13 ms·

It's bigger than that. I think for most people, decentralization is an anti-feature. People do not want all their money to disappear because they lost their lap

It's bigger than that. I think for most people, decentralization is an anti-feature. People do not want all their money to disappear because they lost their laptop on the subway. Being able to call your bank or credit union and have them freeze your cards, reverse fraudulent charges, and restore access to your account is a good thing.

wyager 4y ago
No one leaves all their Bitcoin on a laptop. Even casual users today most likely have a backup of some kind. The process is easy now; buy a hardware wallet or use a phone app, write down the backup words, done. > Being able to call your bank or credit union and have them freeze your cards, reverse fraudulent charges The only reason I've ever had to do this is because traditional payments security is so shitty. Forgive me if I'm not impressed that the fiat payments system has measures to deal with problems that it created. No one can make a fraudulent charge on my Bitcoin wallet. The last time Chase detected a fraudulent charge on my credit card, they helpfully did a chargeback on a bunch of other random non-fraudulent transactions without asking me, which led to many hours of bullshit for me to deal with. I had to move insurance companies because progressive stopped letting me pay with a credit card.
czhu12 4y ago
Well the promise of crypto is that it can prevent nefarious government surveillance, censorship, inflationary policies, etc. If the HN crowd could temporarily look past how crypto is used today to what it could theoretically be, I wonder if more productive conversations could be had.
mbesto 4y ago
This is just more evidence that crypto is just re-realizing 200 years of the development of modern finance.
- shreyshnaccount 4y ago
  and remaking scams from before banking
  - noSyncCloud 4y ago
    And remaking the scams of current banking
    - arcticbull 4y ago
      Not really IMO, modern 'banking scams' are either conspiracy theories, or super duper complicated to evade regulators. Why run complicated scams when you can run simple scams? Just rug 'em.
    - shreyshnaccount 4y ago
      and making the future of scamming. #trailblazer?
ryanmcbride 4y ago
Exactly
ericd 4y ago
This isn’t an issue if you have any form of backup and you have something like FileVault enabled on your computer. Which, I know, is asking a lot compared to the average proficiency of users. But it’s also really not so hard that people need to throw up their hands and say it’s unworkable.
- tppiotrowski 4y ago
  If instead of random hashes, you could generate wallet keys based on biometrics or some other aspect inherent and unique to an individual this could work. But you would be leaking a lot of information for others to reverse engineer your key.
  - cowtools 4y ago
    I don't think that would work as biometrics aren't deterministic AFAIK. That's why operating systems with encrypted storage like Android (and presumably iOS) don't allow you to unlock them with biometrics on startup.
DennisP 4y ago
The advantage of crypto over cash is that you can keep redundant copies, or keep portions of a key in different places so there's no single point of failure. It'd be pretty silly not to have backups. For most people, a friendlier ideal is probably social recovery wallets, as advocated by Vitalik. You can restore access much like centralized services can, except instead of relying on a big company you're relying on your circle of friends and family. You can also include a company or two, if you want, without the company being a single point of failure. https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/01/11/recovery.html https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/01/11/recovery.html Reversing charges is a different point, which could be accomplished pretty simply with 2-of-3 sigs if there's market demand for it. At the moment, scaling issues have kept crypto from being used much for retail payments anyway (though that's gradually getting fixed). As for freezing cards, that's something we have to do a lot because we hand over full account credentials to everyone we pay and just trust them to keep those details safe and not abuse them. I've replaced two credit cards due to fraud, and it was a hassle. It boggles my mind that we've had public key cryptography for fifty years and we're still not using it for payments. Never mind blockchains, just upgrading the banking system to use public keys would be a huge improvement.
- jakelazaroff 4y ago
  Probably the most common vector for crypto theft is phishing people to sign malevolent transactions. So I have a hard time believing that there’s a technical solution to this problem at all — much less with current blockchain technologies.
  - cowtools 4y ago
    Having separate "hot" and "cold" wallets is a good start.
    - arcticbull 4y ago
      Or have no wallets, which solves that problem completely.
wmeredith 4y ago
Thanks for saying this. A lot of the crypto peeps seem to think that we'd all carry around cash if we could, and it's simply not true. People don't use much cash anymore because it's not convenient. There's a reason cash went away for the most part.
strgcmc 4y ago
I agree about decentralization as anti-feature, but this is a poor analogy. It's equivalent to saying, people do not want all their money to disappear because they chose to carry all their life savings in a briefcase on the subway and then they lost the briefcase. If you did that, no bank is going to reimburse you. The way to avoid this problem, is to keep your fiat savings in the bank (which means, as some number in some database they keep), instead of in physical bills on your person. It has nothing to do with fiat or TradFi being inherently better than crypto. Likewise, the way to avoid this problem for crypto, is to not carry your private keys with you all the time (or at least, to only carry them on devices you can afford to lose, such as a hardware wallet that an attacker needs time to penetrate, giving you time to go home and restore/move your funds). Obviously self-custody is still hard and still a high barrier to entry, but from a financial risk perspective, you should only "carry" as much crypto on you as you would be willing to carry as cash in your wallet (which of course you can always lose, and losing it doesn't validate or invalidate the banking industry).
- cowtools 4y ago
  In an ideal world, every device would be secure enough that the user could afford to lose it. P.S. I'm using a pixel phone running CalyxOS It has a locked bootloader so I am reasonably confident an attacker could not steal my keys. I wish I could say the same about my laptop.
idiotsecant 4y ago
Decentralization does not necessarily mean loss of trusted asset recovery, it just means more flexibility around who you trust. Earlier in another comment I linked argent, which at the risk of looking spammy I will post again not because I have anything to gain by promoting them but because I think it's legitimately a well thought out system and a model for the future of how this all works. https://www.argent.xyz/faq/ https://www.argent.xyz/faq/
dieselgate 4y ago
the reversal of fraudulent charges is a tremendous perk of credit cards in my experience
uberdru 4y ago
Not to mention actually rolling back stock trades. . . .
plsbenice34 4y ago
You can't have the good parts without the bad. Most people hate banks. Russians dont like not being allowed to withdraw their money from ATMs and being restricted from foreign exchange. Merchants don't like being scammed by fraudulent chargebacks. People don't want the risk that their funds are stolen by the custodian. Your comment is disingenuous and seems to be willfully misrepresenting the situation by ignoring that there are two sides These forms of decentralised digital money are very new; nobody understands the potential for it if it were supported by social structures and education. Currently it exists in an incredibly hostile social environment where institutions are actively harming the user experience.
jstanley 4y ago
> for most people, decentralization is an anti-feature. Before general literacy, written documentation was an anti-feature. As people gain technical literacy, decentralisation will become more broadly relevant.
- Barrin92 4y ago
  No, as people gain (technical) literacy, decentralization becomes less relevant, because literacy and legibility are the enablers of higher forms of centralization and organization. Who is more centralized, technologically and literate civilizations or ones in so called 'primitive' states?

