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Comment by Grustaf | Hacker News Reader

I'm very sceptical of blockchain (though I've been in crypto off and on since 2013) but most of the arguments in this article are non-sensical. For example:

> But even if all code was without mistakes, blockchains can’t do anything against threats like scams, fraud, hacking of devices with keys for the blochain or just plain old typos in a coin transfer.

I don't think protection against human-factor scams and frauds was ever a goal, you certainly never hear it as an argument.

> Normally, cases of fraud or mistakes could be rectified or reverted by the bank or similar institutions after a review of the situation by humans. However, in the world of blockchain there is no human supervisory authority.

This is a well-known, probably inevitable effect of what is probably the main point of using blockchains. Clearly people feel it is a price worth paying.

I do agree that 99% of blockchain usage is pointless at best, but that is really a different question. It can be used for storing and (slowly) transferring value in a decentralised way, and that is really the main idea.

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It seems a bit off to assert that "people feel it is a price worth paying" when almost all purchases online are made with credit cards which have some protections against fraud, and almost none are made with blockchains in comparison. It seems like so far, most people don't think it's a price worth paying?

I'd go one step further: the few legal purchases done with crypto currencies are mostly done by people unaware they're paying that price

Purchases, perhaps. Money transfer, definitely not. Bitcoin is a pretty cheap way to transfer money across international borders.

A person probably wouldn't use bitcoin at the grocery store to buy milk, but it works better for sending grandma (located in a third world country) a bunch of money.

Bitcoin is still more expensive than the banking system among first-world countries. How much can it be worth to send money to third-world countries of no banks are willing to set up there?

You could always use the crypto currency as the store of value there, just as people did with MPesa. You don't necessarily ever have to convert it to a local currency.

MPesa doesn't store your money in some kind of private currency with a fluctuating value. If you're thinking of it as storing "minutes" as some American cellphone providers would, that's not right.

You deposit and withdraw Kenyan Shillings, or your local equivalent, just as if it were a shilling-denominated bank account.

Yes, and you could make this hypothetical Kenyan cryptocurrency work the same way. One KCoin is one shilling, redeemable for minutes.

where are you getting these $1 international wire transfers? Sign me up!

SEPA transfers cost €0, which (still) is less than $1.

Ok, let me send dollars from the US to Japan via SEPA real quick.

You asked “where”, and the answer is “in the SEPA countries”, which at least includes most of Europe.

Then I apologize for my imprecision! I meant "what financial institution will provide me and my counterparty this service for the currency we currently use in our current countries of residence" rather than "what pair of countries can me and my counterparty relocate to to obtain this service in at least one currency."

Bitcoin BTC is currently more expensive than the banking system in first world countries because of the specific technical choices they have made. When I first used bitcoin it was free to the user (i.e. it was paid for by issuance). Other cryptocurrency systems that have made different technical choices are much cheaper these days - bitcoin BTC is a bit of an outlier in that regard. I personally have been experimenting with USDC on Argent wallet (a zksync L2 on ethereum). It's easy to use, quick and the transaction fees are around 20c at the moment (and likely to reduce further), and I'm sending a stable coin that tracks dollar.

I think you hit the nail on the head. Most people who genuinely want to use cryptocurrencies as a replacement for classic ones in legal day to day transactions don't realize the drawbacks. There's an implicit assumption that by being a "currency" crypto gives the same benefits as a classic one, plus the digital aspect and other advantages.

But I like to think this is like buying medicine from a street dealer. Maybe it's faster or more convenient, maybe you get the same quality. But those "maybes" are clearer for people when buying medication from a back alley. It's not at all visible to people using crypto as a replacement for their classic currency.

Every time there's an exchange hack, a massive fraud, a price crash, etc. more people start feeling the drawbacks and push for the kind of regulation, oversight, supervision that today are antithetical with cryptocurrencies and its associated parties.

I am one of those people that uses cash and bitcoin for privacy and reliability and for 100% legal use cases.

