Molly White Tracks Crypto Scams. It’s Going Just Great
wired.co.uk
wired.co.uk
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fucked_Company
I guess the more things change, the more they stay the same?
Wayback machine appears to have been removed as part of the publication of the book (guessing). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4021548
The LOC has a different charter - its not trying to be "this is a copy of the full site at the time" but rather a historical documents around specific events ( https://www.loc.gov/web-archives/collections/ ) and has a different charter than the internet archive. https://www.loc.gov/programs/web-archiving/about-this-progra...
A lot of people have a limited set of experiences, such as sending wires or Wise payments to/from a specific country, and it works well for them, without realizing there is an entire world of other scenarios outside of this scope where it is not as well suited.
Better phrasing would be niche legitimate use cases not worth supporting, at least not domestically, if you’re America, the EU, China, India or Japan.
Why not? Having open source protocols that compete with PayPal and VISA and aren’t funded and controlled by central states can be a positive thing.
Sure. That isn't what crypto has become. After ten years, it's fair to call it given the amount of fraud, dishonesty and resource misallocation. Again, not saying ban it. Just tax it, regulate it closely, and keep an eye on the folks doing it to make sure they're focussing on doing it abroad.
To what practical end?
I think exploration should continue. But in the academic, not product, space. Crypto has the potential to be toxic. Licensing regimes for potentially-toxic products is highly precedented.
> Having open source protocols that compete with PayPal and VISA and aren’t funded and controlled by central states can be a positive thing.
I personally like that there is another choice than just yet-another-centralized-and-cumbersome system.
Huge advancements in zero knowledge cryptography have been made in the last year. Ethereum activated Proof of Stake in September. New DeFi primitives are released regularly.
It's actually hard to keep up with all of the research and releases which is why your comment is so perplexing unless it was made in bad faith.
What people mean here is that general innovation is dead in token industry, finding a new niches, new industries. All attempts have dies in 2018 or so. Decentralized storage, decentralized compute (with blockchain), decentralized LoRaWan, decentralized identities, decentralized off-chain ownership and so on and so forth. All failed spectacularly.
The only innovation remaining is simply more advanced instruments for scammers and illegal finance operations. That is innovation, but not particularly interesting for mass market.
Strong emphasis on "domestically". If you want to send money from one of those entities to another one, it gets hairy quite fast. I remember a time before SEPA and it was horrifying.
You can still have horrifying experiences with SEPA today. A German company once required that I send them CHF to their German IBAN. Which breaks several of the conditions for smooth SEPA transactions. IIRC for something like 30 Euro in value I had to pay 10 Euro in fees.
Wordwide is also problematic. If you can PayPal helps, but PayPal is its own hell, as many shop owners know. Credit Cards work but I can't send money via CC to a friend on the other side of the world, or can I?
I don't think Bitcoin or crypto is it but it would really be beneficial if we had some kind of money that is a first class citizen of the internet.
And that transaction is completely public, and can be traced back to both of you.
Or you never get the money out, but suddenly have a bunch of stuff and you get hit with taxes you can't pay because you didn't take the money out.
Countries aren't just going to let people evade AML because it finances stuff much worse than Johnny buying weed from a guy in Mexico, it finances terrorism and it's infinitely easier to follow the money than anything else.
Anything that gets big will get sued to hell and it's ridiculous to think otherwise.
If they do outright ban transaction privacy, at least that would involve explicit legislation with some risk of backlash - seems preferable to the status quo where the privacy violations are more covert.
When regulation kicks in (and it will — no government wants its citizens to be fleeced by rogue nations like DPRK and Russia), are there really any legitimate use-cases?
Even if your sending end is regulated, at the other end, there has to be a regulated bank. If not, the person who is receiving the "money" could be breaking their country's laws. Cryptocurrencies don't magically change that. Otherwise, PayPal or Venmo could allow accounts to be created for those people in US dollars and do the job even more inexpensively.
Are you referring to some specific regulation here?
Country A: person uses government regulated exchange/on-ramp to acquire crypto or mines it.
Country B: person receives crypto and trades it for local currency using a government regulated exchange
Which specific laws or regulations are being broken from which specific countries?
It doesn't work to tell the government that it isn't currency, they will just patiently explain to you that they decide that.
Did you really think that getting around money laundering laws is as easy as converting to nonmonetary assets before transfer?
Almost all delayed transactions are due to fraud. The delay is often implemented to protect the sender from losing funds.
How does crypto handle fraud?
[1] https://www.westernunion.com/us/en/restrictions-money-in-min...
> How does crypto handle fraud?
Not every transactional system needs to adhere to the same set of antiquated and arduous AML checks and balances; which often break (either by allowing fraud to occur or incorrectly flagging and delaying valid transactions). For comparison, Cash App has no dispute mechanism:
https://cash.app/help/us/en-us/6501-sent-money-to-the-wrong-...
Cash App is US only and thus doesn't apply to your initial comment. Let's stay on topic please. Thank you.
Reiterating what I wrote in another comment, since you seem to be viewing this solely from your own experience:
> A lot of people have a limited set of experiences, such as sending wires or Wise payments to/from a specific country, and it works well for them, without realizing there is an entire world of other scenarios outside of this scope where it is not as well suited.
And Cash App is just an example; people are happy to send money with it, despite the lack of dispute and reversibility. Many people have friends and family across the world now and would probably be fine sending money to them without strict, slow, and costly AML checks on every transaction.
So the real question is: what is the technological benefit offered by decentralized ledger-type technologies versus traditional ones? The answer for many is that the technology is much worse in fundamental ways. Additionally the governance issues of a decentralized system or organization are very challenging to address.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_Action_Task_Force
As to your fundamental question, the above might already hint at it: decentralization. It’s an open source spec; shared and unified across the globe, that is not in the control of any one state government or private company. Other features like near-instant settlement times, programmability, 100% uptime, privacy (ZKP), permissionless usage, minimal transaction fees (L2)—these are all practical bonuses that do improve on the status quo in today’s payment processors.
What part of the article or Molly White's coverage are you referring to?
There is no need to kid ourselves here anymore to even entertain crypto.
Crypto is a complete scam, with no legitimate or legal use case and nothing else to offer anybody.
I only wish crypto died sooner and that nobody uses it.
We have other systems that are more robust than crypto that is used in the order of hundreds of millions such as UPI, PIX, Wise, Mpesa, Sendwave, etc that has time and time again proved to be better than crypto.
FedNow is coming in a months time so it should hasten crypto’s inevitable downfall faster.
I'm not sure what fraction of HN is between 15 and 35 years old, but it's probably pretty high. Lots of people want to get a career in the new and exciting thing.
(I jest, but I do think there's some truth at the core here)
I just find it so funny, almost like someone did a s/crypto/ai in the uberelite techie hivemind.
Media surfaces to the top any subject which draws attention.
I'm not surprised, I am just disappointed. Perhaps it's ego, but I expect better out of hn participants.
In recent years I have worked quite hard to rid myself of such thinking, in favor of a more positive outlook, even if it's slightly forced.
As a result, I've found myself much more at peace with the world, and generally in a better mood. I'd like to think I'm a better version of myself sans cynicism but maintain a healthy dose of skepticism. I'm not sure I bought in at first, but I've slowly come to realize the benefit of actively acknowledging goodness. +1 for "fake it til ya make it."
That said, there's certainly a significant part of my psyche with which the sentiment of the law resonates.
There's a drive to pioneer, seek thrills, find adventure, take risk, and compete. If a culture has healthy outlets for that drive, then it can lead to incredible innovation, discovery, and harnessing new resources. How many new islands, foods, tools, drugs, etc. were found by someone who just said "fuck it" and went for it?
But when that drive has no healthy outlet, what you instead see is risk-taking turned to destructive ends. We've mapped the whole Earth, space is too expensive, most of the dangerous blue collar jobs have (rightly!) been made safer or automated, and the US's past several decades of forever wars have clearly become less and less morally justified.
So what we see is many young men striving to satisfy that desire any way they can. Things like:
* Treating crypto as a new unexplored frontier where they might get rich.
* Likewise now generative AI.
* Escaping into gaming where they can at least experience a simulation of the kind of risk, thrill-seeking, and glory they crave. Then GamerGate happened where some men lashed out at women who they felt were threatening that space where they could virtually experience that side of themselves.
* Young Trump voters who voted for him specifically as destructive wildcard to break down institutions. Because a world that is more chaotic and dangerous is a world better suited to their desires.
* Further, the fascination and trend around doomsday preppers, apocalyptic media, militias, etc. A segment of the population are obsessed with the world falling apart because maybe in the resulting chaos they can (re)build something.
This is a generalization, obviously, but I tend to think of young single men like this as the TNT of society: incredibly powerful and useful when applied well, but destructive otherwise.
> ...
> This is a generalization, obviously, but I tend to think of young single men like this as the TNT of society: incredibly powerful and useful when applied well, but destructive otherwise.
---
(Bare branches refers to branches of the family tree where there's an unmarried male in a society where the male/female ratio is significantly distorted - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guang_Gun )
https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/media/docum...
> Missing Women and Bare Branches: Gender Balance and Conflict
> We must also examine the reaction of the government. Historically, we have found that as governments become aware of the negative consequences of a growing number of bare branches, most governments are motivated to do something. In the past, “doing something” meant thinning the numbers of bare branches, whether through fighting, sponsoring the construction of large public works necessitating dangerous manual labor, exporting them to less populated areas, or co-opting them into the military or police. One 16th century Portuguese monarch sent his army, composed primarily of noble and non-noble bare branches, on one of the later crusades to avoid a crisis of governance; more than 25 percent of that army never returned, and many others were seriously wounded (Boone, 1983, 1986).
> We find that the need to control the rising instability created by the increasing numbers of bare branches has led governments to favor more authoritarian approaches to internal governance and less benign international presences. In many ways, a society’s prospects for democracy and peace are diminished in step with the devaluation of daughters.
