7 ms·

In a system run by people, the transaction could be reversed, traced, and the culprits eventually brought to justice. In a system run by algorithms, designed t

by mabbo 5y ago

In a system run by people, the transaction could be reversed, traced, and the culprits eventually brought to justice. In a system run by algorithms, designed to avoid oversight by people (governments), there is no such powers. There's no reversal. There's no checking the name on the account the transfer was to. It's just gone. I do not understand why people who have legal intentions would want to be part of the crypto economy. There's nothing but more risks with zero benefits.

malfist 5y ago
Arguably it's the same risk as holding paper notes right? If I steal your life savings from under your mattress, there isn't necessarily anything to trace it back to me. However, there is a physical limit, pretty damn hard to run off with half a billion worth of paper notes.
- paxys 5y ago
  It isn't even just the limits of the notes themselves. Physical theft has to be done on location. You have to steal the money and get away as far as possible as quickly as possible. And there are local laws and police equipped to go after you. How do you deal with it when the money could be in the pockets of an Eastern European teenager with one script run?
- tomatowurst 5y ago
  parent is talking about the financial system run by algorithms designed to evade sanctions and regulation, not being your own bank. You absolutely can keep millions under your mattress and some do when they cannot launder it but it would be up to you to reverse the transaction in a forced wealth transfer vs the bank who can simply trace or even reverse a fraudulent transaction.
- mnumber 5y ago
  Why did you equally conflate the risks then immediately back peddle and say "physically stealing is harder i guess"?
  - malfist 5y ago
    I guess it comes across as me saying cash and crypto are equal. They're not. I was just trying to add nuance to the conversation. I am wholeheartedly a supporter of centralized, fiat currencies.
gear54rus 5y ago
You confuse legal with right. When the government is out for your money, crypto can be a life saver (as the recent russian example shows). So maybe you shouldn't dismiss it so quickly just because it never happened to you.
jokoon 5y ago
Because it's cool money, and because it's a legal gray area. I can't wait for the law to change. At some point there will be a tax for receiving and sending dollars to a blockchain converter, or it will require some heavy regulations and control, and then maybe things will improve. Unless people understand the Blockchain is used to launder money, nothing will change.
lottin 5y ago
They think that government is tyranny, therefore lack of government is freedom. Yes, they are dumb as hell.
- frostwarrior 5y ago
  They forget, freedom to be screwed is also freedom
  - px43 5y ago
    I don't think anyone actually forgot that. It's kind of the point.
- logicchains 5y ago
  What's so dumb about the idea of wanting to be responsible for your own outcomes? You make a stupid mistake, you suffer, nobody else does. If you don't want take responsibility for your own actions, feel free to stick to the mainstream financial system. Note however that as a result of that you'll be on the hook for bailing out other people's stupid mistakes when they fuck up, like how the taxpayer bailed out banks that made stupid loans during the GFC.
  - mfringel 5y ago
    With that kind of attitude, how are you going to get more people to come in and provide you with exit liquidity?
- scottiebarnes 5y ago
  More likely they think government monopoly over money is a form of tyranny, or that unchecked government power is tyranny. See: Civil forfeiture: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United... Executive order 6102: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102 Greek austerity measures (which include the reduction of social welfare and benefits due to incompetence of government spending): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_austerity_packages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_austerity_packages And the most important consequence, hyperinflation, often caused by central banks and governments: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/h/hyperinflation.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/h/hyperinflation.asp The illusion of security and stability is a very nice fantasy to live in. The price of everything you bought went up ~7.5% in the last year, the debt grows perpetually higher with no plan to ever pay it off, housing and stock market bubbles continue to grow, and this is totally normal and sustainable.
calrain 5y ago
Because there are people in the world who can wake up and have lost all money they had deposited in a bank. There are people who have to pay 20% transfer fees to move money overseas. There are people who don't have the ability to open a bank account. There are people who can lose all their banked money if their government doesn't like them. The first world doesn't have these problems. Crypto is a bigger play than 'get rich quick'
- afpx 5y ago
  Where in the world is it common to lose all money deposited in a bank? And, why not just create better banks?
  - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
    > Where in the world is it common to lose all money deposited in a bank? The last round of deposit haircuts were in Europe [1]. OP may be talking about having a bank account frozen by a corrupt government. Though if crypto became widespread, those same governments wouldn’t have trouble coercing people into giving up their keys. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_failure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_failure
  - Reubachi 5y ago
    Entire world in late 1920s, Iceland in 2008,Russia currently. Of course my examples are a bit tongue in cheek, much more nuanced and not as "Bank bad" as I paint them to be. But It's entirely possible for a bank run/economic downturn to wipe out a currency overnight. Does that mean crypto is the solution? It sure doesn't seem to be given cases like this (NFT/ETH being rugpulled from/by videogame devs). But I think that creating "better banks" can only mean "more government oversight", which leads right back to the original problem IE; economic/political factors having too much control. I of course keep all my money in the form of expired New Hampshire State Highway toll tokens.
    - _dujt 5y ago
