Still waiting to see even one single useful use case for cryptocurrency and block-chain storage.
It's all a grift to take money away from stupid retail investors trying to get rich quick.
It's all a grift to take money away from stupid retail investors trying to get rich quick.
That's about it though.
Unless you mined the BTC yourself from a VPN that doesn't keep logs, or acquired it directly from someone else who didn't know you, the BTC would be traceable to you now (though it may still require coordination of multiple state-level interests which is typically reserved for very high-interest targets)
Opsec was still weak in terms of nation state actors but I was doing something legal, I just wanted to minimize the chance of random hassle.
Afghanistan: https://theintercept.com/2022/01/19/crypto-afghanistan-sanct...
Argentina: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-60912789
Russia: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/navalny-ally-urges-dono...
Lebanon: https://www.reuters.com/article/lebanon-crypto-currency-yout...
Nigeria: https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2020/10/16/nigerian-banks-shut...
Ukraine: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/23/ukrainian-flees-to-poland-wi...
I don’t like these companies and will try to not use them at all. Yes, I’m paying a price for it, but imo it’s worth it.
Though this does highlight one of the things that's never made sense to me about this entire ecosystem. Something that's a high-yield asset is a terrible currency because you're basically punishing your future self for spending it on mundane stuff.
Honestly, I’d also prefer to use GNU Taler instead of bitcoin, but unfortunately GNU Taler never gained any traction.
It’s a payment protocol for arbitrary assets. You can pay in Bitcoin via Taler. I don’t think it will gain traction. The best payment protocol for Bitcoin today is Lightning Network, and is as open, and more sophisticated than GNU Taler ever was.
Yes, I ack that BTC is pubkeyhash and scripthash pseudononymous are not private.
Other PoS shitcoins could be considered high yield, in fact the yield is algorithmic and is independent of market value (which is an odd concept, as other reg high yield products will return capital explicitly to satisfy a yield.)
Taken further, yield may well be the “scam”. Bitcoin provides none of this.
Overall, no it isn't.
Not necessarily. There are cryptocurrencies that get around this by using ZKP to obscure senders, receivers, and amounts.
The main one would be near instant settlement. If I make a transaction on Bitcoin, that transaction is completely settled and verified and approved over a hundred thousands times within an hour.
All parties can trust that the transaction happened and everyone has their money. That's not possible in today's financial systems. We don't even have settlements on weekends.
If you sell a stock on Friday, you aren't going to get your money until Wednesday at the earliest. We don't even have T+1 settlement in the US yet lol.
Why do business days exist in todays financial system. If I transfer money from my brokerage on Friday why can I get access to that money right away instead of waiting over the weekend.
Same onus.
By default, no. If you’re an idiot and put yourself in a place where you need instantaneous settlement, you can get it. Hilariously, their extravagant cost was apparently too low. Post crypto, they index to crypto trading fees. These are at least quadruple their historic spreads. I don’t believe anyone but the crypto bros demand it in real markets.
If their was no demand, then why does PayPal, Square, and other FinTech companies make billions a year offer you to instant deposit money into your bank account lol.
If the US banking system had instant settlement Venmo, Cash App and other apps wouldn't be in business because you could just send the money through your bank for free instead of using Mastercard or Visa.
Nope. No loans. You can demand physical settlement on stocks, end of day. Naked shorters (MMs) have to do this from time to time. It’s now more expensive because: idiots. Which suits Wall Street just fine.
> why does PayPal, Square, and other FinTech companies make billions a year offer you to instant deposit money into your bank account
They’re lending you money. No “lol” needed. (Am I misinterpreting this?)
> other apps wouldn't be in business because you could just send the money through your bank for free instead of using Mastercard or Visa
Trusted versus untrusted counterparty. I’m not wiring my hotel because I want AmEx behind me.
Sure. Yes. Fine. A worthless difference. But yet. I won’t wire my hotel’s bank.
I will wire my lawyer or accountant. (Sorry, their banks.) Wires which process instantly and for free. But virtually irreversibly, and so at higher risk for me. (Also, AmEx gives me goodies. Same reason I don’t swipe my debit card.)