I have experienced bank accounts of mine and those I know be frozen, emptied without warning due to identity theft, a false criminal accusation, forgotten debts, etc. I also know very well that banks have data sharing relationships with Visa, etc, that form a full map of where and when you spend money to aid data brokers in selling changes in your behavior to advertisers. Do you really want metadata on every purchase you make at a sex shop or a pharmacy stored in databases and sold to the highest bidder?

Cash has limits though. It is impractical and unsafe to put cash in the mail when paying friends back for dinner after we all go our separate ways or if I am buying something online I wish to be anonymous like a VPN subscription. In those cases Bitcoin solves a problem and I have legitimately used it on a regular basis for many years. I never use venmo etc and friends and I regularly settle debts with Bitcoin.

I would prefer not to have to carry around cash all the time so when possible to use Bitcoin in retail, I do. I have used bitcoin to buy drinks at bars in Germany, electronics at big box stores in Japan, meals at various restaurants, and coffee hundreds of times. I can also get cash from Bitcoin ATMs worldwide without having to deal with a bank denying me my own money because I am in an unexpected country.

Bitcoin, when purchased with cash, gives me all the privacy of cash with all the portability of a visa card.

How are you purchasing bitcoin with cash? I know it happens but I don't know how it's happening. Is it safe?

Bitcoin ATMs, and repayment from friends when I pay for things in cash. There are also p2p exchanges like LocalCoinSwap where you can meet people in person in public places to buy or sell an amount of BTC you are comfortable carrying. Some let you use escrow where you deposit cash to a bank account then you are sent BTC on receipt. None of these methods can be stopped no matter how much regulators demand KYC from the Coinbases of the world. Humans can always trade directly.

Similarly I am also paid directly in Bitcoin by some of my clients I do consulting for so neither side needs to fuss with bank transfers. Lastly I can always buy on an exchanges, convert to Monero, then back to Bitcoin to de-associate the Bitcoin to me.

> convert to Monero, then back to Bitcoin to de-associate the Bitcoin to me.

So you do KYC and AML on one exchange, transfer BTC there, exchange to Monero, then transfer those to your own wallet, do KYC and AML on another exchange, transfer the Monero there, and exchange it back to BTC?

> I have experienced bank accounts of mine and those I know be frozen, emptied without warning due to identity theft, a false criminal accusation, forgotten debts, etc.

Your bank account has been frozen and emptied at least four times?!

Surely the common factor in these incidents is you!

I said those I know.

Mine was frozen once over a clerical error. I have also had mine frozen a number of times for trying to make medium sized cash withdrawals when traveling. This is a common anti fraud tactic but it is very annoying when I can not spend my own money. I do not carry a phone and even if I did waiting on hold with a bank in front of an ATM in a random country sucks.

Several people I know, including family, have suffered identity theft and had accounts drained that way. I know someone else who had an account frozen due to a false accusation.

Someone I know had theirs drained with no warning due to a decade old forgotten debtor getting a court order. I know others who have had accounts frozen or dismissed because the bank did not like the nature of their business. They commonly do this for legal cannibis, adult, gambling, or crypto asset business they consider a brand risk.

In short banks have a lot of nasty edge cases I like to avoid.

How does it give you privacy when all your transactions are visible to all on chain?

The same way Tor gives me privacy. The network knows what traffic went where, but it does not know the identity of the initiator.

Similarly when you get BTC in exchange for cash or p2p exchange without KYC then those transactions are no more tagged to you than the list of transactions in the register of each vendor you pay cash to.

Even when you use cash, serial numbers can be logged on withdrawal and deposit to track movements of cash and secret service does do this when they are targeting someone.

Being anonymous with cash and Bitcoin is similar. Do not identify yourself when you obtain or spend your cash/bitcoin and then logs of their use, which do happen, are at least not directly tied to you.

Bitcoin has the added advantage of each vendor usually generates random withdrawal addresses so no one from the public even can easily identify the recipients, unlike with a credit card transaction where both sides are IDed and logged.

Neither cash or Bitcoin will stop someone tailing me on foot and tagging transactions to me but my primary adversary is surveillance capitalism and it would not be profitable for them to go that far.

