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You mean fiat? Thats not new at all. We've used it for decades now it only leads to boom and bust cycles, while pushing the power of work done into the hands

You mean fiat? Thats not new at all. We've used it for decades now it only leads to boom and bust cycles, while pushing the power of work done into the hands of people who didn't do the work.

ben_w 4y ago
Fiat is more of “proof of a monopoly on the use of violence”. You may not like the idea of relying on such a proof, but it has the important feature of still being both necessary and sufficient regardless of what system you use with it. That it isn’t present in Bitcoin is actually a reason why Bitcoin is a bad idea as a currency, because you can’t get your money back when you’re scammed.
- RedBeetDeadpool 4y ago
  > because you can’t get your money back when you’re scammed. Thats a feature not a bug. Not your keys not your coin. Neither scammers nor government can take it from you without you voluntarily giving it up. Which makes "proof of a monopoly on the use of violence" obsolete since no amount of force can pry it from your dead body.
  - sofixa 4y ago
    https://xkcd.com/538/ https://xkcd.com/538/
    - RedBeetDeadpool 4y ago
      Which is why you store just a little in one address to "give up". And store the rest elsewhere. And never tell anyone how much you really have. For example, you hold 100 bitcoins. Randall Munroe's wrench hacker holds you up for bitcoin because he knows you have some. You give him 0.1 from an address. He lets you go. You keep 99.9 of your bitcoins, but your attacker thinks he took got the whole bag.
      - ben_w 4y ago
        If attackers so much as think that’s likely, they will look at victims the way children look at these: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07NVB4WH1/ref=sbl_dpx_m_toys-party-pinatas_B00TKQYLD2_0 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07NVB4WH1/ref=sbl_dpx_m_toys-part...
        RedBeetDeadpool 4y ago
        At what point does one decide a pinata is empty if there is 0 evidence available that a pinata might not even be a pinata?
        ben_w 4y ago
        Why does that matter to the piñata?
        RedBeetDeadpool 4y ago
        Because the universe is full of "not a pinata"'s. If an attacker is blindfolded swinging their baseball bats hoping to hit one, its utterly futile on the attackers time spent on earth. They are infinitely better off working at wendy's on minimum wage.
        ben_w 4y ago
        You’re a piñata if the attacker says you are, not just because you’re broke. Lack of provability means the attacker may never believe you, in which case you’re now dead as well as broke. If someone has a monopoly on violence, they can pre-commit to massive retribution against anyone who does this. They also get to define what money is, and have a reason to want to. If nobody has a monopoly on violence, nobody is working minimum wage at Wendy’s because there is neither a minimum wage nor a Wendy’s nor a society capable of supporting a Wendy’s.
        RedBeetDeadpool 4y ago
  - ben_w 4y ago
    > Neither scammers nor government can take it from you without you voluntarily giving it up. What exactly do you think a scam is?
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - ben_w 4y ago
      (Someone, I didn’t catch the username, posted “The Federal reserve and taxation”, but deleted it before I’d finished writing this. I think this response is worth posting even though they changed their mind): That’s a very short list. What do you call it when someone offers goods or services, but does not deliver them? Or delivers less than advertised? Or sends official-looking demands for payment of parking/speeding fines without due authority? Or sends a fake invoice, based on a real invoice, at the time a customer is expecting and for the amount expected, but with a different receiver? I would call each of things “scams”. All of them have happened. A good system needs a way to make people whole when they have been wronged.
  - ookdatnog 4y ago
    I'm sure there exists an amount of force that can pry it from your living body though :) Also the Ethereum DAO debacle proves that crypto needed less than ten years for "too big to fail" (preferential treatment for the sufficiently influential) to materialize and essentially undermine all promises of cryptocurrency. You can get your money back when you're scammed or hacked, provided you have enough influential friends.
