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Cryptocurrency was (and still is to an extent) a really interesting idea that has a ton of real world utility, especially as government surveillance continues i

Cryptocurrency was (and still is to an extent) a really interesting idea that has a ton of real world utility, especially as government surveillance continues its march towards panopticon. It's a shame that the "get rich quick" grifters and speculators took ahold of it and have killed any chance of normal people adopting it as a regular form of payment.

simonw 3y ago
Normal people were never going to do well with a payment system where if you forget your password you've irretrievably lost access to your funds. (I've heard all of the arguments about backup phrases and social recovery wallets and suchlike, and I have yet to see evidence that these will work for anyone other than the most technically sophisticated of users.)
- TurningCanadian 3y ago
  You also irretrievably lose access to your funds if an attacker steals your credential. Not a problem as long as you have flawless security. /s
  - rprospero 3y ago
    Honestly, this is more of a problem for blockchain than it is for the old system. Let's say that an 80's movie villain gets his goons to beat you until you sign over the deed to your house (he wants to open another dojo). Today, you could go to court, present your evidence that you made the transaction under duress, and you get your house back. Even if he won't sign the deed back to you, the court can just print a new one on a laser printer, give it a fancy stamp, and the house is yours again. In the blockchain world, there's two options. The first is the "code is law" option. Since you sent him the house, it's his and there's nothing you can do about it. The court might arrest him, but there's no way of ever recovering your house. If he's particularly spiteful, the villain might kill himself. With proper security, his private key is lost forever and that property becomes inaccessibly for eternity. The other option is the "reasonable" option. Here, you go to court and have his token for your house officially invalidated. Additionally, a new token is minted for the property is minted and sent to your account, making you whole again. However, this only works with a modified blockchain that allows a centralised authority to invalidate and mint new tokens. Since we're already trusting this centralised authority, then we're back to the old laser printer and stamp, just with extra steps.
dzader 3y ago
when the only people using it are grifters and speculators I think that points pretty clearly to the fact that it has no real world utility :)
stouset 3y ago
Nearly 14 years in, where exactly is this “ton of real world utility”? Surely someone somewhere would have a product providing this utility, even amidst the sea of fraud and grift. I still don’t see it. Some utility? Okay, sure. A ton? Not even close. Consider that the web launched in 1993. By 2007 (14 years later), virtually the entire planet had changed dramatically as a result. That is a technology with a ton of real world utility.
- ru552 3y ago
  While it may be hard to see in first world countries, imagine being in a third world country and having a place you can store value that can't be debased by your crackpot dictator. That's huge.
  - ProjectArcturis 3y ago
    Why hasn't it been adopted in those places then?
  - igsomething 3y ago
    It is always the same debate in any cryptocurrency thread. People from economically free countries cannot understand cryptocurrencies because they are not meant for them and label them as scam. They cannot understand what 85% income tax is, authoritarian governments freezing (or emptying!) bank accounts for no reason, etc.
    - JohnFen 3y ago
      I disagree. I think people in economically free countries can and do understand this. But, as you point out, cryptocurrencies don't have a great deal of utility to people who don't have to interact with economically oppressed countries.
  - oh_sigh 3y ago
    It can't be debased by a crackpot dictator but it can be debased by the crackpot market. If you "stored value" from 2021 in BTC, you'd only have about half of that value right now. Granted, if you "stored value" from 10 months ago, you'd have 50% more than you put in. But, I think those big swings make it a poor instrument for most people to view it as a real way to store value.
repeekad 3y ago
Maybe, but part of the problem is nearly all of that “utility” lies in circumventing the government, for better or for worse
anon1199022 3y ago
[flagged]
- Zetobal 3y ago
  Wer Visionen hat, soll zum Arzt gehen.
  - anon1199022 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - master-lincoln 3y ago
      That is a phrase commonly associated with the Nazis in Germany misusing it e.g. as slogan on a concentration camp. Please do not post Nazi propaganda sentences without context
      - anon1199022 3y ago
        Rando wrote German to English website.
        AnimalMuppet 3y ago
        That doesn't mean that 1) you should do the same, and 2) that you should do the same with a phrase as loaded as that one.
  - master-lincoln 3y ago
    Willen braucht man. Und Zigaretten.
lazide 3y ago
