15 ms·

You really cannot make this up. As usual crypto in practice is the opposite of decentralized because people. Will. Not. Run. Their. Servers. Moxie nailed it

by jmoak3 4y ago

artemonster 4y ago
What is moxie?
- theIV 4y ago
  Moxie is a who. Probably referencing this blogpost, https://moxie.org/2022/01/07/web3-first-impressions.html https://moxie.org/2022/01/07/web3-first-impressions.html.
  - a4isms 4y ago
    Who is Moxie? Moxie Marlingspike. What is Moxie? A regional beverage that is the origin of the word, now the official soft drink of the state of Maine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moxie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moxie
    - voidfunc 4y ago
      Moxie and a Fluffernutter sandwich. Doesn't get any more New England than that.
    - lgvld 4y ago
      Thank you for replying to the question. ;-)
- daniel-thompson 4y ago
  Moxie Marlinspike is a widely-respected security hacker and parent's comment is referring to this post of his -> https://moxie.org/2022/01/07/web3-first-impressions.html https://moxie.org/2022/01/07/web3-first-impressions.html
  - colesantiago 4y ago
    I wonder if he told that he was also part of a cryptocurrency pump-and-dump scam as well? [0] After learning this I just lost respect for him. [0] https://amycastor.com/2021/04/07/signal-adopts-mobilecoin-a-crypto-project-linked-to-its-own-creator-moxie-marlinspike/ https://amycastor.com/2021/04/07/signal-adopts-mobilecoin-a-...
    - px43 4y ago
      Eh, look at the full timeline. When MobileCoin stuff was happening, when Moxie left Signal, and when he posted the Web3 criticisms. I've been using Bitcoin since 2009, and RedPhone/TxtSecure (Now called Signal) since 2010, and I still have zero clue how I'm even supposed to obtain MobileCoin. It's really a toy project at this point with no real adoption. Being able to send money via a secure chat network is a super important utility that is currently under-served in a big way, but MobileCoin itself is basically a whitepaper and a bunch of toy code that has a novel re-implementation (in rust) of Monero as a stableishcoin, which, last I checked makes it completely incompatible with the rest of the blockchain ecosystem. They are making zero effort to shill, or push MobileCoin in any way, and neither Moxie nor anyone on the team stands to profit greatly from massive MobileCoin adoption.
      - colesantiago 4y ago
        It does not matter. We know it is another scam coin, the fact is the crypto wallet is still in the Signal app. If it is a 'toy' project why didn't they remove it already after years of developing it in the first place? The CEO of MobileCoin already admitted to using MobileCoin to fund Signal [0] and Moxie being the original CTO and paid advisor of the coin as mentioned in the article; also meaning he was a paid shill and part of the scam. They already made the effort to create, shill, and then dump the tokens as soon as it was listed on the exchanges. The fact that Signal already accepted the tokens in the first place tells us that they were most certainly involved from the beginning and were part of the pump-and-dump scheme of the token. Since MobileCoin was pre-allocated with them owning over 50% of the supply with that being the only supported token on Signal tells you that both Signal, Moxie and MobileCoin are all complicit in the scam. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26726246 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26726246
- ekianjo 4y ago
  It's guy that promised you private chats by asking you to register with a phone number.
  - 0daystock 4y ago
    Don't forget they now offer their own cryptocurrency ... to make us more secure and private, I guess.
  - Klonoar 4y ago
    This is confusing privacy and anonymity. He 100% delivered on the former; the latter was the trade off.
    - ekianjo 4y ago
      there was no need for the trade off in the first place
      - Klonoar 4y ago
        You're welcome to try and claim that, but the sheer success of Signal and Moxie's approach is proof you're arguing in bad faith. Privacy and anonymity are not the same thing. Signal foregoes the latter to provide the former to a much wider range of people; foregoing the latter enables substantially better usability for non-technical people.
        ekianjo 4y ago
        > You're welcome to try and claim that, but the sheer success of Signal and Moxie's approach is proof you're arguing in bad faith. This makes no sense. If you wanted to prove that you would need to have a signal equivalent that does not use phone numbers. Where is that?
        brewmarche 4y ago
        That is basically their point, that these alternatives are not successful because they chose not to use phone numbers. Anyway here’s some alternatives: Briar (no iOS client?) Threema (not free as in free beer) Wire Matrix XMPP Telegram (can be used E2EE for 1:1 chats only and is off by default)
- hestefisk 4y ago
  The person behind Signal.
colesantiago 4y ago
It is known for years that centralised exchanges can do this with custodial wallets. Not exactly the discovery of the century. Cryptocurrencies can be held in offline wallets i.e non-custodial hardware or software wallets, like Metamask, Trust Wallet, Ledger Nano, Tezos etc. But no, let's rush into the comments section and scream our heads off and create panic that it is 'exchanges === all crypto is scam'. When it is really a case of what happens when you store your crypto on an exchange rather than a non-custodial wallet.
- anuraaga 4y ago
  > When it is really a case of what happens when you store you crypto on an exchange rather than a non-custodial wallet. In this case, what would happen would likely be pay extremely high gas fees or wait very long for the transaction to be picked up, isn't it? I think what gets people making these comments is there really is no crypto free lunch yet that includes stable UX and fees.
- dgfitz 4y ago
  - colesantiago 4y ago
    What does this mean? Stripe Crypto is a scam because they happen to be using cryptocurrencies? Maybe Stripe should stop their crypto endeavors because they have a crypto offering which means it's a scam.
    - dgfitz 4y ago
      I have no idea how you made this mental leap. I don't understand the question.
      - colesantiago 4y ago
