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This is exactly my thoughts on crypto as well. Being unable to fix a "whoopsy" is the biggest weakness. Humans make mistakes, and computers make mistakes. When

This is exactly my thoughts on crypto as well. Being unable to fix a "whoopsy" is the biggest weakness. Humans make mistakes, and computers make mistakes. When it comes to money, you need to be able to apply common sense and be able to reverse those mistakes. Crypto seems too absolutist for this use case. (Although I should mention that they seem to discuss rolling back the blockchain whenever a big heist takes place. But if you can rollback then chain, then doesn't that circumvent the core tenant of no trust needed as now you have to trust that the group doesn't decide to rollback the chain?)

jaywalk 5y ago
I can't imagine any scenario where a majority of the miners decided to rollback the blockchain with Bitcoin itself surviving unscathed.
- blibble 5y ago
  we saw that pretty much with ethereum vs. ethereum classic
  - colinmhayes 5y ago
    Ethereum has a clear leader.
dexen 5y ago
>Being unable to fix a "whoopsy" is the biggest weakness. Who decides what is a "whoopsy" a legitimate user made, and what is a pretend-"whoopsy" conjured by a malicious actor? Giving people & automated systems ability to flag something as "whoopsy" and revert it or lock down entire account enables malicious abuse and honest mistakes; either can end up very costly or even effectively irreversible in some cases. Trivial example: every day we see a new post on HN about somebody's Apple/Google/YT/payment processor/etc operation/content/account being marked as "whoopsy" by the support or anti-fraud team, and they losing access to data/finances. The best way to think of cryptocurrencies being "too absolutist" (irreversible) is as of a complementary counterpart to the (fiat) money which is too open to interpretation and always subject to unexpected third party decisions.
charcircuit 5y ago
The irreversable transactions of money are primitive operations. Reversible transactions of money will be built on top of this.

jaywalk 5y ago

I can't imagine any scenario where a majority of the miners decided to rollback the blockchain with Bitcoin itself surviving unscathed.

blibble 5y ago
we saw that pretty much with ethereum vs. ethereum classic
- colinmhayes 5y ago
  Ethereum has a clear leader.

dexen 5y ago

>Being unable to fix a "whoopsy" is the biggest weakness. Who decides what is a "whoopsy" a legitimate user made, and what is a pretend-"whoopsy" conjured by a malicious actor? Giving people & automated systems ability to flag something as "whoopsy" and revert it or lock down entire account enables malicious abuse and honest mistakes; either can end up very costly or even effectively irreversible in some cases. Trivial example: every day we see a new post on HN about somebody's Apple/Google/YT/payment processor/etc operation/content/account being marked as "whoopsy" by the support or anti-fraud team, and they losing access to data/finances. The best way to think of cryptocurrencies being "too absolutist" (irreversible) is as of a complementary counterpart to the (fiat) money which is too open to interpretation and always subject to unexpected third party decisions.

charcircuit 5y ago

The irreversable transactions of money are primitive operations. Reversible transactions of money will be built on top of this.