I would amend this to say "Because they believe a world..."
You kind of hit on it with your statements about doomsday preppers.
All of which I find hilarious. Apocalypse proponents, doomsday preppers, accelerationists, anarcho-anything, etc.
People are trying to prepare for an event that by its very definition is unimaginably catastrophic. We don't even know what that event will be. Or if survival is possible or even desirable.
People think that because they want a thing, that they're in a better position to exploit that thing. Sorry, Littlefingers, chaos is not a ladder. It's just chaos.
Honest question are you legitimately excited for FedNow? What problem will it solve?
What does FedNow have to do with cryptos downfall? Does FedNow fix our 120% debt to gdp ratio? Estimates of inflation required to get our debt to gdp back to 50% is 4-5 years of 12-20% inflation.
You don't want inflation? Well then I guess the US is going to default on our loans. 98% of countries in the last 120 years that had a debt to gdp of 130% has either defaulted or had massive inflation (only exception is Japan which is still in progress, currently holding off because its positive NIIP, US has negative NIIP).
For the US it's either default, print, or hope for a miracle.
Sounds impressive, but this stat relies heavily on a) developed world nations and b) nations back when we had the inflexible gold standard. The US also benefits dramatically from being able to issue debt in USD, which it controls.
The US can issue debt in USD and even print 1 trillion USD coins. But what happens to the value of the currency when they repeatedly do that?
Crypto (and other assets obviously) can act as a hedge against such bad government behavior.
Thus far, not all that much of consequence.
> Crypto (and other assets obviously) can act as a hedge against such bad government behavior.
Objection, Your Honor. Assumes facts not in evidence.
From Jan 2019 to now we've had 17.4% inflation. Your purchasing power of the money in your bank account has been reduced. How have other assets faired in that time?
> Objection, Your Honor. Assumes facts not in evidence.
Okay longer timeline, if you held dollars in your savings account from Jan 2009 to now (during ZIRP) you've lost 30.5% of your purchasing power. How has the SP500 or houses fared in that time (even ignoring crypto)?
If losing 30% of your purchasing power is no consequence to you, please let me have a not much of consequence portion of your salary, thanks.
One, obviously a policy failure. Two, don’t do this. Bank deposit dollars are optimised for transacting, not long-term value transport. For that, use Treasuries (including inflation-protected ones). It’s not the Falcon 9’s fault that it makes for a bad hammer.
My argument is that assets and crypto is needed to hedge the potential incoming USD destruction. And that because crypto has some nice properties that houses and the SP500 don't, it has a legitimate reason to be a part (even if small) of your hedge.
I don't buy the "Crypto is a complete scam" argument at all.
No depositors lost money. And like, yeah, Treasuries go up and down in price; it's dumb our regulations pretended otherwise. Particularly given the problem was fixed by Basel III.
> assets and crypto is needed to hedge the potential incoming USD destruction
This is gold buggery. Which means gold does a fine enough job.
> don't buy the "Crypto is a complete scam" argument at all
I don't, at least not with certainty. But there is certainty around the prevalence of fraud. That needs to be regulated, which means crypto needs to be taxed to pay for that regulation. Gold bugs are a famously-profitable client group for finance; crypto is the same. Let's put them on the same level.
> This is gold buggery. Which means gold does a fine enough job.
It's really expensive to secure my own gold. I can't easily verify my own gold. I can't easily send my goal in under a minute to help my friends in Venezuela who's government has inflated his money supply by 5,000% and confiscate most of what sent physically or through the banking system. The USG also has a precedent for confiscating everyones gold. I can't take gold with me across a border in an undetectable manner. Sorry but gold is not doing a fine enough job for me and I'd like something a little more advanced and modern.
I understand for us privileged westerners (assumption about you on my part) that this all this seems a little silly, but for my family and friends in situations where their government is behaving really badly, this is serious. And "buy T bills or a house or the sp500" are not the solutions you think they are.
And I hope it doesn't come to the US but it seems a little silly if you are rich enough to not hedge against that possibility, especially given the US financial competency these last two decades.
Gold bugs pay for their own security. Crypto outsources investigation, enforcement and regulation onto the public.
> how is crypto packets flowing preventing you
My taxes pay for investigation and enforcement.
> Don't you wish you could see JP Morgans or the Pentagons books laid bare like the blockchain?
No? J.P. Morgan is audited. Almost nobody dives into their various filings with the SEC, FDIC, Fed, and every state banking and securities regulator. As for the Pentagon, absolutely not–that's a huge national security hole.
> for us privileged westerners (assumption about you on my part) that this all this seems a little silly, but for my family and friends in situations where their government is behaving really badly, this is serious
I don't think it's silly. I just don't think it should be subsidized by us.
> it doesn't come to the US but it seems a little silly if you are rich enough to not hedge against that possibility
It's a common pass-time for the rich. Crypto, like gold buggery, is aimed at soothing an emotional need to hedge. The fact that those with most to lose play by a different playbook should speak for itself.
When I buy a big vault, extra door locks, a pitbull, and a gun to protect the gold I store at home to go full gold buggery, am I paying for the investigation, enforcement, and regulation of gold? This is what I mean by its expensive to secure my own gold.
When I store gold at a business that specializes in such services, am I paying for the investigation, enforcement, and regulation of gold?
If yes for either of these, how am I not paying for that same investigation, enforcement, and regulation of crypto when buying a vault for my crypto or paying one of many such companies to hold it for me?
I don't really get what you are subsidizing that you don't also subsidize for pokemon cards, private equity, or any collectable.
Gold is exempt from sales tax in most US states so I really have no clue what you are on about.
Incase I've missed something, on behalf of all crypto users you have my full permission to stop subsidizing all USG employees trying to investigate, enforce, and regulate crypto.
No, you’re paying to secure it. That minimises the fraud around gold.
> When I store gold at a business that specializes in such services, am I paying for the investigation, enforcement, and regulation of gold?
Id.
> don't really get what you are subsidizing that you don't also subsidize for pokemon cards, private equity, or any collectable
Private equity is subject to some reporting standards under the ‘40 Act because it is a haven for fraudsters. Pokémon cards are not similarly problematic so they’re not. Crypto, like securities and gambling, has proven itself a haven for fraud.
I don’t demonise crypto. But we need visibility, laws and enforcement, as well as a stream of revenue to pay for it.
... I would be a doofus. That's where my emergency fund goes, but that's it.
> From Jan 2019 to now we've had 17.4% inflation. Your purchasing power of the money in your bank account has been reduced. How have other assets faired in that time?
My home value has tripled, and the S&P500 has gone dramatically up. Series I savings bonds are also a useful option if I'm really all that worried about the stuff in savings, as their interest rate is pegged to inflation numbers.
If we're going to carefully pick dates to make our arguments ("Jan 2019 to now" having had some... outlier stuff going on, after all) I'm gonna ask how hedging with crypto starting in April or October of 2021 would've gone. Remind me the purchasing power of a $64k Bitcoin today?
I'm happy you have a home and own some SP500 to offset USD destruction. Not everyone is so fortunate to have access to those markets. I would suggest you look into crypto as part of your hedge against bad USG behavior because it has some nice properties that could uncorrelate it with those assets if things get nasty (90% tax rates, etc).
They are just regurgitating tweets from someone else
To my dismay, I found that wise doesn't do Swift transactions in USD to bank accounts in the USA. I actually thought that was the whole idea behind wise, but apparently not?
The other option was to pay my bank an additional 40€+ fee for each Swift transaction, which is too much if you need to wire money every month to the states. USDC was the cheapest option in the end (Coinbase doesn't charge for SEPA -> Coinbase and the EUR/USDC exchange rate is closely tracking EUR/USD).
I would agree that >99% of the tokens and cryptocurrencies are garbage. But I would be sad to see Bitcoin and Monero dying.
I currently have nothing on my wise account, as I used the different solution I've described above. I will try that next time.
I wanted to to the following:
German Bank -€-> Wise - convert Euro to USD -$-> US Bank.
German Bank to Wise is a SEPA transfer. That worked fine. But it didn’t allow me to send USD to a US bank (only Euros/other currencies). ACH is only available from within the US on wise(?).
Your payment pipelines become less valuable when nobody wants those Liras, Bolivars, Argentine Pesos, etc. transmitted over them.
And if you don't think that the US dollar is at risk of debasing itself, you should qualify why.
It is equally ridiculous that crypto people think that having a fixed supply of something makes it valuable. Oceanfront property in Miami is also limited, but crypto people are not pumping that because they are not invested in Miami oceanfront property.
"Sophisticated investors" never had access to an asset whose supply was predictable (resistant to debasement), but also decentralized and permissionless to participate in. "Sophisticated investors" should probably know their monetary history, including why gold evolved as a world standard until Bretton Woods. And the types of money societies used before that.
> It is equally ridiculous that crypto people think that having a fixed supply of something makes it valuable. Oceanfront property in Miami is also limited, but crypto people are not pumping that because they are not invested in Miami oceanfront property.
Not sure what you mean, the lead up to 2008 was a pretty interesting time for real estate developers, why would crypto people be talking about condos?
Maybe you thing they are wrong for wanting that, because maybe you think the government is a threat to their wealth, and that is fine to have that opinion but the market for "decentralized and permissionless" isn't very big, which is why you don't see much money going into crypto anymore.
Being decentralized means no single party controls it, and thusly no single party can debase it or prevent its distribution. You need to understand why gold is still used as a store of value, and the role of government bonds as safe havens in the modern economy.
You have trust in a system because it works (for you) now, but you're not looking far enough into the future, and you're not weighting risk appropriately.
Crypto isn't just about sending money or making money. This is a completely new "thing", and part of the way its used is redefining what money actually is, based on programmatic protocols, consensus algorithms, etc.
I suggest you have a look at how many people are allowed to merge bitcoins PRs in github
And then your network will compete with all the other open networks and protocols. And may the better ones win.