    - RedBeetDeadpool 4y ago
      > I'm sure there exists an amount of force that can pry it from your living body though :) No there isn't, because you don't know how much I have. I can always give up some and claim I gave up everything. To do what you claim you literally need to be omniscient. And if you are, then at that point you wouldn't be prying it from me. See my comment to someone else posting https://xkcd.com/538/ https://xkcd.com/538/.
      - ookdatnog 4y ago
        To be clear, I am assuming we're talking about the security of the system as it relates to its users in general, not you specifically. I'm completely happy to yield that you are entirely unassailable. For the vast majority of people, it's not too hard to make an educated guess about their wealth based on their house, their car, the area they live, their lifestyle, their age, their job, etc. For most people, this information isn't hard to find. If you're torturing them to give you access to their crypto wallets, and they give up less than you expected, you just keep torturing. You may argue that people should be protective of this information, but they aren't and will probably never be. (As an aside, I don't actually believe torture is a viable large-scale threat to cryptocurrency. Pointlessness is though.)
        RedBeetDeadpool 4y ago
        Ok got it. So a gangmember will torture you because you have bitcoin just because you drive a lexus, even if you might not control a single satoshi. Which means gang members are suddenly going to torture anyone who lives in Beverly Hills because they must have a bitcoin. Assuming you are on tech worker salary, you should be buying guns to protect yourself from these gang members who are coming after the bitcoin they assert you have which they know you do because they said so. Also keep in mind, some of the poorest people are the ones that yolo invest in crypto and post instagrams of lambos they rent. Gang members are gonna have one heck of a time trying to get those people's bitcoin before realizing the upside down toothless crypto guru actually controls nothing and is actually deep in the red. Which is to say, public appearances are not indicative of true wealth. So here's the question, what metrics are you looking for as a torturer looking for torture acquired bitcoin? Lambos on instagram? Three story homes in beverly hills? Jpegs of a monkey on a twitter profile? The reason I say that trying to pry bitcoin out of someone that has it properly guarded is like walking around the earth tapping rocks hoping to find one that turns into gold is because it requires mind reading technology that hasn't been invented. Its a losing game that puts the assailant at legal risk for close to little chance of winning anything at all. Huge downside, practically zero upside. I'll admit to one thing though. We are going to see more and more and more of these torturers or scammers or crypto criminals and they are going to try harder and harder and harder. But again, properly defended means huge downsides and practically zero upside for them. But its not gonna stop them from trying, and its not gonna stop the hordes of scammers and torturers and crypto criminals from coming.
  - hkt 4y ago
    > voluntarily giving it up https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber-hose_cryptanalysis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber-hose_cryptanalysis
    - RedBeetDeadpool 4y ago
      Everyone responds with your exact comment. 100 people in a room. All of them might have bitcoin. None might have bitcoin. One might have bitcoin. Five might have bitcoin. 99 might have bitcoin. Two might have bitcoin. One guy might have heard of bitcoin. Good luck rubber hosing their bitcoin.
      - 8note 4y ago
        The same can be said about USD though? Or anything else?
  - seoaeu 4y ago
    >> because you can’t get your money back when you’re scammed. > Thats a feature not a bug. This is a hilarious admission that cryptocurrency is designed for malicious actors. Anyone altruistic would consider lack of recourse for scam victims to be at least an unfortunate consequence of the system design. But a “feature”? Only the scammer or their associate would view it like that