Why would the gov’t ever allow it as a legitimate escape hatch? All of these le sigh type retrospectives seem to completely skip over stuff like this.
dale_glass 3y ago
> Cryptocurrency was (and still is to an extent) a really interesting idea that has a ton of real world utility, especially as government surveillance continues its march towards panopticon. Cryptocurrency not only doesn't help much, but even goes backwards there. You think the government is bad? Imagine life in NFT land. Your gym ticket is a NFT. Your movie ticket is a NFT. Your house deed is a NFT. So everyone you interact with knows where you work, how much you earn, what you own, where's your house, what you buy, what groups you belong to... and they can keep tracking you forever if you tell them who you are just once. They can treat you preferentially or charge you more or ban you depending on your past history. Sure, there's Monero, but nobody seems to really care about that one. > It's a shame that the "get rich quick" grifters and speculators took ahold of it and have killed any chance of normal people adopting it as a regular form of payment. It's built into the system. The early makers like Satoshi wanted a deflationary system. A deflationary system is inherently undesirable for usage as a currency, and makes it just the thing for HODLing and speculation. You could have inflation, but who controls it? There are no good answers.
- pnpnp 3y ago
  > So everyone you interact with knows where you work, how much you earn, what you own, where's your house, what you buy, what groups you belong to... and they can keep tracking you forever if you tell them who you are just once. Granted public blockchain is a lot more discoverable, but a lot of this already is public. Property ownership is public (at least in the US), credit cards sell your data, facebook knows which groups you belong to, etc.
  - dale_glass 3y ago
    Not nearly to the same level, and a lot of that is proprietary info. Facebook collects lots of data but doesn't like to share it.
    - pnpnp 3y ago
      Some of it is, but things like property ownership are completely open in some countries. I have a map overlay that lets me see ownership for parcels. Granted you can have an LLC own property, but that's a different obfuscation mechanism.
agloe_dreams 3y ago
> government surveillance continues its march towards panopticon The entire notion of crypto is that you can track a block over every transaction and that the transaction history creates the whole. Most Exchanges are forced to report who opened a wallet. Compared to cash/gift cards or many other payment forms, Crypto is the government surveillance DREAM.
- mrweasel 3y ago
  Various law enforcement agencies around the world has even publicly states how pleased they are with the tracking blockchain technology allows them, without even requiring a warrant for much of the work. It's at a point where you could easily read the original comment as blockchain should technology should be pushed by governments to help fight crime. For the average person crypto-currency have all of the disadvantages of credit/debit- cards, cash and Zimbabwe dollars combined while providing none of the benefits.
- vitehozonage 3y ago
  Monero exists
baz00 3y ago
Unlikely on both counts. Realistically speaking, the problem with crypto is that you will always have to go against a nation state level entity's tax office. And that's not someone you can win a fight with unless you deal in real money.
sydbarrett74 3y ago
It's not just government surveillance. The private sector has plenty of Peeping Toms. I'm pretty sure cryptocurrency isn't the solution.
- nisegami 3y ago
  The private sector doesn't have a monopoly on violence that it can use to imprison me.
  - sydbarrett74 3y ago
    Does that matter in practice? Large private-sector entities can employ organised criminals to assassinate you. Pragmatically, how is that any different? Dead is dead. At least with the government, you (theoretically) have due process. True, the Constitution (or equivalent documents in other countries) is worthless if not enforced and observed, but the private sector has no such guarantees.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    It doesn't have a monopoly, true, but the private sector can and does engage in violence and imprison people.
uoaei 3y ago
> especially as government surveillance continues its march towards panopticon Pseudonymous is not anonymous. Pseudonymity is not privacy. Cryptography is cool for certain kinds of privacy. Cryptocurrency has almost nothing to do with cryptography and does not provide privacy in the ways that counter a surveillance super-state. Pseudonymity makes transactions more traceable because unique identifiers are tied to each wallet and every single transaction with all metadata is recorded in plain view by design of the protocol. Mixers are an attempt to patch the failure of the protocol's design to actually implement any form of privacy, and even then, there are statistical tools that can plausibly tease out who's paying whom. At least enough to justify to the state, in its bureaucratic processes, more conventional forms of investigation. It's not perfect because the failures are systemic, i.e., inherent to the protocols. I feel like a crazy person. Sometimes I feel like I'm hallucinating the life I'm living, and I'm really locked in a padded room repeating these things to myself day and night but no one will listen.