Why do governments hoard billions of dollars of gold bars in military protected bunkers?
Does it have something to do with store of value, and difficulty in debasing gold?
What I think you're missing the understanding of what money is, and the history of money. This is why gold gets brought up.
In the last some thousand years gold evolved as a world standard for trade. Why? It had some good properties; physically tough and lasting, common enough for people to find / rare enough to be difficult to debase (holds value), you can melt it and shape it (divisible), etc. Gold permeated all societies because it was the "winner" of precious metal monies, and good technology tends to spread, giving it network effects.
Your US dollars were originally just paper notes promising redemption for gold at your bank. We traded those notes around because we had enough trust in a system now for it to be convenient for us.
At some point, governments decided it wanted to they wanted more control over money/economy, and essentially forced a fiat standard on the population. This is the great monetary experiment we are living now.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woods_system
If you can contextualize what money is, the history of money dating back thousands of years, then you can start to see how crypto has a lot of advantages over metal money, as well as fiat money.
Again I'm still not sure why you are trying to convince me that USD is a bad investment. I already said it was at the beginning of this thread.
Having a fixed supply doesn't make something intrinsically valuable. But restricting the supply absolutely does increase price when demand exists.
Deflation can send an economy into a death spiral.
I needed to quickly send some money internationally for a perfectly legal purpose. I have an old Coinbase account I wanted to use for the purpose that I hadn't left any money in (because crypto is not a good investment vehicle). Thanks to changes in KYC laws, I found myself completely unable to do this. I had to give them a very uncomfortable amount of information just to unlock the account (including a scan of my driver's license and my social security number). At this point, they still wouldn't let me deposit any cash without further verification. They then proceeded to refuse to let me verify every payment method I tried using (including debit card, PayPal, checking account... they were "unable to verify" any of them). There was some third party service they wanted to use that would literally log into my bank account to provide verification (??!!), but I drew the line there.
So I just ... gave up. Forget any of the more interesting uses of crypto. We're not even talking gray market goods here (it would be interesting for people who need cheap insulin to be able to order it from international pharmacies in countries with lax laws, for example). We're talking boring ordinary transfers, effectively made impossible by regulation.
And yes, there are a lot of scams in crypto. It's not very economically or environmentally efficient (usually). Maybe it deserves to be regulated out of existence. But I do know that for a while it was able to do some things that were difficult or annoying to do in other ways.
"I've made the perfect platform for criminals, but for some reason there are a lot of people using it for crimes and now law enforcement is shutting me down! This is an outrage!"
This reminds me of why there are so few ways to simply send someone a large file on the Internet. All of the easy ways make it too easy to spread copyrighted worked, so they all need to suck in one way or another to avoid being shut down.
The defenses people give of file transfers, chat encryption, etc etc are pretty straightforward: certain things should be equally usable by both law-abiders and criminals, for both legitimate and illegitimate ends. That kind of broad protection is the only way to insure that the civil liberties of all users are protected. Some of the illegal things that people do with these tools are unfortunate, but protecting them remains worthwhile.
What I'm saying is that the people who invented cryptocurrency believed basically the same thing about finances - that we would be better off treating the ability to transfer money as an absolute right, kind of like Signal treats encrypted messaging as an absolute right. The fact that the government doesn't see this as "legitimate" is kind of the point. (It was illegal to export many forms of encryption for *years.) As someone who at some points has used cryptocurrency for completely legal money transfers, I've directly benefited from the ease of use and simplicity this entailed.
Is it "naive at best" to hope that Signal will indefinitely maintain the property of protecting my chats against intrusion by third parties? Maybe! But that doesn't change the point that the fact that Signal does this is the whole reason I use Signal!
In fact e-gold did all that 20 years ago with a simple centralized ledger.
It’s gambling. It should be regulated and taxed like gambling. It shouldn’t be banned, and academic exploration should be unfettered. But anyone making money off it should be monitored by the public and the law, and pay for that oversight.
This is a downside. But I don’t think it’s a crippling one. Tax and regulate the people proximate to it, and the system should net out.
Something autonomous, expensive, rugged? Talk to the Army. Something that allows no recourse? Probably people outside of the court system.
Crypto makes sense for people who are doing something the government doesn't like, but that isn’t something three-letter agencies are willing to spend billions to fix. So not support terrorism, but possibly extracting currency from a controlled regime. It’s not useless, but it’s not big money, as far as I can tell.
I have friends who got in trouble with their government (the spicy kind of ecologists). They have an interesting project around Crypto: communication to evade surveillance. I’m not sure there are many others legitimate uses. But it’s not zero.
Craigslist--when you go to like, sell your old TV--actively tells people not to accept online payments from people because they can be reversed. Why? Because the risk to someone who has a single TV to sell is very different from the risk to someone selling hundreds of TVs, and so the person you need to protect is the seller, not the buyer.
Also, you can totally build a system on top of crypto platforms that supports reversing transactions: it is, at the end of the day, fully programmable money. It's main claim to fame is that it is decentralized and transparent in implementation, and I'd have thought those would be universally good things, right?
But like, frankly, your position here just sounds like some naive form of how we should refuse to give anyone autonomy (which almost all of these systems provide) or privacy (which the better systems provide) because good people have nothing to hide :(.
Everyone deserves end-to-end encrypted permissionless communication, and the same everyone deserves zero-knowledge protocol permissionless payments.
We have controls on regimes normally because the two are highly correlated.
Crypto lies in stark contrast as a shared and open source protocol across the globe, that is not as easily centrally owned. Whether that is worth the pains of self custody, throughput and volatility is going to depend on who you ask.
You don't have to use a regular bank either you know, cash is way less traceable than Bitcoin.
There are hundreds of wallets, some of them OSS, some of them closed source, some of them homebrew. I have used several different wallets, including some that I have coded myself from lower level cryptographic APIs. This is the beauty of it: users are not limited to MetaMask, just like users are not limited to browsing the web in Chrome - despite it obviously having major market share.
And cash is a poor substitute.
Waving flags for payment systems that enable fascist wannabe dictators to cling on to power - well done.
"FedNow is coming in a months time so it should hasten crypto’s inevitable downfall faster."
You arent even trying to be original here. Wonder which twitter account you stole that from
But I guess I agree that scams are rampant in the crypto space, so maybe the downsides of the tech aren't obvious to everyone, and it is good to have someone explicitly point them out?
this is like calling CP "just a string of ones and zeroes"
Hi Molly. I was listening to Majority Report today and they had their old producer, Matt Binder on. He mentioned interviewing you about Web3 recently.
I had been meaning to reach out. Like many people, I've occasionally popped onto web3isgoinggreat.com to see the latest cringefest in crypto and adjacent to it. Unlike many people, though, I run a software company that builds decentralized applications on blockchain, but tries to be as responsible as possible.
Back in 2018, we raised around a half-million dollars, treating the tokens as securities. With that, we built a lot of Web3 software for communities around the world. We also grew a podcast/show where I interview people like Noam Chomsky, and Patri Friedman (grandson of Milton Friedman), on sociopolitical issues around technology, decentralization, freedom of speech, etc. I also interview community economists, former regulators, some of whom are our advisors.
I was wondering if you'd be interested in coming on the show sometime to discuss what you see in Web3, the good and the bad. This February, I'm doing a panel with Noam Chomsky and David Harvey. I'd love to invite you on the show as well.
There is an important conversation to be had. Sadly, most of the Web3 world has been dominated by ponzi schemes and zero-sum games. But as crazy as it is, there is a real need for open source, decentralized platforms. The alternative is all around us, and it has been problematic. Our public forums are privately owned by small groups which are close with state governments. Twitter is privately owned by Musk, Facebook by Zuck, while WeChat and TikTok had a meteoric rise thanks to the Chinese government. WeChat has all but replaced cash, and the CBDCs only accelerate centralized control of the economy, as well as systems that increasingly coerce individuals, like social credit systems. Our mainstream media is also top-down controlled, and under capitalism, the news anchors are often no more than mouthpieces. This leads to wars, to support for forcible internment and re-education of various groups. So there has to be an open-source, decentralized alternative. On the show, I like to have these conversations and discuss the substance of what is good and bad about the space.
Hello,
I appreciate the interest, but I will respectfully decline.
Alright, sure. Would you be willing to share with me the reason? Is it because we are focused on a positive way forward for cryptocurrencies?
This is what a typical discussion on the show looks like:
1. Crypto and Securities Regulations with Sara Hanks, author of Regulation S at the SEC 2. Voluntary Basic Income with Thomas Greco, community currency economist 3. Web3 Identity and Civic Engagement with Eric Starr and David Boulet
She never replied.
Molly White writes a very one sided blog which any anti-Web3 person can point to. It is like, say, Electronic Intifada or MondoWeiss that anti-zionists can point to.
The point was to relate my experience with trying to reach out and welcome Molly on our show and discuss her thesis vs projects in the web3 space. Believe it or not, most scammers don’t work for 5 years and go $200K into personal debt after the initial money ran out to build an open source platform. Which we released for free on the blockchain and GitHub.
Most scammers take your money to enrich themselves and run.
Spare me your racist bullshit please. It's just a bit funny that this is the same thread where you desperately try to portray yourself as the reasonable person who will talk to all sides.
And btw, I have engaged with both zionists and anti-zionists in good faith.
I wanted to show that Molly White doesn’t seem to be open to a discussion about the broader issues, and her blog is certainly very one-sided, which I actually appreciate (I love one sided stuff, because it tends to go out of its way to find the best arguments for its side, as long as you balance it with the other side). We are in a unique position to share our experience with her.
We spent years quietly building open technology to help people around the world stop relying on centralized entities which clearly is a problem.
We have been seeking out and engaging well-known people in substantive discussions around issues that really matter, — sociopolitical, economic, regulatory — etc.
