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This article is a rebuttal to a letter, that in his interpretation, claims: >[...] that the entire technology field is worthless and cannot be used for any pra

This article is a rebuttal to a letter, that in his interpretation, claims: >[...] that the entire technology field is worthless and cannot be used for any practical purpose. However, instead of addressing the core issue of whether cryptocurrency or DLT serves any practical purpose, the article instead cherry-picks specific issues that he thinks are resolvable: * Energy waste * Transaction speed * Privacy The author seems to be missing the forest (that he himself identified) for the trees. Why doesn't he provide a real world use case for DLT? I'm still waiting for that.

abirch 4y ago
Crypto is antiprivacy. All of the transactions are public, it just offers psuedo-anonymity. If we used crypto for all transactions you could see when I go to my local watering hole and wait for me to close out my tab.
- rvz 4y ago
  Do you know who is operating under the pseudonym of Satoshi Nakamoto then?
  - abirch 4y ago
    They didn't use Bitcoin for buying physical things. It's literally a public ledger. It's harder to hide see: https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/crypto-bitcoin-money-laundering-couple https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/crypto-bitcoin-money-lau...
MattPalmer1086 4y ago
He says why he cares are the end. That it could be a viable payment system, if you solve the scaling and energy and regulation and a few other things.
- tptacek 4y ago
  It does not sound plausible that all of this engineering, required to make these systems even viable in the real world (and, we hope, preventing it from eventually demanding approximately as much energy as Eastern Europe, despite the weak incentives to actually accomplish that) is the best, fastest way to lower transaction fees for the working class.
  - MattPalmer1086 4y ago
    No disagreement from me. He seems to think it could be viable. I've seen a few high profile cryptographers get into the crypto space recently. I can't really blame them, it's exciting to see new cryptography put into practice. Who knows, maybe they will solve it all, but I doubt it personally.
    - tptacek 4y ago
      I'm not disputing the claims the article makes, I'm just saying: it's not an especially persuasive reason to support cryptocurrency; if the problem is simply "bring transaction costs down for the working poor", there are much simpler ways to do that. Meanwhile: the cryptocurrencies we have today are causing ongoing harm.
      - randomhodler84 4y ago
        What harm?
        samhw 4y ago
        Harms like: the aforementioned energy usage equivalent to Eastern Europe, scams wiping out billions on the regular (e.g. the absurd Luna pyramid scheme which collapsed the other week), facilitating vast drug dealing and consumption at huge detriment to poor countries and many users, etc.
        randomhodler84 4y ago
ekkeke 4y ago
Have yet to see a reasonable crypto defence, probably because there isn't one. The same people would have been writing "In defence of tulip prices" in age of yore except that was not as bad for the environment.
sparkie 4y ago
Some others have already countered the letter on that point, but it's very easy to bury your head in the sand if you are not directly affected (yet!). https://www.financialinclusion.tech/ https://www.financialinclusion.tech/
99_00 4y ago
>Why doesn't he provide a real world use case for DLT? I'm still waiting for that. As you yourself say, they are talking about cryptocurrencies. Cryptocurrencies are money. Digital money is a practical purpose. This is the letter: >After more than thirteen years of development, it has severe limitations and design flaws that preclude almost all applications that deal with public customer data and regulated financial transactions and are not an improvement on existing non-blockchain solutions. They claim the limitations and design flaws make blockchain inferior to existing solutions. The author is arguing that the limitations and design flaws have been or will be overcome.
tshaddox 4y ago
But people are normally okay with things that are merely interesting or entertaining even if they are perhaps somewhat frivolous, so long as they don't have any obvious large societal downsides.
rvz 4y ago
> Why doesn't he provide a real world use case for DLT? I'm still waiting for that. Payments? So why is Stripe [0], MoneyGram [1], Checkout.com [2], still using them? They seem to know that some of the ones that they chose have a use case? Downvoters: What are these three examples of companies actually using this DLT technology doing then? [0] https://stripe.com/blog/expanding-global-payouts-with-crypto https://stripe.com/blog/expanding-global-payouts-with-crypto [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-05-29/moneygram-ceo-sees-a-future-in-stablecoin-remittances https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-05-29/moneygram... [2] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/07/checkoutcom-jumps-into-crypto-with-stablecoin-payments-feature.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/07/checkoutcom-jumps-into-crypt...