      Currency takes on the value in which people believe it holds. Bitcoin is no different, and would instantly crash in the scenario of a worldwide financial system collapse. It’s juvenile to believe otherwise, and reaffirms the believe that Crypto is just a 21st century pyramid scheme.
Stevvo 5y ago
> There's nothing but more risks with zero benefits. Risk has upside. That is the benefit.
tommiegannert 5y ago
I think this is where insurance companies generally pop up as a solution. I.e. the same solution as with regular bank accounts. Layering humans on top of algorithms makes sense. We already have SWIFT and networks layered under humans in the fiat system, so now we're just pushing more complex algorithms. In the case of block chains, I'd say the concept of asymmetric cryptography is an improvement over mutual trust in secure backoffice communication channels. I'm not into crypto (still thinking it's a solution waiting for a problem), but arguing that banks can do reversals isn't fair. Someone moving fiat quickly between banks will make it hard to reverse as well. I can't imagine a bank is going to just say "I guess they stole it from you, transferred it to us, but then withdrew from us. Let me go ahead and reimburse you anyway." That smells like a insurance case, no matter the underlying algorithms.
- godot 5y ago
  I'll actually try to add and defend crypto a little bit here: > I think this is where insurance companies generally pop up as a solution. Real legitimate DeFi protocols are now often supported by DeFi insurance as well. I know nothing about Axie Infinity and have no idea if this applies for them at all. > (still thinking it's a solution waiting for a problem) IMO, although this has been said many times the past few years, I think we're starting to get past this. In a very simplified view, DeFi protocols that do lending (e.g. loans based on collaterals), can do this fully automated, and it's because "the money is programmable" thanks to smart contracts and value stored. This type of lending took human work to do in TradFi and has overhead, in both costs and speed. I feel like this is the start of what real solutions/applications look like; it's something that wasn't possible before.
px43 5y ago
> In a system run by people, the transaction could be reversed, traced, and the culprits eventually brought to justice. The answer to your question is encoded in the very first block of the very first blockchain. > The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Genesis_block https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Genesis_block Some people feel like they weren't being represented by the "justice" you're talking about, so they built their own thing where all the rules are publicly viewable, and consensus is run by the community. It seemed like a weird idea at the time, but the idea got popular, and people who like this new system have moved about two trillion dollars of global wealth into it. If you like the old way money was managed, by big institutions doing everything they could to extract wealth from the general public with no legal repercussions, then the good news is that the old system still exists. There are just some other options now too. Also, the idea that all cryptocurrencies are some laissez-faire Randian wet dream is simply not true. An extremely diverse array of crypto governance mechanisms are being experimented with. Many run by humans, all with their own interpretations of "justice", which you can read up on and participate in at will. Governance proposals reclaim funds judged to be unfairly allocated all the time. I doubt that will happen here, because Ethereum governance is generally very harsh on people who suck at testing code, but every person who lost money here knew exactly what they were getting in to when they chose to participate.
- ecf 5y ago
  Genesis block does absolutely nothing to explain what it’s actual purpose is. Just another hand-wavey answer by a crypto pyramid scheme peddler in response to genuine criticism.
- jonshariat 5y ago
  I don't think any of that is changed. If anything this allows that injustice to be amplified by those in power.
logicchains 5y ago
>I do not understand why people who have legal intentions would want to be part of the crypto economy. There's nothing but more risks with zero benefits. You don't get bailed out if you fuck up, but also you aren't on the hook for bailing out other people when they fuck up. If you hold BTC, nobody's going to suddenly take a bunch of it to bail out banks that made shitty loans like during the GFC. It's like the saying live by the sword, die by the sword.
kurisufag 5y ago
because it facilitates person to person interactions without oversight. if you want to raise funds for an entity or cause that is controversial, it is useful to have an option that is nigh-impossible to subvert when done correctly.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
FanaHOVA 5y ago
> I do not understand why people who have legal intentions would want to be part of the crypto economy. There's nothing but more risks with zero benefits. I agree 100% on the risk, and my main problem with it is the avg person getting caught up in it. But at the same time, you see all the "PayPal froze my funds" posts, etc, so obviously the current system is flawed in its own way. You could imagine a future in which PayPal is a layer on top of Ethereum (or any other L1 chain) and provides reversibility, etc, for a fee, but at the same time the user also has the freedom to eject out of it and take all the funds with them. The maxi "everything must be 100% decentralized" take is a bit naive, so hopefully these accidents help us move in the right direction. I think long term we might have a lot of the same guard rails we have today, but they'll just be re-built from scratch in a digital-first way, rather than what we currently have.
- tornato7 5y ago
  I agree. The crypto industry has made a lot of progress toward securing private keys, with another 5-10 years of cryptography I think it will be a somewhat 'solved problem', thereby allowing companies like PayPal to offer their own custodial / layer 2 services with minimal risk. Institutional-quality digital asset custody and signing was basically non-existent until Fireblocks launched just over two years ago, and there is still a lot of progress to be made on cryptography primitives and infrastructure best practices.
game_the0ry 5y ago
> There's no checking the name on the account the transfer was to. It's just gone. This has happens with humans too. [1] [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/10/07/ghani-afghanistan-fled-millions-stolen/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/10/07/ghani-afghan...
rkagerer 5y ago
