6 ms·

I don't understand how any take on crypto can not mention that it is now the de-facto currency of online black markets, from pornhub to silk road 9.0 or whateve

I don't understand how any take on crypto can not mention that it is now the de-facto currency of online black markets, from pornhub to silk road 9.0 or whatever version we're up to. This is crypto's utility and the only thing I've seen crypto being used for seriously that isn't speculation. Cryptocurrency is disrupting the black markets the same way amazon/ebay/online shopping disrupted the retail markets. Crypto isn't a solution looking for a problem, the problem was found back in 2011 - it's just that nobody wants to admit it. It reminds how everyone used to say that BitTorrent was used for downloading Linix ISOs, but with less self-awareness.

ls15 5y ago
Speculation is a use case and a market too
- secondcoming 5y ago
  How easy is it to convert gains back into fiat though?
  - lukeramsden 5y ago
    Extremely easy. The bookkeeping for tax is less easy though.
  - ls15 5y ago
    You send it from your wallet to the exchange where you bought it, sell it for fiat and withdraw it to your bank account. The most complicated parts are complying with KYC regulation and calculating taxes, as well as not losing or leaking your private keys. If the asset has only low liquidity, then it is difficult to sell it at the sticker price and your sale may actually lower the price, but this will not happen for most people with high liquidity assets, such as BTC or ETH and so on.
    - cuteboy19 5y ago
      Unless of course Binance disables withdrawals because of ""technical issues""
      - ls15 5y ago
        Then you withdraw a couple of hours later?
        cuteboy19 5y ago
        By that time the coin would have crashed 30% more
        _57jb 5y ago
        why wouldn't you just leverage a stable coin if you are looking for speed? The slowest part of this are the banks and the clearing houses. They essentially "trust" other institutions to a certain extent and vouch for the money until it officially arrives on the books. You should read up on FedNet if you are worried about volatility there are less volatile options inside of crypto
        otterley 5y ago
        It's funny watching crypto boosters realize there are actual benefits to institutional trust that are superior to cryptographic trust. These allow for high liquidity and allow participants to capture gains (or losses) practically in real time.
        _57jb 5y ago
        You misread my statement. The trust of banks is an illusion and actually slower than the consensus. I don't "boost" crypto. I disagree that crypto is how we should buy our lattes. If you live in a country where financial independence and control is not a reality this could be something greater than the corrupt system you are trying to extricate yourself from. There is rampant corruption in crypto and although I feel easier to see, still a dangerous investment vehicle. Is this the thing that changes the world? I think it did in some ways already. Is it the final iteration? I doubt it. As a first cut, I am wholly impressed and I believe it can create something different.
- _57jb 5y ago
  Yeah. I think speculation can be good when you don't have the speculators at the top of the food chain. I'm talking specifically about the Friedman Doctrine and making companies beholden to shareholders in the United States. It's been proven that it doesn't work yet we still have that structure. Predicting future direction can get people deeply invested in an investigative way but when they hold the reigns they can coerce entities to follow their direction
dskloet 5y ago
> the only thing I've seen crypto being used for seriously that isn't speculation When paying for domain names or VPS (or anything online, but those are the cases where it's easy), I prefer paying with crypto because I don't want to give my credit card information to some stranger so they can misuse or lose it. This is not illegal and a legitimate use case.
- jasongi 5y ago
  Crypto offers zero protection from fraud, as transactions are non reversible however if you pay by credit card goods are not delivered or if your card is used fraudulently, the credit card issuer can and will reverse the transactions. Also due to PCI standards almost all online transactions are done via a third party, PCI compliant payment processor. I don't see the value crypto is adding here. If you did have misplaced worries about being a victim to CC fraud, seems like it would be easier to use a prepaid credit card, debit card that you only transfer funds to when making purchases or a service like paypal.
  - kmmlng 5y ago
    With credit cards, you have to give out your details to whoever you are paying. That party will save them somewhere and then there is a possibility that someone else will gain access to your details and abuse them. You won't ultimaltely lose money here, because your credit card company will reverse the transactions, as you said. Being the victim of credit card fraud is still a hassle, however. With crypto, the only thing you give out is your public key. No one can perform any fraudulent activity with just your public key. It is of course possible to be defrauded with crypto, but then it will be partially your fault because you did something you should not have. With credit cards, you can become the victim of fraud through no fault of your own. I do think that is a difference worth pointing out.
    - jasongi 5y ago
      Sure, but I think the risk is overrated. Almost all online shops outsource payment processing to a third party payment gateway, which you can validate pretty easily. They never get access to your details in order to abuse them. Third party payment processor breaches where CC data is lost are quite rare I don't think I've read about one in a very long time. Sure, I guess you can't get phished out of secrets with crypto like you could with a credit card, but that's never happened to me, and probably won't happen to you unless you aren't very good at detecting dodgy websites. Also, if you fall for those kinds of scams, I have some monkey jpgs I want to sell you. The real benefit to crypto here is that you can send money, to anyone, anywhere in the world.