There are tons of people around the world who engage with us. They would like to see things solved. Both on the left and the right. Here are just a few:
David Harvey
Noam Chomsky
Patri Friedman
Robert Murphy
Sarah Hanks
Richard Heart
The original inventors of
Freenet
Kademlia DHT
Ripple
etc.
This crowd loves someone like Molly White to highlight everything wrong. I was inviting Molly White to come and have a real conversation about real issues, that I highlighted. She refused.
I see the same in, say, rabid democrats vs republicans, left vs right, with their and purity tests and shouting down of opposing views. I respect when the people who speak for them are willing to come and engage in a real discussion, and explore ideas. A few people, like Molly, would rather not.
For years, we have been rather welcoming and eager to find out the pitfalls and responsible solutions. I wish AI shops were like that. But on HN, there are a ton of activists who want to bury anything that is in favor of Web3 even slightly. They do it silently and avoid discussion. And if AI is criticized, they downvote that too.
The activists in the HN ”overton window” these days seem to think that there are no people that n tech working on real Web3 and Web5 projects outside their bubble. They will be proven wrong in 2024 but these trends on HN seems to drown out real substance.
Your implication that Molly is uninterested in "real conversations about real issues" because she turned down your podcast is, ultimately, a projection that confirms your priors.
Take it for what it is: a biased one-sided blog. As I said, I find those to be more valuable than middle-of-the-road ones, because they do more hard-hitting arguments and research. But you have to balance it out by reading other blogs, such as at least CoinDesk or CoinTelegraph or watching CoinBureau. And many people on HN don't. They're happy to be in a bubble.
PS: All those other people I mentioned are likely far more busy than Molly. Noam Chomsky is for sure, I know that. And he's been on my show multiple times:
https://www.reddit.com/r/chomsky/comments/mqfbzk/noam_chomsk...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gv5mI6ClPGc
http://davidharvey.org/2023/02/noam-chomsky-and-david-harvey...
In fact, if ANYONE on HN would like to come on our show and discuss why Web3 is not needed, full of scams and is stupid, email me (greg) at intercoin.org. I will make an episode with you and put it up on our YouTube channel.
I am pretty humble but when it comes to engaging on substance, I am rather bold. I am not a professional podcaster and I don’t have millions of dollars or followers. But I have met and had real discussions everyone from Andrew Yang to Tim Berners-Lee to the guys from Stable Diffusion, to top Christian apologists etc. If a topic matters to me, I will go and try to speak with the people who have something major to say.
Sometimes you have to punch above your weight to get quality discussions. I am probably the least well known guy who had all those people on my show and subsequently developed friendships.
I tend to be very polite, try to focus on issues instead of the person. But I do remain intellectually honest, say what I really think, and if that means going against the orthodoxy and braving downvotes then so be it. My HN history is clear going back years. As I said I am open to taking people on HN who aren’t well-known, as long as they sincerely believe the opposite and can argue it well. Because I care about the issues, not celebrities. (Molly isn’t really that famous, if we had to be honest.)
Entitlement? Simply refusal to acknowledge “my place” in this capitalist society and exercising my right to “free association” instead. If someone is publicly putting out biased, one-sided narratives, I could very well reach out and welcome them to discuss. I have said NOTHING about her refusal for many months, to anyone, and totally forgot about it … until this very post where I shared my experience because it was relevant. Basically I think we need better platforms for public discourse.
I went on the Bankless podcast six months ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9Itd3g23QI. I debated Charles Hoskinson on a panel about "the future of crypto": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5p2gt7htDM&t=998s. I went on the Unusual Whales crypto podcast/Twitter space: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/unusual-whales-pod-13-.... I've repeatedly gone on CoinDesk's show — sometimes for more adversarial conversations than others. I provided "The Bear Case for Crypto" on a two-part series by Scott Galloway https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGh... (Michael Saylor provided the bull case; unfortunately we were not in conversation directly). I went on the crypto podcast Digitally Rare a year ago: https://anchor.fm/digitallyrare/episodes/web3-could-be-going....
I apologize for upsetting you when I politely declined the invitation to come on your podcast, but it's simply not accurate to say that I don't "engage with the issues or opposing views".
My reason for declining was largely as drewbeck suggested. I also try to avoid coming on shows where I feel I am simply being used to draw engagement and interest in a specific crypto project, which was part of my concern with your specific invitation.
Please don’t think I was upset. I did not think more of it until this thread simply reminded me of it, and I posted it because I thought it was very relevant, and 99% of the text was written by me so I didn’t feel I was revealing anything truly private.
I totally understand this concern, and why someone like yourself might be very sensitive not to seem like they are endorsing a specific project — and it is exactly the concern that Robert Murphy expressed to me this past week, until we spoke. Now he is coming on my show. Because I only care about discussing the substance.
You couldn’t have known this, but frankly, I reached out simply because I wanted to have a conversation. I believe that a blog which exclusively lists everything bad in web3 is useful, because it does one part of the job. But also, people who put together such things are exactly the best people to have a conversation with because I truly do believe that if the crypto and web3 industry doesn’t step up, the much worse centralized ecosystem of Big Tech, Big Government will keep encroaching with their National IDs and CBDCs and centrally controlled financial systems (just like they have in countries from China to Sweden). As a libertarian, I see things getting a lot worse and I have spent over a decade of my life and a ton of my own money building solutions, so naturally, having discussions with people in the space something I do. To be honest, it is my guilty pleasure - I enjoy being able to engage with people and battle-test my views, and actually realize that they have blind spots too.
It is the same feeling, I suppose, as a chessplayer who gets to play games with people rated higher than them. From a purely market point of view, I guess I am engaging people who are “out of my league” in terms of the size of their audience — disregarding this has worked well for me, thankfully, but I guess it comes up in some ways, like this.
I have another channel, https://youtube.com/QbixPlatform which has nothing to do with crypto and is about an open source Web2 platform. The invitation still stands, of course. To me the issues are more about decentralization vs centralization, capitalism vs gift economies, smart contracts vs trusting specific humans, open source vs walled gardens, funding projects with equity vs utility, etc.
Let me know if you’d like to engage in any way that would scrub any mention of Intercoin (company, project etc) and if so I’ll email you and we can set it up.
More or less of a problem than out and out scams?
> Web5
Did I miss web4?
Overall your complaint would be similar to if I complained that Bryan Krebs was one-sided in his coverage of cybercrime, in that he's never pro-crime.
Jack Dorsey was the reason we went back and renamed everything to Web5. I was always thinking how 2 + 3 = 4, but then Dorsey went full 5 and we wanted to make sure when people google "Web5" they find us. Our soft goal is to have Intercoin rank higher than Bluesky for "Web5".
> relying on centralized entities which clearly is a problem >More or less of a problem than out and out scams?
Probably more. The societal impact and problems from centralized social networks are documented in many places, including the Social Dilemma documentary, the breakdown of society, record levels of sadness in teenagers, having social network addiction be classified as a disease in many countries including China and now USA, states like Utah trying to protect children from it, and much more more.
I have been documenting just the loneliness part here for a decade: https://qbix.com/investors/articles
https://rational.app goes further into the breakdown of society due to these centralized, closed-source Big Tech oligopolies
I guess you like having public forums being privately owned by tiny groups of people, but the world needs open, decentralized alternatives. Sorry if HN doesn't think so anymore, but they should embrace the "hacker ethos" instead of stockholm syndrome shilling for the corporate VC world.
But hold up now, is a decentralized social network dependent on a decentralized currency/token/Blockchain? Mastodon for example is a robust decentralized social network has absolutely nothing to do with whatever web2+n you're touting. The idea that you need to rebuild currency in order to build a new kind of social network reminds me of the common gamedev trap of writing a game engine in order to write a game (and shipping neither.)
> I guess you like having public forums being privately owned by tiny groups of people
When you said centralization I didn't think you meant social networks specifically since generally crypto talks about disrupting banks and governments and I think (with some obvious exceptions) I prefer those to, what would you call it... the anarcho-kleptocracy represented by the Crypto space.
Also, micropayments are essential for a truly decentralized market. I suggest you read this: https://qbix.com/ecosystem
Xanadu used to have the idea of micropayments. You can do those with trustlines which settle eventually on a decentralized ledger.
We're not the only ones working on this. Stefan Thomas (I met him when he was CTO of Ripple) left Ripple to work on his true love, Interledger Protocol, and started Coil. A few years back, Mozilla joined forces with Coil to offer a $100 Million dollar fund for Web Payments (that don't need the banking system): https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/blog/100-million-investmen...
The creator of Javascript, Brendan Eich, left and started Brave Browser, which had a currency for monetizing people's attention, instead of the Surveillance Capitalism economy that's pervasive in all the centralized walled gardens: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance_capitalism
BitTorrent (the largest decentralized network by traffic) launched the BTT token, to help incentivize traffic.
The IPFS folks (who are helping decentralize the Web and ) did a $200M ICO for their coin, which helps pay for storage.
The guy who started AngelList, Naval Ravikant, launched CoinList and helped them do it, in a legal way, and involved many Web2 VCs participating in that ICO.
You're going to have to hate a lot of Web2 greats in order to carry out the hate of Web3 to its logical conclusion. Perhaps HN is wrong to simply hate the idea of decentralized currencies?
Karma isn't a currency, it's formalized reputation to surface good content and gamify writing good content.
> If Wikipedia operated its own currency, it could reward helpful contributions and make vandalism costly
The transaction scale (Wikipedia has two edits oer second) required would put it out of the reach of a crypto though. A centralized Wikipedia-buck would work just fine. Wikipedia itself is centralized.
> (you'd lose 10-50% of your currency if you were found to have vandalized a page, etc.)
This is exactly the type of thing that Crypto was built to avoid!
> micropayments
Due to scalability problems (ie gas fees) aren't cryptos much better suited to macro payments?
> Perhaps HN is wrong to simply hate the idea of decentralized currencies?
You haven't really shown that decentralized currencies are required for a decentralized social network.