        Not a mental leap. If you are saying 'ALL crypto is a scam' this also includes all and any crypto offerings by any company. Stripe, Coinbase, FTX, Binance, Moneygram etc are included. Not to mention the 'DeFi' space as well.
tatertots1234 4y ago
meanwhile anybody who has their own keys is able to transact with it as per usual. “not your keys not your coin.” holding keys are not trivial but far simpler than running a server, better analogy might be to do with people not wanting to stake with a validator because it’s easier to use a centralized staking service.
- TheHypnotist 4y ago
  I wonder if that's even a majority of bitcoin owners. I use the term owners loosely.
  - saurik 4y ago
    Does it even matter? What is interesting and actually-important is that it is even possible. Just because most people do something dumb doesn't mean we should throw up our hands in defeat and build systems where it isn't even possible to do something smart.
    - rglover 4y ago
      This is the greatest comment I've read on HN in years.
    - TheHypnotist 4y ago
      It matters very much who the owner is of the currency you are saying can be transacted. If a large chunk of bitcoin adopters don't own the currency, can't transact, and can't withdraw into fiat, what do you have exactly? Just a theory that this could work if just everyone played by a very specific set of rules.
      - saurik 4y ago
        I honestly don't understand how you can possibly come to that conclusion, and in all honesty that people like you exist is part of why tech is so demoralizing these days. If a large chunk of Bitcoin adopters--or smart phone adopters or Internet users or ANYTHING--don't know how the technology they are using works and put themselves in a bad situation with it, it simply doesn't mean that the technology doesn't work... it just doesn't; and it certainly doesn't mean we should just give up and re-centralize everything. If you build something that can't be used wrong--or hell: that most people who aren't trained don't use wrong--you probably built something evil :/.
mritchie712 4y ago
there are products headed in the right direction with simple self-custody: https://www.coinbase.com/wallet https://www.coinbase.com/wallet
lxgr 4y ago
Alternatively: Many people will not pass an opportunity of a "risk-free" 20% APY. (Not sure if Binance in particular is paying interest on deposits, but many exchanges do, as far as I know.) Also, how are wallets the same thing as servers? That analogy seems a bit stretched.
- tmpz22 4y ago
  Even Bernie Madoff only promised ~13%
  - alephxyz 4y ago
    20% interest paid out in a shitcoin whose nominal value will be down 90% by the end of the year
  - whatever1 4y ago
    Bernie was paying for 20years straight
- l33t2328 4y ago
  I’ve only heard of this mythical “risk free 20%” after the crash. I never heard anyone advertising that rate before.
  - lxgr 4y ago
    https://medium.com/dare-to-be-better/anchor-protocol-insane-20-apy-on-a-stablecoin-and-why-it-is-safe-e8becd259957 https://medium.com/dare-to-be-better/anchor-protocol-insane-... And that's only the first Google result that hasn't been unpublished in the meanwhile...
  - rco8786 4y ago
    Tons of alt coins offering triple digit APYs over the last few years.
  - paulgb 4y ago
    Not quite 20%, but I got slapped around on crypto Twitter by a blue check account for suggesting that supposed 15% returns were not risk-free. https://twitter.com/ErikVoorhees/status/1466802265956577283 https://twitter.com/ErikVoorhees/status/1466802265956577283
ekianjo 4y ago
> As usual crypto in practice is the opposite of decentralized because people. Will. Not. Run. Their. Servers. Nope, you just don't own any crypto assets if they are not stored on your own means. That's not hard to understand.
- mmastrac 4y ago
  If you cannot trust a single third party to hold your money, it's no better than cash under the mattress. We have guard rails in banking for a reason.
  - ekianjo 4y ago
    banking is for fiat currencies whose value halves ever dozens of years. you dont have to worry about bank robbers. inflation does the same thing.
    - rco8786 4y ago
      > whose value halves ever dozens of years This seems demonstrably better than halving over 6 months...
      - jonnycomputer 4y ago
        Or six hours. Looking at you not-stable coin.
  - sweetbitter 4y ago
    Hm, I am not quite sure I understand. Are you saying that people should not have the ability to withdraw their USD into cash either? Cryptographic currencies are exactly the same thing imo- they are not meant to replace trusted third parties in the traditional sense, they are just the digital equivalent of cash. A cryptocurrency wallet is far closer to a physical object than being a 'promise' from networks of trusted authorities. Apples and oranges.
- rco8786 4y ago
sgt101 4y ago
I think it's because bitcoin trading can't actually use the network - it's too slow and expensive. So the exchanges and the stable coins are used as a proxy which then means that they are disconnected from the actual currency. This means that there is an amplifier (leverage) on the way up, leading to spectacular bull runs. Also...
- FabHK 4y ago
  > bitcoin trading can't actually use the network Crypto trading on exchanges never uses the network. You send your crypto to an exchange on-chain, and all trading happening on the exchange then is off-chain: just adjustment of a few positions in the exchange's databank (as it should be: quick and efficient, within a centralised trusted institution).
- misslibby 4y ago
  Decentralized exchanges exist, but they can't trade with fiat money. One of the reasons why stablecoins exist.
menzoic 4y ago
> As usual crypto in practice is the opposite of decentralized Binance is a centralized exchange. There are both centralized and decentralized exchanges. > people. Will. Not. Run. Their. Servers. Moxie nailed it People don't need to run their own servers. They just need to use a light client which is even light even for mobile and browser extensions https://eth.wiki/concepts/light-client-protocol https://eth.wiki/concepts/light-client-protocol Light clients existed before Moxie's post The only problem is adoption of secure practices by popular publishers, like Metamask. Side note: Opensea isn't decentralized either, its a centralized NFT exchange.
- ricardobayes 4y ago
  Good luck getting people to use even a semi-updated web browser, let alone deal with an extension
