5 ms·

My personal opinion is that whilst Bitcoin is not the answer, many seem to miss the point of cryptocurrencies, which IMHO is, to enable a permissionless electro

My personal opinion is that whilst Bitcoin is not the answer, many seem to miss the point of cryptocurrencies, which IMHO is, to enable a permissionless electronic cash system. Being decentralized is an important aspect of it, and TPS and time-to-finality etc are important metrics for any practical use, but the appeal of cryptocurrencies is that you don't need the permission of others to open an account nor have to pay premiums to send or receive money. It is also truly global so there is no difference whatsoever between splitting a bill in a restaurant or sending remittances to your family back home. I guess many people live their lives on the "happy path"[0] thus never really experience how difficult the simplest tasks can get. In the country I have emigrated to, to open a current account you need a proof of (permanent) address, and to be able to rent a flat, you need a bank account to pay the deposit---a Catch 22 that I was able to break only thanks to TransferWise and Revolut. Another example is cash being deprecated for convenience and hygiene reasons, yet banks being just as difficult to give a POS terminal to self-employed and small businesses (hence the emergence of Stripe Terminal and Square) yet alone marginalized groups such as sex workers. Neobanks and fintechs really make life easier for many, but they are still not as free as cryptocurrencies aspire to be, and to be fair, cryptocurrencies are not there yet either... I am looking forward to the day I can spend my stablecoins as easily as using my Visa/MasterCard. Hence, in the end, it may not matter as much whether some chains are more centralized than others or if stable coins are backed by the assets of some central custodians. Bitcoin is far from providing that, I think, but let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_path https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_path

WheatM 5y ago
cipheredStones 5y ago
Generally, if your system can handle the vast majority of cases easily and most edge cases with some effort, you don't think about tearing it down to replace it with an entirely new one that's far less efficient and far more difficult for the end user. The appeal of cryptocurrencies for most buyers is that Bitcoin dectupled in a year and people seem to be getting fabulously rich off of them everywhere you look. No more and no less.
- boramalper 5y ago
  Two things: (1) No one is tearing anything down as far I am concerned, rather people are working on a new system that is intended to complement, surpass, and eventually perhaps even replace the current one in a distant future. For instance, I do not put my savings in neobanks nor would be able to get a mortgage from them anyway, but they are absolutely fantastic for day-to-day use. Is it really impossible to imagine a similar future with stablecoins and better wallets? (2) Isn't what you describe the curse of "good enough"? For a counterexample, WireGuard exactly did tear the current systems down, started with a blank slate, and replaced them with an entirely new one---but it was far more efficient and far easier for the end user. I wholeheartedly agree with you that Bitcoin is not it, but disagree with you that there is no chance of seeing an actual solution aimed at actually serving the needs of netizens in our lifetime.
  - cipheredStones 5y ago
    Part of my point is that cryptocurrency as it stands really doesn't complement the normal financial system. Your landlord isn't going to accept crypto for your deposit because it would require them to invest a great deal of time and effort to learn about how to use crypto, force them to accept additional risk (of e.g. having their coins stolen, of losing access to them), and give them marginal-if-any benefit. And that issue generalizes to most cases you can think of: big institutions could figure out how to do Bitcoin, but won't want to (financial risk, legal risk, complexity, institutional conservatism), and most individuals won't or can't do it (are the sex workers excluded from the normal financial system supposed to figure out how public-key cryptography works?). For these problems of interfacing with the normal system to disappear, crypto would likely need to become the predominant way many people exchange value - and that would be bad. Or, alternatively, you could have most people do crypto through centralized platforms that abstract most of these problems away, which gives you many of the disadvantages of crypto without any of the permissionlessness.
    - spopejoy 5y ago
      > Your landlord isn't going to accept crypto for your deposit because it would require them to invest a great deal of time and effort to learn about how to use crypto, force them to accept additional risk (of e.g. having their coins stolen, of losing access to them), and give them marginal-if-any benefit. That's not an effective argument against crypto itself but more it's UX which is granted, awful, but is improving over time. An argument for "better tech for crypto" is actually pro-crypto -- I fully agree that innovation has been really slow in the last near-decade on actually progressing the user experience of owning crypto. The answer lies in effortless multisig and better API<->protocol interaction, and while it doesn't look great now folks are working on this. Solve this problem and crypto becomes easier to hold than even a credit card, let alone a full-on bank account. Tech failures actually imprison crypto a lot more than people realize. If Bitcoin could (a) scale and (b) not be terrifying to hold large quantities of, there'd be no debate here; what's more, volatility would _improve_ with the drastically increased usage. FX market has just as many negative actors (and indeed far more powerful than crypto whales and corrupt projects), but the reason currencies are less volatile is because they are _used_. The average HN crypto-hater now says "yeah well bitcoin can never scale". Bitcoin doesn't have to, _crypto_ does, and it's been a lot slower going than I think folks realize. Proof-of-Stake slowed things down significantly by encouraging huge centralization of ownership across almost every project (Cosmos being one of the few exceptions). But POS doesn't actually scale very well -- it has fast finality but once you hit the TPS limit it starts looking like subnets etc. The point being, there ARE worlds to conquer in blockchain tech still.