You raise legit concerns. Though the practical degree to which recourse is available and the effectiveness and fairness of those reversals really vary depending on where you live and/or transact. In a headline-grabbing caper like this the advantage seems obvious. But from the less sensational, day-to-day perspective of a small seller, reversals can be a nightmare ripe with fraud (google "chargeback fraud" for anecdotes) infeasible to pursue. It does put onus back on the buyer / investor to do some diligence on who they buy from or send their money to, and increases the importance of reputation in the space. (I personally feel there's an opportunity right now for a reputation mechanism to complement the crypto economy and believe when that catches up it will help incentivize good seller behavior). Kind of like when coins were primarily used as a medium of exchange. Coin payments didn't have reversibility, and adjudication stayed within the purview other institutions, i.e. courts, instead of being diluted and delegated to e.g. VISA. A more efficient dispute resolution system - some kind of analogue of the legal system civilization has built up over centuries - is another opportunity I feel is ripe for innovation in connection to the crypto space. I do think the missing gaps of reputation and justice will be filled eventually and adopted by users, which would go a long way toward addressing your criticisms. In the meantime existing options of criminal / civil litigation remain available and people sending large sums of money would do well to make sure they know who they're sending it to so they can pursue if things go sideways.
lfkdev 5y ago
Why are you actitng like theres no corrupt goverment? Your country is not the whole world
bufferoverflow 5y ago
Not zero benefits. In your system run by people your money can be frozen or taken away without your consent. Recent example: peaceful protesters in Canada. There are also tons of examples, when scammers would reverse a good transaction after receiving the goods. Another benefit of some blockchains: incredibly low transaction fees. Another benefit: smart contracts. I don't understand why you need to straight up lie.
- AlexandrB 5y ago
  > Another benefit of some blockchains: incredibly low transaction fees. Indeed. This was the benefit of Ronin.
- mabbo 5y ago
  > Recent example: peaceful protesters in Canada As a Canadian, and a former Ottawa resident, I can assure you those were not "peaceful protestors". I had friends and family who had to leave the city to escape the unending noise, the harrassment by the 'protestors'. There were arson attempts, assaults, threats, and general disregard for the law. I've literally been a peaceful protestor in Ottawa (I was a student there after all). There's a serious difference between a daytime march for a cause and what those people did. They're criminals, and were treated as such. I'm fully in favor of the government being able to seize the financial assets of criminals. > Another benefit: smart contracts. What benefit do such contracts hold over actual legal contracts? The biggest difference is that when legal costs have bugs, courts can resolve them.
  - bufferoverflow 5y ago
    BLM/antifa protestors burned hundreds of buildings, murdered at least 26 people, including children, harassed people in the middle of the night, tried to declare their own autonomous zone where they robbed business owners. And many people call them peaceful protesters. Canadian protesters limited their noise to 10pm, didn't burn anything, didn kill anyone. Noise is what I saw from hours of footage. I didn't see harassment, maybe it happened, but it must have been an exceptionally rare thing. How do you reconcile this?
blueprint 5y ago
because there are benefits for specific use cases to not requiring a human to be involved, mainly things like censorship .. in other words not something most people would need but something few can find zero other solutions for
koonsolo 5y ago
The ethereum network has been rolled back before, so what you say is not correct. Hence Ethereum Cassic, which didn't roll back.
gorwell 5y ago
Consider yourself lucky. You don't live in places like Russia, China or Canada, where your credit cards and bank account can be frozen or even confiscated without due process. For some living under these regimes, crypto is the only wealth they've been able to retain.
- AlexandrB 5y ago
  > or Canada Come on now. You may not like the due process that was followed, but it was still due process (as-in following the letter of existing law). By this logic the US should also be included on your list because of civil asset forfeiture.
  - gorwell 5y ago
    They invoked the Emergencies Act to bypass due process. `When Prime Minister Justin Trudeau decided a week ago to invoke his country’s Emergencies Act for the first time in Canadian history to quell the unrest, it gave the police sweeping new powers to go after the finances of the protesters.` https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/22/world/americas/canada-protest-finances.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/22/world/americas/canada-pro... As for the US, I agree they belong on the list because of civil asset forfeiture.
  - merely-unlikely 5y ago
    Yes, yes it should.
  - s1artibartfast 5y ago
    Same with Russia and China, or Ukraine - they have a process as well. In the case of Canada, the process was the PM tells the banks to freeze the funds.
rmbyrro 5y ago
Sure, like this, right? [1] [1] https://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/article259205608.html https://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/article259205608.html
matheusmoreira 5y ago
> It's just gone. Funny, that's exactly what happened to nearly everyone in my country some decades ago. Government screws up the economy like always. Runaway inflation destroys the value of currency and our purchasing power. Then president gets desperate or something and just freezes everybody's accounts. Everyone's money at the bank, just gone. Because people trusted the banks and the government, just like you're advising.
CryptoPunk 5y ago
Algorithms can be improved until they approach something close to perfectly secure.. People cannot be made to become perfectly incorruptible. Look at what happened in Canada, with the federal government envoking emergency powers to shut down bank accounts without due process. Look at the "haircuts" during financial crises, where states have seized citizens' funds held in bank accounts, to bail out troubled banks. Look at Hong Kong after the protests, where some of those involved in the protests were prevented from opening bank accounts.