You mean fiat? Thats not new at all. We've used it for decades now it only leads to boom and bust cycles, while pushing the power of work done into the hands of people who didn't do the work.

ben_w 4y ago

Fiat is more of “proof of a monopoly on the use of violence”. You may not like the idea of relying on such a proof, but it has the important feature of still being both necessary and sufficient regardless of what system you use with it. That it isn’t present in Bitcoin is actually a reason why Bitcoin is a bad idea as a currency, because you can’t get your money back when you’re scammed.

RedBeetDeadpool 4y ago
> because you can’t get your money back when you’re scammed. Thats a feature not a bug. Not your keys not your coin. Neither scammers nor government can take it from you without you voluntarily giving it up. Which makes "proof of a monopoly on the use of violence" obsolete since no amount of force can pry it from your dead body.
- sofixa 4y ago
  https://xkcd.com/538/ https://xkcd.com/538/
  - RedBeetDeadpool 4y ago
    Which is why you store just a little in one address to "give up". And store the rest elsewhere. And never tell anyone how much you really have. For example, you hold 100 bitcoins. Randall Munroe's wrench hacker holds you up for bitcoin because he knows you have some. You give him 0.1 from an address. He lets you go. You keep 99.9 of your bitcoins, but your attacker thinks he took got the whole bag.
    - ben_w 4y ago
      If attackers so much as think that’s likely, they will look at victims the way children look at these: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07NVB4WH1/ref=sbl_dpx_m_toys-party-pinatas_B00TKQYLD2_0 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07NVB4WH1/ref=sbl_dpx_m_toys-part...
      - RedBeetDeadpool 4y ago
        At what point does one decide a pinata is empty if there is 0 evidence available that a pinata might not even be a pinata?
        ben_w 4y ago
        Why does that matter to the piñata?
        RedBeetDeadpool 4y ago
        Because the universe is full of "not a pinata"'s. If an attacker is blindfolded swinging their baseball bats hoping to hit one, its utterly futile on the attackers time spent on earth. They are infinitely better off working at wendy's on minimum wage.
        ben_w 4y ago
        You’re a piñata if the attacker says you are, not just because you’re broke. Lack of provability means the attacker may never believe you, in which case you’re now dead as well as broke. If someone has a monopoly on violence, they can pre-commit to massive retribution against anyone who does this. They also get to define what money is, and have a reason to want to. If nobody has a monopoly on violence, nobody is working minimum wage at Wendy’s because there is neither a minimum wage nor a Wendy’s nor a society capable of supporting a Wendy’s.
        RedBeetDeadpool 4y ago
- ben_w 4y ago
  > Neither scammers nor government can take it from you without you voluntarily giving it up. What exactly do you think a scam is?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - ben_w 4y ago
    (Someone, I didn’t catch the username, posted “The Federal reserve and taxation”, but deleted it before I’d finished writing this. I think this response is worth posting even though they changed their mind): That’s a very short list. What do you call it when someone offers goods or services, but does not deliver them? Or delivers less than advertised? Or sends official-looking demands for payment of parking/speeding fines without due authority? Or sends a fake invoice, based on a real invoice, at the time a customer is expecting and for the amount expected, but with a different receiver? I would call each of things “scams”. All of them have happened. A good system needs a way to make people whole when they have been wronged.
- ookdatnog 4y ago
  I'm sure there exists an amount of force that can pry it from your living body though :) Also the Ethereum DAO debacle proves that crypto needed less than ten years for "too big to fail" (preferential treatment for the sufficiently influential) to materialize and essentially undermine all promises of cryptocurrency. You can get your money back when you're scammed or hacked, provided you have enough influential friends.
  - RedBeetDeadpool 4y ago
    > I'm sure there exists an amount of force that can pry it from your living body though :) No there isn't, because you don't know how much I have. I can always give up some and claim I gave up everything. To do what you claim you literally need to be omniscient. And if you are, then at that point you wouldn't be prying it from me. See my comment to someone else posting https://xkcd.com/538/ https://xkcd.com/538/.
    - ookdatnog 4y ago
      To be clear, I am assuming we're talking about the security of the system as it relates to its users in general, not you specifically. I'm completely happy to yield that you are entirely unassailable. For the vast majority of people, it's not too hard to make an educated guess about their wealth based on their house, their car, the area they live, their lifestyle, their age, their job, etc. For most people, this information isn't hard to find. If you're torturing them to give you access to their crypto wallets, and they give up less than you expected, you just keep torturing. You may argue that people should be protective of this information, but they aren't and will probably never be. (As an aside, I don't actually believe torture is a viable large-scale threat to cryptocurrency. Pointlessness is though.)
      - RedBeetDeadpool 4y ago
        Ok got it. So a gangmember will torture you because you have bitcoin just because you drive a lexus, even if you might not control a single satoshi. Which means gang members are suddenly going to torture anyone who lives in Beverly Hills because they must have a bitcoin. Assuming you are on tech worker salary, you should be buying guns to protect yourself from these gang members who are coming after the bitcoin they assert you have which they know you do because they said so. Also keep in mind, some of the poorest people are the ones that yolo invest in crypto and post instagrams of lambos they rent. Gang members are gonna have one heck of a time trying to get those people's bitcoin before realizing the upside down toothless crypto guru actually controls nothing and is actually deep in the red. Which is to say, public appearances are not indicative of true wealth. So here's the question, what metrics are you looking for as a torturer looking for torture acquired bitcoin? Lambos on instagram? Three story homes in beverly hills? Jpegs of a monkey on a twitter profile? The reason I say that trying to pry bitcoin out of someone that has it properly guarded is like walking around the earth tapping rocks hoping to find one that turns into gold is because it requires mind reading technology that hasn't been invented. Its a losing game that puts the assailant at legal risk for close to little chance of winning anything at all. Huge downside, practically zero upside. I'll admit to one thing though. We are going to see more and more and more of these torturers or scammers or crypto criminals and they are going to try harder and harder and harder. But again, properly defended means huge downsides and practically zero upside for them. But its not gonna stop them from trying, and its not gonna stop the hordes of scammers and torturers and crypto criminals from coming.
- hkt 4y ago
  > voluntarily giving it up https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber-hose_cryptanalysis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber-hose_cryptanalysis
  - RedBeetDeadpool 4y ago
    Everyone responds with your exact comment. 100 people in a room. All of them might have bitcoin. None might have bitcoin. One might have bitcoin. Five might have bitcoin. 99 might have bitcoin. Two might have bitcoin. One guy might have heard of bitcoin. Good luck rubber hosing their bitcoin.
    - 8note 4y ago
      The same can be said about USD though? Or anything else?
- seoaeu 4y ago
  >> because you can’t get your money back when you’re scammed. > Thats a feature not a bug. This is a hilarious admission that cryptocurrency is designed for malicious actors. Anyone altruistic would consider lack of recourse for scam victims to be at least an unfortunate consequence of the system design. But a “feature”? Only the scammer or their associate would view it like that