WheatM 5y ago

cipheredStones 5y ago

Generally, if your system can handle the vast majority of cases easily and most edge cases with some effort, you don't think about tearing it down to replace it with an entirely new one that's far less efficient and far more difficult for the end user. The appeal of cryptocurrencies for most buyers is that Bitcoin dectupled in a year and people seem to be getting fabulously rich off of them everywhere you look. No more and no less.

boramalper 5y ago
Two things: (1) No one is tearing anything down as far I am concerned, rather people are working on a new system that is intended to complement, surpass, and eventually perhaps even replace the current one in a distant future. For instance, I do not put my savings in neobanks nor would be able to get a mortgage from them anyway, but they are absolutely fantastic for day-to-day use. Is it really impossible to imagine a similar future with stablecoins and better wallets? (2) Isn't what you describe the curse of "good enough"? For a counterexample, WireGuard exactly did tear the current systems down, started with a blank slate, and replaced them with an entirely new one---but it was far more efficient and far easier for the end user. I wholeheartedly agree with you that Bitcoin is not it, but disagree with you that there is no chance of seeing an actual solution aimed at actually serving the needs of netizens in our lifetime.
- cipheredStones 5y ago
  Part of my point is that cryptocurrency as it stands really doesn't complement the normal financial system. Your landlord isn't going to accept crypto for your deposit because it would require them to invest a great deal of time and effort to learn about how to use crypto, force them to accept additional risk (of e.g. having their coins stolen, of losing access to them), and give them marginal-if-any benefit. And that issue generalizes to most cases you can think of: big institutions could figure out how to do Bitcoin, but won't want to (financial risk, legal risk, complexity, institutional conservatism), and most individuals won't or can't do it (are the sex workers excluded from the normal financial system supposed to figure out how public-key cryptography works?). For these problems of interfacing with the normal system to disappear, crypto would likely need to become the predominant way many people exchange value - and that would be bad. Or, alternatively, you could have most people do crypto through centralized platforms that abstract most of these problems away, which gives you many of the disadvantages of crypto without any of the permissionlessness.
  - spopejoy 5y ago
    > Your landlord isn't going to accept crypto for your deposit because it would require them to invest a great deal of time and effort to learn about how to use crypto, force them to accept additional risk (of e.g. having their coins stolen, of losing access to them), and give them marginal-if-any benefit. That's not an effective argument against crypto itself but more it's UX which is granted, awful, but is improving over time. An argument for "better tech for crypto" is actually pro-crypto -- I fully agree that innovation has been really slow in the last near-decade on actually progressing the user experience of owning crypto. The answer lies in effortless multisig and better API<->protocol interaction, and while it doesn't look great now folks are working on this. Solve this problem and crypto becomes easier to hold than even a credit card, let alone a full-on bank account. Tech failures actually imprison crypto a lot more than people realize. If Bitcoin could (a) scale and (b) not be terrifying to hold large quantities of, there'd be no debate here; what's more, volatility would _improve_ with the drastically increased usage. FX market has just as many negative actors (and indeed far more powerful than crypto whales and corrupt projects), but the reason currencies are less volatile is because they are _used_. The average HN crypto-hater now says "yeah well bitcoin can never scale". Bitcoin doesn't have to, _crypto_ does, and it's been a lot slower going than I think folks realize. Proof-of-Stake slowed things down significantly by encouraging huge centralization of ownership across almost every project (Cosmos being one of the few exceptions). But POS doesn't actually scale very well -- it has fast finality but once you hit the TPS limit it starts looking like subnets etc. The point being, there ARE worlds to conquer in blockchain tech still.