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If we could maybe keep our discussion to one thread that would be helpful. Meta aside, you described the stock market. You don't even need 66%, just a big perc

If we could maybe keep our discussion to one thread that would be helpful. Meta aside, you described the stock market. You don't even need 66%, just a big percentage of shareholders (there are efforts to do this with big evil companies like Exxon). Uncensorable is a pipe dream, crypto isn't beyond the reach of governments, as China's mining ban has demonstrated. And you're wildly mischaracterizing the costs of the existing payment systems vs crypto; maybe you think there wouldn't be all the ancillary bureaucracies and services, but that's literally all the exchanges and such are so you'd already be wrong.

rglullis 5y ago
> You don't even need 66%, just a big percentage of shareholders Unlike most companies in the stock market, the fact that Ethereum has a low point of entry leads to two things happening: - The sheer amount of people needed to be involved in collusion would make such an attack practically impossible. - The chance of such an attack being profitable is so low to make it economically unattractive. An attack of the network would lead to a loss of the value of Ethereum itself, so unless those in collusion have other assets on the chain that are more valuable than the staked Ethereum itself, it will end up being net negative. > Uncensorable is a pipe dream (...) China's mining ban has demonstrated. China may ban mining as much as they want, this is not the uncensorable part I am talking about. What I am talking about is that there is no single entity that can stop you from making transactions on the blockchain. Even if someone is deemed "subversive" in China and gets denied a service by the social credit system, they can still have access to the blockchain, buy, sell and use services. We don't need even need to talk about China. Just think of all the people who had problems with Paypal and had their funds frozen with no recourse. Think of all the people that live in countries with strict capital controls and can not move their money if they want to. This is what I mean by "uncensorable". > you're wildly mischaracterizing the costs of the existing payment systems vs crypto Currently, it costs more (a lot more) to make even simple transfers on the blockchain, but as the technology scales and new solutions come up, these will go down. There will also be insurance, fraud-detecting and even conflict-resolution [0] systems based on the blockchain, so at one point the UX will be just as good as swiping a credit card. [0]: https://kleros.io https://kleros.io
- camgunz 5y ago
  People think Sybil is hard, and it is, but mining groups make it a lot easier. Usually the rejoinder is "Sybil requires a huge investment and immediately destroys it" but that's probably not how it would go. A miner consortium would selectively Sybil, and everyone with all their money wrapped up in BTC would probably just be like "well, that still seems preferable to losing all our money in a crash to zero" and keep their BTC anyway. As far as censoring or control or whatever, sure there are institutions that can do this (and have): governments and banks. All they have to do is ban crypto just like they ban buying anything else. It's so, so super easy. --- Ok so, to be a little less antagonistic, I also think banks are junk and buying things should be private, etc. I think those things are a little at odds with preventing things like the drug trade and modern slavery, but I don't think the financial system is the place to attack them. Broadly I just don't think blockchains are necessary for payments, privacy, distributed computing, you name it. Literally everything anyone can "imagine" (insurance, fraud detection, oooooh) already exists and works great. Maybe it's corny but, I think these problems are best solved by functioning democracies. Elect people who think bank regulation is important, etc. Erecting a shadow financial system based on blockchains seems about the worst way to it.
  - rglullis 5y ago
    You really are out of reasonable arguments, yet you continue to argue: - Please continue to talk about PoW as a strawman for blockchain in general. - "Governments and banks can just ban crypto" is beyond missing the point. The more "banks and governments" try to shut it out and stop people from using it, the more people will be marginalized and get to the point where crypto will be their only choice. Black markets thrive in authoritarian societies, not free ones. - The world does not care about what you think. "Oh, you can solve that with functioning democracies!" No shit, genius, what a revelation. Now go tell that to the people in Venezuela who can not run a fucking grocery stand without the government telling them they are not allowed to take a profit, and tell the others that it is okay to starve to death or being forced to flee to Colombia because "blockchain is burning the planet". --- Just like 99% of the "critics", you don't know what you are talking about you and you project your totalitarian tendencies onto others, while having this childish arrogance of claiming to have a monopoly on what is moral and just. At least now I am certain that it is just a waste of time to discuss with you.

rglullis 5y ago

> You don't even need 66%, just a big percentage of shareholders Unlike most companies in the stock market, the fact that Ethereum has a low point of entry leads to two things happening: - The sheer amount of people needed to be involved in collusion would make such an attack practically impossible. - The chance of such an attack being profitable is so low to make it economically unattractive. An attack of the network would lead to a loss of the value of Ethereum itself, so unless those in collusion have other assets on the chain that are more valuable than the staked Ethereum itself, it will end up being net negative. > Uncensorable is a pipe dream (...) China's mining ban has demonstrated. China may ban mining as much as they want, this is not the uncensorable part I am talking about. What I am talking about is that there is no single entity that can stop you from making transactions on the blockchain. Even if someone is deemed "subversive" in China and gets denied a service by the social credit system, they can still have access to the blockchain, buy, sell and use services. We don't need even need to talk about China. Just think of all the people who had problems with Paypal and had their funds frozen with no recourse. Think of all the people that live in countries with strict capital controls and can not move their money if they want to. This is what I mean by "uncensorable". > you're wildly mischaracterizing the costs of the existing payment systems vs crypto Currently, it costs more (a lot more) to make even simple transfers on the blockchain, but as the technology scales and new solutions come up, these will go down. There will also be insurance, fraud-detecting and even conflict-resolution [0] systems based on the blockchain, so at one point the UX will be just as good as swiping a credit card. [0]: https://kleros.io https://kleros.io

camgunz 5y ago
People think Sybil is hard, and it is, but mining groups make it a lot easier. Usually the rejoinder is "Sybil requires a huge investment and immediately destroys it" but that's probably not how it would go. A miner consortium would selectively Sybil, and everyone with all their money wrapped up in BTC would probably just be like "well, that still seems preferable to losing all our money in a crash to zero" and keep their BTC anyway. As far as censoring or control or whatever, sure there are institutions that can do this (and have): governments and banks. All they have to do is ban crypto just like they ban buying anything else. It's so, so super easy. --- Ok so, to be a little less antagonistic, I also think banks are junk and buying things should be private, etc. I think those things are a little at odds with preventing things like the drug trade and modern slavery, but I don't think the financial system is the place to attack them. Broadly I just don't think blockchains are necessary for payments, privacy, distributed computing, you name it. Literally everything anyone can "imagine" (insurance, fraud detection, oooooh) already exists and works great. Maybe it's corny but, I think these problems are best solved by functioning democracies. Elect people who think bank regulation is important, etc. Erecting a shadow financial system based on blockchains seems about the worst way to it.
- rglullis 5y ago
  You really are out of reasonable arguments, yet you continue to argue: - Please continue to talk about PoW as a strawman for blockchain in general. - "Governments and banks can just ban crypto" is beyond missing the point. The more "banks and governments" try to shut it out and stop people from using it, the more people will be marginalized and get to the point where crypto will be their only choice. Black markets thrive in authoritarian societies, not free ones. - The world does not care about what you think. "Oh, you can solve that with functioning democracies!" No shit, genius, what a revelation. Now go tell that to the people in Venezuela who can not run a fucking grocery stand without the government telling them they are not allowed to take a profit, and tell the others that it is okay to starve to death or being forced to flee to Colombia because "blockchain is burning the planet". --- Just like 99% of the "critics", you don't know what you are talking about you and you project your totalitarian tendencies onto others, while having this childish arrogance of claiming to have a monopoly on what is moral and just. At least now I am certain that it is just a waste of time to discuss with you.