5 ms·

Any opinions from the crypto crowd? Cash seems like the ultimate libertarian way to go. My cash is physically in my wallet - nobody can touch it or take it. It

by AvAn12 5y ago

Any opinions from the crypto crowd? Cash seems like the ultimate libertarian way to go. My cash is physically in my wallet - nobody can touch it or take it. It is indisputably mine. And I know shops, vendors, and pubs will accept it. As soon as I de-materialize the cash into some electronic form, then I become dependent on (1) my phone provider (2) my computer (3) whatever coin exchange is involved (4) whatever method the merchant uses to convert electronic units into national currency so that they can pay their taxes (and probably their suppliers and employees). There are plenty of 100% cash business out there - I think because they like the same liberties which crypto offers...

oneoff786 5y ago
> My cash is physically in my wallet - nobody can touch it or take it. It is indisputably mine. This holds up surprisingly poorly if the other guy has a knife.
- hexis 5y ago
  Or a legislature.
  - Mountain_Skies 5y ago
    or a badge.
- kimixa 5y ago
  Or simply you misplace your wallet. Then you have to make the decision of how much you're willing to risk in taking out of your "totally safe" under-the-mattress stash each day, and that runs into inconvenience of if too high you lost a lot after a few beers on a Friday night, if too small you can't buy everything you wanted in the spur of the moment.
- paxys 5y ago
  Or just the power of the state behind them. The government can always take your money, regardless of what form it is in and where it is.
rufusroflpunch 5y ago
Speaking for myself, I have high hopes for Bitcoin as a freedom technology. It’s climbing the adoption curve rapidly as a store of value. Hopefully the Lightning network gets it the rest of the way to medium of exchange. Lightning offers the same security and permission-less guarantees as the base blockchain, but adds instant settlement and ultra-low fees. Digital cash is the goal, right? The problem with cash as we use it is that is a poor store of value because it is not a real commodity, but just a liability of the government. Bitcoin with Lightning could be both. edit: Britain and the whole world should run from CBDCs at warp 10. That’s a total financial panopticon.
- Multicomp 5y ago
  If Digital cash is the goal, why didn't we keep trying to reinvent mondex then? Seems very close to digital cash. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondex https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondex
  - easrng 5y ago
    Mondex needed special hardware for it's security properties. What we really need is https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DigiCash https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DigiCash
    - Multicomp 5y ago
      Interesting read! Apparently its concepts were taken over by https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Taler https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Taler but I've never seen that in use before so idk of it's the dreaded never to be done micropayments thing or not but hey, it's a start, and less dead than mondex.
- null0pointer 5y ago
  Unfortunately the lightning network re-introduces payment processor middle-men which is unacceptable in my opinion. Yes, anyone can open a channel with a merchant, but it will take at least 2 expensive on-chain transactions (open/close the channel) and it requires you to commit some capital to the channel which you can’t use elsewhere in the meantime. Payment processors would also have the ability to censor transactions which is antithetical to the core ideals of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies as a whole. This kind of processor structure would be fine in a cryptocurrency like Monero where the processor would not be able to see the sender address, recipient address, or transction amount. But in Bitcion where all that information is visible it is infeasible to use lightning network and maintain censorship resistance. Lightning also completely fails in its original design goal which is to allow scaling while preventing node centralization due to expensive hardware requirements. Since a lightning node must maintain open channels with other nodes to operate, and since open channels require commitment of capital, and since the number of open channels required scales directly with number of users and merchants, only the wealthy with the deepest pockets can afford to operate a useful lightning node. But I do agree that we should avoid CBDCs like the plague.
plebianRube 5y ago
I think lightning network is the next closet. You are correct in that you still need internet, but CBDCs will as well. For lightning you will either need to host your own node, or rely on a third party node. Lightning offers a high degree of privacy and fungibility, no exchanges needed, and freezing is not possible. ~2 second confirmation, final settlement. It is backed by the Bitcoin network which is extremely secure, and not very generous with attack surfaces. To doublespend on it an attacker would need to use more hashpower (energy) than what the network is currently being secured by. As it would require an enormous amount of resources, and since it is nearly impossible to pull off, mostly now attacks are trying to convince the general population to not use it with fear based tactics, general misinformation, and half truths; which should give you a good idea of how valuable it really is over any permissioned digital money. Good luck!
null0pointer 5y ago
Cash is good, in fact Bitcoin was originally proposed as “Peer-to-peer digital cash”. Crypto attempts to extend some of the properties of cash to the internet. Unfortunately Bitcoin has kind of failed in this goal at this point and become used more as a store of value rather than a medium of exchange. You have good points about the physicality of cash and the guarantee that merchants will accept it. Crypto can be carried around physically with a hardware wallet, though it’s still not quite as good as cash in this regard. And that guarantee that cash is accepted comes with legal tender status. You can’t be guaranteed to be able to spend CAD in US for example, but plenty of the world has multiple legal tenders, see Europe. I like cryptocurrencies, but admittedly they are still pretty clunky to use. Bitcoin has a lot of development momentum behind it, but I don’t see it as the feasible option going forwards due to the scaling shitshow and lack of privacy (no, taproot won’t solve this because you need privacy by default otherwise private transaction default to “suspicious”). Ethereum is great, I really like Vitalik’s leadership and it arguably has even more development momentum than Bitcoin. Unfortunately it also has the scaling and privacy issues like Bitcoin and additionally it seems to be primarily used to create pump and dump scam coins and shit like NFTs which are always going to clog up the base layer. Monero seems to have the most potential to me. It is like Bitcoin but has default privacy and on-chain scaling (we will have to see how that holds up under more adoption) without the dogma.
- pcthrowaway 5y ago
  Honestly, I think the solution to crypto and other e-payment methods being hard to use is for the next government that wants to adopt crypto to go with a PoS crypto. Then they can purchase a reserve, stake it, and issue a series of notes keyed to some portion of that reserve (in other words, if their reserve was split into a billion notes, they would have a billion unique serial numbers). Citizens could then just use the notes (with counterfeit measures in place) or bring it to the bank to deposit, and (at their discretion) withdraw on-chain. If the citizens want the staking rewards, they'd have to self-custody on-chain, but the nation could implement a system where users/merchants could scan the notes on receipt (which would validate the authenticity, as well as provide information about circulation which would help with anti-counterfeit measures). Upon scanning, you'd then get a kickback from the staking rewards, proportional to the amount and the date of last scan. Sounds like a nightmare, but it makes it accessible to homeless people, elderly, etc. and it's honestly more private than existing digital payments; scanning would be at your discretion.