Slartie 5y ago
I'd add ransomware payments to the list, but otherwise your take "the problem was found back in 2011 - it's just that nobody wants to admit it" is spot-on! An interesting tangent of your BitTorrent analogy is that, for BitTorrent the protocol, an actually legal use case was found later: it is now used to create powerful ad-hoc CDNs for limited use cases with the novel property of gaining bandwidth automatically as more clients show up. The "Linux ISOs" that actually existed were the earliest incarnation of this, driven by non-profit orgs low on cash, but the concept is now in active use also for purely commercial purposes such as downloading large game updates (World of Warcraft, StarCraft 2 etc. have been using this scheme for a long time now) or generally distributing large software packages to a bunch of clients (I've read about at least one company-proprietary project that uses BitTorrent embedded in some kind of software package distribution system to quickly roll out microservice updates in a mesh made up of thousands of servers). This may mean that it's not impossible for some of the crypto protocols to eventually end up being used for actual benefit in some legal way that is not just again financial speculation. However, it will probably be much less world-changing than the crypto enthusiasts expect.
- jasongi 5y ago
  I would consider ransomware under the umbrella of black markets. Perhaps "anything illegal" would have been a better description. Nice point about BitTorrent. I'm sure crypto will have some niche adoptions in the future too. Apparently P2P game updates ended up being disabled though. Probably a good thing too - imagine the absolute carnage on ISPs if places like netflix decided to outsource their CDN to everyone's home internet. https://web.archive.org/web/20160715104054/https://us.battle.net/forums/en/bnet/topic/16283439122 https://web.archive.org/web/20160715104054/https://us.battle...
  - dspillett 5y ago
    > Apparently P2P game updates ended up being disabled though. Probably a good thing too - imagine the absolute carnage on ISPs if places like netflix decided to outsource their CDN to everyone's home internet. Given how asymmetric many home connections are, and were more so further back, and that using the whole upstream will effectively throttle downstream & there is no reliable way to detect at what throughput you will become a problem, I never saw P2P game updates as a good idea in general. Excellent for those behind the same bottleneck though - two PCs in the same student digs updating the same huge game for instance, saving a second slow download using the orders-of-magnitude faster local LAN - but I don't think that is a common enough use case to be worth the implementation effort.
mmcnl 5y ago
That's what I'm always saying too. Crypto is used for two things: criminal activities and convincing others to buy into your crypto so your crypto portfolio increases in value. The second thing can also be considered a criminal activity because it is _literally_ a pyramid scheme. Not "almost" or "something like", but by definition it is a pyramid scheme. The second thing is that crypto or "defi" enthusiasts go on raving about the decentralized structure. Anyone older than 25 should know that decentralization/centralization is a continuous cycle in which neither one is inherently better than the other. However, decentralization by itself is always used as an argument for crypto without further explanation. Red flag to me. Why a red flag? First, crypto is not decentralized, contrary to popular belief. In the case of smart contracts as the author of the article points out, everything runs on the network (Ethereum for example). That is _extreme_ centralization. Everything has to happen within the boundaries of the network. Sure the execution is decentralized, but there is one and only one protocol that everyone should use. Imagine a world where every messaging app has to use the SMS protocol. Second, centralization has enormous advantages, which is why we have so much centralization. Do you trust yourself to safely store the key to your life savings or artistic portfolio? I absolutely don't. I don't even trust myself to backup my holiday photos. You could then argue that there are identity/access services for that, like Coinbase (or whatever equivalent in the future). But as soon as you use a service like that, you are basically creating the crypto equivalent of Facebook/Google/Twitter for single sign-on. To me we are then exactly right back where we started in 2005: building centralized services on top of a decentralized infrastructure. What have we gained? Nothing. Except that some VCs got to execute web 2.0 all over again and get rich from the gains, which they apparently missed out on in the previous cycle. I have thought so much about this subject, and maybe I'm just too dumb or know to little about it, but honestly everything about crypto is repulsive to me.
- tim333 5y ago
  From Wikipedia "Pyramid schemes are based on network marketing, where each person in the pyramid is tasked with bringing in their own subordinates and in turn profiting from their sales or recruitments." Different really.
achenatx 5y ago
just because something is illegal doesnt make it immoral. Money transfer across country boundaries is a big use case. Chinese were using btc to get money out of the country which was one of the original big bumps. the immoral people are the countries that restrict people's ability to move by restricting their ability to move their assets. The US exerts its will around the world through the banking system. Sometimes for good and sometimes for immoral purposes. Crypto allows good and bad actors to avoid that pressure.
gquiniou 5y ago
Cryptocurrencies are used by people living in countries with high inflation (e.g. Venezuela) to protect their savings.

