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This is what most people got wrong. Crypto solves one problem and one problem only: censorship. Crypto is the only, single censorship resistant asset on the ent

This is what most people got wrong. Crypto solves one problem and one problem only: censorship. Crypto is the only, single censorship resistant asset on the entire earth. You can't remove private key by force ($5 wrench is not an argument). You can confiscate land, stocks, freeze bank accounts, take gold. You can't extract a string of numbers which you aren't even sure is there in the first place. Not yet at least. Might not be the biggest threat in US, but in Asia right now that property is crucial.

misnome 3y ago
So, people have no problem - say - redeeming tokens that have been through Tornado? Or trouble redeeming bitcoins that have been through known, sanctioned wallets? How is “Everyone can see every transaction you have ever done” censorship-resistant, doesn’t that mean you have to be extra careful about every single person or service you have ever transacted with? And, excluding the $5 wrench seems a really, really large oversight when it results in every single asset or piece of ”money” you own being irretrievably, instantly stolen.
- bulbosaur123 3y ago
  > So, people have no problem - say - redeeming tokens that have been through Tornado? Or trouble redeeming bitcoins that have been through known, sanctioned wallets? Nothing prevents us agreeing to trade those bitcoins for cash or anything else. You are correct that some Bitcoins are "tainted", which is why it's not the absolute, most perfect cryptocurrency. But they are still censorship resistant. That was my point. They still can't be confiscated. And to further your argument, if you want to find the best crypto that is actually fungible - that would be Monero (all Moneros are the same, there are no "tainted" or "blacklisted" Moneros). However, because of that very fact it is banned on exchanges and blacklisted everywhere. It's just too good. Bitcoin is good enough to get popular yet at the same time shitty enough (traceable) not to get outright banned, that's why BTC is here to stay while better coins like Monero will perish. > How is “Everyone can see every transaction you have ever done” censorship-resistant, doesn’t that mean you have to be extra careful about every single person or service you have ever transacted with? Just to reiterate. It's because not even the government can confiscate your Bitcoin (them beating you into telling your seed phrase means you still giving it up and let's not pretend there aren't 21st seeds and duress phrases just for this very reason). > And, excluding the $5 wrench seems a really, really large oversight when it results in every single asset or piece of ”money” you own being irretrievably, instantly stolen. Again. Anyone with significant amount of crypto will not be public about it, will keep duress phrases, 21st seed words and extra wallets while giving up the minimum. In theory, with $5 wrench you could keep beating a totally innocent person hoping they give you a crypto wallet that doesn't even exist and if they gave you one, you could keep beating them until they give you the "other one" and the "third one", it just isn't a solid argument.
  - adgjlsfhk1 3y ago
    > It's because not even the government can confiscate your Bitcoin. They can really easily do that though. A court can say "give us your keys or you are going to sit in jail until you do and we will record your conversations so if you tell the keys to someone else, we'll sell them"
    - delecti 3y ago
      That's the "$5 wrench" argument rephrased. It's not much in its favor, but a sufficiently motivated person can resist handing over cryptocurrency better than they can any other asset.
      - ithinkso 3y ago
        Or they can bury the gold and refuse to tell where...
        delecti 3y ago
        But that gold isn't usable until retrieved. Cryptocurrency is (at least theoretically) just as usable while remaining unseizable.
        adgjlsfhk1 3y ago
        not if you're in prison without internet access.