- sickofparadox 3y ago
  I'm well aware that cryptos like Bitcoin and Etherium are open ledger books that show everything. The privacy comment was more targeted at systems such as Monero.
sydbarrett74 3y ago
Cryptocurrency is purpose-built for tax evasion and money laundering.
LetsGetTechnicl 3y ago
Would love to hear what this "real world utility" is aside from burning down the Amazon rainforest and enabling all new kinds of fraud and scamming
Zuiii 3y ago
It's still being used by normal people in really bad situations. It's just hn's typical demographic bubble that fails (or refuses) to see how it helps people. Of course, you're only experience with it is scams if you have easy access to USD and a more or less stable economy. Why on earth would you use something else!! It really makes me happy that cryptocurrecy is here to stay despite the constant groaning and moaning. One day, even folks like hn will face the same issues that forced people to rely on it and they will be glad that it exists too :) Edit: less downvoting, more useful discussion.
- throwawayqqq11 3y ago
  Relying on something volatile sounds like a contradiction to me and trust is the core of all currencies. Every crypto "currency" was dead the moment they dropped stability for personal/miners gains. Edit: Imagine a system where nodes would gain progressively less by dicovering new blocks but would prevent a timed decay of their wallets by doing so. A naive inverted incentive structure. Would this be a more long term relyable currency?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
bparsons 3y ago
The blockchain is a perfect tool of government surveillance. They can track the flows of money like never before, while most users think it is completely anonymous. There has been hundreds of stories about how blockchain technology has been a boon to investigators trying to track drug, terrorism and illegal porn money flows. https://www.wsj.com/articles/bitcoin-blockchain-hacking-arrests-93a4cb29 https://www.wsj.com/articles/bitcoin-blockchain-hacking-arre...
lelanthran 3y ago
What real world utility?
bparsons 3y ago
The blockchain is a perfect tool of government surveillance. They can track the flows of money like never before, while most users think it is completely anonymous. It is the perfect weapon of state control. There has been hundreds of stories about how blockchain technology has been a boon to investigators trying to track drug, terrorism and illegal porn money flows. https://www.wsj.com/articles/bitcoin-blockchain-hacking-arrests-93a4cb29 https://www.wsj.com/articles/bitcoin-blockchain-hacking-arre...
- vitehozonage 3y ago
  monero exists
  - bparsons 3y ago
    So does cash.
  - dale_glass 3y ago
    And nobody uses it. It's a small network that appears to be stagnating. https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/monero-transactions.html#alltime https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/monero-transactions.htm...
demondemidi 3y ago
> especially as government surveillance continues its march towards panopticon I thought China loved crypto because you get absolute spy power over how every penny of your citizenry is spent, and can then control someone's access to their coins if they speak out against you. Seems like the opposite of what you're describing, no?
JohnFen 3y ago
> and have killed any chance of normal people adopting it as a regular form of payment. To be honest, it's not just the grifters that put me off using cryptocurrency as a regular form of payment. It's other considerations such as volatility, the inability to undo payments, etc. Although it's true that the the fact the cryptocurrency tends to be used, or at least advocated, mostly by certain subcultures (not just criminals) is very off-putting to me as well. Plus, at least for the sorts of commerce I engage in, cryptocurrency is very inconvenient and doesn't give me any benefits that justify the inconvenience.
SilasX 3y ago
So, what's the connection to the article, or Binance, or USD withdrawals? Oh, right, HN no longer does anything about generic soapbox comments that have nothing to do with the article.
mrguyorama 3y ago
> "get rich quick" grifters and speculators took ahold of it Every single "feature" touted as a good thing by crypto boosters is exactly WHY grifters and conmen got into it. The system doesn't even have a concept of a "fraudulent transaction" FFS. For a system built by people who claim to know so much about cryptography and computer security, they sure seem stumped by the very simple concept of "someone tricked me and I clicked on a link" which is still the number one problem in computer security. The lack of transaction reversal is a god-send for crooks. The lack of a justice system is a boon for them. There's a reason they don't even have to be creative with their scams, and are just dusting off old play books from the 1920s. Crypto isn't shitty because of bad luck, crypto is shitty because the people who built it are completely ignorant of the value of regulation because they are caught in their ideology that all regulation is bad.