  - Siira 4y ago
    Laziness has costs, that’s not a new thing. You want something, you have to work for it.
baby 4y ago
That’s why ultra light clients are important. See Plumo and Mina where you don’t need to run a node to interact with the blockchain in a secure way (you get cryptographic proofs of the latest state)
0daystock 4y ago
All monetary systems are built on trust. You can say the same thing about a run on traditional banks, which only have a fraction of reserves to cover deposits and would result in similar price depression.
- nradov 4y ago
  False. Fiat monetary systems are built on a state monopoly on violence. Trust is merely a byproduct. You are required to pay taxes in the local fiat currency, and if you fail to pay then the government will eventually seize your assets by force, or perhaps put you in jail. This is a feature, not a bug, and it generally works fairly well in practice as long as the government is at least minimally competent.
  - achenet 4y ago
    This. The original purpose of money is to enable to government to quantify precisely how much of your stuff it will take each tax season.
    - namaria 4y ago
      The original purpose of money is seignorage, the difference between face value and actual value of the currency. It doesn't get better then printing hundred dollar bills that get out of circulation - almost pure profit. Taxing in kind is way better, it's inflation proof.
  - Consultant32452 4y ago
    "generally works fairly well" - I agree with this, but I doubt we would agree at what it does fairly well. In the fiat systems the people with the most coins can issue themselves more coins on a whim, thereby devaluing all the other coins held by the poor. This too is a feature, not a bug, and it works really well for all the people with the most coins. They get to slowly and consistently extract wealth from the poor without having to do any work.
    - 4y ago
optimiz3 4y ago
Case in point: was an early adopter of Eth, mined many of the very early blocks. Sold it all back in February. One of the reasons? The whole Eth 2.0 upgrade requires both a base level node (Ethererum sanctioned) and a "2.0 validator node" where one is supposed to trust a 3rd party implementation with minimally 10s of thousands of dollars per stake. At least with a 1st party node the Ethereum Foundation stood behind it but now there is no official release backing the future of the project, only a spec. How is anyone sane supposed to run their own servers in this case?
- faangiq 4y ago
  Also ETH is nonsense with no use case.
  - optimiz3 4y ago
    Wouldn't go that far - the programmable aspects were at release were certainly unique and value added.
    - coldpie 4y ago
      Wait till this guy hears about stored procedures.
    - RC_ITR 4y ago
      To do what? (Other than enable financial engineering)
      - fddhjjj 4y ago
        Why would programmable money be useful for anything beyond financial engineering. It’s literally engineering + finance. Why is financial engineering inherently universally without qualification bad? I have a mortgage, an index fund, and an ATM card. I :heart: financial engineering.
        freemint 4y ago
mumblemumble 4y ago
> As usual crypto in practice is the opposite of decentralized because people. Will. Not. Run. Their. Servers. "My theory would be perfect if only I could convince humans to stop acting like humans," is the original sin of bad economics. I would submit that it is approximately impossible to have a cryptocurrency that is simultaneously popularly successful, and has even a significant minority of its users owning their own wallets. Because only a fraction of a percent of the general public has both the skill and the inclination to do something like that.
- ethbr0 4y ago
  > "My [product] would be perfect if only I could convince humans to stop acting like humans," is the original sin of bad [technologists] fixed that
  - SantalBlush 4y ago
    There was recently an article posted to HN [0] about a startup founder doing this very thing, blaming his customers for behaving like humans. >I was fighting human nature and losing. >Everyone swears they will eat right and exercise, but most don’t. Everyone agrees they need to spend less to be financially secure later, but most won’t. Our users were telling us they would use ContractBeast to achieve those long-term benefits, but most weren’t. >When I looked at the contracts the users were creating, I found most of them were ones in which a particular feature provided a clear and immediate benefit. Usually involving contract review and approval. >Human nature sucks. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11866868 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11866868
    - rat9988 4y ago
      >here was recently an article posted to HN [0] about a startup founder doing this very thing, blaming his customers for behaving like humans. He did it the opposit. He blamed his product for going against human nature.This is misquoting him.
      - 4y ago
api 4y ago
"Not wanting to run your own server" is not the primary issue. People might run their own servers if it was as easy as running a Mac or a smart phone. People hate manual IT and system administration. They will sacrifice money, freedom, privacy, control, even ownership of their own works to avoid having to futz around with that stuff. They hate it that much. (There are a small number of people this doesn't apply to. These are called enthusiasts. There are also car enthusiasts who like to change their own oil or even rebuild their own engines. We are talking about 99% of the market here though. Enthusiasts are a small niche.) It's easy to understand why if you count time as money. Lets say you value your time at $60/hour, which is probably on the low side for people here but lets be conservative. Now lets say you have to spend three hours a month messing with your servers. That means it's costing you $180/month or $2,160/year. That doesn't count the additional cognitive load of having to worry about it or the inconvenience of something going down and needing attention at an inopportune time. If those issues were addressed, you would see more people running their own servers. Unfortunately the "ease of use is for stupid people" meme goes way back in tech culture: http://catb.org/jargon/html/P/point-and-drool-interface.html http://catb.org/jargon/html/P/point-and-drool-interface.html ^^^ This is why FOSS has never crossed the chasm. It's a cultural problem. Another contributing factor is the love that some developers have for complexity. They see complexity as a sign of intelligence. It's not. Simple systems are far more difficult and require much more intelligence than complex systems.
