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I’m flabbergasted by how often HN commentators who should know better keep refusing to acknowledge the trade-offs in the technical implementations of crypto. Wh

I’m flabbergasted by how often HN commentators who should know better keep refusing to acknowledge the trade-offs in the technical implementations of crypto. What SQLite database running on raspberry pi is immune from seizure by relevant government authorities for helping with criminal transactions? Compare and contrast with Tornado Cash, which still works fine despite being OFAC sanctioned. Now, you may not care for law evasion, and that’s fine. But it’s asinine to pretend that crypto tech is not better for such purposes than “an SQLite database running on a raspberry pi.”

deleted 4y ago
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vkou 4y ago
TC works just fine, if your definition of fine is 'I want to send my money into a black hole'.
grey-area 4y ago
> What SQLite database running on raspberry pi is immune from seizure by relevant government authorities What cryptocurrency is? The answer is none, because there are several weak points to any cryptocurrency and if state agencies choose to take them seriously they can easily shut them down.
dmitriid 4y ago
> keep refusing to acknowledge the trade-offs in the technical implementations of crypto. No, we don't. The thing is, every time a "good application of crypto" comes up the next question is "show these to us". And invariably those "good applications" have no idea what they are doing, require centralized trusted entities to function, and can be run from a Raspberry Pi.
Nextgrid 4y ago
The only real use-case of crypto is value transfer that is immune to government interference - I don't think anyone is denying that. But for the vast majority of businesses which interact with the real world, it doesn't matter whether the actual logic is on a bulletproof, uncensorable VM if the government can just go after the few input/output points where the system interacts with the real world. Therefore, it's no better than just running SQLite and much worse because crypto makes significant tradeoffs (to be resistant to adversary interference) that aren't actually useful here.

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vkou 4y ago

TC works just fine, if your definition of fine is 'I want to send my money into a black hole'.

grey-area 4y ago

> What SQLite database running on raspberry pi is immune from seizure by relevant government authorities What cryptocurrency is? The answer is none, because there are several weak points to any cryptocurrency and if state agencies choose to take them seriously they can easily shut them down.

dmitriid 4y ago

> keep refusing to acknowledge the trade-offs in the technical implementations of crypto. No, we don't. The thing is, every time a "good application of crypto" comes up the next question is "show these to us". And invariably those "good applications" have no idea what they are doing, require centralized trusted entities to function, and can be run from a Raspberry Pi.

Nextgrid 4y ago

The only real use-case of crypto is value transfer that is immune to government interference - I don't think anyone is denying that. But for the vast majority of businesses which interact with the real world, it doesn't matter whether the actual logic is on a bulletproof, uncensorable VM if the government can just go after the few input/output points where the system interacts with the real world. Therefore, it's no better than just running SQLite and much worse because crypto makes significant tradeoffs (to be resistant to adversary interference) that aren't actually useful here.