by AvAn12 5y ago

oneoff786 5y ago

> My cash is physically in my wallet - nobody can touch it or take it. It is indisputably mine. This holds up surprisingly poorly if the other guy has a knife.

hexis 5y ago
Or a legislature.
- Mountain_Skies 5y ago
  or a badge.
kimixa 5y ago
Or simply you misplace your wallet. Then you have to make the decision of how much you're willing to risk in taking out of your "totally safe" under-the-mattress stash each day, and that runs into inconvenience of if too high you lost a lot after a few beers on a Friday night, if too small you can't buy everything you wanted in the spur of the moment.
paxys 5y ago
Or just the power of the state behind them. The government can always take your money, regardless of what form it is in and where it is.

rufusroflpunch 5y ago

Speaking for myself, I have high hopes for Bitcoin as a freedom technology. It’s climbing the adoption curve rapidly as a store of value. Hopefully the Lightning network gets it the rest of the way to medium of exchange. Lightning offers the same security and permission-less guarantees as the base blockchain, but adds instant settlement and ultra-low fees. Digital cash is the goal, right? The problem with cash as we use it is that is a poor store of value because it is not a real commodity, but just a liability of the government. Bitcoin with Lightning could be both. edit: Britain and the whole world should run from CBDCs at warp 10. That’s a total financial panopticon.

