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Comment by kriops | Hacker News Reader

The fact that blockchains are used by criminals is definitive proof that it improves upon traditional financial infrastructure also in legitimate use cases where trust is an issue. I.e., blockchains are an indisputable success from a technological point of view.

The fact that criminals use tools, such as bolt cutters, cars and computers, doesn't mean that the tools are evil. Criminals are evil! Punish criminals for engaging in criminal activities, don't punish morally upstanding citizens for enjoying the liberty afforded them by virtue of their humanity.

There, two simple points that 99% of bitcoin "critiques" fail to address.

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Trust isn't the reason that criminals use blockchains. They would happily transfer money the same way normal businesses do. They use blockchain cause they are locked out of the normal banking infrastructure.

For the same reason normal people don't use blockchain to transfer money. They are able to use the banking system or Venmo or whatever. Using a blockchain is more complicated and usually more expensive than the alternatives.

Nano has 0 fees and instant transactions. It's hard for any other alternative to do better.

bitcoin does it better by not being a pre-mine scam and still having 0 fees and instant transactions on lightning.

Distribution of Nano was more fair than bitcoin. Just saying.

And lightning transactions have fees. Also just saying.

> Distribution of Nano was more fair than bitcoin

yes, that's what all pre-miners say.

lightning network fees are negligible, you should try it one day.

Neglectible is not 0.

And I'm not a pre-miner

negligible is basically 0.

you're not a pre-miner (though maybe you are, how do i know?), nano "founders" are pre-mining scammers.

Nano is green, Bitcoin an environmental hazard :D.

But I'm sure we're not coming to an agreement :D.

No environmental hazard, it's a myth.

PoS is no greener than PoW, they are equally expensive. PoS is expensive in political plane (just like current financial system with all the corruption and wars) while Bitcoin is expensive purely in terms of energy. I know which one i prefer.

Why should an average user care that founders are premining "scammers"? An average user won't be a miner and an average user doesn't have an investment in any platform.

Someone saying x-crypto is a premining scam is somebody who invests in another platform and is advertising.

Because in PoS holders of large amount of assets are also political elite that gets to make the rules.

The fees of bitcoin are paid in the damage to the environment done by mining. It is vastly more expensive than traditional banking. The only difference is that it's not paid by the user directly, but by the whole of humanity.

bitcoin doesn't damage environment by mining, that's just a dumb thing people like to repeat without spending a second to think about it.

first - damage is done by producers of energy, not consumers

second - yes, consumers create the demand for energy, which drives producers to do harm, but harm is still producer's responsibility

third - if we want to reduce environmental harm, it is much more sensible to regulate producers in how they produce rather than regulating consumers in what they consume for

fourth - even if you somehow want to blame consumers - bitcoin mining actually drives development of green energy, increasing capacity, making green producers more profitable, allowing more development and r&d in that segment of energy production industry, so even by that ridiculous standard bitcoin mining is the last energy-consuming industry you want to be going after

I guess I'll just leave a firehose blowing water out my window because it's not me who's literally sourcing tap water, it's the utilities, and if they do that by overusing and destroying some watershed it's not my fault since I'm not literally the one doing it. It's too bad my plan is not nearly as profitable as mining bitcoin though...

Free markets are beautiful.

everyone hates Nano now, mostly due to the shills showing up everywhere un-asked for.

What enables the exclusions of actors from the traditional banking system if not a different trust model?

Instead of having a 'trusted' 3rd party mediate your transactions, you use a blockchain. Difference being that the trust is now distributed over a large set of actors that are directly financially invested in maintaining the integrity of your transaction.

We can talk about cost and convenience if you want, but they were never at the core of blockchain/BTCs value proposition as far as I am concerned. In well-functioning societies anyways.

> The fact that blockchains are used by criminals is definitive proof that it improves upon traditional financial infrastructure

Reminds me of how some people were making a big story about why Toyotas are popular with ISIS. I saw it as a big testimony to their reliability :P

Maybe we should centralize authority to stop criminal actors from using these tools

Sir, do you have a licence for the computer you used to type that comment?

Is this sarcasm? I can't tell.

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