wyager 4y ago

No one leaves all their Bitcoin on a laptop. Even casual users today most likely have a backup of some kind. The process is easy now; buy a hardware wallet or use a phone app, write down the backup words, done. > Being able to call your bank or credit union and have them freeze your cards, reverse fraudulent charges The only reason I've ever had to do this is because traditional payments security is so shitty. Forgive me if I'm not impressed that the fiat payments system has measures to deal with problems that it created. No one can make a fraudulent charge on my Bitcoin wallet. The last time Chase detected a fraudulent charge on my credit card, they helpfully did a chargeback on a bunch of other random non-fraudulent transactions without asking me, which led to many hours of bullshit for me to deal with. I had to move insurance companies because progressive stopped letting me pay with a credit card.

czhu12 4y ago

Well the promise of crypto is that it can prevent nefarious government surveillance, censorship, inflationary policies, etc. If the HN crowd could temporarily look past how crypto is used today to what it could theoretically be, I wonder if more productive conversations could be had.

mbesto 4y ago

This is just more evidence that crypto is just re-realizing 200 years of the development of modern finance.

shreyshnaccount 4y ago
and remaking scams from before banking
- noSyncCloud 4y ago
  And remaking the scams of current banking
  - arcticbull 4y ago
    Not really IMO, modern 'banking scams' are either conspiracy theories, or super duper complicated to evade regulators. Why run complicated scams when you can run simple scams? Just rug 'em.
  - shreyshnaccount 4y ago
    and making the future of scamming. #trailblazer?

ryanmcbride 4y ago

Exactly

ericd 4y ago

This isn’t an issue if you have any form of backup and you have something like FileVault enabled on your computer. Which, I know, is asking a lot compared to the average proficiency of users. But it’s also really not so hard that people need to throw up their hands and say it’s unworkable.

tppiotrowski 4y ago
If instead of random hashes, you could generate wallet keys based on biometrics or some other aspect inherent and unique to an individual this could work. But you would be leaking a lot of information for others to reverse engineer your key.
- cowtools 4y ago
  I don't think that would work as biometrics aren't deterministic AFAIK. That's why operating systems with encrypted storage like Android (and presumably iOS) don't allow you to unlock them with biometrics on startup.