by mabbo 5y ago

malfist 5y ago

Arguably it's the same risk as holding paper notes right? If I steal your life savings from under your mattress, there isn't necessarily anything to trace it back to me. However, there is a physical limit, pretty damn hard to run off with half a billion worth of paper notes.

paxys 5y ago
It isn't even just the limits of the notes themselves. Physical theft has to be done on location. You have to steal the money and get away as far as possible as quickly as possible. And there are local laws and police equipped to go after you. How do you deal with it when the money could be in the pockets of an Eastern European teenager with one script run?
tomatowurst 5y ago
parent is talking about the financial system run by algorithms designed to evade sanctions and regulation, not being your own bank. You absolutely can keep millions under your mattress and some do when they cannot launder it but it would be up to you to reverse the transaction in a forced wealth transfer vs the bank who can simply trace or even reverse a fraudulent transaction.
mnumber 5y ago
Why did you equally conflate the risks then immediately back peddle and say "physically stealing is harder i guess"?
- malfist 5y ago
  I guess it comes across as me saying cash and crypto are equal. They're not. I was just trying to add nuance to the conversation. I am wholeheartedly a supporter of centralized, fiat currencies.

gear54rus 5y ago

You confuse legal with right. When the government is out for your money, crypto can be a life saver (as the recent russian example shows). So maybe you shouldn't dismiss it so quickly just because it never happened to you.

jokoon 5y ago

Because it's cool money, and because it's a legal gray area. I can't wait for the law to change. At some point there will be a tax for receiving and sending dollars to a blockchain converter, or it will require some heavy regulations and control, and then maybe things will improve. Unless people understand the Blockchain is used to launder money, nothing will change.

lottin 5y ago

They think that government is tyranny, therefore lack of government is freedom. Yes, they are dumb as hell.

