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This just reminded me that cryptocurrencies is a thing, this has not been a prominent topic here for some time, I would say. Is the entire cryptocurrencies stuf
by danbruc 3y ago
This just reminded me that cryptocurrencies is a thing, this has not been a prominent topic here for some time, I would say. Is the entire cryptocurrencies stuff eventually on the way out or would that be a misperception? Just checked Google trends, that also indicates a downward trend for terms like Bitcoin, cryptocurrency, NFT or Ethereum for the last year or two.
- nerf0 3y agoI work in this area and to me, the tech is still super interesting. In particular, things like zero knowledge proof and related scaling/privacy solutions are at the forefront of cryptography in my opinion.
- wmf 3y agoWe just need to find some non-speculative and non-scammy uses for that tech.
- iskander 3y agoI think you'll see people picking those techniques and using them in a hidden-from-the-user way (like how git and BlueSky use Merkle trees)
- Terr_ 3y ago> I think you'll see people picking those techniques Those techniques were already invented and in-use long beforehand though. I think that needs emphasizing, because sometimes it feels like... Imagine that fans of the Segway claimed it will replace all other forms of transportation, and a worrying number of them are still out there crediting the (failing) product for inventing the wheel.
- iskander 3y agoMerkle trees, yes! That was just an example of a technique that can be well hidden vs in the user's face. Newer techniques like Verkle trees, SNARKs, STARKs, &c are.... well, new.
- Terr_ 3y agoThe way I see it, "blockchain" (NFTs, etc) are less technologies and more business-plans to make money--perhaps in a slightly more-literal sense than usual--from available tools. It's kind of like ride-share services: They didn't invent cars or databases or dispatching systems or phone-apps, and while their investment might have spurred some new tools/libraries/algorithms they use, the broader usefulness of those inventions doesn't flow backward to mean they have a good/sustainable business. There are even cases like "private blockchain" where the fad-marketing is getting used to mislabel what is actually just a regular old distributed database of yesteryear.
- miracle2k 3y ago> They didn't invent cars Can we really call the car an "invention"? After all, both the wheel and the steam engine already existed. Those techniques were already invented and in-use long beforehand.
- danbruc 3y agoCryptocurrencies have not actually invented much new technology, they mostly combined existing ideas in new ways. Merkel trees, for example, are an almost 50 year old idea, zero-knowledge proofs are almost 40 years old, proof of work predates Bitcoin by 15 years which makes it 30 years old.
- wmf 3y agoRecent advances in SNARKs/STARKs/VDFs were funded by crypto. SNARKs have gone from unusably slow to reasonably efficient.
- iskander 3y agoI think the initial impractical prototypes for the core techniques were in the literature for a while but there's really no comparison between eg interactive ZK protocols and the succinct non-interactive proofs used by the cryptocurrency folks. The latter are computationally general (you don't have to roll a new one for each program) and many orders of magnitude more efficient. I think it's important to give the cryptocurrency industry credit for the few corners in which it makes real (theory/tooling) contributions even if they're motivated by nonsense
- danbruc 3y agoI did not want to say that they invented or improved nothing, just that a lot of the building blocks already existed. I just looked this up, non-interactive zero-knowledge proof also seem to have a history back to the late 80s, but if cryptocurrencies gave us some improvements and new ideas that made them more practical, fine, I am not going to complain about that.
- iskander 3y agoLike, huge tangible improvements. You can do general purpose programming in all kinds of DSLs and Rust libraries that compiles down to big-but-practical arithmetic circuits and then generate proofs that y=f(x) without revealing x for arbitrary f. That really wasn't possible until a few years ago and emerged almost exclusively within the sphere of cryptocurrency-adjacent research. You can also use the succinctness of SNARKs to batch these proofs and shrink the verifier costs to almost nothing It's a cool model for asymmetric computing, with low capacity verifiers collecting results from high capacity provers. It'll probably find uses outside deranged gambling...
- theironhammer 3y agoA solution in search of a problem? Maybe they could apply it to something like protecting a person's online identity rather than a digital coin/currency. Or something along the lines of Distributed Apps instead of DeFi.
- astrange 3y agoThere aren't any use cases for crypto technology except crypto. It relies on so many specific assumptions that none of the components make sense when taken out of context.
- grotorea 3y agoHaven't we be trying since the beginning?
- sneak 3y agoCheap and safe payments are of tremendous utility. The problem is that anonymous payments are essentially illegal under current regulations designed to protect the large incumbent businesses. Cryptocurrencies could render paywalls and signupwalls a thing of the past, allowing you to pay a fraction of a penny for a page view automatically in browser without an account. Such systems are illegal.
- eigenket 3y agoThere are some pretty big, obvious reason why true anonymous payments are illegal under a lot of regulations in different countries. Supporting current big businesses is pretty damn far down the list.
- sneak 3y agoYes, the reasons are big, but they aren't valid or useful unless you are a large incumbent (or the state itself).
- callalex 3y agoAny payment that can’t be reversed after a dispute is inherently unsafe.
- mindslight 3y agoIt's a different type of primitive, which can be used safely or unsafely. For example if you're selling something on craigslist, then it's unsafe to accept any form of payment that can be reversed after the item leaves.
- mindslight 3y agoI was with you until "pay a fraction of a penny for a page view". Trying to push the web back into the closed pay for access model is something that leaves a bad taste in many people's mouths. I'd say it's only a positive thing if it's funding new nodes working to route around existing attempts at artificial scarcity (to drive the price to within an epsilon of zero). But given the way the legal shakedown regime works we know it won't actually play out that way.
- rubatuga 3y agoDrugs usually aren't a scam.