ls15 5y ago

Speculation is a use case and a market too

secondcoming 5y ago
How easy is it to convert gains back into fiat though?
- lukeramsden 5y ago
  Extremely easy. The bookkeeping for tax is less easy though.
- ls15 5y ago
  You send it from your wallet to the exchange where you bought it, sell it for fiat and withdraw it to your bank account. The most complicated parts are complying with KYC regulation and calculating taxes, as well as not losing or leaking your private keys. If the asset has only low liquidity, then it is difficult to sell it at the sticker price and your sale may actually lower the price, but this will not happen for most people with high liquidity assets, such as BTC or ETH and so on.
  - cuteboy19 5y ago
    Unless of course Binance disables withdrawals because of ""technical issues""
    - ls15 5y ago
      Then you withdraw a couple of hours later?
      - cuteboy19 5y ago
        By that time the coin would have crashed 30% more
        _57jb 5y ago
        why wouldn't you just leverage a stable coin if you are looking for speed? The slowest part of this are the banks and the clearing houses. They essentially "trust" other institutions to a certain extent and vouch for the money until it officially arrives on the books. You should read up on FedNet if you are worried about volatility there are less volatile options inside of crypto
        otterley 5y ago
        It's funny watching crypto boosters realize there are actual benefits to institutional trust that are superior to cryptographic trust. These allow for high liquidity and allow participants to capture gains (or losses) practically in real time.
        _57jb 5y ago
        You misread my statement. The trust of banks is an illusion and actually slower than the consensus. I don't "boost" crypto. I disagree that crypto is how we should buy our lattes. If you live in a country where financial independence and control is not a reality this could be something greater than the corrupt system you are trying to extricate yourself from. There is rampant corruption in crypto and although I feel easier to see, still a dangerous investment vehicle. Is this the thing that changes the world? I think it did in some ways already. Is it the final iteration? I doubt it. As a first cut, I am wholly impressed and I believe it can create something different.
_57jb 5y ago
Yeah. I think speculation can be good when you don't have the speculators at the top of the food chain. I'm talking specifically about the Friedman Doctrine and making companies beholden to shareholders in the United States. It's been proven that it doesn't work yet we still have that structure. Predicting future direction can get people deeply invested in an investigative way but when they hold the reigns they can coerce entities to follow their direction

dskloet 5y ago

> the only thing I've seen crypto being used for seriously that isn't speculation When paying for domain names or VPS (or anything online, but those are the cases where it's easy), I prefer paying with crypto because I don't want to give my credit card information to some stranger so they can misuse or lose it. This is not illegal and a legitimate use case.

jasongi 5y ago
Crypto offers zero protection from fraud, as transactions are non reversible however if you pay by credit card goods are not delivered or if your card is used fraudulently, the credit card issuer can and will reverse the transactions. Also due to PCI standards almost all online transactions are done via a third party, PCI compliant payment processor. I don't see the value crypto is adding here. If you did have misplaced worries about being a victim to CC fraud, seems like it would be easier to use a prepaid credit card, debit card that you only transfer funds to when making purchases or a service like paypal.
- kmmlng 5y ago
  With credit cards, you have to give out your details to whoever you are paying. That party will save them somewhere and then there is a possibility that someone else will gain access to your details and abuse them. You won't ultimaltely lose money here, because your credit card company will reverse the transactions, as you said. Being the victim of credit card fraud is still a hassle, however. With crypto, the only thing you give out is your public key. No one can perform any fraudulent activity with just your public key. It is of course possible to be defrauded with crypto, but then it will be partially your fault because you did something you should not have. With credit cards, you can become the victim of fraud through no fault of your own. I do think that is a difference worth pointing out.
  - jasongi 5y ago
    Sure, but I think the risk is overrated. Almost all online shops outsource payment processing to a third party payment gateway, which you can validate pretty easily. They never get access to your details in order to abuse them. Third party payment processor breaches where CC data is lost are quite rare I don't think I've read about one in a very long time. Sure, I guess you can't get phished out of secrets with crypto like you could with a credit card, but that's never happened to me, and probably won't happen to you unless you aren't very good at detecting dodgy websites. Also, if you fall for those kinds of scams, I have some monkey jpgs I want to sell you. The real benefit to crypto here is that you can send money, to anyone, anywhere in the world.