simonw 3y ago

Normal people were never going to do well with a payment system where if you forget your password you've irretrievably lost access to your funds. (I've heard all of the arguments about backup phrases and social recovery wallets and suchlike, and I have yet to see evidence that these will work for anyone other than the most technically sophisticated of users.)

TurningCanadian 3y ago
You also irretrievably lose access to your funds if an attacker steals your credential. Not a problem as long as you have flawless security. /s
- rprospero 3y ago
  Honestly, this is more of a problem for blockchain than it is for the old system. Let's say that an 80's movie villain gets his goons to beat you until you sign over the deed to your house (he wants to open another dojo). Today, you could go to court, present your evidence that you made the transaction under duress, and you get your house back. Even if he won't sign the deed back to you, the court can just print a new one on a laser printer, give it a fancy stamp, and the house is yours again. In the blockchain world, there's two options. The first is the "code is law" option. Since you sent him the house, it's his and there's nothing you can do about it. The court might arrest him, but there's no way of ever recovering your house. If he's particularly spiteful, the villain might kill himself. With proper security, his private key is lost forever and that property becomes inaccessibly for eternity. The other option is the "reasonable" option. Here, you go to court and have his token for your house officially invalidated. Additionally, a new token is minted for the property is minted and sent to your account, making you whole again. However, this only works with a modified blockchain that allows a centralised authority to invalidate and mint new tokens. Since we're already trusting this centralised authority, then we're back to the old laser printer and stamp, just with extra steps.

dzader 3y ago

when the only people using it are grifters and speculators I think that points pretty clearly to the fact that it has no real world utility :)

stouset 3y ago

Nearly 14 years in, where exactly is this “ton of real world utility”? Surely someone somewhere would have a product providing this utility, even amidst the sea of fraud and grift. I still don’t see it. Some utility? Okay, sure. A ton? Not even close. Consider that the web launched in 1993. By 2007 (14 years later), virtually the entire planet had changed dramatically as a result. That is a technology with a ton of real world utility.

ru552 3y ago
While it may be hard to see in first world countries, imagine being in a third world country and having a place you can store value that can't be debased by your crackpot dictator. That's huge.
- ProjectArcturis 3y ago
  Why hasn't it been adopted in those places then?
- igsomething 3y ago
  It is always the same debate in any cryptocurrency thread. People from economically free countries cannot understand cryptocurrencies because they are not meant for them and label them as scam. They cannot understand what 85% income tax is, authoritarian governments freezing (or emptying!) bank accounts for no reason, etc.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    I disagree. I think people in economically free countries can and do understand this. But, as you point out, cryptocurrencies don't have a great deal of utility to people who don't have to interact with economically oppressed countries.
- oh_sigh 3y ago
  It can't be debased by a crackpot dictator but it can be debased by the crackpot market. If you "stored value" from 2021 in BTC, you'd only have about half of that value right now. Granted, if you "stored value" from 10 months ago, you'd have 50% more than you put in. But, I think those big swings make it a poor instrument for most people to view it as a real way to store value.

repeekad 3y ago

Maybe, but part of the problem is nearly all of that “utility” lies in circumventing the government, for better or for worse

anon1199022 3y ago

[flagged]

Zetobal 3y ago
Wer Visionen hat, soll zum Arzt gehen.
- anon1199022 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - master-lincoln 3y ago
    That is a phrase commonly associated with the Nazis in Germany misusing it e.g. as slogan on a concentration camp. Please do not post Nazi propaganda sentences without context
    - anon1199022 3y ago
      Rando wrote German to English website.
      - AnimalMuppet 3y ago
        That doesn't mean that 1) you should do the same, and 2) that you should do the same with a phrase as loaded as that one.
- master-lincoln 3y ago
  Willen braucht man. Und Zigaretten.

lazide 3y ago

Why would the gov’t ever allow it as a legitimate escape hatch? All of these le sigh type retrospectives seem to completely skip over stuff like this.