I was referring to people in crypto. Obviously the general public prefers traditional payment systems because most people have no problem trusting that the banks will do the right thing.

Millions of people work at banks… lots of middlemen that maybe don’t need to be there anymore…

There's still a need for them though. Societies still want to do AML/KYC stuff, and tax audits.

In fact bitcoin makes it harder[1], so we probably need MORE people doing these investigations.

So we actually maybe need millions MORE people to work these things.

[1] mostly. In some ways also easier. But probably on net harder.

I mean you don't need people to manually make money transfers anymore, but I don't think many people do that. Banks have a lot of different jobs, very few of them are obsoleted by crypto, at least so far.

That’s the opportunity, right? Some code does the work.

As I said, little or no manual labour is involved when you pay your bills or transfer money. Bank employees meet customers, set up mortgages, program the payment infrastructure, make deals with other banks, help hide money in shady jurisdictions etc.

If only we could invent a way of settling transactions that takes more money and energy than running traditional banks. It might sound like the worst idea ever, but with enough buzzwords and a sprinkle of Ponzi, I think it will be a hit.

Blockchain is just a decentralized ledger of transactions. A cryptocurrency is an implementation of digital currency using a blockchain. Blaming blockchain for not having fraud prevention tech is like blaming TCP/IP stack for delivering a scam email to your inbox. This is a problem to be solved in a higher layer, which we're seemingly nowhere near as we're still just trying to get blockchain to scale efficiently.

This is technically true, but crypto currency does make the most sense when there is no middle-man. If you merely replace the backend of the banking system with a blockchain, nobody would care.

Yes, and if it was promoted as a "decentralized ledger of transactions" it would be fine and almost no one would have heard of it. But it's often aggressively promoted as a replacement for traditional currencies and banking with many benefits over the old-fashioned models, ignoring the fact that those models account for many issues that blockchain does not. There's a reason banks and economies evolved in the way they did.

>Blockchain is just a decentralized ledger of transactions. A cryptocurrency is an implementation of digital currency using a blockchain. Blaming blockchain for not having fraud prevention tech is like blaming TCP/IP stack for delivering a scam email to your inbox.

It's more like blaming a water utility company that doesn't give potable water, and its supporters tell you "but you can always buy a bottle of water from the store. Or maybe dig for water yourself!".

Yes, one can build the "fraud prevention" and other measures on top of blockchain. But then you have a financial institution just like a bank, and you can drop the blockchain part - anything it "solves" can be solved much simpler and with 1000x less energy once you have the other trappings of a financial institution.

Correct, crypto is great when you need an append only database with no root password.

Outside of that use case crypto is a speculative investment vehicle. Maybe BTC will replace gold as a store of value. But that is just speculation.

That's not true. A bank does not allow universal and unquestioning withdrawal nor does it truly require user consent to complete transactions. Clever cryptography makes it possible to do both building on top of Bitcoin or whatever ledger has the desired security and feature set.

>That's not true. A bank does not allow universal and unquestioning withdrawal

Neither the "full blockchain solution" would, once the fraud protection and other safety checks are added.

Which is the point I've made.

You can't simultaneously claim the benefits of blockchain being without protection, and respond to the criticism about the dangers with "it's just a toolkit, you can add protection in layers above". Or you can, but you're claiming the pros on both sides of a XOR feature set.

> Blockchain is just a decentralized ledger of transactions.

Well, so is Git!

The big difference is that the blockchain requires all transactions to appear on all nodes, and has a wildly expensive and slow consensus phase.

Thing is, these two features provide great negative utility for the average person and no positive utility at all unless you are an anonymous entity wanting to transact with other anonymous entities with no legal framework at all.

I think I'm defrauded a lot less than 1/20 of the time, so it may make more sense for me to stop paying Stripe and Visa 5% or whatever, if I ever have that option.

Maybe in US. In Europe people pay a lot with money transfer and payments are considered to be mostly irreversible. Banks don't take responsibility for your mistakes (like typos or getting scammed).