Switching to blockchain isn't any easier than simply improving the existing system.
Have you ever attempted to send shares overseas? 2 weeks minimum, up to 3 months in some of my cases, and endless paperwork and emails. On blockchains it takes less than a minute.
All of finance should be fast and globally accessible, money is only the most basic use case.
No, it's because in the years of financial market experience, people realise the risks don't outweigh the rewards.
Cryptocurrencies and block chain isn't solving a problem, it's just spruiking the pro's side of a pro's and con's decision.
Send money across the world in minutes without haveing to pay a corporation is a useful feature that could be adopted by the US financial system.
Instant deposit money into any bank account is a useful feature.
PayPal makes billions offering this service, when it could be a feature of the financial system.
There are features of cryptocurrencies that would actually be useful in today's financial services.
The main one would be near instant settlement.
PayPal makes billions offering this service, when it could be a feature of the financial system.
You seem to be doing this weird thing where you're trying to imply cryptocurrency is solving a problem, but still wanting to have take backs when people say "cryptocurrency doesn't solve this problem".
If your position is that instant transfer would be useful, there is no reason we don't have that already at a technical level. It's purely a financial system construct that we wait and have settlement periods for the ability to reverse transactions, have added security, etc.
If your position is that cryptocurrency somehow solves a technical problem, I'd be interested to hear what you think that technical problem is.
Sure it has limitations, but the base network layer is there and functioning (with 100% uptime) for anyone to use without needing to ask for permission. That's the value.
How is this any different than what PayPal has been offering since 1998?
For example the other week I wanted to buy some Series I savings bonds. This involved first freeing up some capital by selling some index funds. I put the order in Friday night and had to wait until Monday morning for the trade to be executed. Then I had to wait until Wednesday for the cash to become available in the brokerage account. I transfer the cash to my checking account, and the ACH doesn't clear until Friday morning. I finally go to make the purchase on Treasury Direct, and it tells me the order won't go through until the next business day (Tuesday because Monday is a holiday). All told it took me 11 days and countless time fumbling around the outdated and laggy web applications of three different financial institutions.
In contrast the other day I unstaked some USDC I had earning yield in Curve, bridged it from Ethereum to the Polygon, converted it to MATIC tokens using Uniswap, then staked those tokens to earn yield in Lido. The entire chain of transactions took no more than 5 minutes. Didn't have to create an account or login into any of those platforms. Everything went through Metamask connected to an ultra secure hardware wallet.
I'd draw the analogy of how a lot of people from the older generation missed the explosion of mobile convenience apps tens years ago. I can recall my parents asking "why do you need an app to make a restaurant reservation, what's the big deal with just calling the restaurant." And I think the point is that consumers often treat frictions as a given until they actually have an experience where those frictions are removed. Then they have a really hard time going back to the old way.
Next, I can transfer money in Europe (SEPA) settling immediately, for a tiny fee ($0.30 or so).
Finally, I've had BTC transactions in the mempool for 16 hours or more, hanging in there without any confirm. They might just drop out, or they might eventually be included in a block - who knows. Not exactly a predictable and reliable money transfer.
...and then what?
This is the first story I've heard like this.
Sending funds to people outside of the country without being reliant on gatekeepers is extremely useful. This is especially true if you want to send funds to people and/or organizations being blackballed by the US financial establishment (either because of their function, such as Wikileaks, or their location, for living in a frowned upon country).
I still find it somewhat astounding that people, especially techies, can't see the extreme utility in this function. But, unfortunately, ideology often trumps logic.
Useful because it would have lower administration overhead than one bank maintaining a service for exchanging funds, no concerns about downtime, and all sorts of guarantees about the correctness of balances. Lots of back end software that just doesn’t need to be written or maintained.
Lots of similar usecases where small mostly trusted groups need to keep track of asset transfers or trade between them.
[1] https://www.kaspersky.com/about/press-releases/2015_the-grea...
edit: Suggesting that the interbank system move to crypto on a thread about a massive failed crypto project is a huge failure on reading the room. It's like trying to convince people to buy Titanic II tickets at the funeral for the Titanic I victims or trying to sell a Model 38 to Jacqueline Kennedy on November 23, 1963.