zitterbewegung 4y ago
For many crypto devs people will use infura instead of running their own node so lots of the devs are centralized to infura.
olalonde 4y ago
> You really cannot make this up. Not only you can make this up but it's literally happened hundreds of times in the history of cryptocurrency. So much that there is even a catchphrase for it: "Not your keys, not your Bitcoin". MtGox being the most infamous example. > As usual crypto in practice is the opposite of decentralized because people. Will. Not. Run. Their. Servers. 1) Only a small percentage of the total Bitcoin supply is held on Binance. 2) Self-custody doesn't require running your own server. Why is this the top comment? I don't know (but I have my suspicions).
- jmoak3 4y ago
  > MtGox being the most infamous example. I was there for it. I mined my first coins in late 2011. Few people want to run their local node (server), few people want to point their wallet at their own node, and fewer people want to run code they've compiled themselves. If you aren't running your own node you are relying on someone else's. As a mass adoption decentralized trust-less technology for transacting, bitcoin has failed. That people are still getting burned by trusting major exchanges is hard to believe, and why you really can't make this up. It's stranger than fiction. >(but I have my suspicions). Yes, it is me. Jamie Dimon. Warren Buffett and George Soros are here next to me too. Bill Gates is on the way, and he's bringing chips and guac. We're all out to get those pesky crypto entrepreneurs.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - olalonde 4y ago
    I'd say you have a more black-and-white vision than me. While it's not perfectly decentralized, e.g. some users do delegate their trust to centralized services for convenience or security, it is still more decentralized than fiat where (digital) self-custody is simply not possible. Decentralization and trust are a spectrum, not a binary. Even compiling the software yourself wouldn't get you 100% there [0]. I also feel that it's a bit early to call Bitcoin a failure but I do agree that it has a long way to go for mass atoption. Bitcoin is not disrupting the taxi or the hotel industry. It is disrupting the most entrenched and powerful "status quo" there is on Earth. We're talking about global banking, global finance, powerful governments, etc. Most people have no conception of what money really is or even that it could be different. > That people are still getting burned by trusting major exchanges is hard to believe, and why you really can't make this up. It's stranger than fiction. Surely you knew that Binance existed prior to this tweet? > Yes, it is me. Jamie Dimon. Warren Buffett and George Soros are here next to me too. Bill Gates is on the way, and he's bringing chips and guac. We're all out to get those pesky crypto entrepreneurs. My suspicion was simply that many HNers tend to reflexively upvote any comment that paints crypto in a bad light. [0] https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rdriley/487/papers/Thompson_1984_ReflectionsonTrustingTrust.pdf https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rdriley/487/papers/Thompson_1984_Ref...
brewmarche 4y ago
> Moxie nailed it His talk[0]/article[1] typically gets a lot of flack on HN whenever it is posted but it was really eye-opening to me. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nj3YFprqAr8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nj3YFprqAr8 [1] https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/ https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/
gardenhedge 4y ago
Can you explain your comment a bit more? How does Binances' actions affect Bitcoin users who don't use Binance? And how do you arrive at your comment from this tweet? It doesn't say or imply how many people are using Binance. Futhermore, people who use Binance might also use a number of other options.
- jmoak3 4y ago
  Sure thing - once again people were unable to move around their coins due to depending on a tool hosted on someone else's computer. We've seen this many times, and it's a shame because letting another party manage your wallet or run a node for you defeats what I find attractive about bitcoin - the ability to be a peer in a decentralized peer-to-peer system. If Binance went under in that time, people would have simply been screwed and lost their coins Mt.Gox-style. Bitcoin only achieves it's decentralized promise if everyone hosts their own node and connects their wallet to it, and I'm personally not seeing that. Why don't people run their own nodes and connect their wallets to their nodes exclusively? Because it's a pain, and nobody wants to host their own servers. They'll pick gmail over a mail server 99% of the time, and that is bad for the promise of bitcoin. I would wager most/all cryptocurrencies have similar problems. Moxie's web3 blog touched on this, and he nailed it.
  - gardenhedge 4y ago
    How do you know many (or too many) people are doing it this way?
    - jmoak3 4y ago
      There are ~16k total reachable bitcoin nodes out there, which means there are plenty of users are trusting 3rd party nodes. https://bitnodes.io/ https://bitnodes.io/ Having your own keys and using a wallet application that connects to someone else's node is better than keeping your coins on an exchange, but you're still relying on someone else's node to not screw you. Compare the meager 16k nodes people trust with the 100 million who claim to own bitcoin. https://www.wsj.com/articles/bitcoins-one-percent-controls-lions-share-of-the-cryptocurrencys-wealth-11639996204 https://www.wsj.com/articles/bitcoins-one-percent-controls-l... (no paywall: https://archive.ph/73vR1#selection-4213.0-4213.97 https://archive.ph/73vR1#selection-4213.0-4213.97) I have no data on this but if history is any indication, I'd wager 90% of user's wallets point to the same 100 nodes. All of crypto looks like PayPal with extra steps. If I'm incorrect someone please educate me on this.

