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Bitcoin really needs some kind of SSL or way of getting a verified address from a particular organisation or person. Raw addresses encourage address reuse, whic

Bitcoin really needs some kind of SSL or way of getting a verified address from a particular organisation or person. Raw addresses encourage address reuse, which is already problematic for the bitcoin ecosystem. Add on top of that the fact that there is no authentication, there really needs to be a solution. An alternative that exists today would be LNURL, which is simply an HTTPS protocol that will generate an lightning invoice, however lightning itself doesn't have wide spread use yet.

MereInterest 5y ago
This would require some level of trust, which Bitcoin and the cryptocurrency ecosystem are pathologically avoidant of. Every one of cryptocurrency's problems, from the massive electrical cost to the irreversible transactions to the permanent auditable record of all transactions, could be avoided by the existence of a trusted intermediate. Societies grow strong on the basis of trustworthy and trusted institutions. Cryptocurrency has neither, and pays the cost of inefficiency with every hash.
- PretzelPirate 5y ago
  > This would require some level of trust, which Bitcoin and the cryptocurrency ecosystem are pathologically avoidant of. This is a misunderstanding of the blockchain community. They understand that trust is important and even required in many situations. The idea in blockchain is that you should decide who you trust and to what degree you trust them. For the scenario of figuring out if an address is really owned by the Red Cross, people are interested in the idea of Decentralized Identity where cryptographic attestations are stored on-chain about an address. Someone can choose to trust those attestations (by following a larger web of trust through attestations), or They can choose to trust some other source. Blockchains are about choice and not being forced to trust any specific entity who hasn’t gained your trust simply because you’re told to.
  - MereInterest 5y ago
    If that were the case, then blockchains would be implemented akin to GPG's web of trust. You could choose who to trust, and based on a level of trust, whether you would trust their trusted contacts. Public-key cryptography is about being able to choose who to trust. Blockchain is about never trusting anybody.
    - astoor 5y ago
      > Blockchain is about never trusting anybody. This is a common misconception - blockchain still requires trust, it simply shifts trust from central authorities to more nebulous entities such as anonymous developers, shady mining cartels, unregulated exchanges, the cryptocurrency oligarchs manipulating the prices, and even yourself to not lose your private keys. See also Bruce Schneier's https://www.wired.com/story/theres-no-good-reason-to-trust-blockchain-technology/ https://www.wired.com/story/theres-no-good-reason-to-trust-b... .
    - vmception 5y ago
      Yes, there are some groups that use blockchains as a GPG web of trust, since like 2011 Where are you even getting these blanket statements from? Did you look or ask about them? The point is that the blockchain doesnt force you to use it, but optional or temporarily trusted environments can be used and are being used
  - arcticbull 5y ago
    > This is a misunderstanding of the blockchain community. It's a misunderstanding of part of the community. Part of the community is ideologically anarchocapitalist libertarian - the loud part - and the rest of the community couldn't care less about decentralization or trustlessness so long as number go up. After all bitcoin isn’t technology it’s ideology. An old slow inefficient linked list being stapled to anything that moves.
    - MereInterest 5y ago
      Watching the space over the last decade has been fascinating, like watching a continual slow-motion train crash, where the occupants of the train insist that nothing is ever wrong. I would say that the anarchocapitalist part is the core and foundation of the community, around which everything else grew. At least they had a consistent mental framework about it, even though it was driven by a weird wistfulness about the gold standard.
      - arcticbull 5y ago
        Watching the space has actually given me a love of following live-action crime. There's just a never-ending supply of grift and crime going on all around and some gumshoes who track it down, and some podcasters who report on it. If you haven't listened to it yet, I couldn't recommend Crypto Critics Corner enough. Their focus is on the crime and grift, and they're generally fairly neutral on the tech itself. [1] [1] http://cascoinfoundation.org http://cascoinfoundation.org
endisneigh 5y ago
Lol, why. Just use fiat at that point.
anaganisk 5y ago
So reinventing banking?
kanzure 5y ago
> Bitcoin really needs some kind of SSL or way of getting a verified address from a particular organisation or person. https://www.metzdowd.com/pipermail/cryptography/2022-March/037752.html https://www.metzdowd.com/pipermail/cryptography/2022-March/0...
sb057 5y ago
OpenAlias allows for sending Bitcoin and Monero to any domain name via a TXT DNS record by supported clients. https://openalias.org/ https://openalias.org/
tenuousemphasis 5y ago
It has that, it just never became widely used and has some drawbacks. https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0070.mediawiki https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0070.mediawi...