Interbank transfers are very cheap. A lot of central banks have invested heavily in payments systems too (the BoE is one, Faster is very good). But at certain other points, this technology could be very valuable. Two examples that occur to me immediately are pensions and fund administration.
Obviously, Ethereum goes beyond that with a more generalized VM. From what I have seen, this is a ludicrously inefficient way to perform computations. If that is wrong, then maybe there is more. But just blockchain alone will have a huge impact (if you look at back/middle-offices in banks/fund managers/pensions/insurance, I remember working in this area and going to one of the largest pension admins in my country...I remember vividly opening the door to the pig pen, and it was just a sea of people, 95% just responding to very basic customer queries/doing incredibly basic computation work and costing huge amounts of money...because, of course, there is no cost pressure from "customers"...a parallel that more people understand is US healthcare admin, huge inefficiencies, pension admin is like that).
We are not even at day one with this trend. I am sure people will find other applications after, but applying blockchain/distributed storage/distributed computing/whatever to back/middle office in finance will be huge. It also isn't really a question about whether it is going to happen...it will.
How does blockchain solve this?
There are always people pushing generalized "it will be good for this" statements, yet they can never seem to give concrete examples of where blockchain would be a better solution than the current implementation.
All WHAT goes away? You're talking about hordes of people answering customer queries. How the hell does blockchain make that go away?
Yes, blockchain totally solves all these problems...
I worry if people are actually this delusional.
Would it make you worry more or less if they are not delusional but just plainly not thinking?
All of the technology to do away with this exists now and existed before blockchain. But most of these companies haven't implemented because they aren't native tech companies (I don't think people understand on here, these places don't have any software engineers, they hire consultants, their idea of a "tech guy" is the guy who sorts out the Microsoft licences) and the cost saving is only realised if everyone adopts it.
With blockchain, it allows you to decentralise a whole set of computational logic that was previously performed by hand, and you change how people interact with that.
It all seems totally puzzling...because most people assume that these businesses are already using technology, when they aren't. Blockchain incentivizes business transformation across the supply chain, which allows you to remove cost from almost every level.
The question of actual customer support is not going away, it will never go away. That is what financial advisers are for, they are actual customer support.
Classic HN though, a bunch of people who don't work in an industry pontificating about how that industry works...genius.
It is already happening.
But they’re already trusted partners who already have a functioning settlement mechanism that already has provisions for reversing transactions. Jamming a blockchain on top of this solves nothing not already solved.
The claim that this would reduce maintenance overhead is hogwash – we’ve seen an unending litany of unexpected bugs in blockchain protocols and smart contracts, while the existing transfer mechanisms are already debugged. Trustless mechanisms are harder to get right than trust-based ones, not easier.
All I’m talking about is a simple ledger, not the fancy smart contact nonsense.
You wrote:
> > A private “coin” between mostly trusted partners with provisions for reversing transactions as needed.
Either you’re doing that with a smart contract, or you’re just plain trusting the other people to reverse it when asked, in which case there’s zero reason to be using a blockchain to begin with.
You don’t want or need trustless ledgers to interact with trusted parties - that’s a big increase in complexity for zero gain.
It’s just a ledger, it doesn’t matter at all how big the numbers are. It’s not real money just a record of balances.
I’m not talking about a cryptocurrency, just a blockchain as a replacement for a database table, essentially a different api that ran distributed instead of on some ancient mainframe.
If we need dozens of specific purpose ledgers between banks, what's wrong with database tables running on ancient mainframes, and how would dozens of different blockchains solve that specific problem?
Suppose you and I are large institutions. I owe you $10bn today. You owe me 10bn EUR today. I owe you some currencies tomorrow, and you owe me some tomorrow, etc. (I may also owe you a bunch of future corn, you may owe me some shares of Coinbase, etc.).