You really cannot make this up. As usual crypto in practice is the opposite of decentralized because people. Will. Not. Run. Their. Servers. Moxie nailed it

by jmoak3 4y ago

You really cannot make this up. As usual crypto in practice is the opposite of decentralized because people. Will. Not. Run. Their. Servers. Moxie nailed it

artemonster 4y ago

What is moxie?

theIV 4y ago
Moxie is a who. Probably referencing this blogpost, https://moxie.org/2022/01/07/web3-first-impressions.html https://moxie.org/2022/01/07/web3-first-impressions.html.
- a4isms 4y ago
  Who is Moxie? Moxie Marlingspike. What is Moxie? A regional beverage that is the origin of the word, now the official soft drink of the state of Maine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moxie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moxie
  - voidfunc 4y ago
    Moxie and a Fluffernutter sandwich. Doesn't get any more New England than that.
  - lgvld 4y ago
    Thank you for replying to the question. ;-)
daniel-thompson 4y ago
Moxie Marlinspike is a widely-respected security hacker and parent's comment is referring to this post of his -> https://moxie.org/2022/01/07/web3-first-impressions.html https://moxie.org/2022/01/07/web3-first-impressions.html
- colesantiago 4y ago
  I wonder if he told that he was also part of a cryptocurrency pump-and-dump scam as well? [0] After learning this I just lost respect for him. [0] https://amycastor.com/2021/04/07/signal-adopts-mobilecoin-a-crypto-project-linked-to-its-own-creator-moxie-marlinspike/ https://amycastor.com/2021/04/07/signal-adopts-mobilecoin-a-...
  - px43 4y ago
    Eh, look at the full timeline. When MobileCoin stuff was happening, when Moxie left Signal, and when he posted the Web3 criticisms. I've been using Bitcoin since 2009, and RedPhone/TxtSecure (Now called Signal) since 2010, and I still have zero clue how I'm even supposed to obtain MobileCoin. It's really a toy project at this point with no real adoption. Being able to send money via a secure chat network is a super important utility that is currently under-served in a big way, but MobileCoin itself is basically a whitepaper and a bunch of toy code that has a novel re-implementation (in rust) of Monero as a stableishcoin, which, last I checked makes it completely incompatible with the rest of the blockchain ecosystem. They are making zero effort to shill, or push MobileCoin in any way, and neither Moxie nor anyone on the team stands to profit greatly from massive MobileCoin adoption.
    - colesantiago 4y ago
      It does not matter. We know it is another scam coin, the fact is the crypto wallet is still in the Signal app. If it is a 'toy' project why didn't they remove it already after years of developing it in the first place? The CEO of MobileCoin already admitted to using MobileCoin to fund Signal [0] and Moxie being the original CTO and paid advisor of the coin as mentioned in the article; also meaning he was a paid shill and part of the scam. They already made the effort to create, shill, and then dump the tokens as soon as it was listed on the exchanges. The fact that Signal already accepted the tokens in the first place tells us that they were most certainly involved from the beginning and were part of the pump-and-dump scheme of the token. Since MobileCoin was pre-allocated with them owning over 50% of the supply with that being the only supported token on Signal tells you that both Signal, Moxie and MobileCoin are all complicit in the scam. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26726246 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26726246
ekianjo 4y ago
It's guy that promised you private chats by asking you to register with a phone number.
- 0daystock 4y ago
  Don't forget they now offer their own cryptocurrency ... to make us more secure and private, I guess.
- Klonoar 4y ago
  This is confusing privacy and anonymity. He 100% delivered on the former; the latter was the trade off.
  - ekianjo 4y ago
    there was no need for the trade off in the first place
    - Klonoar 4y ago
      You're welcome to try and claim that, but the sheer success of Signal and Moxie's approach is proof you're arguing in bad faith. Privacy and anonymity are not the same thing. Signal foregoes the latter to provide the former to a much wider range of people; foregoing the latter enables substantially better usability for non-technical people.
      - ekianjo 4y ago
        > You're welcome to try and claim that, but the sheer success of Signal and Moxie's approach is proof you're arguing in bad faith. This makes no sense. If you wanted to prove that you would need to have a signal equivalent that does not use phone numbers. Where is that?
        brewmarche 4y ago
        That is basically their point, that these alternatives are not successful because they chose not to use phone numbers. Anyway here’s some alternatives: Briar (no iOS client?) Threema (not free as in free beer) Wire Matrix XMPP Telegram (can be used E2EE for 1:1 chats only and is off by default)
hestefisk 4y ago
The person behind Signal.

colesantiago 4y ago

It is known for years that centralised exchanges can do this with custodial wallets. Not exactly the discovery of the century. Cryptocurrencies can be held in offline wallets i.e non-custodial hardware or software wallets, like Metamask, Trust Wallet, Ledger Nano, Tezos etc. But no, let's rush into the comments section and scream our heads off and create panic that it is 'exchanges === all crypto is scam'. When it is really a case of what happens when you store your crypto on an exchange rather than a non-custodial wallet.

anuraaga 4y ago
> When it is really a case of what happens when you store you crypto on an exchange rather than a non-custodial wallet. In this case, what would happen would likely be pay extremely high gas fees or wait very long for the transaction to be picked up, isn't it? I think what gets people making these comments is there really is no crypto free lunch yet that includes stable UX and fees.
dgfitz 4y ago
- colesantiago 4y ago
  What does this mean? Stripe Crypto is a scam because they happen to be using cryptocurrencies? Maybe Stripe should stop their crypto endeavors because they have a crypto offering which means it's a scam.
  - dgfitz 4y ago
    I have no idea how you made this mental leap. I don't understand the question.
    - colesantiago 4y ago
      Not a mental leap. If you are saying 'ALL crypto is a scam' this also includes all and any crypto offerings by any company. Stripe, Coinbase, FTX, Binance, Moneygram etc are included. Not to mention the 'DeFi' space as well.

tatertots1234 4y ago

meanwhile anybody who has their own keys is able to transact with it as per usual. “not your keys not your coin.” holding keys are not trivial but far simpler than running a server, better analogy might be to do with people not wanting to stake with a validator because it’s easier to use a centralized staking service.

