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If a system is billed as having certain properties, but in practice it repeatedly fails to have those properties, there's a legitimate criticism to be made. I

If a system is billed as having certain properties, but in practice it repeatedly fails to have those properties, there's a legitimate criticism to be made. I can understand why it might be frustrating to hear the same criticisms repeatedly but it doesn't make them illegitimate.

SilasX 3y ago
But this thing happened in the conventional financial system, which is not billed as having those properties, so no, it's not a legitimate criticism.
- maxbond 3y ago
  The criticism is that cryptoassets do not, in practice, have the censorship resistance they are billed as having. Blaming "tradfi" is passing the buck - cryptoasset promoters signed a check they couldn't cash, and no one made them do that. There are myriad rebuttals you could make, but dismissing it entirely isn't one of them, imho. This is the libertarian equivalent of claiming that Soviet Russia wasn't real communism. Sure, in both cases, things weren't realized in the way they had been envisioned. If proponents want to be successful in the future, they need to reckon with that and not shirk it.
  - SilasX 3y ago
    >The criticism is that cryptoassets do not, in practice, have the censorship resistance they are billed as having. Correct: when you have assets in the traditional financial system, you don't have censorship resistance, which everyone knew. This is not an argument that the cryptocurrency itself lacks censorship resistance. >There are myriad rebuttals you could make, but dismissing it entirely isn't one of them, imho. Which I didn't do. I correctly pointed out that if you interface between systems A and B, you inherit the problems of both A and B. Which everyone already knew, and didn't require the enlightened insight of you and almost_unusual to point out specific instances of. It's just that most people also don't equate this with the argument that "A always has B's problems". >This is the libertarian equivalent of claiming that Soviet Russia wasn't real communism. Sure, in both cases, things weren't realized in the way they had been envisioned. If proponents want to be successful in the future, they need to reckon with that and not shirk it. It would be more like saying, "if you're in a libertarian paradise, and then travel to Soviet Russia, your economic freedoms will be infringed. Checkmate libertarians!" No one was arguing that economic freedoms wouldn't be infringed outside of a libertarian country, just like no one claims that if you move assets off a crypto blockchain, they will still have all the properties of blockchain transactions. Whatever the problems of libertarianism/blockchain, this would be a bad argument. "If you put the wrong numbers in, do the right answers still come out?" No, they don't. And if you don't use the blockchain, you don't get the benefits of the blockchain (or the costs), and vice versa.
    - maxbond 3y ago
      > Which everyone already knew, and didn't require the enlightened insight of you and almost_unusual to point out specific instances of. Why do you have to be rude and personal like that? If we can't have a civil discussion, I'm going to get back to work. Take care.
seanhunter 3y ago
It's not a legitimate criticism at all in this case. It's a low-effort hot take by someone who doesn't understand what actually happend and just wants to take a potshot at crypto. There's plenty of things to criticise about crypto, FTX, alameda, etc, but the fact that to do leveraged finance you have to post collateral with counterparties meaning those counterparties can freeze those assets isn't an inditement of crypto. The exact some thing happens in conventional finance eg search for all the hedge funds who had prime brokerage funds trapped when Bear Stearns collapsed and had to wait years to get their money back - and that's without any fraud involved.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
samsin 3y ago
You give custodianship of your coins to a 3rd party, they now have control over them. That’s not a legitimate criticism of cryptocurrency.
- maxbond 3y ago
  Maybe so, but needing to bribe an unfriendly government to access your funds is the type of thing cryptoassets were meant to obviate. So you might call capitulating to a government in control of it's nation's financial system, "the antithesis of crypto."
  - samsin 3y ago
    With crypto, 'your funds' are the ones you hold the private keys for. You don't have ownership over those coins, which is a mantra that's repeated ad nauseam (not your keys, not your coins). The idea that this concept is "the antithesis of crypto" seems entirely backwards.

SilasX 3y ago

But this thing happened in the conventional financial system, which is not billed as having those properties, so no, it's not a legitimate criticism.

maxbond 3y ago
The criticism is that cryptoassets do not, in practice, have the censorship resistance they are billed as having. Blaming "tradfi" is passing the buck - cryptoasset promoters signed a check they couldn't cash, and no one made them do that. There are myriad rebuttals you could make, but dismissing it entirely isn't one of them, imho. This is the libertarian equivalent of claiming that Soviet Russia wasn't real communism. Sure, in both cases, things weren't realized in the way they had been envisioned. If proponents want to be successful in the future, they need to reckon with that and not shirk it.
- SilasX 3y ago
  >The criticism is that cryptoassets do not, in practice, have the censorship resistance they are billed as having. Correct: when you have assets in the traditional financial system, you don't have censorship resistance, which everyone knew. This is not an argument that the cryptocurrency itself lacks censorship resistance. >There are myriad rebuttals you could make, but dismissing it entirely isn't one of them, imho. Which I didn't do. I correctly pointed out that if you interface between systems A and B, you inherit the problems of both A and B. Which everyone already knew, and didn't require the enlightened insight of you and almost_unusual to point out specific instances of. It's just that most people also don't equate this with the argument that "A always has B's problems". >This is the libertarian equivalent of claiming that Soviet Russia wasn't real communism. Sure, in both cases, things weren't realized in the way they had been envisioned. If proponents want to be successful in the future, they need to reckon with that and not shirk it. It would be more like saying, "if you're in a libertarian paradise, and then travel to Soviet Russia, your economic freedoms will be infringed. Checkmate libertarians!" No one was arguing that economic freedoms wouldn't be infringed outside of a libertarian country, just like no one claims that if you move assets off a crypto blockchain, they will still have all the properties of blockchain transactions. Whatever the problems of libertarianism/blockchain, this would be a bad argument. "If you put the wrong numbers in, do the right answers still come out?" No, they don't. And if you don't use the blockchain, you don't get the benefits of the blockchain (or the costs), and vice versa.
  - maxbond 3y ago
    > Which everyone already knew, and didn't require the enlightened insight of you and almost_unusual to point out specific instances of. Why do you have to be rude and personal like that? If we can't have a civil discussion, I'm going to get back to work. Take care.

seanhunter 3y ago

It's not a legitimate criticism at all in this case. It's a low-effort hot take by someone who doesn't understand what actually happend and just wants to take a potshot at crypto. There's plenty of things to criticise about crypto, FTX, alameda, etc, but the fact that to do leveraged finance you have to post collateral with counterparties meaning those counterparties can freeze those assets isn't an inditement of crypto. The exact some thing happens in conventional finance eg search for all the hedge funds who had prime brokerage funds trapped when Bear Stearns collapsed and had to wait years to get their money back - and that's without any fraud involved.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

samsin 3y ago

You give custodianship of your coins to a 3rd party, they now have control over them. That’s not a legitimate criticism of cryptocurrency.

maxbond 3y ago
Maybe so, but needing to bribe an unfriendly government to access your funds is the type of thing cryptoassets were meant to obviate. So you might call capitulating to a government in control of it's nation's financial system, "the antithesis of crypto."
- samsin 3y ago
  With crypto, 'your funds' are the ones you hold the private keys for. You don't have ownership over those coins, which is a mantra that's repeated ad nauseam (not your keys, not your coins). The idea that this concept is "the antithesis of crypto" seems entirely backwards.