You also haven't shown how your preferred networks will avoid the misaligned incentives that have created human misery out of existing social networks if they're still going to be for-profit (and the presence of a coin certainly suggests a profit motive.)
Who decides what "vandalized" means or how helpful any given contribution is and why wouldn't such a system be gamed if money is involved? This seems like a great way to turn Wikipedia completely toxic since now there's a potential financial incentive to engaging in bad faith. Even on Reddit - where Karma is not exchangeable for money - this is a problem[1].
[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/ox8ptp/what_is_k...
You want to bring her on the show to generate your own clout under the guise or maybe honestly finding solutions and are airing personal emails to tarnish their reputation.
I don't think that's the greatest way to treat potential guests.
As I said, I care about substance. The people who publicly espouse one view day in and day out are some of the best people to discuss with.
It’s sad that you think everything is about grift. It’s like how many Russians cynically think everything US does has no goodwill behind it and must be about power politics and screwing others. Certainly a lot of it is, but I guess it is easier to assume that all the time when you have a cynical view.
By the way if you think Molly White would give me clout then I am a little bit surprised. I had no idea she was that famous or well-known.
Richard Heart got us the most views of any video on our channel. And so what?
Oh yeah… here is proof that you’re wrong. Most of my Noam Chomsky videos were posted on youtube as UNLISTED and got maybe a couple hundred views over the years. If I was chasing subscribers I’d post them publicly !
1. Airing private conversations in an attempt to make someone look bad isn't the best look especially if you are trying to get other people on your podcast.
2. There are a million reasons not to engage on a podcast - because someone doesn't does not imply any of your viewpoints or mean that they can't have an engaging conversation about it.
3. When I read your comments it looks to me like you wanted to duke it out in a battle about Web3 - someone who doesn't like conflict probably wouldn't want to spend their time doing that.
4. Just saw that Molly responded directly to your claims. As someone who hosts a podcast do your Due Diligence FFS before you spout off.
She didn’t “just post something”. She literally runs a blog where that is all she posts.
It is reasonable to reach out to someone running a systematically anti-zionist blog and invite them to discuss things at any time of their convenience. They are doing the equivalent of standing on a street corner with a megaphone, for all the public to hear their thoughts, so of course they should expect someone to politely approach them and engage them.
> They are doing the equivalent of standing on a street corner with a megaphone
It's revealing you find it that in your face. Most people discover it via a link on hn, read, have a chuckle, move on.
> expect someone to politely approach them
Well indeed. And hopefully not see them splurge all over the place when they refuse to engage.
It's rare that someone openly admits to this.
Coinbase was planning on creating a lending product but the SEC called that a security and Coinbase has delayed its plans.
There are collateralized loan products already in decentralized finance apps such as Curve and MakerDAO (oasis.app). There aren't many artificial limits to what a Turing complete smart contract can do as long as it has access to the underlying information.
I am not much into crypto, but I know the saying: Not your keys, not your coins/money.
What is this article even? There is the very short vita. The common theme being crypto. Apparently she is also a victim (which is a sole identity by now, not sure if hers). And most importantly she hates crypto.
What does she actually do? I have no clue. She has a blog apparently, but that doesn't really warrant an article and the article should tell me why they write an article about that person.
Is anonymity the issue? Cash is anonymous, but you also say that crypto is not private, which makes it now good or bad in your eyes? The opportunity for recourse has nothing to do with a currency. A currency cannot give you recourse in the face of user error (or basically any). Neither fiat can do that nor crypto can.
> The "not your keys not your coins" take is hilariously dumb in light of how much "value" has evaporated in personal custodial failure.
Do you want to tell me this cannot happen with fiat? The (partly rhetorical) question also aims at both sides custodial and non-custodial fiat.
> The currency and its supporting infrastructure has everything to do with it, and crypto fails basic litmus tests to even attempt to go mainstream.
What exactly does it fail?
edit: replace one "it" with "crypto" to remove ambiguity.
People using fiat are not losing their life savings when they forget their bank passwords, nor are they sending money to the wrong address and losing money irrecoverably.
This would be good or bad for scams? For me this sounds worse for scams. Regarding choice: You could use Monero/XMR if you want to use it like (fungible,mostly anonymous) cash.
> People using fiat are not losing their life savings when they forget their bank passwords, [...]
This is not a like for like comparison. If you forget your wallet somewhere, your money is potentially gone as well. On the other hand if you have your crypto in a bank (custodial), it is the exact same as fiat (with the same caveats).
> [...] nor are they sending money to the wrong address and losing money irrecoverably.
This is maybe the only part that is really different here. Fiat doesn't have the capability to "send" at all, but banks have. The non-custodial part about crypto has the property of higher responsibility. If you have it somewhere custodial you could have the same properties as with fiat (properties not inherent to the currency).
Here's what it boils down to: freedom is messy.
The early days of the dotcom space were filled with carnage of a type which makes crypto look pretty normal. Amazon stock dropped >90% and a trillion and a half in value vanished from the market overall. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot-com_bubble
And that's in a space whose biggest ambition was to replace catalogue shopping and how hotel reservations are made.
Crypto has bigger goals, and the mess is bigger. But it's the same innovation engine that ran Silicon Valley, the same type of people, it's just now they're less dependent on Goldman Sachs when they want to go to the public and ask for their money. Make no mistake: nothing new, strange or unusual is happening. It's just tech being tech, no cause for alarm.
IE if you think you are just "tech being tech" but lots and lots of tech is like "uh, no, we aren't like you at all, please don't lump us in with you", that should tell you something.
Beyond that, your take seems so divorced from reality i'm not even sure where to begin.
I don't agree at all with your view of crypto's goals being bigger than tech's[1] , and even if i did, that the level of mess is proportionality similar, that this is a normal/good thing, etc.
These are sort of fundamental issues so it's gonna be hard to get somewhere.
I guess i'll just say if this is the best defense you've got of why what's going on is okay and good for the world, then you deserve everything crypto is getting and will get in the future.
[1] Crypto has always been a subset of tech's goals, and is even framed that way 99% of the time in presentations/etc. It's very hard for me to see how you can even argue otherwise.
It would be a bit like pre-internet engineers dismissing the internet because it’s the world’s best porn distribution mechanism.
Can these many people in Bitcoin doing legitimate stuff speak up, because I'm yet to see an actual implemented use case that isn't "evade financial regulations and hope governments don't care enough"
GP is simply saying that making a permissionless financial network a key element of the way value is exchanged across the world is a much more ambitious goal than selling books online.
How long has Crypto remained a bottomless pit of fraud and greed?
They said:
> And that's in a space whose biggest ambition was to replace catalogue shopping and how hotel reservations are made.
Which is an amazingly uncharitable interpretation of "the whole tech industry" in the 90s when the internet was being created, ask people at the time to give their best-foot-forward description of ambitions and you'd probably get something much more like "make all the world's knowledge available to everyone" and "eliminate the tyranny of distance to let human relationships flourish"
Vs, you know, "replace banks and let people transfer money instantly" or "create a new currency" - which sounds an AWFUL lot like a subset of that "connect everything together" original tech goal. Hell, "create a new currency" was even a goal for a lot of players back then, too!
(Interestingly they both share a level of idealism in terms of transcending traditional national borders, whether or not that is practical/achievable/or was achieved fully.)
Ah yes, Flooz and Beenz. So silly, but at least they didn't use a small country's worth of electricity.
Here is the thread where they talk about it and reject every single problem that others bring up with their blockchain title system. They also lie extensively about the value of a parcel of land for some odd reason: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33878584
I don’t either, given that
> writing anything else on a given blockchain only guarantees that this something else is written on this given blockchain, and if you don't have any external authority that can make it true (for example, the justice system to which you can go if the person to whom you have paid for a piece of land do not deliver) it has absolutely no value.
Thus,
> you don't need a blockchain. You just need a database.
I have come to the same conclusion as you. Perhaps leashless aka ‘once in a generation transformative intelligence guy’ (his own words[0]) can tell us why we’re wrong.
[0] https://twitter.com/molly0xFFF/status/1516610542588284931?s=...
https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Speech-M...
That’s from the UK head of civil justice. Read points six through nine.
Then https://medium.com/humanizing-the-singularity/the-best-of-bo...
Which explains how we get real world facts on to the blockchain in an economically secure way.
No, you cannot do this with a database.
Bear in mind I’m also http://myhopeforthe.world and http://guptaoption.com/2.long_peace.php and several other projects.
I’m spread thin across a surprising variety of fields working on problems that to most people look disconnected, but to me look like aspects of the same thing.
https://medium.com/humanizing-the-singularity/by-the-end-of-...
This is what I wrote the morning we launched Ethereum.
My mind is not particularly deep, but it is exceedingly wide. If you can find my equal in this regard let me know. I should like to meet them.
What I’m putting together is the technology platform to take the edge off the global humanitarian clusterfuck which is coming when the international refugee system collapses under the weight of climate refugees.
* blockchains and legal contracts get us aid transparency - if we can track the underlying physical assets say with 2D barcodes.
* correctly deployed insurance gets us biometrics without centralised databases. (Guptaoption.com/cheapid)
* unconventional approaches to civilian military cooperation are required to roll out aid on this scale https://web.archive.org/web/20120127093132/http://science.do...
Yes that is an archived version of an official DoD blog post about me.
* I worked for these folks for years https://akvo.org/wash-and-water-quality-data-solutions/ which is how we figure out where the food and water etc. are
I’m mapping and prototyping the systems for keeping hundreds of millions of people alive when the shit finally hits the fan on climate change.
Two molecules thick over a territory the size of a university.
You either see it or you don’t, but what I’m knitting together here is the only remotely viable global plan for managing the worse aspects of the humanitarian damage we are going to take from climate change.
I didn’t say “once in a generation transformative intelligence” lightly. This is about half of the shit that I’ve done in the last 20 years.