Prepayment fraud is somewhat prevelant, so most transactions are post paid or direct debit. Neither form has that problem.

Even when fraud occurs, the recipient is a known actual person. Know your costumer rules successfully prevent these kinds of scams to a sufficient degree.

Banks will also monitor transactions and will delay execution when there are signs of fraud. That's why so many scams rely on other methods of payment, especially gift cards, western union and... Crypto coins.

> Even when fraud occurs, the recipient is a known actual person.

Not really. It's easy enough to set up fake identity that people who go and scam people on the internet usually do that.

I mean crypto and gift cards are way worse than banks of course. I'm just saying that there's no expectation in Europe that most payments are reversible.

If people used wire transfers for online payments the same issues would arise. Using Bitcoin natively on layer-1 for online payments is like using wire transfers. Semi-custodial or layer-2 options will compete with credit cards.

> I don't think protection against human-factor scams and frauds was ever a goal, you certainly never hear it as an argument.

These features and capabilities are usually implied for financial systems. It's really just common sense.

I mean when you put it that way, blockchains aren't really financial systems in the first place.

Yes, it is, in the traditional financial system. Crypto is an attempt at building an alternative, with different trade-offs. You might not agree with the trade-offs, most people don't - I mostly don't, but it's definitely a choice, it's not inevitable.

to be clear about the semantics here: cash doesn't count as a "financial system", right?

Blockchain currencies are basically counterfeit-proof, digital cash with an audit trail. comparing them to credit cards is an apples:oranges comparison.

With cash that limitation exists because there isn't really an alternative. That doesn't mean we should use it as example, being able to undo mistakes is a valuable feature. That's also one of the reasons most online accounts aren't E2E-encrypted, most people prefer having a way to reset their password/key over losing all access to data.

Sorry if my comment wasn't clear - I wasn't trying to compare cash to credit cards, of course.

Regulation around "cash" transactions are quite strict here (including the definition of a verbal contract etc.), so unless one is engaged in "under the counter" activities, you can benefit from similar protections. Of course, in contrast to credit cards and online transactions, recovery from cash fraud/mistakes is more complicated since you'd need to contact the authorities/the other party yourself and deal with the whole process "manually" (instead of just clicking a button in your bank's web portal and letting them take care of it)

If blockchain proponents want to replace the existing system that does protect against human-factor scams and frauds (ie. the current financial system that lets governments and institutions control it to enforce the law) then it's going to be part of the discussion whether they like it or not.

Of course it should be part of the discussion, but the article seems to think that crypto people are unaware of it. They're not, they just think it's worth it.

It doesn't matter if crypto advocates are aware of it, these arguments are for other people to understand. The argument is well-known because it's incredibly valid and common for people to want protection against those problems of fraud. When people point out that you're not wearing any pants, "uh I know I'm not wearing any pants" doesn't really address the relevant concern.

Of course it does. It's like saying "but Uber doesn't own any cars, they can't run a taxi service". There are pros and cons with their approach, and you might prefer the traditional way, but they purposely chose another way.

Clever reframing, but when you choose such a different way with clear downsides, it's on you to justify it. It would have been the responsibility of the founders of Uber to explain to stakeholders why they were justified in running a taxi service without owning cars. Just like if I point out that you're not wearing pants, I'm generally expecting the response to explain why that's justified for me to continue standing next to an apparently pantless lunatic instead of telling me that you already have.

There's no part of the article that ever said crypto people aren't aware of this problem, it pointed out the problem. It's a problem. "I have intentionally chosen a path that runs into this glaring problem" is not helpful or interesting at all. If you have nothing more to say beyond "they know", then I guess I don't have anything more to say either.

I think they have been pretty clear about what they think the upside is: decentralisation. No need to trust banks and governments.

Obviously you don't think it's a good trade-off, but they do.

The problem with the article is that there are no real arguments besides citing other articles. At best, it’s a summary of Bruce Schneier’s works with a catchy headline.

