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This lecture by Berkeley CS professor Nicholas Weaver is a fantastic overview of what cryptocurrency and Blockchain actually is and why it is a complete waste o

This lecture by Berkeley CS professor Nicholas Weaver is a fantastic overview of what cryptocurrency and Blockchain actually is and why it is a complete waste of time, energy, and money and needs to be reduced to 0: https://youtu.be/J9nv0Ol-R5Q https://youtu.be/J9nv0Ol-R5Q I used to think "well maybe there is some real application of Bitcoin" but the more I learned about it I just realized the entire enterprise is awful and the only real benefit it has is uncensored money transfer. Which is great for ransomware. Now that Bitcoin is practically controlled by under 10 miners, there really is no decentralized part of it. Bitcoin maxis say you don't need to trust anyone, but that's not true. You gotta trust the code. Trust the miners. Also what good is magic internet money if I need to keep everything in an offline cold storage wallet to be secure? The only useful application now is using Bitcoin as a honeypot in your servers to notify you if a hacker has access to your systems (you'll see it when the wallet is drained!).

DennisP 4y ago
You can be secure with a hardware wallet. The keys stay internal to it, it shows the transaction data on its own display, you press a button on the hardware wallet to approve, and it passes the signed transaction back to your computer.
- deleted 4y ago
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- roland35 4y ago
  And what happens if I lose my wallet?? Or forgot the passcode?
  - DennisP 4y ago
    That's not a problem either, you keep a 24-word seed phrase as a backup. That's what goes in your deep cold storage. This has been well-known basic practice for years now. An emerging option is social recovery, as advocated by Vitalik. There are phone wallets now that let you have, say, 3 of 5 recovery, where the five are trusted friends/family or even a business or two.
strix_varius 4y ago
This presentation has great content but it's let down somewhat by the guy's presentation style. He's an adult professor in his late 40s with the mannerisms of a teenage redditor: a veneer of self-impressed haughtiness over clear insecurities. All the high-pitched exclamations were hard to listen to.
lern_too_spel 4y ago
Lecturer, not professor. Professors can't be entertaining until they have tenure, and by then, many have forgotten how.

DennisP 4y ago

You can be secure with a hardware wallet. The keys stay internal to it, it shows the transaction data on its own display, you press a button on the hardware wallet to approve, and it passes the signed transaction back to your computer.

deleted 4y ago
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roland35 4y ago
And what happens if I lose my wallet?? Or forgot the passcode?
- DennisP 4y ago
  That's not a problem either, you keep a 24-word seed phrase as a backup. That's what goes in your deep cold storage. This has been well-known basic practice for years now. An emerging option is social recovery, as advocated by Vitalik. There are phone wallets now that let you have, say, 3 of 5 recovery, where the five are trusted friends/family or even a business or two.

strix_varius 4y ago

This presentation has great content but it's let down somewhat by the guy's presentation style. He's an adult professor in his late 40s with the mannerisms of a teenage redditor: a veneer of self-impressed haughtiness over clear insecurities. All the high-pitched exclamations were hard to listen to.

lern_too_spel 4y ago

Lecturer, not professor. Professors can't be entertaining until they have tenure, and by then, many have forgotten how.