frostwarrior 5y ago
They forget, freedom to be screwed is also freedom
- px43 5y ago
  I don't think anyone actually forgot that. It's kind of the point.
logicchains 5y ago
What's so dumb about the idea of wanting to be responsible for your own outcomes? You make a stupid mistake, you suffer, nobody else does. If you don't want take responsibility for your own actions, feel free to stick to the mainstream financial system. Note however that as a result of that you'll be on the hook for bailing out other people's stupid mistakes when they fuck up, like how the taxpayer bailed out banks that made stupid loans during the GFC.
- mfringel 5y ago
  With that kind of attitude, how are you going to get more people to come in and provide you with exit liquidity?
scottiebarnes 5y ago
More likely they think government monopoly over money is a form of tyranny, or that unchecked government power is tyranny. See: Civil forfeiture: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United... Executive order 6102: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102 Greek austerity measures (which include the reduction of social welfare and benefits due to incompetence of government spending): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_austerity_packages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_austerity_packages And the most important consequence, hyperinflation, often caused by central banks and governments: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/h/hyperinflation.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/h/hyperinflation.asp The illusion of security and stability is a very nice fantasy to live in. The price of everything you bought went up ~7.5% in the last year, the debt grows perpetually higher with no plan to ever pay it off, housing and stock market bubbles continue to grow, and this is totally normal and sustainable.

calrain 5y ago

Because there are people in the world who can wake up and have lost all money they had deposited in a bank. There are people who have to pay 20% transfer fees to move money overseas. There are people who don't have the ability to open a bank account. There are people who can lose all their banked money if their government doesn't like them. The first world doesn't have these problems. Crypto is a bigger play than 'get rich quick'

afpx 5y ago
Where in the world is it common to lose all money deposited in a bank? And, why not just create better banks?
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago
  > Where in the world is it common to lose all money deposited in a bank? The last round of deposit haircuts were in Europe [1]. OP may be talking about having a bank account frozen by a corrupt government. Though if crypto became widespread, those same governments wouldn’t have trouble coercing people into giving up their keys. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_failure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_failure
- Reubachi 5y ago
  Entire world in late 1920s, Iceland in 2008,Russia currently. Of course my examples are a bit tongue in cheek, much more nuanced and not as "Bank bad" as I paint them to be. But It's entirely possible for a bank run/economic downturn to wipe out a currency overnight. Does that mean crypto is the solution? It sure doesn't seem to be given cases like this (NFT/ETH being rugpulled from/by videogame devs). But I think that creating "better banks" can only mean "more government oversight", which leads right back to the original problem IE; economic/political factors having too much control. I of course keep all my money in the form of expired New Hampshire State Highway toll tokens.
  - _dujt 5y ago
    Currency takes on the value in which people believe it holds. Bitcoin is no different, and would instantly crash in the scenario of a worldwide financial system collapse. It’s juvenile to believe otherwise, and reaffirms the believe that Crypto is just a 21st century pyramid scheme.

Stevvo 5y ago

> There's nothing but more risks with zero benefits. Risk has upside. That is the benefit.

tommiegannert 5y ago

I think this is where insurance companies generally pop up as a solution. I.e. the same solution as with regular bank accounts. Layering humans on top of algorithms makes sense. We already have SWIFT and networks layered under humans in the fiat system, so now we're just pushing more complex algorithms. In the case of block chains, I'd say the concept of asymmetric cryptography is an improvement over mutual trust in secure backoffice communication channels. I'm not into crypto (still thinking it's a solution waiting for a problem), but arguing that banks can do reversals isn't fair. Someone moving fiat quickly between banks will make it hard to reverse as well. I can't imagine a bank is going to just say "I guess they stole it from you, transferred it to us, but then withdrew from us. Let me go ahead and reimburse you anyway." That smells like a insurance case, no matter the underlying algorithms.

godot 5y ago
I'll actually try to add and defend crypto a little bit here: > I think this is where insurance companies generally pop up as a solution. Real legitimate DeFi protocols are now often supported by DeFi insurance as well. I know nothing about Axie Infinity and have no idea if this applies for them at all. > (still thinking it's a solution waiting for a problem) IMO, although this has been said many times the past few years, I think we're starting to get past this. In a very simplified view, DeFi protocols that do lending (e.g. loans based on collaterals), can do this fully automated, and it's because "the money is programmable" thanks to smart contracts and value stored. This type of lending took human work to do in TradFi and has overhead, in both costs and speed. I feel like this is the start of what real solutions/applications look like; it's something that wasn't possible before.