I’m not a blockchain die-hard, but there are some solid practical uses. For instance, in trade finance where multiple parties in an environment with limited trust have to settle a complex transaction asynchronously, blockchain / DLT can really help. Have a look at Corda/R3 as an example; there’s a reason why big financial institutions are investing a lot in this space because it can really drive efficiencies.

As with most things in life, the answer is seldom black or white. The same rule applies to blockchain as well.

> For instance, in trade finance where multiple parties in an environment with limited trust have to settle a complex transaction asynchronously, blockchain / DLT can really help.

When does that happen?

Documentary trade finance - e.g cross-border trade where importers and exporters transact physical goods using letters of credit issued and endorsed by banks on both sides of the transaction. A good example is a container load of crude oil shipped from an upstream exporter in India to a refinery (importer) in the States.

Banks act as facilitators of such as transaction on import / export side, often have to interact with shipping / logistics and insurance providers to ascertain that goods have been sent in order to clear and settle payment from buyer to seller. It’s an entirely event-driven and very paper-based business with lots of complex processing logic which can very well be replaced by a smart contract, especially because each party may not trust each other a lot (eg exporter wishing to audit transactions of the importer’s bank). A blockchain works quite well for this type of problem.

Disclaimer: I do not work for Corda.

How come the trust regarding the physical goods themselves does not expand to the financial aspects of the transaction?

Maybe read up on trade finance :)

Let me rephrase: you don't need a public permissionless blockchain to have an append-only ledger that allow you to audit transactions. If you're not using a public permissionless blockchain, then there's nothing new that hasn't been around for decades. See also the paragraph about private blockchains in https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2019/02/theres_no_g...

> I don't think protection against human-factor scams and frauds was ever a goal, you certainly never hear it as an argument.

I don't think this argument is nonsensical. It's true that these things were not goals.

The author's point, I think, is that obviously they should have been. Because this is how people lose money. You can't just call all the most important aspects of monetary transfers "out of scope" if you're trying to create a system for monetary transfers.

> Clearly people feel [the loss of reversal] is a price worth paying.

I don't think so. I think the vast majority of even pro-bitcoin people are actually either in the camp of not realizing the full meaning of this, or they don't truly understand that there's no recourse, until it actually happens to them.

Certainly people in general expect "the bank" or "the police" or "courts" to "just fix it". If cryptocurrency people were honest about this in their MLM pitches then people would tell them to piss off.

> It can be used for storing and (slowly) transferring value in a decentralised way, and that is really the main idea.

Well, "store of value" is the idea now, now that the initial plan proved a massive failure.

> You can't just call all the most important aspects of monetary transfers "out of scope" if you're trying to create a system for monetary transfers.

Different people have different perspectives. Clearly a lot of coiners think it's totally fine to put the burden on the user. Of course the author is free to disagree, but it's silly to pretend there is only one possible set of priorities.

Also it is difficult to bring up the real reason without looking a bit crazy.

The governments of the world - pretty much all the major ones - are behaving in a completely irresponsible way. "Trustless" isn't something to be applied to a neighbour. It is a polite way of saying that people are really sick of the lies emanating from the halls of power about what good economic management looks like.

It still baffles me that the official policy is that prices should rise exponentially. I haven't seen evidence it is a good policy and it is weird that there are no serious political challenges to it. Easy to explain, but still weird.

> I don't think protection against human-factor scams and frauds was ever a goal, you certainly never hear it as an argument.

In a sense, it admits that traditional banking has the advantage in that regard because it has things like traceability, reversibility, insurance, accountability, and legal guarantees. These have been put aside on purpose in the crypto market, and while I think I understand the whys and wherefores, I don't see giving up these consumer protections is worth it.

Well, not to me anyway, but I'm not getting rich off of crypto.

For most people it isn't. Maybe at some point it will, if governments let the money printer brr even more, or if we see more of what Canada did. If that is amplified by say 10x, I think a lot of people would start to reconsider.

At no point will people deliberately give up consumer protections they have today. If an economy is undergoing extreme hyperinflation, the consumer protections would have likely already been gone at that point.

