intermediary for your personal finance, so accepting that for crypto is an ideologically consistent position for you to take. The issue is that it's a bit two faced for the crypto crowd, who for years have been saying "be your own bank" and hyping crypto's ability to destroy traditional banks and financial institutions. That's why those of us who are negative on crypto (like me) will regularly point out how crypto has basically started recreating a parallel financial structure to traditional finance, only worse.

anonu 5y ago

Crypto is supposed to be about DeFi... but to your point, its just a rehash of CeFi. (Centralized Finance) The major paradox here is that Coinbase, a company that has banked its success on crypto for the masses, derives most of its marketcap through listing on the NYSE. Go figure...

sillysaurusx 5y ago

When Mt Gox went under and it took my father's $11k gift to me along with it, it messed me up for awhile. The idea that my father had worked so many years to save up for me, and that I had squandered it in one day... it took a long, long time to make peace with that. "Not your keys, not your coin" is trite, but true. I was an ardent, outspoken critic of Coinbase for a long time. I was also wrong. Coinbase didn't lose the crypto. I don't know how they managed not to, but it was an excellent reminder that the most successful startups in history often seem like terrible ideas at the start. I'm weirdly proud of them, because I understand how difficult of an achievement that was to pull off at scale. Just remember that the losers like me are forgotten in the sands of history. For every winner, there were dozens of horror stories you never hear about. Keep control over the assets that matter to you.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

Sebb767 5y ago

> Cryptocurrencies have proven that you don't have to have traditional layers of trust and that's where I see the technological breakthrough. Are you sure about that? Crypto forums are littered with posts of people having lost their coins due to some stupid mistake, be it a harddrive crash, a malformed transaction, a scam or even an actual hacker. Now, I'm not saying banks are perfect, but you at least have some hope to get your money back. With crypto, it's quite easy to loose it in the void. And if your money is in an insured, legal exchange, managed by someone else, you're using a fancy stock brokerage with some extra payment options. It's cool, yes, but not a paradigm shift.

SavantIdiot 5y ago

> am I weird for not being that uncomfortable with companies like Coinbase managing your crypto Maybe don't skim the article? Because that is literally what it is about: trust. You claim to blindly trust a single point of failure. But traditional banks aren't the same: there are multiple levels of recourse and regulation.

lamontcg 5y ago

I've run my own e-mail for the past 20 years, including setting up DKIM and all of that. Why do nearly all of you use some corporate service like gmail?

WelcomeShorty 5y ago
Convenience & (for me personally) superbe sender reputation and spam filtering.
- lamontcg 5y ago
  That was a rhetorical question really. Although I think we do need trimmed down easy to use personal/home mailservers/dnsservers -- which are easy to deploy and configure and totally inappropriate for running a Fortune 500 company -- and those need to be incorporated into consumer electronic boxes (similar to a home NAS) to make them easy to deploy to dramatically drop the barrier to ditching gmail. I've also never had an issue with sender reputation -- but I have an .org domain and its run DKIM+SPF for years so the last time I got forged bounce spam must have been a decade or more ago. Sender reputation is probably a bit overblown and possibly even a bit of a lie by google to keep you locked into gmail. If you are in a TLD that people have to trust and have a domain which is secured, then your e-mails will go through, even if your mail volume is low. Spam filtering is a bit annoying though, DNS blackhole lists tend to shitcan quite a bit of necessary e-mail that some neckbeard has gotten themselves in a twist over.

johnthescott 5y ago

"Quickly skimming through the Wired piece, am I weird for not being that uncomfortable with companies like Coinbase " can not "you" verify said "correctness"? -j