        delecti 3y ago
        I feel like surely yours isn't a point made in good faith, because the point I'm trying to make is so simple. If I've got $20 bill or a gold bar in my pocket, I can use it at the store if I can get to the store, but someone could easily confiscate it from me. If I have a $20 bill or gold bar buried in the woods behind my house, it can't be easily confiscated from me, but I can't use that at the store, even aside from whether I can access a store. If I have a cryptocurrency wallet, I can use it in the hypothetical cryptocurrency store if I can access it, and it also cannot be easily confiscated from me (assuming reasonable security measures). The real criticism is "what cryptocurrency store?" and that's the real reason cryptocurrency isn't very useful. I'm not arguing that cryptocurrency is good or useful, I'm arguing very narrowly for one specific point: "owning cryptocurrency" is more like knowing something than it is like possessing something.
ysavir 3y ago
This exposes exactly why crypto is _not_ a solution: It's only a preferable alternative when the broader societal context is a strong net negative. In the current US, while financial censorship can happen, it doesn't happen often enough that the pains of using crypto as a primary currency are are outweighed by the benefits. And if the situation changes to a place where that's true, we've got some bigger problems. That is, in that situation, making an economy function smoothly isn't as important as removing the problematic censorship. Our GPUs could be put to much better work than bitcoin. This also doesn't account for a government being able to just outlaw cryptocurrencies. They may not be able to confiscate your bitcoin, but they sure can throw you in jail for trying to spend it at the grocery store. Or impact your ability to access the blockchain, etc.
this_user 3y ago
> Crypto solves one problem and one problem only: censorship It doesn't even do that properly, because there is no guarantee of service given by the system. Miners could just decide that they don't like you very much and refuse to process your TX. Or they could conspire to blackmail you: "pay us or your tokens are useless". Sure, someone might be willing to process your TX, or you could try to do it yourself, but that might take a long time or it might fail altogether. Furthermore, as the Ethereum rollback has shown when the original "DAO" was hacked, the vast majority of crypto project have some sort of backdoor that can and will be used. The only thing crypto "solves" is oversight by governments, and the people who are interested in that the most are criminals or actors who have been sanctioned like North Korea or Russia. Somehow, I don't quite see the value in that.
- tromp 3y ago
  > Miners could just decide that they don't like you very much and refuse to process your TX. Some miners perhaps. But others will like every tx that pays a decent transaction fee and these tend to eventually get your tx included.
  - jeremyjh 3y ago
    I like the part where you just ignore GP's famous example of miners colluding to void a transaction, quite successfully.
    - knocte 3y ago
      First: I guess you guys are talking about mining pools, not miners. Second: so long as there's one single mining pool that is not colluding, then any censorship attempt is going to be moot. You would need to have, not just 51% of mining-pool collusion, you need 100%! Third: even if you had 100% collusion, this "problem" is actually being solved with technology, it's called Stratum V2 protocol. Stay tuned. Last but not least: I'm really surprised this level of ignorance still exists in the HN community wrt crypto. I guess we are still early.
multjoy 3y ago
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/jul/13/met-police-bitcoin-money-laundering-cryptocurrency https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/jul/13/met-polic...
simple-thoughts 3y ago
Ethereum censors transactions. People still use it as a permisionless financial platform, which allows the delivery of novel consumer goods. Primarily gambling, speculation, and other forms of entertainment.

