Comment by djcapelis | Hacker News Reader

Comment by djcapelis | Hacker News Reader

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> censorship-resistant decentralized payment system

Does it achieve any of those words in practice?

“Censorship resistant” - Regulatory authorities are seemingly having as much impact on bitcoin as any other financial instrument.

“Decentralized” - It is not particularly decentralized. The fact that multiple nodes maintain the same log provides very little decentralization of much of anything. Here’s folks representing 90% of the hashing power of bitcoin on a stage: https://mobile.twitter.com/lopp/status/673398201307664384?la... That’s about the same number of people on the board of governors for the US federal reserve, to be fair. But to be fairer, the US dollar is one of 200 or so nation state backed currencies in the world and the federal reserve can’t invalidate transactions that have already occurred using their currency.

“Payment system” - It is not doing very well at that at all. Almost every competing payment system offers more predictable and consumer friendly behavior.

Show me a regulator able to prevent bitcoin users who own their own keys from making transactions, or one able to reverse transactions once made and confirmed.

Show me a regulator who is able to do any of those things with cash transfers of USD?

Bitcoin can though. 51% of users could just outright fork and annul whatever transaction they want, no?

In addition, we’ve learned over and over again that non-reversibility is not necessarily even a desirable property to have in a payment system, which is why so many non-cash payment systems have built those in.

No they have to re-write the history. The cartel of minors does not set the rules of bitcoin. It can only undo transactions by doing more work to write an alternate history. Even with the majority this is often unfeasible in practice.

> Show me a regulator who is able to do any of those things with cash transfers of USD?

Holding and/or transporting large amounts of cash is extremely fraught, especially across borders. US legal authorities regularly seize cash without due process and without meaningful judicial recourse. Most US banknotes are contaminated with cocaine, so it's prima facie laughable that a narcotic-detection-dog alert on a pile of money is seen as sufficient evidence that the money was obtained via the drug trade (thus allowing its seizure) -- yet this is a very common tactic.

The ability to transact in cash is meaningless if governments (and entities authorised by governments, look up "sewer service" or "gutter service") can seize cash without even a pretence of due process.

Any national regular can prevent bitcoin users from making transactions which exchange BTC for their national currency, or for retailers with a presence in their country.

Show me a regulator able to prevent US dollar users who have the money in their hands from making transactions, or one able to reverse transactions once made (doesn't even have to be confirmed—in fact confirmed instantly).

Yes, it is censorship resistant, but more importantly it is much more than payment system. It is for the first time in human history that we are able to scale trust. Money transactions are just first and obvious use of it. But it will eventually change the fabric of our society for more global, decentralized and flat. See this 20min talk for explanation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSRN8PUhHX0

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