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The only fundamental difference inherent to the respective designs of blockchains and traditional banking, is censorship resistance through genuine self-custody

The only fundamental difference inherent to the respective designs of blockchains and traditional banking, is censorship resistance through genuine self-custody. The former is designed to provide this quality, and the latter is not. Put another way, there is nothing inherently scammy in using a distributed blockchain to record balances, and cryptography to authenticate updates to the balances. While opening the door to financial contracts to every one in the world with a computing device may make scam offerings more common, it's overly simplistic and lazy to resort to a caricature of crypto tokens being, as a rule, scams. Articles like the ones you linked above want a return to serfdom, under the control of officialdom. There is no other conceivable reason why someone would not want people to have at least the option of taking custody over their own money, in a form more useful than physical cash.

oblio 3y ago
Most of what you wrote presumes anonymity. In long lived immutable digital systems, guess what, that doesn't exist. Talk to your actual scientist cousins, crypto-graphers. If we're at the "totalitarian government" stage, "easily readable immutable data source" is EXACTLY what they'd dream of.
- ETH_start 3y ago
  Even without anonymity, it raises the cost for the government to enforce broad restrictions, because the chokepoints—which are intermediaries like financial institutions—are gone. In any case, anonymity is a gradient. It's a question of how much resources a state has to expend to track a user, and that value can be increased with better privacy technology, so that the state has to eschew broad-based restrictions on mutually voluntary interactions and focus its investigative resources on only the most dangerous actors, who engage in genuinely predatory behavior (murderers, thieves, etc).
chx 3y ago
> is censorship resistance through genuine self-custody. https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2018/04/05/debunking-but-bitcoin-is-like-the-early-internet/ https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2018/04/05/debunking-bu... > Ordinary person: “Your weird Internet money sucks to use. It’s slow and expensive. I lost my coins by mistake and it can’t be fixed. If I get hacked it can’t be fixed either.” > Bitcoin advocate: “But everyone wants [list of ideological aims held only by weird people]! Everyone I know, anyway.” But in specifics, censorship resistance? I just read that in an article. https://www.wired.co.uk/article/sex-workers-crypto-failing-them https://www.wired.co.uk/article/sex-workers-crypto-failing-t... > “You get on an exchange for as long as you can, until they shut your ass down,” says Knox. “You quickly [run out of exchanges], so you sit on a lot of useless money. The whole ‘crypto is permissionless and censorship-resistant’ thing is a bunch of bullshit.”
- pcthrowaway 3y ago
  Centralized exchanges are not "blockchain" they're more like Venmo
- ETH_start 3y ago
  Being slow and expensive doesn't make something a scam. If you falsely label the blockchain as a scam, and want people to not have even the option of using, I contend that your real issue is with people having self-custody over their money, and thus you believe in a modern form of serfdom. All your sophistry aside that is.
  - chx 3y ago
    The scam nature is explained in the links in my thread opener: https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=37368544 https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=37368544
    - ETH_start 3y ago
      That has already been refuted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37368625 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37368625 Please read the responses and don't encourage flame wars.
      - chx 3y ago
        There is not a word that would contend any of the arguments made. If you meant: > The only fundamental difference inherent to the respective designs of blockchains and traditional banking, is censorship resistance through genuine self-custody. Then this is nonsense. The fundamental difference between the two is that one deals with real money while the other does not.
        ETH_start 3y ago
        One can deal with any money on the public blockchain, like USD-backed stablecoins.
kredd 3y ago
To be frank, only an extreme minority cares about censorship resistance, especially when it comes in a form of inconvenience. In the last 10 years, we’ve seen again and again even within cryptoheads, the choice of storing their money in a centralized place (Binance, Coinbase, FTX) rather than self-custody. It’s just people have limited amount of time in a day, and caring that government X can trace their transaction is waste of time. Also, in the last 3 years of lawsuits, we’ve kind of seen how crypto payments are traceable as well if someone really wants to find the source.
- ETH_start 3y ago
  A huge proportion of crypto is self-custodied. The important point is that with crypto, people have an option of self-custodying, in a form of convenient, secure and useful than physical commodities.

oblio 3y ago

Most of what you wrote presumes anonymity. In long lived immutable digital systems, guess what, that doesn't exist. Talk to your actual scientist cousins, crypto-graphers. If we're at the "totalitarian government" stage, "easily readable immutable data source" is EXACTLY what they'd dream of.

ETH_start 3y ago
Even without anonymity, it raises the cost for the government to enforce broad restrictions, because the chokepoints—which are intermediaries like financial institutions—are gone. In any case, anonymity is a gradient. It's a question of how much resources a state has to expend to track a user, and that value can be increased with better privacy technology, so that the state has to eschew broad-based restrictions on mutually voluntary interactions and focus its investigative resources on only the most dangerous actors, who engage in genuinely predatory behavior (murderers, thieves, etc).

chx 3y ago

> is censorship resistance through genuine self-custody. https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2018/04/05/debunking-but-bitcoin-is-like-the-early-internet/ https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2018/04/05/debunking-bu... > Ordinary person: “Your weird Internet money sucks to use. It’s slow and expensive. I lost my coins by mistake and it can’t be fixed. If I get hacked it can’t be fixed either.” > Bitcoin advocate: “But everyone wants [list of ideological aims held only by weird people]! Everyone I know, anyway.” But in specifics, censorship resistance? I just read that in an article. https://www.wired.co.uk/article/sex-workers-crypto-failing-them https://www.wired.co.uk/article/sex-workers-crypto-failing-t... > “You get on an exchange for as long as you can, until they shut your ass down,” says Knox. “You quickly [run out of exchanges], so you sit on a lot of useless money. The whole ‘crypto is permissionless and censorship-resistant’ thing is a bunch of bullshit.”

pcthrowaway 3y ago
Centralized exchanges are not "blockchain" they're more like Venmo
ETH_start 3y ago
Being slow and expensive doesn't make something a scam. If you falsely label the blockchain as a scam, and want people to not have even the option of using, I contend that your real issue is with people having self-custody over their money, and thus you believe in a modern form of serfdom. All your sophistry aside that is.
- chx 3y ago
  The scam nature is explained in the links in my thread opener: https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=37368544 https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=37368544
  - ETH_start 3y ago
    That has already been refuted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37368625 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37368625 Please read the responses and don't encourage flame wars.
    - chx 3y ago
      There is not a word that would contend any of the arguments made. If you meant: > The only fundamental difference inherent to the respective designs of blockchains and traditional banking, is censorship resistance through genuine self-custody. Then this is nonsense. The fundamental difference between the two is that one deals with real money while the other does not.
      - ETH_start 3y ago
        One can deal with any money on the public blockchain, like USD-backed stablecoins.

kredd 3y ago

To be frank, only an extreme minority cares about censorship resistance, especially when it comes in a form of inconvenience. In the last 10 years, we’ve seen again and again even within cryptoheads, the choice of storing their money in a centralized place (Binance, Coinbase, FTX) rather than self-custody. It’s just people have limited amount of time in a day, and caring that government X can trace their transaction is waste of time. Also, in the last 3 years of lawsuits, we’ve kind of seen how crypto payments are traceable as well if someone really wants to find the source.

ETH_start 3y ago
A huge proportion of crypto is self-custodied. The important point is that with crypto, people have an option of self-custodying, in a form of convenient, secure and useful than physical commodities.