dale_glass 3y ago

> Cryptocurrency was (and still is to an extent) a really interesting idea that has a ton of real world utility, especially as government surveillance continues its march towards panopticon. Cryptocurrency not only doesn't help much, but even goes backwards there. You think the government is bad? Imagine life in NFT land. Your gym ticket is a NFT. Your movie ticket is a NFT. Your house deed is a NFT. So everyone you interact with knows where you work, how much you earn, what you own, where's your house, what you buy, what groups you belong to... and they can keep tracking you forever if you tell them who you are just once. They can treat you preferentially or charge you more or ban you depending on your past history. Sure, there's Monero, but nobody seems to really care about that one. > It's a shame that the "get rich quick" grifters and speculators took ahold of it and have killed any chance of normal people adopting it as a regular form of payment. It's built into the system. The early makers like Satoshi wanted a deflationary system. A deflationary system is inherently undesirable for usage as a currency, and makes it just the thing for HODLing and speculation. You could have inflation, but who controls it? There are no good answers.

pnpnp 3y ago
> So everyone you interact with knows where you work, how much you earn, what you own, where's your house, what you buy, what groups you belong to... and they can keep tracking you forever if you tell them who you are just once. Granted public blockchain is a lot more discoverable, but a lot of this already is public. Property ownership is public (at least in the US), credit cards sell your data, facebook knows which groups you belong to, etc.
- dale_glass 3y ago
  Not nearly to the same level, and a lot of that is proprietary info. Facebook collects lots of data but doesn't like to share it.
  - pnpnp 3y ago
    Some of it is, but things like property ownership are completely open in some countries. I have a map overlay that lets me see ownership for parcels. Granted you can have an LLC own property, but that's a different obfuscation mechanism.

agloe_dreams 3y ago

> government surveillance continues its march towards panopticon The entire notion of crypto is that you can track a block over every transaction and that the transaction history creates the whole. Most Exchanges are forced to report who opened a wallet. Compared to cash/gift cards or many other payment forms, Crypto is the government surveillance DREAM.

mrweasel 3y ago
Various law enforcement agencies around the world has even publicly states how pleased they are with the tracking blockchain technology allows them, without even requiring a warrant for much of the work. It's at a point where you could easily read the original comment as blockchain should technology should be pushed by governments to help fight crime. For the average person crypto-currency have all of the disadvantages of credit/debit- cards, cash and Zimbabwe dollars combined while providing none of the benefits.
vitehozonage 3y ago
Monero exists

baz00 3y ago

Unlikely on both counts. Realistically speaking, the problem with crypto is that you will always have to go against a nation state level entity's tax office. And that's not someone you can win a fight with unless you deal in real money.

sydbarrett74 3y ago

It's not just government surveillance. The private sector has plenty of Peeping Toms. I'm pretty sure cryptocurrency isn't the solution.

nisegami 3y ago
The private sector doesn't have a monopoly on violence that it can use to imprison me.
- sydbarrett74 3y ago
  Does that matter in practice? Large private-sector entities can employ organised criminals to assassinate you. Pragmatically, how is that any different? Dead is dead. At least with the government, you (theoretically) have due process. True, the Constitution (or equivalent documents in other countries) is worthless if not enforced and observed, but the private sector has no such guarantees.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  It doesn't have a monopoly, true, but the private sector can and does engage in violence and imprison people.

uoaei 3y ago

> especially as government surveillance continues its march towards panopticon Pseudonymous is not anonymous. Pseudonymity is not privacy. Cryptography is cool for certain kinds of privacy. Cryptocurrency has almost nothing to do with cryptography and does not provide privacy in the ways that counter a surveillance super-state. Pseudonymity makes transactions more traceable because unique identifiers are tied to each wallet and every single transaction with all metadata is recorded in plain view by design of the protocol. Mixers are an attempt to patch the failure of the protocol's design to actually implement any form of privacy, and even then, there are statistical tools that can plausibly tease out who's paying whom. At least enough to justify to the state, in its bureaucratic processes, more conventional forms of investigation. It's not perfect because the failures are systemic, i.e., inherent to the protocols. I feel like a crazy person. Sometimes I feel like I'm hallucinating the life I'm living, and I'm really locked in a padded room repeating these things to myself day and night but no one will listen.

sickofparadox 3y ago
I'm well aware that cryptos like Bitcoin and Etherium are open ledger books that show everything. The privacy comment was more targeted at systems such as Monero.

sydbarrett74 3y ago

Cryptocurrency is purpose-built for tax evasion and money laundering.