TheHypnotist 4y ago
I wonder if that's even a majority of bitcoin owners. I use the term owners loosely.
- saurik 4y ago
  Does it even matter? What is interesting and actually-important is that it is even possible. Just because most people do something dumb doesn't mean we should throw up our hands in defeat and build systems where it isn't even possible to do something smart.
  - rglover 4y ago
    This is the greatest comment I've read on HN in years.
  - TheHypnotist 4y ago
    It matters very much who the owner is of the currency you are saying can be transacted. If a large chunk of bitcoin adopters don't own the currency, can't transact, and can't withdraw into fiat, what do you have exactly? Just a theory that this could work if just everyone played by a very specific set of rules.
    - saurik 4y ago
      I honestly don't understand how you can possibly come to that conclusion, and in all honesty that people like you exist is part of why tech is so demoralizing these days. If a large chunk of Bitcoin adopters--or smart phone adopters or Internet users or ANYTHING--don't know how the technology they are using works and put themselves in a bad situation with it, it simply doesn't mean that the technology doesn't work... it just doesn't; and it certainly doesn't mean we should just give up and re-centralize everything. If you build something that can't be used wrong--or hell: that most people who aren't trained don't use wrong--you probably built something evil :/.

mritchie712 4y ago

there are products headed in the right direction with simple self-custody: https://www.coinbase.com/wallet https://www.coinbase.com/wallet

lxgr 4y ago

Alternatively: Many people will not pass an opportunity of a "risk-free" 20% APY. (Not sure if Binance in particular is paying interest on deposits, but many exchanges do, as far as I know.) Also, how are wallets the same thing as servers? That analogy seems a bit stretched.

tmpz22 4y ago
Even Bernie Madoff only promised ~13%
- alephxyz 4y ago
  20% interest paid out in a shitcoin whose nominal value will be down 90% by the end of the year
- whatever1 4y ago
  Bernie was paying for 20years straight
l33t2328 4y ago
I’ve only heard of this mythical “risk free 20%” after the crash. I never heard anyone advertising that rate before.
- lxgr 4y ago
  https://medium.com/dare-to-be-better/anchor-protocol-insane-20-apy-on-a-stablecoin-and-why-it-is-safe-e8becd259957 https://medium.com/dare-to-be-better/anchor-protocol-insane-... And that's only the first Google result that hasn't been unpublished in the meanwhile...
- rco8786 4y ago
  Tons of alt coins offering triple digit APYs over the last few years.
- paulgb 4y ago
  Not quite 20%, but I got slapped around on crypto Twitter by a blue check account for suggesting that supposed 15% returns were not risk-free. https://twitter.com/ErikVoorhees/status/1466802265956577283 https://twitter.com/ErikVoorhees/status/1466802265956577283

ekianjo 4y ago

> As usual crypto in practice is the opposite of decentralized because people. Will. Not. Run. Their. Servers. Nope, you just don't own any crypto assets if they are not stored on your own means. That's not hard to understand.

mmastrac 4y ago
If you cannot trust a single third party to hold your money, it's no better than cash under the mattress. We have guard rails in banking for a reason.
- ekianjo 4y ago
  banking is for fiat currencies whose value halves ever dozens of years. you dont have to worry about bank robbers. inflation does the same thing.
  - rco8786 4y ago
    > whose value halves ever dozens of years This seems demonstrably better than halving over 6 months...
    - jonnycomputer 4y ago
      Or six hours. Looking at you not-stable coin.
- sweetbitter 4y ago
  Hm, I am not quite sure I understand. Are you saying that people should not have the ability to withdraw their USD into cash either? Cryptographic currencies are exactly the same thing imo- they are not meant to replace trusted third parties in the traditional sense, they are just the digital equivalent of cash. A cryptocurrency wallet is far closer to a physical object than being a 'promise' from networks of trusted authorities. Apples and oranges.
rco8786 4y ago

sgt101 4y ago

I think it's because bitcoin trading can't actually use the network - it's too slow and expensive. So the exchanges and the stable coins are used as a proxy which then means that they are disconnected from the actual currency. This means that there is an amplifier (leverage) on the way up, leading to spectacular bull runs. Also...