Slartie 5y ago

I'd add ransomware payments to the list, but otherwise your take "the problem was found back in 2011 - it's just that nobody wants to admit it" is spot-on! An interesting tangent of your BitTorrent analogy is that, for BitTorrent the protocol, an actually legal use case was found later: it is now used to create powerful ad-hoc CDNs for limited use cases with the novel property of gaining bandwidth automatically as more clients show up. The "Linux ISOs" that actually existed were the earliest incarnation of this, driven by non-profit orgs low on cash, but the concept is now in active use also for purely commercial purposes such as downloading large game updates (World of Warcraft, StarCraft 2 etc. have been using this scheme for a long time now) or generally distributing large software packages to a bunch of clients (I've read about at least one company-proprietary project that uses BitTorrent embedded in some kind of software package distribution system to quickly roll out microservice updates in a mesh made up of thousands of servers). This may mean that it's not impossible for some of the crypto protocols to eventually end up being used for actual benefit in some legal way that is not just again financial speculation. However, it will probably be much less world-changing than the crypto enthusiasts expect.

jasongi 5y ago
I would consider ransomware under the umbrella of black markets. Perhaps "anything illegal" would have been a better description. Nice point about BitTorrent. I'm sure crypto will have some niche adoptions in the future too. Apparently P2P game updates ended up being disabled though. Probably a good thing too - imagine the absolute carnage on ISPs if places like netflix decided to outsource their CDN to everyone's home internet. https://web.archive.org/web/20160715104054/https://us.battle.net/forums/en/bnet/topic/16283439122 https://web.archive.org/web/20160715104054/https://us.battle...
- dspillett 5y ago
  > Apparently P2P game updates ended up being disabled though. Probably a good thing too - imagine the absolute carnage on ISPs if places like netflix decided to outsource their CDN to everyone's home internet. Given how asymmetric many home connections are, and were more so further back, and that using the whole upstream will effectively throttle downstream & there is no reliable way to detect at what throughput you will become a problem, I never saw P2P game updates as a good idea in general. Excellent for those behind the same bottleneck though - two PCs in the same student digs updating the same huge game for instance, saving a second slow download using the orders-of-magnitude faster local LAN - but I don't think that is a common enough use case to be worth the implementation effort.

mmcnl 5y ago

That's what I'm always saying too. Crypto is used for two things: criminal activities and convincing others to buy into your crypto so your crypto portfolio increases in value. The second thing can also be considered a criminal activity because it is _literally_ a pyramid scheme. Not "almost" or "something like", but by definition it is a pyramid scheme. The second thing is that crypto or "defi" enthusiasts go on raving about the decentralized structure. Anyone older than 25 should know that decentralization/centralization is a continuous cycle in which neither one is inherently better than the other. However, decentralization by itself is always used as an argument for crypto without further explanation. Red flag to me. Why a red flag? First, crypto is not decentralized, contrary to popular belief. In the case of smart contracts as the author of the article points out, everything runs on the network (Ethereum for example). That is _extreme_ centralization. Everything has to happen within the boundaries of the network. Sure the execution is decentralized, but there is one and only one protocol that everyone should use. Imagine a world where every messaging app has to use the SMS protocol. Second, centralization has enormous advantages, which is why we have so much centralization. Do you trust yourself to safely store the key to your life savings or artistic portfolio? I absolutely don't. I don't even trust myself to backup my holiday photos. You could then argue that there are identity/access services for that, like Coinbase (or whatever equivalent in the future). But as soon as you use a service like that, you are basically creating the crypto equivalent of Facebook/Google/Twitter for single sign-on. To me we are then exactly right back where we started in 2005: building centralized services on top of a decentralized infrastructure. What have we gained? Nothing. Except that some VCs got to execute web 2.0 all over again and get rich from the gains, which they apparently missed out on in the previous cycle. I have thought so much about this subject, and maybe I'm just too dumb or know to little about it, but honestly everything about crypto is repulsive to me.

tim333 5y ago
From Wikipedia "Pyramid schemes are based on network marketing, where each person in the pyramid is tasked with bringing in their own subordinates and in turn profiting from their sales or recruitments." Different really.

achenatx 5y ago

just because something is illegal doesnt make it immoral. Money transfer across country boundaries is a big use case. Chinese were using btc to get money out of the country which was one of the original big bumps. the immoral people are the countries that restrict people's ability to move by restricting their ability to move their assets. The US exerts its will around the world through the banking system. Sometimes for good and sometimes for immoral purposes. Crypto allows good and bad actors to avoid that pressure.

gquiniou 5y ago

Cryptocurrencies are used by people living in countries with high inflation (e.g. Venezuela) to protect their savings.