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None of those things require crypto. They are essentially solved problems. The UK banking system has had chip&pin for 20+ years, has had (Europe-wide?) instant

by eterm 2y ago

None of those things require crypto. They are essentially solved problems. The UK banking system has had chip&pin for 20+ years, has had (Europe-wide?) instant payments for at least a decade. Banking numbers in the UK are push not pull, you cannot take someone else's money just because you have their bank number. * Payments require CVV (and have done for almost 30 years) and often additional 2fa verification through an app for larger payments. "Card not present" transactions are particular guarded against. The regularatory framework is such that the banks must absorb the cost of fraud, unless they can demonstrate the customer has been particular negligent. The average banking customer in the UK does not live in fear of "identity theft", and does not own "identity insurance" or similar protection packages, the legal framework provides protection. Solving the problem for international transfers simply requires greater international cooperation, not a different technical solution. It is a particular shame of Brexit that the UK has lost it's ability to lead in this area, because Europe generally has had a similar transformation over the past 20 years. Expanding that banking cooperation to bring in more trusted countries would further reduce the cost of international remittance. Someone trying to sell a technical solution to a social problem ought to always be treated with extra skepticism. * Some pedant will point out direct debits, but that is only available to trusted providers, and is backed up by the Direct Debit Guarentee, so the risk won't fall to the customer if things do go wrong.

dist1ll 2y ago
Many of the things I mentioned are absolutely not solved problems. > Payments require CVV Many companies regularly violate regulations and store CVVs against your will. How do you think millions of CC CVVs get leaked in many of these major hacks? > Solving the problem for international transfers simply requires greater international cooperation Sounds great in theory. How long has traditional finance had to work out these problems? We're in 2023 and I still can't send money to an US account without paying absurd fees. Now compare that to what several crypto projects have achieved a handful of years after their inception. > Someone trying to sell a technical solution to a social problem ought to always be treated with extra skepticism. What makes secure payments more social than secure messaging or secure browsing? Imagine trying to solve TLS and E2E messaging with social solutions.
- FabHK 2y ago
  > I still can't send money to an US account without paying absurd fees. You think that is a technological problem? Using crypto appears cheap (despite being inferior technology) because it simply skips 99% of what banks are doing.
  - dist1ll 2y ago
    Well, clearly I don't need 99% of whatever the bank is doing to send a transaction between two accounts I own. Add to that all the things that many banks continuously fail to provide, like proper OpsSec, transparent fees, full programmability via APIs. > despite being inferior technology Could you clarify? Are you talking about a particular protocol, or an implementation component, or mean crypto in general?
    - FabHK 2y ago
      Happy to clarify. a) Theory: In any engineering or optimisation problem, adding a constraint makes the solution not better, and, if the constraint is binding, worse. So, we would not expect distributed state machine replication (which was solved in the late 90s, with BFT-style consensus such as Paxos and Raft etc.) to get better by requiring permissionlessness. (And the latter is, in my view, the actual defining characteristic of what's now known as blockchain; though of course you have a couple of permissioned blockchains that are basically rebranding of existing technology to ride the hype-train.) b) Practice: You could trivially run a BTC (ie, Longest Chain Rule) or ETH (ie, BFT-type) style network with extremely high reliability with some, say, 10 nodes that are permissioned and (at least 51%) trusted. That would use around 10-100 W (and you could probably achieve far higher throughput). Instead, BTC uses 20 GW, ETH around 1 MW. So, the requirement of permissionlessness increases energy usage by a factor of several thousand to billions. Furthermore, you lose many many other features of centralised systems (such as that you can correct mistakes cheaply, replace lost keys, undo fraud, etc.) So, basically, you employ a vastly inferior technology, just so you can circumvent the law. Really don't see why anyone should support that.
      - 2y ago
programmarchy 2y ago
> Solving the problem for international transfers simply requires greater international cooperation Right, simply need to solve for world peace, ending all wars and economic sanctions. Kumbaya.
- Joker_vD 2y ago
  Well, yes. Otherwise, why would you or anyone, really, be against arbitrary money transfers into (or out of) Iran, or North Korea, or Russia? Yet here we are.
dist1ll 2y ago
To give one more counter-point to your "fraud costs are baked in": Self-custody as is common in crypto isn't really a thing in traditional finance (for most people anyways) - having your money backed 1:1 by cash is an extremely expensive service. The bank accounts most people have are essentially low-risk lending agreements. So any kind of cost calculation should factor in the financial gain of lending out your assets.

by eterm 2y ago

dist1ll 2y ago

Many of the things I mentioned are absolutely not solved problems. > Payments require CVV Many companies regularly violate regulations and store CVVs against your will. How do you think millions of CC CVVs get leaked in many of these major hacks? > Solving the problem for international transfers simply requires greater international cooperation Sounds great in theory. How long has traditional finance had to work out these problems? We're in 2023 and I still can't send money to an US account without paying absurd fees. Now compare that to what several crypto projects have achieved a handful of years after their inception. > Someone trying to sell a technical solution to a social problem ought to always be treated with extra skepticism. What makes secure payments more social than secure messaging or secure browsing? Imagine trying to solve TLS and E2E messaging with social solutions.

FabHK 2y ago
> I still can't send money to an US account without paying absurd fees. You think that is a technological problem? Using crypto appears cheap (despite being inferior technology) because it simply skips 99% of what banks are doing.
- dist1ll 2y ago
  Well, clearly I don't need 99% of whatever the bank is doing to send a transaction between two accounts I own. Add to that all the things that many banks continuously fail to provide, like proper OpsSec, transparent fees, full programmability via APIs. > despite being inferior technology Could you clarify? Are you talking about a particular protocol, or an implementation component, or mean crypto in general?
  - FabHK 2y ago
    Happy to clarify. a) Theory: In any engineering or optimisation problem, adding a constraint makes the solution not better, and, if the constraint is binding, worse. So, we would not expect distributed state machine replication (which was solved in the late 90s, with BFT-style consensus such as Paxos and Raft etc.) to get better by requiring permissionlessness. (And the latter is, in my view, the actual defining characteristic of what's now known as blockchain; though of course you have a couple of permissioned blockchains that are basically rebranding of existing technology to ride the hype-train.) b) Practice: You could trivially run a BTC (ie, Longest Chain Rule) or ETH (ie, BFT-type) style network with extremely high reliability with some, say, 10 nodes that are permissioned and (at least 51%) trusted. That would use around 10-100 W (and you could probably achieve far higher throughput). Instead, BTC uses 20 GW, ETH around 1 MW. So, the requirement of permissionlessness increases energy usage by a factor of several thousand to billions. Furthermore, you lose many many other features of centralised systems (such as that you can correct mistakes cheaply, replace lost keys, undo fraud, etc.) So, basically, you employ a vastly inferior technology, just so you can circumvent the law. Really don't see why anyone should support that.
    - 2y ago

programmarchy 2y ago

> Solving the problem for international transfers simply requires greater international cooperation Right, simply need to solve for world peace, ending all wars and economic sanctions. Kumbaya.

Joker_vD 2y ago
Well, yes. Otherwise, why would you or anyone, really, be against arbitrary money transfers into (or out of) Iran, or North Korea, or Russia? Yet here we are.

dist1ll 2y ago

To give one more counter-point to your "fraud costs are baked in": Self-custody as is common in crypto isn't really a thing in traditional finance (for most people anyways) - having your money backed 1:1 by cash is an extremely expensive service. The bank accounts most people have are essentially low-risk lending agreements. So any kind of cost calculation should factor in the financial gain of lending out your assets.