misnome 3y ago

So, people have no problem - say - redeeming tokens that have been through Tornado? Or trouble redeeming bitcoins that have been through known, sanctioned wallets? How is “Everyone can see every transaction you have ever done” censorship-resistant, doesn’t that mean you have to be extra careful about every single person or service you have ever transacted with? And, excluding the $5 wrench seems a really, really large oversight when it results in every single asset or piece of ”money” you own being irretrievably, instantly stolen.

bulbosaur123 3y ago
> So, people have no problem - say - redeeming tokens that have been through Tornado? Or trouble redeeming bitcoins that have been through known, sanctioned wallets? Nothing prevents us agreeing to trade those bitcoins for cash or anything else. You are correct that some Bitcoins are "tainted", which is why it's not the absolute, most perfect cryptocurrency. But they are still censorship resistant. That was my point. They still can't be confiscated. And to further your argument, if you want to find the best crypto that is actually fungible - that would be Monero (all Moneros are the same, there are no "tainted" or "blacklisted" Moneros). However, because of that very fact it is banned on exchanges and blacklisted everywhere. It's just too good. Bitcoin is good enough to get popular yet at the same time shitty enough (traceable) not to get outright banned, that's why BTC is here to stay while better coins like Monero will perish. > How is “Everyone can see every transaction you have ever done” censorship-resistant, doesn’t that mean you have to be extra careful about every single person or service you have ever transacted with? Just to reiterate. It's because not even the government can confiscate your Bitcoin (them beating you into telling your seed phrase means you still giving it up and let's not pretend there aren't 21st seeds and duress phrases just for this very reason). > And, excluding the $5 wrench seems a really, really large oversight when it results in every single asset or piece of ”money” you own being irretrievably, instantly stolen. Again. Anyone with significant amount of crypto will not be public about it, will keep duress phrases, 21st seed words and extra wallets while giving up the minimum. In theory, with $5 wrench you could keep beating a totally innocent person hoping they give you a crypto wallet that doesn't even exist and if they gave you one, you could keep beating them until they give you the "other one" and the "third one", it just isn't a solid argument.
- adgjlsfhk1 3y ago
  > It's because not even the government can confiscate your Bitcoin. They can really easily do that though. A court can say "give us your keys or you are going to sit in jail until you do and we will record your conversations so if you tell the keys to someone else, we'll sell them"
  - delecti 3y ago
    That's the "$5 wrench" argument rephrased. It's not much in its favor, but a sufficiently motivated person can resist handing over cryptocurrency better than they can any other asset.
    - ithinkso 3y ago
      Or they can bury the gold and refuse to tell where...
      - delecti 3y ago
        But that gold isn't usable until retrieved. Cryptocurrency is (at least theoretically) just as usable while remaining unseizable.
        adgjlsfhk1 3y ago
        not if you're in prison without internet access.
        delecti 3y ago
        I feel like surely yours isn't a point made in good faith, because the point I'm trying to make is so simple. If I've got $20 bill or a gold bar in my pocket, I can use it at the store if I can get to the store, but someone could easily confiscate it from me. If I have a $20 bill or gold bar buried in the woods behind my house, it can't be easily confiscated from me, but I can't use that at the store, even aside from whether I can access a store. If I have a cryptocurrency wallet, I can use it in the hypothetical cryptocurrency store if I can access it, and it also cannot be easily confiscated from me (assuming reasonable security measures). The real criticism is "what cryptocurrency store?" and that's the real reason cryptocurrency isn't very useful. I'm not arguing that cryptocurrency is good or useful, I'm arguing very narrowly for one specific point: "owning cryptocurrency" is more like knowing something than it is like possessing something.

ysavir 3y ago

This exposes exactly why crypto is _not_ a solution: It's only a preferable alternative when the broader societal context is a strong net negative. In the current US, while financial censorship can happen, it doesn't happen often enough that the pains of using crypto as a primary currency are are outweighed by the benefits. And if the situation changes to a place where that's true, we've got some bigger problems. That is, in that situation, making an economy function smoothly isn't as important as removing the problematic censorship. Our GPUs could be put to much better work than bitcoin. This also doesn't account for a government being able to just outlaw cryptocurrencies. They may not be able to confiscate your bitcoin, but they sure can throw you in jail for trying to spend it at the grocery store. Or impact your ability to access the blockchain, etc.

this_user 3y ago

> Crypto solves one problem and one problem only: censorship It doesn't even do that properly, because there is no guarantee of service given by the system. Miners could just decide that they don't like you very much and refuse to process your TX. Or they could conspire to blackmail you: "pay us or your tokens are useless". Sure, someone might be willing to process your TX, or you could try to do it yourself, but that might take a long time or it might fail altogether. Furthermore, as the Ethereum rollback has shown when the original "DAO" was hacked, the vast majority of crypto project have some sort of backdoor that can and will be used. The only thing crypto "solves" is oversight by governments, and the people who are interested in that the most are criminals or actors who have been sanctioned like North Korea or Russia. Somehow, I don't quite see the value in that.

tromp 3y ago
> Miners could just decide that they don't like you very much and refuse to process your TX. Some miners perhaps. But others will like every tx that pays a decent transaction fee and these tend to eventually get your tx included.
- jeremyjh 3y ago
  I like the part where you just ignore GP's famous example of miners colluding to void a transaction, quite successfully.
  - knocte 3y ago
    First: I guess you guys are talking about mining pools, not miners. Second: so long as there's one single mining pool that is not colluding, then any censorship attempt is going to be moot. You would need to have, not just 51% of mining-pool collusion, you need 100%! Third: even if you had 100% collusion, this "problem" is actually being solved with technology, it's called Stratum V2 protocol. Stay tuned. Last but not least: I'm really surprised this level of ignorance still exists in the HN community wrt crypto. I guess we are still early.

multjoy 3y ago

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/jul/13/met-police-bitcoin-money-laundering-cryptocurrency https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/jul/13/met-polic...

simple-thoughts 3y ago

Ethereum censors transactions. People still use it as a permisionless financial platform, which allows the delivery of novel consumer goods. Primarily gambling, speculation, and other forms of entertainment.