- iskander 3y agoI gave the "industry" a pretty thorough deep dive; I learned Solidity, wrote a bunch of smart contracts, tried a lot of DeFi, and listened to ~100 episodes of the Zero Knowledge podcast. My impression on the other end of it is that the "tech" is interesting in a purely academic sense but most of the participants are building things they know have no use and engaging in a lot of motivated reasoning about the future to justify drawing money in from the outside. Like, it can all be a lot of fun! And some techniques, like all ZK folding schemes, are mathematical magic. But, no one wants code to be law and pretty much no one should be managing private keys tied to money. It's a very cool but failed idea.
- Zetobal 3y agoIt's a decade now and there is still no real use case for it..
- danbruc 3y agoOne and a half decades actually.
- Demotomo 3y agoYour zero knowledge proof is not true. We see the issues with it: 1. It moves the trust issue or 2. The trust is only on the Blockchain. World exists in a physical world which doesn't allow you at all to use a Blockchain there. And zero trust for your money also means zero recovery
- pavlov 3y agoIt’s not going to just vanish because crypto has become the tool of choice for online scams and crime. Here’s just one recent example, a small Kansas bank that collapsed entirely because its CEO got involved in a crypto scam: “The chief executive officer of Heartland Tri-State Bank asked if the client would lend him $12 million so he could get his money out of a cryptocurrency investment. He promised he’d pay him back 10 days later, offering $1 million in interest to make it worth his while.” https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-09-27/crypto-scam-led-to-demise-of-heartland-tri-state-bank https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-09-27/crypto-sc... Billions are being stolen annually using crypto. It’s the only use case with any traction. For the same reason, governments are increasingly cracking down on crypto. The conditions that created the 2011-2021 crypto booms were a combination of lack of regulation and zero interest rates, which made investors look for increasingly speculative investments. Those days aren’t coming back.
- eftychis 3y agoHistory of economics disagrees with the last -- hopeful I will assume -- statement. The world was and is full of scammers and fraudsters. Also respectfully I am not sure I get the zero interest rates arguments. There seems to be a subgroup of HN community that believes low interest rates (below some arbitrary threshold?) to be immoral. Maybe there is a Crime, scams and ponzi schemes correlation study over hundreds of years I am unaware of? Japan is keeping negative rates and they are not known for that, to give the country everyone knows counterexample. Besides that the main borrowers are countries themselves. And with US, Europe and China paths right now, amidst a global war tension, something will have to give long term to make ends meet. Usually it is currency devaluation and a fundamental systemic change.
- ethanbond 3y agoThe zero interest rate comment has nothing to do with morality, it means that people were doing incredibly goofy, risky shit to get a return, which creates ripe ground for conmen and fraud.
- 3y ago
- everfree 3y agoSo far, crypto has gone through multiple market cycles lasting about four years each. At the peak people get euphoric and think it will solve all the world's problems, then in the trough people think it's all on its way out - that it will slowly fade out of public consciousness until it's forgotten. I believe the reality is somewhere in between. But one thing is for sure: during the trough of every cycle, there's always someone posting that they wonder if crypto is dead and never coming back.
- iskander 3y agoIt would be a shame if this keeps happening, like: (2013) Bitcoin and its clones failed at all their stated purposes, (2017) the ICO craze left nothing of value, (2021) the DeFi/NFT bubble also left nothing but rubble. This stuff is zero sum, shuffling money without creating new things of enduring value.
- ogogmad 3y agoAt the moment, you can buy drugs with it online. Don't know if that will last, though.
- iskander 3y agoCan you still!? It's so incredibly traceable these days and every iteration of Silk Road gets busted, no?
- ogogmad 3y agoDark web markets absolutely still exist. The traceability problem is at least partially solved using mixers. I don't know everything there is to know here, like how easy it is to get back fiat.
- solumunus 3y agoThe markets get busted (or become scams), the dealers not so much. If you’re on these markets regularly for years you’re probably communicating directly with sellers at this point.
- SagatPetchy 3y agoCrypto has always had extreme bull and bear markets. During bear markets the speculators leave, crypto's detractors once again proclaim its demise, and its believers anxiously wait for the next bull market.
- anon84873628 3y agoAll the grifters and dilettantes moved on to AI :)
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- nebula8804 3y agoMy thinking has always been that Bitcoin can solve the issue of continued printing of fiat money. Bitcoin and other crypto clearly introduces other problems but this fundamental weakness of fiat currency is still there and unsolved. Will bitcoin/crypto really go away if this issue with fiat currency is still unresolved?
- kinakomochidayo 3y agoBitcoin has a critical issue looming with the security budget, as each halvening means less revenue for miners, and miners don’t get enough transaction fees to incentivize running ASIC mining farms.
- astrange 3y agoYou can print new crypto by forking an existing chain, because if it suddenly gets a ton of new users, none of them have any reason to respect what the slow database says the current ones belong to. Meanwhile, printing fiat money isn't a problem and is in fact the reason the system works. Crypto users and Austrians are deluded about the purpose of money, which is to facilitate transactions and not to keep score.
- adultorata 3y agoCheck out Ampleforth, a perfect elastic supply, if Bitcoin had oracles in 2008, then the protocol would've behaved as AMPL
- thrawa8387336 3y agoThe genie is out of the box. How would 2008 have played out if Bitcoin existed back then?
- nikanj 3y agoGrifters moved on to AI, leaving only the actually viable parts of crypto around. So yeah cryptos are 100% dead.
- kinakomochidayo 3y agoJust getting started with cryptocurrency I would say. Bitcoin Spot ETFs decisions being delayed by SEC, Ether Futures ETFs were just approved by SEC. Crypto will likely be part of our everyday lives eventually, we just won’t know it.