6 ms·

It’s a convenient way of backing up the document that can be used to re-create this impactful technology from scratch… may a disaster take place. Think like sen

It’s a convenient way of backing up the document that can be used to re-create this impactful technology from scratch… may a disaster take place. Think like sending backups of human civilization into space. There are probably now hundreds of millions of copy of this file, pretty cool.

Skyy93 4y ago
Currently the only impact Bitcoin had is burning a large amount of electricity. I would not say this is a particular worthy technology to safe. There would be far better ideas like Transformers in AI or 5nm chip technology.
- neilv 4y ago
  And facilitating organized crime, terrorism, and investment scams.
  - charlieyu1 4y ago
    Which of these do not happen when using conventional money?
    - lottin 4y ago
      You're missing the point. Cryptocurrencies are specifically designed to evade regulations. Everything else —efficiency, cost, convenience, usability— is sacrificed in order to achieve this goal.
      - charlieyu1 4y ago
        Call me old school but I don’t understand the hype about regulations. The less power the government has, the better. They certainly don’t need to know my spending habits. And a stack of banknotes evade regulations pretty well anyway.
        hnbad 4y ago
        The function of the state is to enforce private property rights. Regulations exist to alleviate the consequences of private property rights by adding various forms of exceptions. Whether you think that's a good thing depends on whether your idea of utopia is a egalitarian commune or a neofeudal federation of corporate city states. Note that I'm talking about private property not personal property. Variations of the latter exist and have existed in almost every society but the concept of the former has increasingly been maximized to the point that patches of land, ways to do things, ideas in your head and sincere promises are now things you can own and exchange and people refusing to suffer hunger or lack of shelter are seen as unreasonable if they want to use what isn't eaten or isn't lived in. Abolishing the state as long as other organizations (or individuals) are allowed to hoard resources/wealth/power seems as catastrophic a suggestion as abolishing the police as long as other gangs exist. You're just substituting one evil for another without affecting any material change.
      - Zuiii 4y ago
        > Cryptocurrencies are specifically designed to evade regulations. No, most are not. (I'd go as far to argue that even monero is not specifically designed to evade regulation.)
  - codehalo 4y ago
    And human trafficking.
    - it_citizen 4y ago
      And funding North Korea.
      - colestantiago 4y ago
        don't forget ransomware enablement and burning the planet up with mining.
        midmagico 4y ago
        Heavily debunked nonsense trope.. https://medium.com/@nic__carter/comments-on-the-white-house-report-on-the-climate-implications-of-crypto-mining-8d65d30ec942 https://medium.com/@nic__carter/comments-on-the-white-house-...
    - Zuiii 4y ago
      Yeah, I wish cryptocurrencies haven't been invented so that human trafficking wouldn't exist at all. I mean just think about it. A FULL 3%* of all cryptocurrency transactions are related to criminal activities! If we ban those 3% (and the other 97% because why not), we will stop all human trafficking or at least make a noticeable dent in it because most traffickers rely on cryptocurrency and absolutely don't use traditional currency as the main way to transact. Perhaps if cryptocurrencies do finally get banned, it would at least help certain individuals to think more critically, or perhaps start thinking at all. One can only wish. [*]: 3% because it's the most extreme reputable statistic out there. Most reputable studies place transactions related to illicit activities well bellow 1%.
  - dingosity 4y ago
    Careful. You're going to be accused of furthering an "ideological debate" in violation of HN's Terms of Service.
  - overthrow 4y ago
    https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3942181 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3942181 > For example, illegal transactions, scams and gambling together make up less than 3% of volume.
    - VWWHFSfQ 4y ago
      the other 97% is bots sending small amounts of bitcoins back and forth to each other for no reason whatsoever
      - trogdor 4y ago
        In fairness, that kind of thing arguably happens with stocks as well, though algorithmic trading. Though it’s not small amounts.
        eru 4y ago
        Though they do have reasons. But the 'bots' in Bitcoin probably have too. After all, there are transaction costs.