abirch 4y ago

Crypto is antiprivacy. All of the transactions are public, it just offers psuedo-anonymity. If we used crypto for all transactions you could see when I go to my local watering hole and wait for me to close out my tab.

rvz 4y ago
Do you know who is operating under the pseudonym of Satoshi Nakamoto then?
- abirch 4y ago
  They didn't use Bitcoin for buying physical things. It's literally a public ledger. It's harder to hide see: https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/crypto-bitcoin-money-laundering-couple https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/crypto-bitcoin-money-lau...

MattPalmer1086 4y ago

He says why he cares are the end. That it could be a viable payment system, if you solve the scaling and energy and regulation and a few other things.

tptacek 4y ago
It does not sound plausible that all of this engineering, required to make these systems even viable in the real world (and, we hope, preventing it from eventually demanding approximately as much energy as Eastern Europe, despite the weak incentives to actually accomplish that) is the best, fastest way to lower transaction fees for the working class.
- MattPalmer1086 4y ago
  No disagreement from me. He seems to think it could be viable. I've seen a few high profile cryptographers get into the crypto space recently. I can't really blame them, it's exciting to see new cryptography put into practice. Who knows, maybe they will solve it all, but I doubt it personally.
  - tptacek 4y ago
    I'm not disputing the claims the article makes, I'm just saying: it's not an especially persuasive reason to support cryptocurrency; if the problem is simply "bring transaction costs down for the working poor", there are much simpler ways to do that. Meanwhile: the cryptocurrencies we have today are causing ongoing harm.
    - randomhodler84 4y ago
      What harm?
      - samhw 4y ago
        Harms like: the aforementioned energy usage equivalent to Eastern Europe, scams wiping out billions on the regular (e.g. the absurd Luna pyramid scheme which collapsed the other week), facilitating vast drug dealing and consumption at huge detriment to poor countries and many users, etc.
        randomhodler84 4y ago

ekkeke 4y ago

Have yet to see a reasonable crypto defence, probably because there isn't one. The same people would have been writing "In defence of tulip prices" in age of yore except that was not as bad for the environment.

sparkie 4y ago

Some others have already countered the letter on that point, but it's very easy to bury your head in the sand if you are not directly affected (yet!). https://www.financialinclusion.tech/ https://www.financialinclusion.tech/

99_00 4y ago

>Why doesn't he provide a real world use case for DLT? I'm still waiting for that. As you yourself say, they are talking about cryptocurrencies. Cryptocurrencies are money. Digital money is a practical purpose. This is the letter: >After more than thirteen years of development, it has severe limitations and design flaws that preclude almost all applications that deal with public customer data and regulated financial transactions and are not an improvement on existing non-blockchain solutions. They claim the limitations and design flaws make blockchain inferior to existing solutions. The author is arguing that the limitations and design flaws have been or will be overcome.

tshaddox 4y ago

But people are normally okay with things that are merely interesting or entertaining even if they are perhaps somewhat frivolous, so long as they don't have any obvious large societal downsides.

rvz 4y ago

> Why doesn't he provide a real world use case for DLT? I'm still waiting for that. Payments? So why is Stripe [0], MoneyGram [1], Checkout.com [2], still using them? They seem to know that some of the ones that they chose have a use case? Downvoters: What are these three examples of companies actually using this DLT technology doing then? [0] https://stripe.com/blog/expanding-global-payouts-with-crypto https://stripe.com/blog/expanding-global-payouts-with-crypto [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-05-29/moneygram-ceo-sees-a-future-in-stablecoin-remittances https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-05-29/moneygram... [2] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/07/checkoutcom-jumps-into-crypto-with-stablecoin-payments-feature.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/07/checkoutcom-jumps-into-crypt...