DennisP 4y ago

The advantage of crypto over cash is that you can keep redundant copies, or keep portions of a key in different places so there's no single point of failure. It'd be pretty silly not to have backups. For most people, a friendlier ideal is probably social recovery wallets, as advocated by Vitalik. You can restore access much like centralized services can, except instead of relying on a big company you're relying on your circle of friends and family. You can also include a company or two, if you want, without the company being a single point of failure. https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/01/11/recovery.html https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/01/11/recovery.html Reversing charges is a different point, which could be accomplished pretty simply with 2-of-3 sigs if there's market demand for it. At the moment, scaling issues have kept crypto from being used much for retail payments anyway (though that's gradually getting fixed). As for freezing cards, that's something we have to do a lot because we hand over full account credentials to everyone we pay and just trust them to keep those details safe and not abuse them. I've replaced two credit cards due to fraud, and it was a hassle. It boggles my mind that we've had public key cryptography for fifty years and we're still not using it for payments. Never mind blockchains, just upgrading the banking system to use public keys would be a huge improvement.

jakelazaroff 4y ago
Probably the most common vector for crypto theft is phishing people to sign malevolent transactions. So I have a hard time believing that there’s a technical solution to this problem at all — much less with current blockchain technologies.
- cowtools 4y ago
  Having separate "hot" and "cold" wallets is a good start.
  - arcticbull 4y ago
    Or have no wallets, which solves that problem completely.

wmeredith 4y ago

Thanks for saying this. A lot of the crypto peeps seem to think that we'd all carry around cash if we could, and it's simply not true. People don't use much cash anymore because it's not convenient. There's a reason cash went away for the most part.

strgcmc 4y ago

I agree about decentralization as anti-feature, but this is a poor analogy. It's equivalent to saying, people do not want all their money to disappear because they chose to carry all their life savings in a briefcase on the subway and then they lost the briefcase. If you did that, no bank is going to reimburse you. The way to avoid this problem, is to keep your fiat savings in the bank (which means, as some number in some database they keep), instead of in physical bills on your person. It has nothing to do with fiat or TradFi being inherently better than crypto. Likewise, the way to avoid this problem for crypto, is to not carry your private keys with you all the time (or at least, to only carry them on devices you can afford to lose, such as a hardware wallet that an attacker needs time to penetrate, giving you time to go home and restore/move your funds). Obviously self-custody is still hard and still a high barrier to entry, but from a financial risk perspective, you should only "carry" as much crypto on you as you would be willing to carry as cash in your wallet (which of course you can always lose, and losing it doesn't validate or invalidate the banking industry).

cowtools 4y ago
In an ideal world, every device would be secure enough that the user could afford to lose it. P.S. I'm using a pixel phone running CalyxOS It has a locked bootloader so I am reasonably confident an attacker could not steal my keys. I wish I could say the same about my laptop.

idiotsecant 4y ago

Decentralization does not necessarily mean loss of trusted asset recovery, it just means more flexibility around who you trust. Earlier in another comment I linked argent, which at the risk of looking spammy I will post again not because I have anything to gain by promoting them but because I think it's legitimately a well thought out system and a model for the future of how this all works. https://www.argent.xyz/faq/ https://www.argent.xyz/faq/

dieselgate 4y ago

the reversal of fraudulent charges is a tremendous perk of credit cards in my experience

uberdru 4y ago

Not to mention actually rolling back stock trades. . . .

plsbenice34 4y ago

You can't have the good parts without the bad. Most people hate banks. Russians dont like not being allowed to withdraw their money from ATMs and being restricted from foreign exchange. Merchants don't like being scammed by fraudulent chargebacks. People don't want the risk that their funds are stolen by the custodian. Your comment is disingenuous and seems to be willfully misrepresenting the situation by ignoring that there are two sides These forms of decentralised digital money are very new; nobody understands the potential for it if it were supported by social structures and education. Currently it exists in an incredibly hostile social environment where institutions are actively harming the user experience.

jstanley 4y ago

> for most people, decentralization is an anti-feature. Before general literacy, written documentation was an anti-feature. As people gain technical literacy, decentralisation will become more broadly relevant.

Barrin92 4y ago
No, as people gain (technical) literacy, decentralization becomes less relevant, because literacy and legibility are the enablers of higher forms of centralization and organization. Who is more centralized, technologically and literate civilizations or ones in so called 'primitive' states?