px43 5y ago

> In a system run by people, the transaction could be reversed, traced, and the culprits eventually brought to justice. The answer to your question is encoded in the very first block of the very first blockchain. > The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Genesis_block https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Genesis_block Some people feel like they weren't being represented by the "justice" you're talking about, so they built their own thing where all the rules are publicly viewable, and consensus is run by the community. It seemed like a weird idea at the time, but the idea got popular, and people who like this new system have moved about two trillion dollars of global wealth into it. If you like the old way money was managed, by big institutions doing everything they could to extract wealth from the general public with no legal repercussions, then the good news is that the old system still exists. There are just some other options now too. Also, the idea that all cryptocurrencies are some laissez-faire Randian wet dream is simply not true. An extremely diverse array of crypto governance mechanisms are being experimented with. Many run by humans, all with their own interpretations of "justice", which you can read up on and participate in at will. Governance proposals reclaim funds judged to be unfairly allocated all the time. I doubt that will happen here, because Ethereum governance is generally very harsh on people who suck at testing code, but every person who lost money here knew exactly what they were getting in to when they chose to participate.

ecf 5y ago
Genesis block does absolutely nothing to explain what it’s actual purpose is. Just another hand-wavey answer by a crypto pyramid scheme peddler in response to genuine criticism.
jonshariat 5y ago
I don't think any of that is changed. If anything this allows that injustice to be amplified by those in power.

logicchains 5y ago

>I do not understand why people who have legal intentions would want to be part of the crypto economy. There's nothing but more risks with zero benefits. You don't get bailed out if you fuck up, but also you aren't on the hook for bailing out other people when they fuck up. If you hold BTC, nobody's going to suddenly take a bunch of it to bail out banks that made shitty loans like during the GFC. It's like the saying live by the sword, die by the sword.

kurisufag 5y ago

because it facilitates person to person interactions without oversight. if you want to raise funds for an entity or cause that is controversial, it is useful to have an option that is nigh-impossible to subvert when done correctly.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

FanaHOVA 5y ago

> I do not understand why people who have legal intentions would want to be part of the crypto economy. There's nothing but more risks with zero benefits. I agree 100% on the risk, and my main problem with it is the avg person getting caught up in it. But at the same time, you see all the "PayPal froze my funds" posts, etc, so obviously the current system is flawed in its own way. You could imagine a future in which PayPal is a layer on top of Ethereum (or any other L1 chain) and provides reversibility, etc, for a fee, but at the same time the user also has the freedom to eject out of it and take all the funds with them. The maxi "everything must be 100% decentralized" take is a bit naive, so hopefully these accidents help us move in the right direction. I think long term we might have a lot of the same guard rails we have today, but they'll just be re-built from scratch in a digital-first way, rather than what we currently have.

tornato7 5y ago
I agree. The crypto industry has made a lot of progress toward securing private keys, with another 5-10 years of cryptography I think it will be a somewhat 'solved problem', thereby allowing companies like PayPal to offer their own custodial / layer 2 services with minimal risk. Institutional-quality digital asset custody and signing was basically non-existent until Fireblocks launched just over two years ago, and there is still a lot of progress to be made on cryptography primitives and infrastructure best practices.

game_the0ry 5y ago

> There's no checking the name on the account the transfer was to. It's just gone. This has happens with humans too. [1] [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/10/07/ghani-afghanistan-fled-millions-stolen/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/10/07/ghani-afghan...

rkagerer 5y ago

You raise legit concerns. Though the practical degree to which recourse is available and the effectiveness and fairness of those reversals really vary depending on where you live and/or transact. In a headline-grabbing caper like this the advantage seems obvious. But from the less sensational, day-to-day perspective of a small seller, reversals can be a nightmare ripe with fraud (google "chargeback fraud" for anecdotes) infeasible to pursue. It does put onus back on the buyer / investor to do some diligence on who they buy from or send their money to, and increases the importance of reputation in the space. (I personally feel there's an opportunity right now for a reputation mechanism to complement the crypto economy and believe when that catches up it will help incentivize good seller behavior). Kind of like when coins were primarily used as a medium of exchange. Coin payments didn't have reversibility, and adjudication stayed within the purview other institutions, i.e. courts, instead of being diluted and delegated to e.g. VISA. A more efficient dispute resolution system - some kind of analogue of the legal system civilization has built up over centuries - is another opportunity I feel is ripe for innovation in connection to the crypto space. I do think the missing gaps of reputation and justice will be filled eventually and adopted by users, which would go a long way toward addressing your criticisms. In the meantime existing options of criminal / civil litigation remain available and people sending large sums of money would do well to make sure they know who they're sending it to so they can pursue if things go sideways.