What does it matter if people "give up the protections" or if they disappear? The result could still be that they flock to crypto, which is what we're discussing.

But it's not a binary question. Some people are already "giving up consumer protections" in some cases. And not just by buying crypto. Ordering stuff from Wish is also a gamble.

If the money printer runs for long enough, we might get to see the sort of volatility that's a daily occurence with crypto.

...so therefore crypto is better?

And if you're afraid of cancel culture coming to a financial instrument near you, why would you want to put all your financial transactions on a permanent record? Sure, it's pseudonymous, but your entire purchase history is one hell of a fingerprint.

Traditional currency has a perfectly anonymous payment method: send cash.

Yes, cash is great, but it's pretty clear that most first world governments are trying to get rid of cash. And it's pretty inconvenient, especially since you need to trust the recipient.

Crypto currencies being volatile is not inherent in the technology. You can easily imagine a crypto currency pegged to something like gold, ideally not run by scammers like in the case of tether. The purchase history is also a non-argument, that's not inherent in the concept of a crypto currency.

Also, the problem with inflation is not really volatility as such, it's depreciation. Having a currency that jumps up and down by a factor of 2 like bitcoin in the last year is still better than one that melts away, so if BTC can remain as "stable" as it is now that would be pretty acceptable

> Crypto currencies being volatile is not inherent in the technology

How so? It has no control mechanism to prevent it. I get that the brakes (central banks) don't always work perfectly, but removing them entirely is an odd choice.

> Having a currency that jumps up and down by a factor of 2 like bitcoin in the last year is still better than one that melts away

To whom? When?

> You can easily imagine [...], that's not inherent in the concept of a crypto currency

It's easy to win an argument when you compare a real world system to one that doesn't exist.

We're discussing the technology of crypto currencies, not just the currencies that exist now. It wouldn't be hard to make a utility coin that gives you something real, but virtual, like megabytes of data on your phone plan, domain hosting, virtual goods in games to the value of 1 dollar etc. Such a coin would not be as volatile as one that is untethered from anything tangible, like Bitcoin.

> To whom? When?

To most people. Look at BTC/USD for the last year, and then look at a currency during hyperinflation, that loses 10% a day, every day. Which would you rather hold?

On one side you cherry pick the failures of a system in use, and on the other you tout the benefits of something that could be. Do you see why this is not a fair comparison?

Speaking of cherry picking, the hyperinflation events that you mention happened a few times over centuries, but they happen on a quarterly basis in cryptoland. And somehow that makes crypto better?

How does "everyone" benefit from a massively unstable currency? Who actually desires money that can double and halve in value overnight, and why?

I guess you're replying to the wrong person. I clearly said that for "most people" it's NOT worth it. And I haven't cherry picked any failures in the current system. I'm not a crypto proponent. I don't own any crypto, I'm definitely not saying we should replace dollars with crypto.

> Who actually desires money that can double and halve in value overnight, and why?

As I said twice above, if you live in Zimbabwe, or even Argentina, bitcoin is probably preferable to the state currency. That's really all I'm saying. Technical hyperinflation is not all that common perhaps, but even at 10-20% a month it gets hard.

> > But even if all code was without mistakes, blockchains can’t do anything against threats like scams, fraud, hacking of devices with keys for the blochain or just plain old typos in a coin transfer.

> I don't think protection against human-factor scams and frauds was ever a goal, you certainly never hear it as an argument.

The problem is any payment system DOES need that. And the competition has it.

Abstract goals without connection to real life needs are nice. Not useful.

I don't agree at all. It is definitely a nice feature, but as with everything else, it's a trade-off. Most people, today, want these features, but it's definitely not true that a payment system "has to" have them. Cash largely doesn't.

It's like saying that any messaging system needs to be traceable, so you can see who sent you something. That is convenient and useful, but we survived until email without it.

> Cash largely doesn't.

If you get a contract/receipts you can use the legal system to attempt to recover your cash. With blockchain that's technically impossible?