I started working flat out on this knowing it would take 30 years or more to develop in 2002.
Do you remember worrying about climate change in 2003? Do you remember how insignificant it looked? A little respect, please.
Shit has to get done. Something bad is coming.
Anyway, I decided to go straight to the source and look at the report that Sir Vos is referencing in his speech. You can read it here: https://cms.lawtechuk.io/uploads/report_smarter_contracts.pd...
Most of the uses of blockchain cited are not Web3, but examples where a private blockchain has been used in place of a traditional database. Notably, there are no examples of 'smart contracts' replacing legal contracts; there are references to e-signatures replacing paper ones, but that's not a blockchain technology.
I've gone through each chapter in the report and looked at three things: one, whether any of the examples cited use blockchain at all; two, whether that blockchain is actually doing something that couldn't be accomplished without blockchain and three, whether it's actually the type of blockchain that is part of the Web3 ecosystem (i.e. permissionless and public). The results do not actually look great for the narrative you're trying to promote, Mr Gupta.
Electronic signatures
This is not a blockchain technology. Next.
Contract automation and management
The chapter summary says: "They may apply blockchain and smart legal contract technology, depending on user requirements." However, not one of the six case studies described in this chapter actually use blockchain. They use electronic signatures on legal documents that are stored in traditional databases. So, while the chapter summary makes a passing mention that some of these platforms can use blockchain if the user requires it for some reason, they haven't been able to find an example where the user actually required blockchain.
Financial services
This chapter looks at the Aurora platform created by Nivaura. A few interesting quotes:
"Nivaura established a digital framework for the use of smart legal contracts in the creation and management of tokenised financial instruments. MIFID and CASS compliance was required to be able to custody money and assets, create stablecoins and tokenised assets, and issue instruments. When conducting these transactions, Nivaura identified that, although the use of blockchain can deliver improvements in respect of clearing and settlement activities, much of the inefficiency in the process occurs before the settlement system is needed - in the structuring and execution of the transactions."
"Nivaura decided to focus on building a foundation within the Aurora platform: developing the technology to generate the documentation and the transaction workflows first, while remaining agnostic to where the instrument is created and managed; in other words, combining traditional methods with the potential use of blockchain technology."
"integrates seamlessly with other platforms through APIs or decentralised blockchain infrastructure using the open specification Aurora protocol"
"the Aurora platform offers the ability to push the data into a blockchain based infrastructure to execute tokenised transactions both traditionally through the clearing systems, as well as through blockchain infrastructure"
Of the three case studies, only one involves the use of a blockchain. This was Santander's September 2019 issuance of a $20M bond on Ethereum. What the report didn't mention is that this bond was redeemed early in December 2019, and Santander since haven't done anything else on Ethereum. Essentially, it was a proof of concept that they did one time and then didn't touch again.
So Aurora is essentially a 'you can connect it to blockchain if you really want to' platform, but there are scant examples of anyone actually needing or wanting to do so.
Insurance
This chapter concerns parametric insurance contracts. Again, it is mostly not about blockchain, but one bullet point does state: "Blockchain technology may enhance the operations of contracts when buyers, sellers, and other stakeholders seek to share data and computational resources across a distributed network, enabling access to verified data at the same time."
The blockchain in this case would be private, not a permissionless public ledger - so not Web3. And there really is no reason to use blockchain for that kind of distributed network, they can just use a private cloud and digital signatures.
Renewable energy
This chapter opens with: "Blockchain technology-based smart legal contracts underpin ‘microgrids’, which enable peer-to-peer and peer-to-grid trading of small amounts of renewable electricity."
It provides three case studies, each one of which uses a private, permissoned blockchain - so again, not Web3. And again, blockchain isn't even necessary for this use case and I don't see what it adds over just using a traditional database.
Trade
The first part of this chapter looks at electronic trade documents, not a blockchain technology.
The second part looks at supply chains: "Supply chains are one of the most promising use cases for digitalisation and blockchain technology, which are already addressing previously unsolvable problems and are a key component of the future of digital trade"
I'm skeptical of this claim - it just seems like another example of using blockchain for the sake of using blockchain. But regardless, the three examples (TradeLens, Provenance and Chainvine) all use private, permissioned blockchains. So again - not Web3, not Ethereum, not cryptocurrency.
Sale of goods and services
Is this a chapter about cryptocurrency transactions? No, it's about DocuSign CLM. Not a blockchain technology.
Logistics and transportation
This chapter is about Amazon Quantum Ledger Database. A private, permissioned blockchain (although Amazon prefers to call it a 'ledger database' in which 'changes are chained together as blocks' - rather telling that they don't even want to touch the word). So yet again: a database that is part-blockchain, sure... but it's not Web3.
Digital representation and ownership of physical assets
This chapter is about Mattereum, a company that ties NFTs to legal contracts called the Matterium Asset Passport. Essentially, since you can't actually change the legal ownership of physical goods solely by trading NFTs, the sale is instead facilitated by the Matterium Asset Passport, which uses a private dispute resolution mechanism instead of the courts in 170 countries that allow for this. An interesting system... if it weren't BS that nobody needs. Because you could do this with digital signatures on legal contracts without involving NFT marketplaces at all. They've made it possible to do a thing with NFTs that people have been doing without NFTs for decades. Another instance of the technology looking for the use case, rather than the use case requiring the technology.
Sport sponsorship
This chapter describes Hunit, which uses digital legal contracts (not smart contracts) for which the signatures are stored on a private, permissioned ledger. Again, not Web3 (noticing a pattern here?) and again just seems to be another case of using blockchain for the sake of using blockchain.
Home buying and selling
Is this a chapter about selling your home as an NFT? No, it's another chapter about the digitisation of legal contracts and signatures. Again there are a few examples here of a private permissioned blockchain being used for data storage, but yet again in all of these cases any form of secure distributed database could be used and blockchain isn't necessary - and regardless, yet again, it's not the type of blockchain that's Web3.
Digital Company
This chapter looks at The Digital Company project, which is mostly about the digitisation of legal contracts and signatures. As in the previous chapter, a private permissioned blockchain is used in place as a database but yet again it appears to be an example of blockchain being used simply for the sake of using blockchain - and yet again, not the type of blockchain that's Web3.
1) it takes four months on average to transfer real estate in the UK. It’s about the same in most other counties.
2) with our system that is reduced to one KYCAMLCTF/source of funds check, and an atomic swap on Ethereum.
Two days and most, and instant if you pre-clear the money.
3) getter a property legally ready for that transaction takes some time of course, but that work is mostly reused in subsequent transactions.
4) this is of most utility to large property companies not invisible house buyers. Developers and REITs for example.
5) no, you cannot do this with a database, a database can’t clear a $1.2m payment in real-time or create legally binding digital signatures on electronic versions of paper contracts, at least not without a vast amount of middleware. It’s a real blockchain use case.
Right now there is no meaningful electronic trading venue for real estate. The closest you get is listed REIT stock on stock exchanges.
Roughly three trillion of transactions a year for real estate. It’s a worthy market.
Not, I think you’ll find, a solution looking for a problem. A very large market indeed which has so far not found an electronic trading system that suits its operational and commercial needs.
As MICA in the EU and other similar legislation around the world clear out the pirate finance people the blockchain will simply normalise as a standard technology for doing transactions. If we also see central bank digital currency — it seems certain in at least some jurisdictions - that removes another set of uncertainties.
The UK Law Commission recently published a 550 page consultation document on digital assets in the UK. As that rolls into legislation the grey area will evaporate and we would expect mass adoption for B2B use cases to begin.
That’s certainly the government’s intention.
Yes there are a lot of naive grifters in the blockchain space. There are also a lot of world class technologists and lawyers. There are people breaking the law, or breaking laws which should exist! And there are people creating the enabling legislation.
Because you’ve been listening to propaganda not thinking for yourself, you have pre-judged the situation without understanding what the legislative agenda from the larger governments will enable. And I don’t mean USA here, that’s just a mess, but the world is bigger than just America.
2) By KYCAMLCTF/source of funds, I'm assuming you're referring to what happens when someone buys ETH on an exchange? The problem is that only covers trading on the exchange. Once it leaves the exchange it leaves that regulatory environment, and it becomes impossible to prevent things like wash trading in NFT marketplaces. Are you really trying to tell me that exposing the property market to that is a good idea?
3) What you're actually saying here is that what Mattereum does isn't actually equivalent to conveyancing. In order to make doing this with NFTs work, you've created an inferior legal framework to actual property law, based solely around contract and arbitration law, that you expect people to use instead. The trade of the NFT is faster than conveyancing, not because it's doing the same thing more efficiently, but because it's not actually doing the same thing at all.
4) Large property companies will want actual conveyancing, not your substitute for it. They also don't want to trade property like NFTs. They'll be pleased about digital contract solutions that streamline the process of actual conveyancing.
5) A database can clear a $1.2m payment in real time. In the UK we have near-instant, free bank transfers with a limit of £1 million per transaction - to send more it can just be split into multiple transactions. Neither a database NOR a blockchain can create legally binding signatures on e-contracts without middleware like DocuSign or Adobe Sign. For electronic conveyancing, the answer is to... just use that middleware, it's fine. Transfer of an NFT does not count as a legally binding signature (isn't that the whole reason Mattereum exists)?
"Right now there is no meaningful electronic trading venue for real estate." Maybe - here's an idea - property shouldn't actually be traded like NFTs are? Maybe property law isn't just useless red tape and it exists for a reason? Maybe high frequency trading of property on a pseudonymous marketplace is actually NOT a good idea?
Speaking of Mattereum, I note the article on your website from April 16 2023 claiming that you have tokenised a "prime beach-front property on England’s south coast". Although the article uses a stock image of a building, the property is actually just a land parcel. Just curious, why was the NFT burned and recreated four months ago? It wasn't because the property sold. Why is it only now possible to buy the NFT by emailing Tokenised Properties to be added to a whitelist? Doesn't that rather defeat the purpose of what you're trying to do?
