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Is it though? I am pretty sure that building an anonymous payment system for illegal trades is possible without crypto. I have not seen a legitimate use of cr

• koonsolo 4y ago
  > I am pretty sure that building an anonymous payment system for illegal trades is possible without crypto. How? And then it turns out this system is owned by the FBI, like the ANOM phone. Oops. At least with Monero you know it's peer reviewed, and can check what is running on your system. You see that is the strange part here. There is a cool algorithmic solution, and HN says "Nah, some central authority could do that with software too".
• cornholio 4y ago
  I think if we were trying to build a payment system for illegal use, what we would end up would look very much like crypto. This in itself should speak volumes. Of course, for my part I certainly wouldn't be able to independently come up with proof of work chains, the major contribution of Satoshi. Something like Wei b-money with a super-peer network that broadcasts transactions and countersigns those that are legitimate/first. It wouldn't have the strong anti-double-spending features of Bitcoin, but it would work much as current proof of stake coins, as long as the super-peer cabal was not majority-compromised. I know I could come up with it because I toyed with these concepts in the space of filesharing protocols before 2010, but decided the whole e-cash approach was too heavy. Always wondered what it could have led to if I implemented it back then.