There recently was a piece of news about some blockchain believers who locked themselves out of 20 million in <random crypto coin> because they used a "smart contract" and their code was buggy. Both the payer and the payee would like the transaction to go through but neither can do anything about it.

Edit: random link

https://vnexplorer.net/aku-ethereum-nft-launch-ends-with-34m...

How would a cryptocurrency be different here? If the counterparty is known you can still go after them via the legal system. If they are unknown, there would be no way of recovering the cash either.

>I don't think protection against human-factor scams and frauds was ever a goal, you certainly never hear it as an argument.

Doesn't matter if "it was a goal".

It should have been a goal, and it's necessary (doesn't have to be perfect, but absolutely has to exist) for anything wanting to be used as a means of exchange in a modern economy, outside of Mad Max situations and speculation.

>Clearly people feel it is a price worth paying.

People felt that for smoking too. Then they didn't. And tons of people are just misinformed with Amway-style proselitization, and when they lose money without recourse they are surprised...

> It should have been a goal, and it's necessary (doesn't have to be perfect, but absolutely has to exist) for anything wanting to be used as a means of exchange in a modern economy, outside of Mad Max situations and speculation.

Why are you the one to decide what should have been a goal? And aren't you aware that a lot of people do live in Mad Max like scenarios? Even in a modern country like Argentina the currency is in free fall, not to mention many unstable African countries.

Not to mention that Trudeau let the cat out of the bag, you can't even trust that teddybear of a country with your money if you say something the government doesn't like.

>Why are you the one to decide what should have been a goal?

Notice how this is an absurd strawman. Also how this is not an argument.

I'm not claiming "I am the one to decide", if it wasn't obvious.

I'm stating my opinion on what should have been decided, followed by some arguments/qualifiers on where/why it should be applicable.

Generally, when people say something, it's their opinion. No clarification is required on that, it's a convention of human discussion. Even though people state things should be X or Y, they don't necessarily make the claim that they are the sole arbitrers of the ultimate authority on a subject: they convey their take on what should be/have been done.

>And aren't you aware that a lot of people do live in Mad Max like scenarios? Even in a modern country like Argentina the currency is in free fall, not to mention many unstable African countries

We've had inflation and catastrophes and we managed to move value without the blockchain.

>Not to mention that Trudeau let the cat out of the bag, you can't even trust that teddybear of a country with your money if you say something the government doesn't like.

You can trust the blockchain even less then.

> We've had inflation and catastrophes and we managed to move value without the blockchain.

Nobody claims that life is impossible without crypto, we were talking about reasons and situations where it makes sense, and one example is when fiat currencies fail or are inflated away. No, it's not the only solution, but it's a solution.

>> Not to mention that Trudeau let the cat out of the bag, you can't even trust that teddybear of a country with your money if you say something the government doesn't like.

> You can trust the blockchain even less then.

That's objectively false. Bitcoin, for example, is not controlled by any single entity, especially not any political entity, so obviously you can trust "the blockchain" not to steal your money for supporting the wrong politics, that can't even happen in theory. But we did just see it happen in the regular banking system in a supposedly free democracy.

> It can be used for storing value

It can only do this for as long as ownership of a certain private key is valuable. Some keys have shown to hold value for ~10 years (those tied to the BTC ticker symbol), but some keys have gone from valuable to worthless pretty quick. The fact that you have to bet on holding the right kind of private key I think makes it pretty clear that blockchains do not, in fact, reliably store value.

> transferring value in a decentralised way

There are no longer any decentralized blockchains that also have significant value (ie. worth transferring). For instance, the figurehead known as Bitcoin has been centralized for a while [0].

[0] https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2015/07/28/analyzing-the-2013-...

Coordination in rollling out a bugfix is not a strong indication of bitcoin being centralized. There are certainly aspects where bitcoin is not as decentralized as one would hope, but overall and when compared against alternatives, it's pretty decentralized.

> Coordination in rollling out a bugfix is not a strong indication of bitcoin being centralized.

It depends on how many parties, relative to the whole, are coordinating. It is a very strong indication when 2 devs are coordinating a fundamental decision for thousands of people.