lfkdev 5y ago

Why are you actitng like theres no corrupt goverment? Your country is not the whole world

bufferoverflow 5y ago

Not zero benefits. In your system run by people your money can be frozen or taken away without your consent. Recent example: peaceful protesters in Canada. There are also tons of examples, when scammers would reverse a good transaction after receiving the goods. Another benefit of some blockchains: incredibly low transaction fees. Another benefit: smart contracts. I don't understand why you need to straight up lie.

AlexandrB 5y ago
> Another benefit of some blockchains: incredibly low transaction fees. Indeed. This was the benefit of Ronin.
mabbo 5y ago
> Recent example: peaceful protesters in Canada As a Canadian, and a former Ottawa resident, I can assure you those were not "peaceful protestors". I had friends and family who had to leave the city to escape the unending noise, the harrassment by the 'protestors'. There were arson attempts, assaults, threats, and general disregard for the law. I've literally been a peaceful protestor in Ottawa (I was a student there after all). There's a serious difference between a daytime march for a cause and what those people did. They're criminals, and were treated as such. I'm fully in favor of the government being able to seize the financial assets of criminals. > Another benefit: smart contracts. What benefit do such contracts hold over actual legal contracts? The biggest difference is that when legal costs have bugs, courts can resolve them.
- bufferoverflow 5y ago
  BLM/antifa protestors burned hundreds of buildings, murdered at least 26 people, including children, harassed people in the middle of the night, tried to declare their own autonomous zone where they robbed business owners. And many people call them peaceful protesters. Canadian protesters limited their noise to 10pm, didn't burn anything, didn kill anyone. Noise is what I saw from hours of footage. I didn't see harassment, maybe it happened, but it must have been an exceptionally rare thing. How do you reconcile this?

blueprint 5y ago

because there are benefits for specific use cases to not requiring a human to be involved, mainly things like censorship .. in other words not something most people would need but something few can find zero other solutions for

koonsolo 5y ago

The ethereum network has been rolled back before, so what you say is not correct. Hence Ethereum Cassic, which didn't roll back.

gorwell 5y ago

Consider yourself lucky. You don't live in places like Russia, China or Canada, where your credit cards and bank account can be frozen or even confiscated without due process. For some living under these regimes, crypto is the only wealth they've been able to retain.

AlexandrB 5y ago
> or Canada Come on now. You may not like the due process that was followed, but it was still due process (as-in following the letter of existing law). By this logic the US should also be included on your list because of civil asset forfeiture.
- gorwell 5y ago
  They invoked the Emergencies Act to bypass due process. `When Prime Minister Justin Trudeau decided a week ago to invoke his country’s Emergencies Act for the first time in Canadian history to quell the unrest, it gave the police sweeping new powers to go after the finances of the protesters.` https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/22/world/americas/canada-protest-finances.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/22/world/americas/canada-pro... As for the US, I agree they belong on the list because of civil asset forfeiture.
- merely-unlikely 5y ago
  Yes, yes it should.
- s1artibartfast 5y ago
  Same with Russia and China, or Ukraine - they have a process as well. In the case of Canada, the process was the PM tells the banks to freeze the funds.

rmbyrro 5y ago

Sure, like this, right? [1] [1] https://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/article259205608.html https://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/article259205608.html

matheusmoreira 5y ago

> It's just gone. Funny, that's exactly what happened to nearly everyone in my country some decades ago. Government screws up the economy like always. Runaway inflation destroys the value of currency and our purchasing power. Then president gets desperate or something and just freezes everybody's accounts. Everyone's money at the bank, just gone. Because people trusted the banks and the government, just like you're advising.

CryptoPunk 5y ago

Algorithms can be improved until they approach something close to perfectly secure.. People cannot be made to become perfectly incorruptible. Look at what happened in Canada, with the federal government envoking emergency powers to shut down bank accounts without due process. Look at the "haircuts" during financial crises, where states have seized citizens' funds held in bank accounts, to bail out troubled banks. Look at Hong Kong after the protests, where some of those involved in the protests were prevented from opening bank accounts.