Multicomp 5y ago
If Digital cash is the goal, why didn't we keep trying to reinvent mondex then? Seems very close to digital cash. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondex https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondex
- easrng 5y ago
  Mondex needed special hardware for it's security properties. What we really need is https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DigiCash https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DigiCash
  - Multicomp 5y ago
    Interesting read! Apparently its concepts were taken over by https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Taler https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Taler but I've never seen that in use before so idk of it's the dreaded never to be done micropayments thing or not but hey, it's a start, and less dead than mondex.
null0pointer 5y ago
Unfortunately the lightning network re-introduces payment processor middle-men which is unacceptable in my opinion. Yes, anyone can open a channel with a merchant, but it will take at least 2 expensive on-chain transactions (open/close the channel) and it requires you to commit some capital to the channel which you can’t use elsewhere in the meantime. Payment processors would also have the ability to censor transactions which is antithetical to the core ideals of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies as a whole. This kind of processor structure would be fine in a cryptocurrency like Monero where the processor would not be able to see the sender address, recipient address, or transction amount. But in Bitcion where all that information is visible it is infeasible to use lightning network and maintain censorship resistance. Lightning also completely fails in its original design goal which is to allow scaling while preventing node centralization due to expensive hardware requirements. Since a lightning node must maintain open channels with other nodes to operate, and since open channels require commitment of capital, and since the number of open channels required scales directly with number of users and merchants, only the wealthy with the deepest pockets can afford to operate a useful lightning node. But I do agree that we should avoid CBDCs like the plague.

plebianRube 5y ago

I think lightning network is the next closet. You are correct in that you still need internet, but CBDCs will as well. For lightning you will either need to host your own node, or rely on a third party node. Lightning offers a high degree of privacy and fungibility, no exchanges needed, and freezing is not possible. ~2 second confirmation, final settlement. It is backed by the Bitcoin network which is extremely secure, and not very generous with attack surfaces. To doublespend on it an attacker would need to use more hashpower (energy) than what the network is currently being secured by. As it would require an enormous amount of resources, and since it is nearly impossible to pull off, mostly now attacks are trying to convince the general population to not use it with fear based tactics, general misinformation, and half truths; which should give you a good idea of how valuable it really is over any permissioned digital money. Good luck!

null0pointer 5y ago

Cash is good, in fact Bitcoin was originally proposed as “Peer-to-peer digital cash”. Crypto attempts to extend some of the properties of cash to the internet. Unfortunately Bitcoin has kind of failed in this goal at this point and become used more as a store of value rather than a medium of exchange. You have good points about the physicality of cash and the guarantee that merchants will accept it. Crypto can be carried around physically with a hardware wallet, though it’s still not quite as good as cash in this regard. And that guarantee that cash is accepted comes with legal tender status. You can’t be guaranteed to be able to spend CAD in US for example, but plenty of the world has multiple legal tenders, see Europe. I like cryptocurrencies, but admittedly they are still pretty clunky to use. Bitcoin has a lot of development momentum behind it, but I don’t see it as the feasible option going forwards due to the scaling shitshow and lack of privacy (no, taproot won’t solve this because you need privacy by default otherwise private transaction default to “suspicious”). Ethereum is great, I really like Vitalik’s leadership and it arguably has even more development momentum than Bitcoin. Unfortunately it also has the scaling and privacy issues like Bitcoin and additionally it seems to be primarily used to create pump and dump scam coins and shit like NFTs which are always going to clog up the base layer. Monero seems to have the most potential to me. It is like Bitcoin but has default privacy and on-chain scaling (we will have to see how that holds up under more adoption) without the dogma.

pcthrowaway 5y ago
Honestly, I think the solution to crypto and other e-payment methods being hard to use is for the next government that wants to adopt crypto to go with a PoS crypto. Then they can purchase a reserve, stake it, and issue a series of notes keyed to some portion of that reserve (in other words, if their reserve was split into a billion notes, they would have a billion unique serial numbers). Citizens could then just use the notes (with counterfeit measures in place) or bring it to the bank to deposit, and (at their discretion) withdraw on-chain. If the citizens want the staking rewards, they'd have to self-custody on-chain, but the nation could implement a system where users/merchants could scan the notes on receipt (which would validate the authenticity, as well as provide information about circulation which would help with anti-counterfeit measures). Upon scanning, you'd then get a kickback from the staking rewards, proportional to the amount and the date of last scan. Sounds like a nightmare, but it makes it accessible to homeless people, elderly, etc. and it's honestly more private than existing digital payments; scanning would be at your discretion.