You have to realize also that "bugfix" is subjective to human judgement. It's often unclear whether a given behavior is truly contrary to intent or not, and it takes humans in authority to judge this for the rest to avoid perpetual conflict.

> I don't think protection against human-factor scams and frauds was ever a goal, you certainly never hear it as an argument.

And there's a reason you never hear it as an argument - the lack of such fundamental protection is a massive weakness of these blockchain currencies. The extremely technical savvy early adopters do not care, because evading authorities is actually an objective and they profit regardless as long as the value of their holdings goes up, but protecting normies from scams is actually kind of important if you want to be used as a "normal" currency rather than a speculative asset.

A central authority with the ability to deal with bad actors is a fundamental aspect of making fiat currency actually work in the real world.

>This is a well-known, probably inevitable effect of what is probably the main point of using blockchains. Clearly people feel it is a price worth paying.

If people really thought it were a price worth paying, everyone would be using Ethereum Classic instead of Ethereum.

One thing people forget, or just plain do not know, is that Bitcoin has "smart contracts" (at least it had them when one BTC was around 0.2€ ... haven't checked in much after that).

One example of those smart contracts was involving a trusted third party into a payment. The smart contract in that payment would only clear if two parties signed off on the payment. That's definitely a way to avoid fraud.

Assuming that you can trust the "smart contracts". And I think there's a lot of reasons why such trust is not warranted.

This is true. I suppose what is important to me is that cryptocurrencies solve the problem that they set out to solve, but the problem they have defined seems to be based on a lot of shaky premises (e.g. a volatile, deflationary currency is useful) and set in a world that doesn't exist (one with limitless green energy and no fraud).

Yeah, sounds like this guy needs to just not use the internet or computers at all. That is where almost all scams originate. Don't bother even talking to people. When the internet was created, no one knew the power. Maybe some day soon we will be able to employ this tech to further humanity.

> Clearly people feel it is a price worth paying.

I was never asked and I really don't think phone scams and ransomware, which are both enabled by cryto currency, is a price worth paying. In fact, I think it's a major disservice to humanity really.

Just because it's getting ignored, doesn't mean it doesn't matter.

I bring that up on all Blockchain discussions.

> Normally, cases of fraud or mistakes could be rectified or reverted by the bank or similar institutions after a review of the situation by humans.

This "could" happen, but in practice it rarely happens because the money has moved on as soon as it hits the account. Additionally, for many types of fraud, there has to be an actual court order to get a bank to take action. So the argument is predicated on a false assumption.

Actually reversals frequently happen. For example, a multi day delay is built into ACH, partly for this exact reason. Also, with credit cards and some flavors of bank transactions you as the end user are protected against fraud, even if (yes)the money has already moved on, you are made whole. The loss is absorbed by the bank. By absorbed, of course I mean you've paid for that service with various fees which amount to a kind of insurance. (Nothing really comes "for free".)

But yes, there are plenty of other types of transactions, like gift card scams, that you would not be made whole for.

I cannot judge the American banking situation but I can attest to the fact that transactions are reverted constantly in Europe. The reason for this is the SEPA direct debit system where debitors can directly charge an account via SEPA direct debit and fraud does happen. For that reason banks are very happy to reverse the transaction and it's not at all a unique situation.

I guess it differs by geography, but here in Sweden, when I accidentally transferred €10k to an old account that didn't exist anymore I wasn't the least bit concerned that the money would get lost. I would have been extremely surprised if they hadn't given me the money back.

That's the advantage of a high trust society. Heck, once an ATM retracted my cash because I wasn't quick enough, I called the bank and they just credited my account with the €300 or whatever it was. No questions asked.

Do you have a source for that?

In my experience transfers are pretty much always successfully reversed.

Hell, when one of the PirateBay founders hacked a bank and tried to rob it they actually reversed/prevented most of that, even though he had full access to the bank mainframe. He only managed to extract a couple of thousand that his accomplices took out of an ATM, IIRC.

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