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Which is the problem that crypto solved for the most part, independence from a few oligopolistic PROCESSORS. While I am still not a "Buying literal digital cur

Which is the problem that crypto solved for the most part, independence from a few oligopolistic PROCESSORS. While I am still not a "Buying literal digital currency is a sound investment" true believer, I feel recent events are making people keen to throw the baby out with the bathwater in the notion of decentralised crypto as a medium of exchange.

TimJRobinson 3y ago
Yea stablecoins (fiat tokens) are by far the biggest successful use case of crypto. It's unfortunate that so many on Hacker News still think crypto is Bitcoin and other wannabe currencies (which never made sense as mediums of exchange) so don't notice the solution to these issues is already here and being adopted all over the world already.
menus 3y ago
After watching Folding Ideas' video on crypto and NFT (1) I am less convinced that is decentralised. It goes over how crypto ended up becoming the very thing it swore to destroy (banks and oligopolies). Also anyone with the means can still do a 51% attack if they wanted. (1) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ_xWvX1n9g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ_xWvX1n9g
- TimJRobinson 3y ago
  They can't though. Firstly NFTs and their image storage location are unrelated to tokens. In regards to 51% attacks they aren't going to happen to Bitcoin or Ethereum. For possible flaws, to put it in terms that technical non-crypto people understand, his arguments are like saying "well Heart Bleed happened and this could happen again thus all computers are unsafe and you can never trust them to be secure" which is technically true but that doesn't mean we should abandon storing our own data and give it all to google to keep it safe for us (which we do with money today). Blockchain developers are very smart and build defense in depth against attacks, there's a reason why Ethereum has tens of billions of USD stored on it. There are protocols for transferring cash on Ethereum (LUSD, RAI) that you can use that no one, not even nation states spending billions of dollars can stop you from using. The tradeoff is they won't scale to the world. But then there are less secure protocols (DAI, USDC) that do scale which will be fine for 99.9% of people (who aren't terrorists or being targeted by the government). Tech is all about tradeoffs and you can learn about them from experts in the field rather than an obviously anti-crypto YouTube video to understand them. All of these are far more censorship resistant than any banks or traditional financial services.
- mattdesl 3y ago
  > Also anyone with the means can still do a 51% attack if they wanted. Not quite, at least in PoS protocols with off chain governance. If somebody with billions of dollars decided to attack Ethereum, the community would be able to fork the protocol and drain the malicious nodes of funds, basically burning the attacker’s capital over a short time.
- deleted 3y ago
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fomine3 3y ago
Agree. Crypto is heavily overrated and underrated. Crypto should be exist for some use cases and won't replace most of current transactions.

TimJRobinson 3y ago

Yea stablecoins (fiat tokens) are by far the biggest successful use case of crypto. It's unfortunate that so many on Hacker News still think crypto is Bitcoin and other wannabe currencies (which never made sense as mediums of exchange) so don't notice the solution to these issues is already here and being adopted all over the world already.

menus 3y ago

After watching Folding Ideas' video on crypto and NFT (1) I am less convinced that is decentralised. It goes over how crypto ended up becoming the very thing it swore to destroy (banks and oligopolies). Also anyone with the means can still do a 51% attack if they wanted. (1) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ_xWvX1n9g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ_xWvX1n9g

TimJRobinson 3y ago
They can't though. Firstly NFTs and their image storage location are unrelated to tokens. In regards to 51% attacks they aren't going to happen to Bitcoin or Ethereum. For possible flaws, to put it in terms that technical non-crypto people understand, his arguments are like saying "well Heart Bleed happened and this could happen again thus all computers are unsafe and you can never trust them to be secure" which is technically true but that doesn't mean we should abandon storing our own data and give it all to google to keep it safe for us (which we do with money today). Blockchain developers are very smart and build defense in depth against attacks, there's a reason why Ethereum has tens of billions of USD stored on it. There are protocols for transferring cash on Ethereum (LUSD, RAI) that you can use that no one, not even nation states spending billions of dollars can stop you from using. The tradeoff is they won't scale to the world. But then there are less secure protocols (DAI, USDC) that do scale which will be fine for 99.9% of people (who aren't terrorists or being targeted by the government). Tech is all about tradeoffs and you can learn about them from experts in the field rather than an obviously anti-crypto YouTube video to understand them. All of these are far more censorship resistant than any banks or traditional financial services.
mattdesl 3y ago
> Also anyone with the means can still do a 51% attack if they wanted. Not quite, at least in PoS protocols with off chain governance. If somebody with billions of dollars decided to attack Ethereum, the community would be able to fork the protocol and drain the malicious nodes of funds, basically burning the attacker’s capital over a short time.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

fomine3 3y ago

Agree. Crypto is heavily overrated and underrated. Crypto should be exist for some use cases and won't replace most of current transactions.