"DISCLAIMER: The land is sold as is without any planning permission. Images are for reference only for possible uses. Buyers are to make their own investigations and due diligence." Hmm, an empty plot of land with no planning permission... not exactly a house, is it?
"[...] the required searches, title deed and reference media for due diligence are displayed accurately and transparently so that the NFT purchaser can sell on the property without the next purchaser needing to go through the process all over again. What the NFT purchaser gets for their money is an interest in the property. If they wish to take full ownership of the property itself, they simply pay an extra pound, and full legal title is transferred to them, they can then do as they wish with the property and the NFT is burned."
Wait, one moment it's a property, the next it's just an interest in the property? What is your NFT actually adding here? If they take full ownership of the property, say, to build something on the land and sell it on, they're actually going to have to start that whole process over again, right?
I see absolutely no upside to tokenising property interests as NFTs and plenty of downsides, such as the potential for market manipulation, scams and thefts. Which is probably why the Smarter Contracts report focused instead on technological developments to fully digitise the traditional conveyancing process that already exists under property law.
But you've hitched your wagon to public permissionless blockchain ledgers like Ethereum and marketplaces for trading NFTs, so you have a vested interested in convincing us that this is the proper technology for the use case. Yeah, there are a lot of naïve grifters in the blockchain space - and you're one of them.
People have said things like this about every new technology -- both the successes and the failures. Will it succeed or fail? We shall see -- I think the former, you think the latter, that's fine: you have no skin in the game and are entitled to your opinion.
But here's the bottom line: there's no electronic trading system for real estate right now, other than things like REIT equity on exchanges.
So whoever cracks that wins big. Is that a reasonable risk for a commercial enterprise to take?
Absolutely.
Is the first one done the same as the five thousandth one? No, we'll learn, improve, refine. We'll build commercial infrastructure and commercial partnerships.
But the prize is large enough to do some actual work on, because if we're right, we wind up winning big.
If the legals are a little confusing, I suggest going over it with a lawyer, assuming you aren't one!
Yes, but the reason for this is not because it would be impossible to implement with existing technology. There's absolutely no reason that you couldn't set up a traditional database to do that. The reason for this is that there's actually a lack of demand for a system that would allow individual properties to be day traded like individual stocks.
Seriously, who the fuck looks at day trading and thinks "wouldn't it be great if we could do this with houses?" And on top of that, proposes a system in which it would be totally pseudonymous? lol, lmao.
I suggest that you seriously reassess your business model if you're counting on people using Mattereum for houses.
I'm not a lawyer but I've read the Smarter Contracts report from LawtechUK - you know, the one Sir Vos was citing - and it lays out quite clearly how technology is going to streamline the process of conveyancing. This is what's actually needed, not trading property like NFTs.
Everything is equivalent to a Turing machine.
The question is costs.
"clearly how technology is going to streamline the process of conveyancing. This is what's actually needed, not trading property like NFTs"
These statements say the same thing: a perfectly efficient conveyancing process is seamless, so the property can change hands like an NFT. An atomic swap with cash in one direction and the title etc. in the other.
At which point, we just use an NFT.
Have a nice day.
Transfer the NFT? O.k, what happens if the wrong NFT is transferred and the person refuses to give it back?
What happens if someone hacks your wallet and steals your apes and your house. Do you have to move out?
What happens if the wrong data gets entered and an apartment block has one less floor of apartments than actually exists?
What is your blockchain solution to the boring everyday errors and fraud that occur in real life?
Here`s the problem. My shiftless nephew put a key logger on my computer and transferred my house NFT to his own wallet. Now he`s claiming I gave it to him and is aiming to sell it. Walk me through the process resolving this, step by step. .
Conveyancing includes checks to comply with property law. Trading an NFT doesn't.
Have a nice day.
P.S.: You've already admitted on the Mattererum website that the NFT isn't actually legal ownership of the property itself, but an interest in the property, and an extra step is still required to convert that into legal ownership.
If you wanted to build digital a marketplace for property interests to be speculated on like NFTs with a traditional database you could - and no, it wouldn't be more expensive. It's not been done because the demand isn't there.
You are a little behind the times on the status of digital signatures, smart contracts etc.
Our project The Law Commission was asked by the Lord Chancellor to include work on smart legal contracts as part of our Thirteenth Programme of Law Reform. In November 2019, the UK Jurisdiction Taskforce (“UKJT”) published its legal statement on cryptoassets and smart contracts. The UKJT Legal Statement concluded that, in principle, smart contracts are capable of giving rise to binding legal obligations, enforceable in accordance with their terms.
Following this, the Ministry of Justice asked us to undertake a detailed analysis of the current law as it applies to smart legal contracts, highlighting any uncertainties or gaps, and identifying such further work as may be required now or in the future.
Advice to Government We published our advice to Government on smart legal contracts on 25 November 2021. It was informed by the detailed responses we received to the call for evidence, published in December 2020.
We have concluded that the current legal framework in England and Wales is clearly able to facilitate and support the use of smart legal contracts, without the need for statutory law reform.
All the Law Commission essentially said is that there doesn't need to be any new legislation created for the courts to be able to deal with what they call 'smart legal contracts'.
In their summary report the Law Commission also said: "Solely code smart legal contracts are likely to be rare in practice, given that commercial contracts are typically too nuanced to be reduced solely to code."
Their definition of a 'smart legal contract' includes traditional natural language contracts in which the implementation of some of the aspects is automated by code.
Note also that in this context, 'code' is not confined to 'smart contracts' on blockchains. A web server that automates some contractual activities by connecting with an API, for example, would count as part of a 'smart legal contract' by the definition that the Law Commission is using here.
I'm not sure what point you're actually trying to make by linking me to this Law Commission report. Maybe my brain is just not wide enough / too deep to understand? But if you're trying to convince me that the Law Commission said that we're increasingly going to be using blockchain smart contracts for things, you're seriously misrepresenting the conclusions of their paper.
You're building a casino, and on the inside, you're selling plots on the moon and names in a star registry.
You can actually read the legal contracts which make that happen at mattereum.com/land — go over it with a lawyer, they’ll explain how it works.
It’s straight forward contract law. The property has to be in an SPC (special purpose vehicle) but that’s standard for all commercial real estate and quite a bit of high end residential.
It’s just a lot of lawyering. It actually works.
Having the data on chain doesn’t really help anything. All that matters is who the authority choose to see as the owner. They may as well operate the registry as they can choose to ignore it if they wish.
https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Speech-M... -- head of civil justice for the UK discusses smart contracts and commerce.
Read points six through ten here. This is entirely the point: having the data and contracts on chain is hugely important. If you don't understand this, you don't understand critical features about how everything really works.
It hits different coming from people that handle the legal frameworks for trillions of dollars of transactions, you know?
If that's how you see the world, me going point by point is not going to change your fundamental "but only 5000 people have email accounts."
Here's 550 pages of the UK Law Commission (govt legal think tank) discussing how to integrate digital assets into UK law.
https://www.lawcom.gov.uk/project/digital-assets/
Why do you think this kind of labour is going into the digital asset space?
Crypto is a massively compelling proposition to working transactional lawyers at all levels of seniority but it's especially compelling to the most senior. They know their business. As do I.
Decades of experience doing real world transactions makes the utility of the blockchain obvious. To people without that experience, maybe the point is harder to see?
But the serious types get it. That's the lived experience in the field.
Sunk cost fallacy, libertarian ideology, the fact it's become a cult of prosperity for the tech class and the fact that to argue against it meaningfully you have to have a strong understanding of finance, technology and law. Very few people have enough expertise in all three areas to explain why it's a bad idea.
But let me ask you. Since it's been the 'internet of the early 90s' for 15 years, why isn't it the 'internet of the mid/late 2000s' yet?
Judges aren't experts in technology generally speaking, they're not experts in economics generally speaking and they obviously don't know much about blockchains.
I don't care if he's the King of England, the fact remains. Trustlessness is all-or-nothing. If the chain can become out of sync with the real world, and the real world trumps the chain, then you do not have anything other than a slow and annoying database. This is called the oracle problem, and it remains thoroughly unsolved.
Not to mention real estate on the blockchain is one of the absolute dumbest ideas to date. A bearer token representing ownership of your house, lol. You lose your keys and now someone else owns your house?! I can't wait for Kim Jong-Un to own half the midwest through the Lazarus group.
As of now, the only thing you can extend the guarantees of the blockchain to are things that are wholly and completely represented on-chain. That means basically just 'money.' Literally nothing else is a good fit with the model. And that's before touching on its sheer inefficiency.
But let's come at it the other way. If it has so much potential and we've invested billions and billions of dollars in it, why has every company that tried it given up on it? Why is it still the future, 15 years later? Plenty of ideas that first came to market back then are now the present like the iPhone. I think you and the Judge may be the ones missing something, no parent poster and I.
If you actually manage to take to market a better solution to a problem I have leveraging a blockchain, I will be the first to use it. Stop telling me it's the future and make it happen.
He's not nothing but it's not like he's one of the top 10 most senior judges in the UK or something.
He also doesn't handle the legal frameworks for trillions of dollars of transactions. I don't even know what you think "handle the legal framework" means, but it's clear you literally don't even understand his job, and you sort of ascribe some weird business structure to it.
The responder to me was right - every time someone points out a problem you make up some ethereal nonsense.
You really seem to think you are doing the right thing, or at least present that as a facade.
But you do in fact come off as a confidence grifter. Maybe change that if you want anyone to take you seriously, rather than just argue you have a big brain and people should therefore respect you.
It turns out, unsurprisingly, there are lots of big brained people around. The useful parts of what you say are not particularly insightful, and the rest is just crazy.
Have you heard of the oracle problem[1]? How are you planning to solve it for physical goods? A barcode is not the same as the stuff in the box and is trivially copied and transmitted using a smartphone without the goods going anywhere at all. And this is a much bigger issue to reliably delivering anything than which database organizations use to track the goods.