FabHK 4y ago
> bitcoin trading can't actually use the network Crypto trading on exchanges never uses the network. You send your crypto to an exchange on-chain, and all trading happening on the exchange then is off-chain: just adjustment of a few positions in the exchange's databank (as it should be: quick and efficient, within a centralised trusted institution).
misslibby 4y ago
Decentralized exchanges exist, but they can't trade with fiat money. One of the reasons why stablecoins exist.

menzoic 4y ago

> As usual crypto in practice is the opposite of decentralized Binance is a centralized exchange. There are both centralized and decentralized exchanges. > people. Will. Not. Run. Their. Servers. Moxie nailed it People don't need to run their own servers. They just need to use a light client which is even light even for mobile and browser extensions https://eth.wiki/concepts/light-client-protocol https://eth.wiki/concepts/light-client-protocol Light clients existed before Moxie's post The only problem is adoption of secure practices by popular publishers, like Metamask. Side note: Opensea isn't decentralized either, its a centralized NFT exchange.

ricardobayes 4y ago
Good luck getting people to use even a semi-updated web browser, let alone deal with an extension
- Siira 4y ago
  Laziness has costs, that’s not a new thing. You want something, you have to work for it.

baby 4y ago

That’s why ultra light clients are important. See Plumo and Mina where you don’t need to run a node to interact with the blockchain in a secure way (you get cryptographic proofs of the latest state)

0daystock 4y ago

All monetary systems are built on trust. You can say the same thing about a run on traditional banks, which only have a fraction of reserves to cover deposits and would result in similar price depression.

nradov 4y ago
False. Fiat monetary systems are built on a state monopoly on violence. Trust is merely a byproduct. You are required to pay taxes in the local fiat currency, and if you fail to pay then the government will eventually seize your assets by force, or perhaps put you in jail. This is a feature, not a bug, and it generally works fairly well in practice as long as the government is at least minimally competent.
- achenet 4y ago
  This. The original purpose of money is to enable to government to quantify precisely how much of your stuff it will take each tax season.
  - namaria 4y ago
    The original purpose of money is seignorage, the difference between face value and actual value of the currency. It doesn't get better then printing hundred dollar bills that get out of circulation - almost pure profit. Taxing in kind is way better, it's inflation proof.
- Consultant32452 4y ago
  "generally works fairly well" - I agree with this, but I doubt we would agree at what it does fairly well. In the fiat systems the people with the most coins can issue themselves more coins on a whim, thereby devaluing all the other coins held by the poor. This too is a feature, not a bug, and it works really well for all the people with the most coins. They get to slowly and consistently extract wealth from the poor without having to do any work.
  - 4y ago

optimiz3 4y ago

Case in point: was an early adopter of Eth, mined many of the very early blocks. Sold it all back in February. One of the reasons? The whole Eth 2.0 upgrade requires both a base level node (Ethererum sanctioned) and a "2.0 validator node" where one is supposed to trust a 3rd party implementation with minimally 10s of thousands of dollars per stake. At least with a 1st party node the Ethereum Foundation stood behind it but now there is no official release backing the future of the project, only a spec. How is anyone sane supposed to run their own servers in this case?

faangiq 4y ago
Also ETH is nonsense with no use case.
- optimiz3 4y ago
  Wouldn't go that far - the programmable aspects were at release were certainly unique and value added.
  - coldpie 4y ago
    Wait till this guy hears about stored procedures.
  - RC_ITR 4y ago
    To do what? (Other than enable financial engineering)
    - fddhjjj 4y ago
      Why would programmable money be useful for anything beyond financial engineering. It’s literally engineering + finance. Why is financial engineering inherently universally without qualification bad? I have a mortgage, an index fund, and an ATM card. I :heart: financial engineering.
      - freemint 4y ago

mumblemumble 4y ago

> As usual crypto in practice is the opposite of decentralized because people. Will. Not. Run. Their. Servers. "My theory would be perfect if only I could convince humans to stop acting like humans," is the original sin of bad economics. I would submit that it is approximately impossible to have a cryptocurrency that is simultaneously popularly successful, and has even a significant minority of its users owning their own wallets. Because only a fraction of a percent of the general public has both the skill and the inclination to do something like that.

ethbr0 4y ago
> "My [product] would be perfect if only I could convince humans to stop acting like humans," is the original sin of bad [technologists] fixed that
- SantalBlush 4y ago
  There was recently an article posted to HN [0] about a startup founder doing this very thing, blaming his customers for behaving like humans. >I was fighting human nature and losing. >Everyone swears they will eat right and exercise, but most don’t. Everyone agrees they need to spend less to be financially secure later, but most won’t. Our users were telling us they would use ContractBeast to achieve those long-term benefits, but most weren’t. >When I looked at the contracts the users were creating, I found most of them were ones in which a particular feature provided a clear and immediate benefit. Usually involving contract review and approval. >Human nature sucks. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11866868 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11866868
  - rat9988 4y ago
    >here was recently an article posted to HN [0] about a startup founder doing this very thing, blaming his customers for behaving like humans. He did it the opposit. He blamed his product for going against human nature.This is misquoting him.
    - 4y ago

api 4y ago

"Not wanting to run your own server" is not the primary issue. People might run their own servers if it was as easy as running a Mac or a smart phone. People hate manual IT and system administration. They will sacrifice money, freedom, privacy, control, even ownership of their own works to avoid having to futz around with that stuff. They hate it that much. (There are a small number of people this doesn't apply to. These are called enthusiasts. There are also car enthusiasts who like to change their own oil or even rebuild their own engines. We are talking about 99% of the market here though. Enthusiasts are a small niche.) It's easy to understand why if you count time as money. Lets say you value your time at $60/hour, which is probably on the low side for people here but lets be conservative. Now lets say you have to spend three hours a month messing with your servers. That means it's costing you $180/month or $2,160/year. That doesn't count the additional cognitive load of having to worry about it or the inconvenience of something going down and needing attention at an inopportune time. If those issues were addressed, you would see more people running their own servers. Unfortunately the "ease of use is for stupid people" meme goes way back in tech culture: http://catb.org/jargon/html/P/point-and-drool-interface.html http://catb.org/jargon/html/P/point-and-drool-interface.html ^^^ This is why FOSS has never crossed the chasm. It's a cultural problem. Another contributing factor is the love that some developers have for complexity. They see complexity as a sign of intelligence. It's not. Simple systems are far more difficult and require much more intelligence than complex systems.