      - Psychoshy_bc1q 4y ago
        back this claim up. wait you can't
  - RestlessMind 4y ago
    And also to fight oppressive governments. Compiled some examples here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32406095 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32406095 Though those governments would love people like you who paint all the use cases as "organized crime, terrorism" etc
    - igsomething 4y ago
      Add countries with hyperinflation too such as Venezuela and Argentina. Every cryptocurrency-related post here in HN is flooded with extremely negative comments, even if the post itself does not promote cryptocurrencies. These people have seen countless examples of cryptocurrency scams, but they cannot understand what life under an economically oppressed or unstable country is because they never experienced it.
      - Zuiii 4y ago
        I'd also add: - People living abroad who are completely debanked because local banks refuse to open banks accounts for people who are merely suspected of being US citizns, despite them not being US citizns, with no path to resolve their predicament. This is a real problem that is effecting real people right now. - Any legal activity that the banks and payment processors don't like for one reason or another; onlyfans, "right-wing" websites (whether actual or merely alleged), ...etc. We no longer live in a world where you can live a dignified life with cash alone. Cryptocurrecy is a net positive to humanity, even if the technologies behind it may currently be more wasteful and make the lives of criminals a bit easier. There is simply no alternative for a lot of honest people in financial dead-ends the government can't or won't help. Thank you Satoshi and anyone who works to support this technology for making the world a slightly better place.
      - Psychoshy_bc1q 4y ago
        HN is flooded with overprivileged richkids with no connection to reality
        hnbad 4y ago
  - jeffhuys 4y ago
    Eh, every good thing can be used for bad. And it's a pandora's box anyways. So who cares.
  - midmagico 4y ago
    Bitcoin specifically, even at the height of Silk Road, and at Bitcoin's nearly weakest-by-comparison point, has been and is cleaner by proportion when compared with virtually all countries' grey markets in terms of what proportion of its economy is used for crime. The crime trope is ancient, old, and has been repeatedly debunked. The evidence for its prevalence simply isn't there—because Bitcoin is not anonymous.
- chclt 4y ago
  Meh, being able to synchronise an append-only tamper proof linked list and control who gets to put what on it in a decentralized way is pretty cool. Not to mention it's far easier to implement with limited means, than 5nm chips, or large tansformer models. (Also implementing money on it does seem pretty intelligent -- its a scarcity device -- peoble just seem to do stupid stuff with it)
  - ninkendo 4y ago
    Git (and any merkle tree) already implements a tamper proof linked list, there’s no reason to burn electricity in a proof of work algorithm to accomplish this. Controlling who gets to put things in it in a decentralized way isn’t as important as many people think, at the end of the day almost all applications (other than currency) can just use a central authority to publish hashes.
    - chclt 4y ago
      > Git (and any merkle tree) already implements a tamper proof linked list, there’s no reason to burn electricity in a proof of work algorithm to accomplish this. Thats why the word "and" is there in my sentence
    - midmagico 4y ago
      Pardon me while I git push -f..
      - ninkendo 4y ago
        You should probably reread git’s documentation if you think git push -f rewrites any commits. It doesn’t. It makes new commits and re-assigns the named branch to track the new commits you just pushed. It rewrites branch names, not commits. It is impossible (without finding a SHA collision) to rewrite a commit in git. And before you say “yeah but how do you know which SHA sums are the right one if you don’t trust branch names”, please reread the final paragraph of the post you replied to.
- yieldcrv 4y ago
  okay, someone give me a cloud development platform where I can host anything and do arbitrary executions for a) single one time cost. b) no list of approved or unapproved uses c) unlimited free read bandwidth d) all my users pay to change the application I've looked at AWS, GCP, Firebase, bare metal and none of their offerings have the same pricing structure of blockchain nodes. Additionally, the target audience for non-blockchain applications require a much larger funnel and friction to get users to for anything, while the overhead costs of getting them into the funnel soar. Free tiers are okay but can't handle a spike in traffic. Whereas audiences in the blockchain space have already crossed all the friction and have an insatiable demand for 1-click payment funnels. This perspective doesn't really seem to arise in these conversations. But perhaps there is a counterpoint that I missed about some other cloud platform? This is very high impact for me and I can see many developers continuing to bring their audiences to this development platform.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

Skyy93 4y ago

Currently the only impact Bitcoin had is burning a large amount of electricity. I would not say this is a particular worthy technology to safe. There would be far better ideas like Transformers in AI or 5nm chip technology.

