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hudon
searching PlanetScale…
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47 ms
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451.
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by
hudon
9y ago
Email is a drastic improvement on the way people communicate. It is orders of magnitude faster, for example, cheaper for the user and more convenient. Bitcoin is slower, more expensive and harder to use than the existing financial instrumen
452.
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hudon
9y ago
> This is an important differentiation. From the user's perspective, not really. Many people compare their credit card to Bitcoin even if the way these systems work are completely different (credit network atop fiat versus digital a
453.
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by
hudon
9y ago
Using a distributed ledger like R3's Corda ( https://www.corda.net ) will do what you say: prevent "cooking the books" and make transactions public and audit-able. What the blockchain does that Corda does not is: th
454.
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by
hudon
9y ago
Is your argument that the VISA network is not software that is being improved over time? Did you know that VISA has been able to process up to 56,000 transactions per second in 2014? It also sounds like they improved 20% from 2013 to 2014
455.
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by
hudon
9y ago
Remittances have been shown to not actually be better with bitcoin. [1] [2] [3]. I can send 2000 USD to India using TransferWise and they will only charge me 17.84 USD. That is a 0.89% fee using a reliable mechanism and I know my recipient
456.
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by
hudon
9y ago
> It does not take 10~60 minutes to sign a bitcoin transaction... It doesn't even take a second. Why are you only considering signing time? Signing a bitcoin transaction is not sufficient for the merchant to be confident that they c
457.
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by
hudon
9y ago
As a user, <5 seconds is much faster than 10~60 minutes. And I have never had VISA mutate my transaction... that would be fraud. Once every 200 transactions let's say, my card will be denied and I'll need to swipe it a second t
458.
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hudon
9y ago
Spot on, these along with: political donations, funding activism, information marketplaces (think wikileaks but the leaker gets paid). Anything that a government or regulatory body would want to censor, basically, is made significantly easi
459.
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hudon
9y ago
A scarce commodity isn't new though right? People can buy gold online now and use that as a safe haven, for example. Why does it being a "digital" scarce commodity matter?
460.
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hudon
9y ago
I definitely wouldn't say "fast". I can tap my phone with apple pay or insert my VISA chip card and it takes <5 seconds. I agree though that for payments where the merchant can't be banked or VISA doesn't want to
461.
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hudon
9y ago
If it does than, then it can get out-competed by Rainforest, which is a clone of Amazon but with lower fees. Then if Sahara comes along and copies Rainforest but uses the blockchain for payments, they won't be able to compete because t
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The Tor of Money
(medium.com)
2 points
by
hudon
9y ago
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0 comments
463.
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hudon
9y ago
> A blockchain platform can be designed to not give the developer direct control over things like pricing, or anything at all The developers don't control the price... It's a market between brave/publishers/users. Are
464.
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hudon
9y ago
> " it won't be able to do any gatekeeping on who uses the system and for what purpose" Agreed. This is actually something the blockchain has that existing systems do not: censorship resistance. The ability to participate
465.
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hudon
9y ago
How is that different than being locked into the BAT? Brave decides how much BAT will get you an ad spot right?
466.
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hudon
9y ago
Google wouldn't even need to create a "token", just let you store USD in your Google Wallet and let you cash it out when you want (venmo style). The user already has a way to pay online: their credit card. So: no new merchant
467.
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hudon
9y ago
> it's really easy to move between currencies once you've got accounts on the right exchanges. wait so the users are going to need more than one kind of token? And they're going to need to open accounts on an exchange? >
468.
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hudon
9y ago
The use of a blockchain here is going to slow them down... The business model is really interesting but if it ends up working, Google will see it, build a Google Token that doesn't rely on the blockchain, undercut them severely on cost
469.
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hudon
9y ago
Why do you need a cryptocurrency to make the model work? If people wanted to do this, couldn't Chrome build a "Google Token" that does the same thing?
470.
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hudon
9y ago
We get it, you're a sovereign individual. That doesn't mean we shouldn't educate people about what exactly they are buying and the risks involved. There is a real risk here that many of these ICO teams get heavily fined and s
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hudon
9y ago
Someone being an asshole does not preclude them from being right. If you're protecting your investment with "but the critics are misogynist!", I'm afraid it's a charade the SEC will see right through.
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hudon
9y ago
"Token Sales" are unlicensed security sales[1], please be very wary of sending them money if you live in the United States. [1] https://hackernoon.com/dear-sec-icos-tokens-are-killing-inno...
473.
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hudon
9y ago
Thank you for the insightful comment. My article was meant to challenge my blockchain-loving friends and focus on "blockchains are only good at censorship resistance", but I unfortunately made it sound like that was equivalent to
474.
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hudon
9y ago
Right, all governments need to do to prevent the "world currency" idea is say "no."
475.
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hudon
9y ago
I agree and I didn't mean to equate them. Many people make the mistake and say requests for privacy means you have something to hide. The fact that digital tools that offer censorship resistance, be it Tor, Tails or Bitcoin have appli
476.
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hudon
9y ago
Thank you! This should be the biggest takeaway and I could have made it more nuanced, see thread here: https://medium.com/@Tboice/provocative-and-on-point-e3cbe1d7...
477.
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hudon
9y ago
> I think confirmations are overated anyway First they defend the crazy high fees, then they say that miners aren't important, then they say that confirmations are not really important... what's next, they'll try to rewrit
478.
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hudon
10y ago
Thanks for the link with details. As you can see, the proposed hard fork starts with a decrease to ~300k. The increase past 1mb starts in 2024... that is in 7 years. It's not hard to see that this fails to meet the bar of a 2mb hard fo
479.
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hudon
10y ago
> But to say they reneged on providing a scaling solution is wrong. Regardless of your position in the debate, to say that many well-known Core developers reneged is absolutely defensible, given than they signed this: https://
480.
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hudon
10y ago
> Luke Dashjr's hard-fork proposals, fulfilling his end of the HK agreement, [...] Which proposal are you talking about? Luke proposed a block size decrease , followed by a small increase in a decade... The HK agreement asks for a
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