LetsGetTechnicl 3y ago

Would love to hear what this "real world utility" is aside from burning down the Amazon rainforest and enabling all new kinds of fraud and scamming

Zuiii 3y ago

It's still being used by normal people in really bad situations. It's just hn's typical demographic bubble that fails (or refuses) to see how it helps people. Of course, you're only experience with it is scams if you have easy access to USD and a more or less stable economy. Why on earth would you use something else!! It really makes me happy that cryptocurrecy is here to stay despite the constant groaning and moaning. One day, even folks like hn will face the same issues that forced people to rely on it and they will be glad that it exists too :) Edit: less downvoting, more useful discussion.

throwawayqqq11 3y ago
Relying on something volatile sounds like a contradiction to me and trust is the core of all currencies. Every crypto "currency" was dead the moment they dropped stability for personal/miners gains. Edit: Imagine a system where nodes would gain progressively less by dicovering new blocks but would prevent a timed decay of their wallets by doing so. A naive inverted incentive structure. Would this be a more long term relyable currency?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

bparsons 3y ago

The blockchain is a perfect tool of government surveillance. They can track the flows of money like never before, while most users think it is completely anonymous. There has been hundreds of stories about how blockchain technology has been a boon to investigators trying to track drug, terrorism and illegal porn money flows. https://www.wsj.com/articles/bitcoin-blockchain-hacking-arrests-93a4cb29 https://www.wsj.com/articles/bitcoin-blockchain-hacking-arre...

lelanthran 3y ago

What real world utility?

bparsons 3y ago

The blockchain is a perfect tool of government surveillance. They can track the flows of money like never before, while most users think it is completely anonymous. It is the perfect weapon of state control. There has been hundreds of stories about how blockchain technology has been a boon to investigators trying to track drug, terrorism and illegal porn money flows. https://www.wsj.com/articles/bitcoin-blockchain-hacking-arrests-93a4cb29 https://www.wsj.com/articles/bitcoin-blockchain-hacking-arre...

vitehozonage 3y ago
monero exists
- bparsons 3y ago
  So does cash.
- dale_glass 3y ago
  And nobody uses it. It's a small network that appears to be stagnating. https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/monero-transactions.html#alltime https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/monero-transactions.htm...

demondemidi 3y ago

> especially as government surveillance continues its march towards panopticon I thought China loved crypto because you get absolute spy power over how every penny of your citizenry is spent, and can then control someone's access to their coins if they speak out against you. Seems like the opposite of what you're describing, no?

JohnFen 3y ago

> and have killed any chance of normal people adopting it as a regular form of payment. To be honest, it's not just the grifters that put me off using cryptocurrency as a regular form of payment. It's other considerations such as volatility, the inability to undo payments, etc. Although it's true that the the fact the cryptocurrency tends to be used, or at least advocated, mostly by certain subcultures (not just criminals) is very off-putting to me as well. Plus, at least for the sorts of commerce I engage in, cryptocurrency is very inconvenient and doesn't give me any benefits that justify the inconvenience.

SilasX 3y ago

So, what's the connection to the article, or Binance, or USD withdrawals? Oh, right, HN no longer does anything about generic soapbox comments that have nothing to do with the article.

mrguyorama 3y ago

> "get rich quick" grifters and speculators took ahold of it Every single "feature" touted as a good thing by crypto boosters is exactly WHY grifters and conmen got into it. The system doesn't even have a concept of a "fraudulent transaction" FFS. For a system built by people who claim to know so much about cryptography and computer security, they sure seem stumped by the very simple concept of "someone tricked me and I clicked on a link" which is still the number one problem in computer security. The lack of transaction reversal is a god-send for crooks. The lack of a justice system is a boon for them. There's a reason they don't even have to be creative with their scams, and are just dusting off old play books from the 1920s. Crypto isn't shitty because of bad luck, crypto is shitty because the people who built it are completely ignorant of the value of regulation because they are caught in their ideology that all regulation is bad.