You mean fiat?
Thats not new at all. We've used it for decades now it only leads to boom and bust cycles, while pushing the power of work done into the hands of people who didn't do the work.
Thats not new at all. We've used it for decades now it only leads to boom and bust cycles, while pushing the power of work done into the hands of people who didn't do the work.
Thats a feature not a bug. Not your keys not your coin. Neither scammers nor government can take it from you without you voluntarily giving it up.
Which makes "proof of a monopoly on the use of violence" obsolete since no amount of force can pry it from your dead body.
Also the Ethereum DAO debacle proves that crypto needed less than ten years for "too big to fail" (preferential treatment for the sufficiently influential) to materialize and essentially undermine all promises of cryptocurrency. You can get your money back when you're scammed or hacked, provided you have enough influential friends.
No there isn't, because you don't know how much I have. I can always give up some and claim I gave up everything. To do what you claim you literally need to be omniscient. And if you are, then at that point you wouldn't be prying it from me.
See my comment to someone else posting https://xkcd.com/538/.
For the vast majority of people, it's not too hard to make an educated guess about their wealth based on their house, their car, the area they live, their lifestyle, their age, their job, etc. For most people, this information isn't hard to find. If you're torturing them to give you access to their crypto wallets, and they give up less than you expected, you just keep torturing. You may argue that people should be protective of this information, but they aren't and will probably never be.
(As an aside, I don't actually believe torture is a viable large-scale threat to cryptocurrency. Pointlessness is though.)
Which means gang members are suddenly going to torture anyone who lives in Beverly Hills because they must have a bitcoin.
Assuming you are on tech worker salary, you should be buying guns to protect yourself from these gang members who are coming after the bitcoin they assert you have which they know you do because they said so.
Also keep in mind, some of the poorest people are the ones that yolo invest in crypto and post instagrams of lambos they rent. Gang members are gonna have one heck of a time trying to get those people's bitcoin before realizing the upside down toothless crypto guru actually controls nothing and is actually deep in the red. Which is to say, public appearances are not indicative of true wealth.
So here's the question, what metrics are you looking for as a torturer looking for torture acquired bitcoin? Lambos on instagram? Three story homes in beverly hills? Jpegs of a monkey on a twitter profile?
The reason I say that trying to pry bitcoin out of someone that has it properly guarded is like walking around the earth tapping rocks hoping to find one that turns into gold is because it requires mind reading technology that hasn't been invented. Its a losing game that puts the assailant at legal risk for close to little chance of winning anything at all. Huge downside, practically zero upside.
I'll admit to one thing though. We are going to see more and more and more of these torturers or scammers or crypto criminals and they are going to try harder and harder and harder. But again, properly defended means huge downsides and practically zero upside for them. But its not gonna stop them from trying, and its not gonna stop the hordes of scammers and torturers and crypto criminals from coming.
Pretty much.
Or you could hire some people to do the security for you. Naturally they will want some money.
But now you’re scaring all the people around you because the security answers to you alone, and you’re scared yourself because the people richer than you have more and better security, and people without enough to hire any security keep disappearing — some dead, some just leave because it’s unsafe — and so you all decide to hire them collectively and pay collectively and oh look you’ve invented taxation and a police force and now you don’t need a trustless payment system but you do need an accountant.
> Thats a feature not a bug.
This is a hilarious admission that cryptocurrency is designed for malicious actors. Anyone altruistic would consider lack of recourse for scam victims to be at least an unfortunate consequence of the system design. But a “feature”? Only the scammer or their associate would view it like that
What exactly do you think a scam is?
That’s a very short list.
What do you call it when someone offers goods or services, but does not deliver them? Or delivers less than advertised? Or sends official-looking demands for payment of parking/speeding fines without due authority? Or sends a fake invoice, based on a real invoice, at the time a customer is expecting and for the amount expected, but with a different receiver?
I would call each of things “scams”.
All of them have happened.
A good system needs a way to make people whole when they have been wronged.
100 people in a room. All of them might have bitcoin. None might have bitcoin. One might have bitcoin. Five might have bitcoin. 99 might have bitcoin. Two might have bitcoin. One guy might have heard of bitcoin.
Good luck rubber hosing their bitcoin.
For example, you hold 100 bitcoins. Randall Munroe's wrench hacker holds you up for bitcoin because he knows you have some. You give him 0.1 from an address. He lets you go. You keep 99.9 of your bitcoins, but your attacker thinks he took got the whole bag.
Lack of provability means the attacker may never believe you, in which case you’re now dead as well as broke.
If someone has a monopoly on violence, they can pre-commit to massive retribution against anyone who does this. They also get to define what money is, and have a reason to want to.
If nobody has a monopoly on violence, nobody is working minimum wage at Wendy’s because there is neither a minimum wage nor a Wendy’s nor a society capable of supporting a Wendy’s.
And so are you. Doesn't matter if you don't actually have a bitcoin. Lack of provability means the attacker says you have a bitcoin so therefore you have a bitcoin.
You are pinata by decree of the assailant and nothing else. Therefore due to the
> Lack of provability means the attacker may never believe you, in which case you’re now dead as well as broke.
... regardless of whether or not you owned any bitcoin.
Which means everyone regardless of owning or hating bitcoin are now dead because gangmembers say everyone they say so has bitcoin now has bitcoin. I guess we're all dead.
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> If someone has a monopoly on violence, they can pre-commit to massive retribution against anyone who does this. They also get to define what money is, and have a reason to want to.
And they can also decree who is evil and must be purified. Wether its afghanis, or uyghurs, or jews. They can also decree users with names staring with ben need to be tickle tortured for 20 years.
> If nobody has a monopoly on violence, nobody is working minimum wage at Wendy’s because there is neither a minimum wage nor a Wendy’s nor a society capable of supporting a Wendy’s.
You're getting into economic theory here, which theorists have written volumes of books about, but the short of this is that you're reaching for conclusions without any supporting arguments.
Keeping your crypto holdings secret would appear to be basic OpSec, just as one would do if you had to carry significant cash, precious metals, gemstones...
Hard to brag about your holdings on social media if you're not allowed to tell anyone, though.
Keep in mind, no one knows if this rock prints money or if that other rock prints money. One of the rocks you've been told can print money but you dont know which one. How many rocks are you going to whack? or maybe its just easier to drive an uber and make money.