neilv 4y ago
And facilitating organized crime, terrorism, and investment scams.
- charlieyu1 4y ago
  Which of these do not happen when using conventional money?
  - lottin 4y ago
    You're missing the point. Cryptocurrencies are specifically designed to evade regulations. Everything else —efficiency, cost, convenience, usability— is sacrificed in order to achieve this goal.
    - charlieyu1 4y ago
      Call me old school but I don’t understand the hype about regulations. The less power the government has, the better. They certainly don’t need to know my spending habits. And a stack of banknotes evade regulations pretty well anyway.
      - hnbad 4y ago
        The function of the state is to enforce private property rights. Regulations exist to alleviate the consequences of private property rights by adding various forms of exceptions. Whether you think that's a good thing depends on whether your idea of utopia is a egalitarian commune or a neofeudal federation of corporate city states. Note that I'm talking about private property not personal property. Variations of the latter exist and have existed in almost every society but the concept of the former has increasingly been maximized to the point that patches of land, ways to do things, ideas in your head and sincere promises are now things you can own and exchange and people refusing to suffer hunger or lack of shelter are seen as unreasonable if they want to use what isn't eaten or isn't lived in. Abolishing the state as long as other organizations (or individuals) are allowed to hoard resources/wealth/power seems as catastrophic a suggestion as abolishing the police as long as other gangs exist. You're just substituting one evil for another without affecting any material change.
    - Zuiii 4y ago
      > Cryptocurrencies are specifically designed to evade regulations. No, most are not. (I'd go as far to argue that even monero is not specifically designed to evade regulation.)
- codehalo 4y ago
  And human trafficking.
  - it_citizen 4y ago
    And funding North Korea.
    - colestantiago 4y ago
      don't forget ransomware enablement and burning the planet up with mining.
      - midmagico 4y ago
        Heavily debunked nonsense trope.. https://medium.com/@nic__carter/comments-on-the-white-house-report-on-the-climate-implications-of-crypto-mining-8d65d30ec942 https://medium.com/@nic__carter/comments-on-the-white-house-...
  - Zuiii 4y ago
    Yeah, I wish cryptocurrencies haven't been invented so that human trafficking wouldn't exist at all. I mean just think about it. A FULL 3%* of all cryptocurrency transactions are related to criminal activities! If we ban those 3% (and the other 97% because why not), we will stop all human trafficking or at least make a noticeable dent in it because most traffickers rely on cryptocurrency and absolutely don't use traditional currency as the main way to transact. Perhaps if cryptocurrencies do finally get banned, it would at least help certain individuals to think more critically, or perhaps start thinking at all. One can only wish. [*]: 3% because it's the most extreme reputable statistic out there. Most reputable studies place transactions related to illicit activities well bellow 1%.
- dingosity 4y ago
  Careful. You're going to be accused of furthering an "ideological debate" in violation of HN's Terms of Service.
- overthrow 4y ago
  https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3942181 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3942181 > For example, illegal transactions, scams and gambling together make up less than 3% of volume.
  - VWWHFSfQ 4y ago
    the other 97% is bots sending small amounts of bitcoins back and forth to each other for no reason whatsoever
    - trogdor 4y ago
      In fairness, that kind of thing arguably happens with stocks as well, though algorithmic trading. Though it’s not small amounts.
      - eru 4y ago
        Though they do have reasons. But the 'bots' in Bitcoin probably have too. After all, there are transaction costs.
