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So not a ton that's that surprising as someone who's been following this, but this was something special: > Ellison testified how colleagues at Alameda set up

So not a ton that's that surprising as someone who's been following this, but this was something special: > Ellison testified how colleagues at Alameda set up accounts on the Chinese exchange tied to the identities of Thai prostitutes, hoping they could somehow use those accounts to siphon the money away from the frozen account.

almost_usual 3y ago
Isn’t the whole point of cryptocurrency to avoid centralized authorities that can do exactly this?
- ceejayoz 3y ago
  If you have a big red button marked "do not push ever", and everyone goes and pushes the button, perhaps the problem is less the people and more the button.
- nightski 3y ago
  No, not all cryptocurrencies are decentralized. There's nothing about a blockchain that requires decentralization. It's a key tenet of some of the coins, but not all.
  - Retric 3y ago
    There’s no point to the crypto part of cryptocurrencies if it’s centralized. You just have a currency.
    - nightski 3y ago
      I'm not sure I follow. Having an immutable system of record (verified by crypto) is of value without decentralization and the blockchain is one realization of that.
      - Retric 3y ago
        There’s nothing immutable about a private blockchain. Suppose Company X buys 100k in hashing power and signs everything accordingly so it all looks fine. How do you know they didn’t instead buy 200k and run two blockchains side by side until they need to pick one months later? Alternatively, they instead buy 1M in hashing power so they can spend 1 day making a believable 10 days worth of history on 100k hashing power blockchain. Now you can argue publishing a blockchain makes it immutable, but so does publishing anything else. Don’t want people to see the data? Publish hashes of your database backups.
        seanhunter 3y ago
        THat's not how private blockchains work at all. IF you have a private blockchain (usually called an "app chain") people don't "buy hashing power" on it. The entity running the network has 100% of the validators on the network. "Hashing power" doesn't apply because it's not bicoin so would be POS, but the equivalent is owning the validators, which if it's an app chain there isn't (ever afaik) a process by which some other org can buy the ability to run a validator. The controlling entity just decides that.
        Retric 3y ago
        I was doing the mathematics thing of skipping over the most trivial case. Set N = 0 dollars of hash power and it becomes really obvious that the person running the network can just arbitrarily create any blockchain they want at any time for ~zero cost. It therefore clearly isn’t an “immutable system of record” because they can change it. But let’s flip it around what specific benefit are you proposing and how exactly does cryptography enable it differently than a Bank.
        junofan 3y ago
        You can checkpoint the canonical fork on a public PoW chain like Bitcoin every so often. Banks carry insurance.
    - pornel 3y ago
      Don’t tell that to people buying Tether.

almost_usual 3y ago

Isn’t the whole point of cryptocurrency to avoid centralized authorities that can do exactly this?

ceejayoz 3y ago
If you have a big red button marked "do not push ever", and everyone goes and pushes the button, perhaps the problem is less the people and more the button.
nightski 3y ago
No, not all cryptocurrencies are decentralized. There's nothing about a blockchain that requires decentralization. It's a key tenet of some of the coins, but not all.
- Retric 3y ago
  There’s no point to the crypto part of cryptocurrencies if it’s centralized. You just have a currency.
  - nightski 3y ago
    I'm not sure I follow. Having an immutable system of record (verified by crypto) is of value without decentralization and the blockchain is one realization of that.
    - Retric 3y ago
      There’s nothing immutable about a private blockchain. Suppose Company X buys 100k in hashing power and signs everything accordingly so it all looks fine. How do you know they didn’t instead buy 200k and run two blockchains side by side until they need to pick one months later? Alternatively, they instead buy 1M in hashing power so they can spend 1 day making a believable 10 days worth of history on 100k hashing power blockchain. Now you can argue publishing a blockchain makes it immutable, but so does publishing anything else. Don’t want people to see the data? Publish hashes of your database backups.
      - seanhunter 3y ago
        THat's not how private blockchains work at all. IF you have a private blockchain (usually called an "app chain") people don't "buy hashing power" on it. The entity running the network has 100% of the validators on the network. "Hashing power" doesn't apply because it's not bicoin so would be POS, but the equivalent is owning the validators, which if it's an app chain there isn't (ever afaik) a process by which some other org can buy the ability to run a validator. The controlling entity just decides that.
        Retric 3y ago
        I was doing the mathematics thing of skipping over the most trivial case. Set N = 0 dollars of hash power and it becomes really obvious that the person running the network can just arbitrarily create any blockchain they want at any time for ~zero cost. It therefore clearly isn’t an “immutable system of record” because they can change it. But let’s flip it around what specific benefit are you proposing and how exactly does cryptography enable it differently than a Bank.
        junofan 3y ago
        You can checkpoint the canonical fork on a public PoW chain like Bitcoin every so often. Banks carry insurance.
  - pornel 3y ago
    Don’t tell that to people buying Tether.