zitterbewegung 4y ago

For many crypto devs people will use infura instead of running their own node so lots of the devs are centralized to infura.

olalonde 4y ago

> You really cannot make this up. Not only you can make this up but it's literally happened hundreds of times in the history of cryptocurrency. So much that there is even a catchphrase for it: "Not your keys, not your Bitcoin". MtGox being the most infamous example. > As usual crypto in practice is the opposite of decentralized because people. Will. Not. Run. Their. Servers. 1) Only a small percentage of the total Bitcoin supply is held on Binance. 2) Self-custody doesn't require running your own server. Why is this the top comment? I don't know (but I have my suspicions).

jmoak3 4y ago
> MtGox being the most infamous example. I was there for it. I mined my first coins in late 2011. Few people want to run their local node (server), few people want to point their wallet at their own node, and fewer people want to run code they've compiled themselves. If you aren't running your own node you are relying on someone else's. As a mass adoption decentralized trust-less technology for transacting, bitcoin has failed. That people are still getting burned by trusting major exchanges is hard to believe, and why you really can't make this up. It's stranger than fiction. >(but I have my suspicions). Yes, it is me. Jamie Dimon. Warren Buffett and George Soros are here next to me too. Bill Gates is on the way, and he's bringing chips and guac. We're all out to get those pesky crypto entrepreneurs.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- olalonde 4y ago
  I'd say you have a more black-and-white vision than me. While it's not perfectly decentralized, e.g. some users do delegate their trust to centralized services for convenience or security, it is still more decentralized than fiat where (digital) self-custody is simply not possible. Decentralization and trust are a spectrum, not a binary. Even compiling the software yourself wouldn't get you 100% there [0]. I also feel that it's a bit early to call Bitcoin a failure but I do agree that it has a long way to go for mass atoption. Bitcoin is not disrupting the taxi or the hotel industry. It is disrupting the most entrenched and powerful "status quo" there is on Earth. We're talking about global banking, global finance, powerful governments, etc. Most people have no conception of what money really is or even that it could be different. > That people are still getting burned by trusting major exchanges is hard to believe, and why you really can't make this up. It's stranger than fiction. Surely you knew that Binance existed prior to this tweet? > Yes, it is me. Jamie Dimon. Warren Buffett and George Soros are here next to me too. Bill Gates is on the way, and he's bringing chips and guac. We're all out to get those pesky crypto entrepreneurs. My suspicion was simply that many HNers tend to reflexively upvote any comment that paints crypto in a bad light. [0] https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rdriley/487/papers/Thompson_1984_ReflectionsonTrustingTrust.pdf https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rdriley/487/papers/Thompson_1984_Ref...

brewmarche 4y ago

> Moxie nailed it His talk[0]/article[1] typically gets a lot of flack on HN whenever it is posted but it was really eye-opening to me. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nj3YFprqAr8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nj3YFprqAr8 [1] https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/ https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/

gardenhedge 4y ago

Can you explain your comment a bit more? How does Binances' actions affect Bitcoin users who don't use Binance? And how do you arrive at your comment from this tweet? It doesn't say or imply how many people are using Binance. Futhermore, people who use Binance might also use a number of other options.

jmoak3 4y ago
Sure thing - once again people were unable to move around their coins due to depending on a tool hosted on someone else's computer. We've seen this many times, and it's a shame because letting another party manage your wallet or run a node for you defeats what I find attractive about bitcoin - the ability to be a peer in a decentralized peer-to-peer system. If Binance went under in that time, people would have simply been screwed and lost their coins Mt.Gox-style. Bitcoin only achieves it's decentralized promise if everyone hosts their own node and connects their wallet to it, and I'm personally not seeing that. Why don't people run their own nodes and connect their wallets to their nodes exclusively? Because it's a pain, and nobody wants to host their own servers. They'll pick gmail over a mail server 99% of the time, and that is bad for the promise of bitcoin. I would wager most/all cryptocurrencies have similar problems. Moxie's web3 blog touched on this, and he nailed it.
- gardenhedge 4y ago
  How do you know many (or too many) people are doing it this way?
  - jmoak3 4y ago
    There are ~16k total reachable bitcoin nodes out there, which means there are plenty of users are trusting 3rd party nodes. https://bitnodes.io/ https://bitnodes.io/ Having your own keys and using a wallet application that connects to someone else's node is better than keeping your coins on an exchange, but you're still relying on someone else's node to not screw you. Compare the meager 16k nodes people trust with the 100 million who claim to own bitcoin. https://www.wsj.com/articles/bitcoins-one-percent-controls-lions-share-of-the-cryptocurrencys-wealth-11639996204 https://www.wsj.com/articles/bitcoins-one-percent-controls-l... (no paywall: https://archive.ph/73vR1#selection-4213.0-4213.97 https://archive.ph/73vR1#selection-4213.0-4213.97) I have no data on this but if history is any indication, I'd wager 90% of user's wallets point to the same 100 nodes. All of crypto looks like PayPal with extra steps. If I'm incorrect someone please educate me on this.