MereInterest 5y ago

This would require some level of trust, which Bitcoin and the cryptocurrency ecosystem are pathologically avoidant of. Every one of cryptocurrency's problems, from the massive electrical cost to the irreversible transactions to the permanent auditable record of all transactions, could be avoided by the existence of a trusted intermediate. Societies grow strong on the basis of trustworthy and trusted institutions. Cryptocurrency has neither, and pays the cost of inefficiency with every hash.

PretzelPirate 5y ago
> This would require some level of trust, which Bitcoin and the cryptocurrency ecosystem are pathologically avoidant of. This is a misunderstanding of the blockchain community. They understand that trust is important and even required in many situations. The idea in blockchain is that you should decide who you trust and to what degree you trust them. For the scenario of figuring out if an address is really owned by the Red Cross, people are interested in the idea of Decentralized Identity where cryptographic attestations are stored on-chain about an address. Someone can choose to trust those attestations (by following a larger web of trust through attestations), or They can choose to trust some other source. Blockchains are about choice and not being forced to trust any specific entity who hasn’t gained your trust simply because you’re told to.
- MereInterest 5y ago
  If that were the case, then blockchains would be implemented akin to GPG's web of trust. You could choose who to trust, and based on a level of trust, whether you would trust their trusted contacts. Public-key cryptography is about being able to choose who to trust. Blockchain is about never trusting anybody.
  - astoor 5y ago
    > Blockchain is about never trusting anybody. This is a common misconception - blockchain still requires trust, it simply shifts trust from central authorities to more nebulous entities such as anonymous developers, shady mining cartels, unregulated exchanges, the cryptocurrency oligarchs manipulating the prices, and even yourself to not lose your private keys. See also Bruce Schneier's https://www.wired.com/story/theres-no-good-reason-to-trust-blockchain-technology/ https://www.wired.com/story/theres-no-good-reason-to-trust-b... .
  - vmception 5y ago
    Yes, there are some groups that use blockchains as a GPG web of trust, since like 2011 Where are you even getting these blanket statements from? Did you look or ask about them? The point is that the blockchain doesnt force you to use it, but optional or temporarily trusted environments can be used and are being used
- arcticbull 5y ago
  > This is a misunderstanding of the blockchain community. It's a misunderstanding of part of the community. Part of the community is ideologically anarchocapitalist libertarian - the loud part - and the rest of the community couldn't care less about decentralization or trustlessness so long as number go up. After all bitcoin isn’t technology it’s ideology. An old slow inefficient linked list being stapled to anything that moves.
  - MereInterest 5y ago
    Watching the space over the last decade has been fascinating, like watching a continual slow-motion train crash, where the occupants of the train insist that nothing is ever wrong. I would say that the anarchocapitalist part is the core and foundation of the community, around which everything else grew. At least they had a consistent mental framework about it, even though it was driven by a weird wistfulness about the gold standard.
    - arcticbull 5y ago
      Watching the space has actually given me a love of following live-action crime. There's just a never-ending supply of grift and crime going on all around and some gumshoes who track it down, and some podcasters who report on it. If you haven't listened to it yet, I couldn't recommend Crypto Critics Corner enough. Their focus is on the crime and grift, and they're generally fairly neutral on the tech itself. [1] [1] http://cascoinfoundation.org http://cascoinfoundation.org

endisneigh 5y ago

Lol, why. Just use fiat at that point.

anaganisk 5y ago

So reinventing banking?

kanzure 5y ago

> Bitcoin really needs some kind of SSL or way of getting a verified address from a particular organisation or person. https://www.metzdowd.com/pipermail/cryptography/2022-March/037752.html https://www.metzdowd.com/pipermail/cryptography/2022-March/0...

sb057 5y ago

OpenAlias allows for sending Bitcoin and Monero to any domain name via a TXT DNS record by supported clients. https://openalias.org/ https://openalias.org/

tenuousemphasis 5y ago

It has that, it just never became widely used and has some drawbacks. https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0070.mediawiki https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0070.mediawi...