    - Psychoshy_bc1q 4y ago
      back this claim up. wait you can't
- RestlessMind 4y ago
  And also to fight oppressive governments. Compiled some examples here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32406095 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32406095 Though those governments would love people like you who paint all the use cases as "organized crime, terrorism" etc
  - igsomething 4y ago
    Add countries with hyperinflation too such as Venezuela and Argentina. Every cryptocurrency-related post here in HN is flooded with extremely negative comments, even if the post itself does not promote cryptocurrencies. These people have seen countless examples of cryptocurrency scams, but they cannot understand what life under an economically oppressed or unstable country is because they never experienced it.
    - Zuiii 4y ago
      I'd also add: - People living abroad who are completely debanked because local banks refuse to open banks accounts for people who are merely suspected of being US citizns, despite them not being US citizns, with no path to resolve their predicament. This is a real problem that is effecting real people right now. - Any legal activity that the banks and payment processors don't like for one reason or another; onlyfans, "right-wing" websites (whether actual or merely alleged), ...etc. We no longer live in a world where you can live a dignified life with cash alone. Cryptocurrecy is a net positive to humanity, even if the technologies behind it may currently be more wasteful and make the lives of criminals a bit easier. There is simply no alternative for a lot of honest people in financial dead-ends the government can't or won't help. Thank you Satoshi and anyone who works to support this technology for making the world a slightly better place.
    - Psychoshy_bc1q 4y ago
      HN is flooded with overprivileged richkids with no connection to reality
      - hnbad 4y ago
- jeffhuys 4y ago
  Eh, every good thing can be used for bad. And it's a pandora's box anyways. So who cares.
- midmagico 4y ago
  Bitcoin specifically, even at the height of Silk Road, and at Bitcoin's nearly weakest-by-comparison point, has been and is cleaner by proportion when compared with virtually all countries' grey markets in terms of what proportion of its economy is used for crime. The crime trope is ancient, old, and has been repeatedly debunked. The evidence for its prevalence simply isn't there—because Bitcoin is not anonymous.
chclt 4y ago
Meh, being able to synchronise an append-only tamper proof linked list and control who gets to put what on it in a decentralized way is pretty cool. Not to mention it's far easier to implement with limited means, than 5nm chips, or large tansformer models. (Also implementing money on it does seem pretty intelligent -- its a scarcity device -- peoble just seem to do stupid stuff with it)
- ninkendo 4y ago
  Git (and any merkle tree) already implements a tamper proof linked list, there’s no reason to burn electricity in a proof of work algorithm to accomplish this. Controlling who gets to put things in it in a decentralized way isn’t as important as many people think, at the end of the day almost all applications (other than currency) can just use a central authority to publish hashes.
  - chclt 4y ago
    > Git (and any merkle tree) already implements a tamper proof linked list, there’s no reason to burn electricity in a proof of work algorithm to accomplish this. Thats why the word "and" is there in my sentence
  - midmagico 4y ago
    Pardon me while I git push -f..
    - ninkendo 4y ago
      You should probably reread git’s documentation if you think git push -f rewrites any commits. It doesn’t. It makes new commits and re-assigns the named branch to track the new commits you just pushed. It rewrites branch names, not commits. It is impossible (without finding a SHA collision) to rewrite a commit in git. And before you say “yeah but how do you know which SHA sums are the right one if you don’t trust branch names”, please reread the final paragraph of the post you replied to.
yieldcrv 4y ago
okay, someone give me a cloud development platform where I can host anything and do arbitrary executions for a) single one time cost. b) no list of approved or unapproved uses c) unlimited free read bandwidth d) all my users pay to change the application I've looked at AWS, GCP, Firebase, bare metal and none of their offerings have the same pricing structure of blockchain nodes. Additionally, the target audience for non-blockchain applications require a much larger funnel and friction to get users to for anything, while the overhead costs of getting them into the funnel soar. Free tiers are okay but can't handle a spike in traffic. Whereas audiences in the blockchain space have already crossed all the friction and have an insatiable demand for 1-click payment funnels. This perspective doesn't really seem to arise in these conversations. But perhaps there is a counterpoint that I missed about some other cloud platform? This is very high impact for me and I can see many developers continuing to bring their audiences to this development platform.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]