The practicalities we need to attend to include, at least:
I actually owe you those dollars, and a business decision was made to keep that debt payable today. So I have to convey the dollars to you. Similarly, you need to convey those Euros to me. We can do this by actually transferring them via central bank mechanisms, or I suppose we could have a custodian that operates a blockchain and use that blockchain. I’m unclear how that helps. But keep reading…
There is a risk that one of us will default. If I default before any transactions take place, it’s not a huge deal — I still have my Euros, you still have your dollars, no one is out a huge amount of money, and the lawyers and courts can pick up the pieces later.
But there is also a risk that only one transaction goes through. (Look up Herstatt Bank.) If this happens, then one of us is out $10bn until the law does its thing. That is a big deal. This can be mitigated by atomic multi-currency transactions or maybe by a hypothetical blockchain handling USD and EUR (and Coinbase shares and everything else), but that seems every bit as hard as getting the central banks to use the same database, if not harder. [0]. Or they can use an escrow service like CLS, which works without a blockchain.
[0] Blockchains perform spectacularly poorly in the event of a network partition. Does anyone really think it would be wise for, say, the central banks of the US and Russia to allow currency to move in the same blockchain or, for that matter, on a POW or PoS blockchain?
They stuck them in there around 2012, during the dust spam (which wasn't dust spam, it was a dos attack which failed)
The use cases are there but you've made up your mind to ignore them and act smug about it.
GLHF!
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32080174
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32094142
Or do those not count?
You are confusing, "groundbreaking" with, "useful and convenient". It is much cheaper, faster and easier to send small international payments via crypto than it is via any legacy financial service - this is beyond dispute.
Let me dispute it then. Try Wise (formerly Transferwise). It is cheap, fast, and easy.
FWIW, I know many people working abroad (from expats to domestic helpers), and none of them use crypto for remittances, as far as I know.
Just checked it out, sending $5 costs at least 13% (they receive $4.33) and doesn't transfer until tomorrow. Some currencies cost far more. Sending $5 to my friend in Brazil would cost a whopping 28% (they receive $3.54). Some currencies don't allow you to send $5, but have minimums that are higher.
Sending $5 of litecoin costs me about .75% (they receive $4.96) and takes anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes.
And although I haven't tried the service, I'm sure they block payments to people and organizations frowned upon by the banking system and the US government. Would my payment to Wikileaks go through? Or the Julian Assange defense fund? I find it highly unlikely.
Finally, individuals like myself who in the past played online poker are blocked from using transfer services like Moneygram and Western Union for engaging in blacklisted behavior. Why would I struggle to enter the walled garden when it is cheaper, faster and easier to use crypto?
>FWIW, I know many people working abroad (from expats to domestic helpers), and none of them use crypto for remittances, as far as I know.
I know dozens of people who work here in New York who use crypto for remittances. In fact, although I don't use it, there is a nearby laundromat with a bitcoin machine that is almost entirely frequented by migrants from South and Central America. Search for "bitcoin machine" in the NY metro area and you will find a huge number of them are located in landromats and bodegas frequented by immigrants who use these machines to send and receive funds.
More charitably you could call them 1. micropayments and 2. disrupting rent-seeking incumbent banks. You use a currency to pay for things, so yeah, the use cases will tend to circle around payments and transferring money. What did you expect, a cure for cancer?
Can the country of Belize claw back their money? It depends where you live, where your NFT collective lives, and the treaties between the countries. If you chose your countries correctly to ransomware. If Eth is fungible currency, then you can claim that just because the 'money' someone stole ended up with you, for a legitimate sale, its not a 'stolen good'.
Maybe in a hundred years we’ll realise they were ahead of their time. When some UN blockchain extends across the solar system. Like how we remember N. Tesla and the 90s’ satellite internet folk. Financially ruined. But cute in their own way.
There are a lot of boomers recapitulating their 90s in crypto. They’re fine. They’re gambling. I have a lot more sympathy for the young people wrapped up in the whirlwind. They’re making me wealthy. But oof, do I wish they’d widen up.
I doubt it. Crypto reached the superbowl and it's incredibly mainstream. If it's trillion dollar use hasn't been found yet (beyond just doing what already exists slightly better / worse) then I doubt it will ever come.
A revolutionary researcher who had the government confiscate all of his valuable work — "cute in their own way"?
I don't know what your point is, but your disrespect is shameful.