Okay, I read all of your references, and besides the whole amazing arrogance piece, you fundamentally don't understand land disputes. Also, your references don't support any of your points in a meaningful way. Points 6-9 say nothing other than "blockchain is not immature". It doesn't say "holy crap the world would be better if land was on blockchain". The referred to report doesn't say it either.
The whole thing reads like a serious case of NPD.
As a lawyer, let me try to help: Putting land records on blockchain, and even turning land into NFT's that properly transfer when NFT moves is totally meaningless.
Land disputes are, 99.9% of the time, not about a lack of records. They are about a lack of caring about what the records say, and NFT won't fix that.
For example, when US states took land from the indians, it wasn't "hey we have no records that say you own this", in fact, the opposite - not only did they have records, the courts even said "yeah the indians own this, you can't take this". The result was the state governments saying "yeah, we don't give a crap" and doing it anyway, and marching them out of the state.
This is repeated time and time again. It is incredibly rare to have a land dispute where the issue is "we have no records", or we can't prove anything.
If it was a bunch of NFT's, either it would be simply ignored (which is what happened pre-NFT's), overruled by some other chain that has more central control (IE a dictator creates his own chain and doesn't care about yours, even if everyone else does), or someone would just torture people until they transferred them. Yay, i'm glad you fixed everything.
Even if this was wrong (and it's not), the mechanics say that bona fide purchaser for value without notice take good and valid title, even against the people who had land stolen from them.
This, again, isn't due to lack of records.
The system isn't actually broken, it's behaving exactly as it is supposed to.
It just turns out that having land as NFTs or whatever doesn't change the fact that governments are sovereigns that can do what they want.
Somehow i suspect you think crypto will magically change this too - it will not. At best, it will only change how formal a government exists, and even that's crazytown. In that world, the people with the most weapons and willingness to use them make the rules. Those are the government, defacto or not.
Whats more likely here, there is an error in the website that captures these property transaction details or the person is lying?
The person trying to sell it for 1.9 million is having a laugh, to put it mildly.
It's hard for me to have too much sympathy for people that were parking a large amount of money at that place and trusting them with it. Who cares what "promises" they were making?
rekt.news is also quite good, but skewed towards less reporting but more in depth.
IMO Molly should be getting public good funding from the ETH ecosystem for being such a good & reliable source, regardless of if there's a difference in belief of whether crypto is eventually worth it, if you want to build for the long term you must know what is going wrong.
Here’s the genius of our time backpedaling, lying, and disappearing when he is clearly caught lying: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33878584
Keep fighting the good fight, Molly.
and
"If you have to tell everyone how smart you are, you probably aren’t"
> IMO Molly should be getting public good funding from the ETH ecosystem for being such a good & reliable source
It's a generous thought, but it's very bad optics to take a bunch of money from someone that you report on. Yes I know this happens all the time in bigger media circles, but they're big enough that it's either not going to be a dominant revenue stream or the appearance of integrity is irrelevant (the ur-example being Fox News and their claims of being "entertainment")
Bitcoin hit the scene in 2011. By 2023 crypto's mostly a failed get-rich-quick scheme with a couple actual possibly legitimate uses that you can see if you squint just right.
So not only did crypto have much smaller goals than the Dot-Com era, but it failed pretty hard at those goals. And the deep dark secret at the heart of crypto is that — apart from the get-rich-quick stuff — it's neither particularly interesting nor useful. And it takes a lot of set dressing and hand-waving to make it seem like such.
However, it remains to be seen if cryptocurrency could survive doing only that (e.g., without speculators) - because if there's no speculation how do you unload the currency? Only to others wishing to do the same. It's possible, but will it work out?
But anonymous London shell companies have been available for years!
Of course, apparently fees on bitcoin are so high that buying a dime bag there isn't useful, either.
A government that fully supported an actual digital cash that was untraceable (perhaps this is best done with crypto, but you can do it without a blockchain) would serve the same purpose.
Yes. I way underestimated the size of the money-laundering industry.
Yep. For an example this week, see "Web3 Can Help Marginalized Communities Share Their Stories" (https://decrypt.co/142763/web3-can-help-marginalized-communi...)
“You can truly own your IP through the whole thing,” Bayne said, highlighting the advantages that Web3 brings to filmmaking. “Your community can be involved through every step, and you don't necessarily need the studios.”
i get you have to have types with very active imaginations to evangelize and get a new thing created, but sometimes, that imagination is just so fanciful that it has the same odds as a snow ball in certain locations. it also makes the speaker just sound completely out of touch and delusional. that comment makes me think someone is quite enamored with the sound of their own voice
Prior to the web, in the 1960s/1970s we had packet-switching networks, such as ARPANET which were the basis of modern computer networking.
The original ARPANET (precursor to the internet)was just used to connect computers at research institutions. I.e it wasn’t used by that many people relatively speaking.
It took another 20 years for the web to come along and more for it gain widespread adoption.
Is Bitcoin, a very low level protocol, more analogous to ARPANET or the web? Even if you dislike crypto, is this comparison really helpful?
All technology is built on the shoulders of previous giants. Building a secure, scalable, sufficiently decentralized distributed computer system is hard. I.e it’s going to take a long ass time. Hence I’m not surprised at how far we have come since BTC was released.
I think fundamentally the infrastructure required to build decentralized applications is hard and has pushed the limits of computer science (zero knowledge proofs etc).
I think people have inflated expectations about how long it will take this technology to mature. Today it’s still very technically hard to build a scalable dapp that’s easy to use. Assuming this is something consumers actually want as opposed to a solution in search of a problem, this will take more time to solve.
Sometimes greed makes people think a technology is a lot further along than it actually is.
ARPANET knew who it was for and what it was for: for researchers to share data and compute resources that would otherwise be expensive to do across vast distances. Audience and use case. What's the equivalent for cryptocurrency?
>Building a secure, scalable, sufficiently decentralized distributed computer system is hard.
Who actually wants that, and for what practical purpose?
Have you heard of git?
AFAICT the comparison is only made because, faced with a decade and a bit of failure to deliver, cryptocurrency and blockchain proponents need an argument as to why it's still going to be HUGE, and is still a case of "just you wait, you'll see", rather than admitting it's not looking very hopeful.
Whereas crypto still struggles to do anything novel or get popular with anyone outside of speculation.
Yep. This blockchain/PoW/PoS way they’ve come up with to do it, with a built in cryptocurrency, doesn’t really cut it.
The trade offs to be “sufficiently decentralized” make it slow, expensive and unscalable. Making it effectively useless for real-world applications. The whole of Ethereum has as much power as a raspberry pi.
You forgot that already by 2022, you were able to use multiple slurp juices on a single ape!
However, the tax implications are insane for me in Canada. I won't touch anything where I have to pay in crypto because it creates a huge burden when it comes to doing my taxes at the end of the year. How does crypto solve that? IMO, they've already been regulated to a place where they can't compete.
I also feel like proof of stake is literally the code-is-law version of "the rich get richer". If the injection point for newly minted ETH is the rich that already own the majority of the existing ETH, how is that any different than the government printing FIAT and the rich that already own the majority of the FIAT being the injection point? For me, it's all the same because I don't see how anything changes for me (besides more complex taxes).
If this is true it's the biggest indictment of Silicon Valley ever. The goal was always to pump and dump on retail but finally they got to take the mask off? Fuck that forever.
I see lots of gambling, lots of scams, and very little actual use outside the "classical" use cases that existed at the very beginning. These are wire transfer and black/grey market commerce.
What crypto has become has showed just how wrong Satoshi was about people. Crypto COULD have been everything he hoped for. It could have been a system where everyone participated, with millions of nodes. Instead it became something no one understood, operated by a few mega pools, all who are trying to fleece people who don't understand or care but just want to make money. Crypto is now an economic matchmaking system that matches the desperate and greedy with those who would take advantage of them. It's a free market system that matches predator with prey. It's doing what almost all banking regulation tries to mitigate.
Capitalism consumed crypto in a second. I'd go as far as to say that the two are actually incompatible at a fundamental level.
This is exactly why generalizing doesn't work.
The most visible parts of the crypto space (exchanges, VC-funded blockchain, etc...) are there simply to make money. If you meet some of the longer-term devs, you'll see a completely different side of it.
How can someone think that Vitalik is in this space for money when he gives so much of it away and has been known to question whether the price matches the value of Ethereum (meaning that Eth was priced too high)? He can also walk away and retire at any time, but chooses to keep working on Ethereum and helping other chains when needed.
It's not just Vitalik either. There are many people in this space who value decentralization, personal freedom, financial inclusion, etc... but you dont read news articles about them because they aren't trying to get your attention or money, they're trying to make something that's meaningful to them that they think will make the world a better place.
None of the people in crypto are trying to make the world a better place. The harm done outweighs the benefits by such a ridiculous ratio it’s really not worth it to even trying to compute. I mean, that's what Molly White is trying to do here but it's just not necessary. We all know. Doubly so for the advocates.
https://www.polygon.com/platform/amp/22709126/ethereum-creat...
Joe Lubin, the guy behind him, is of course all about the money.
Carnage, yes. I ran "downside.com" back then. (It's still up, but I stopped updating it around 2006.). In the first dot-com boom, everybody went public. So you could track their numbers from SEC filings. I just took their cash flow numbers and computed when the cash would run out as the "death date". That was surprisingly accurate.
But not as many out and out scams as in crypto. Most of the original dot-coms actually did something real. It might not have been profitable, but there was some utility. You could order from Webvan and the stuff would show up.
They needed Goldman or somebody like it in on the deal. Everybody had to put on a suit. It was industrial.
Now it’s a cottage industry of petty grifters exiled from multi level marketing, plus a few big Silicon Valley institutions that turned to the dark side: A16Z springs to mind.
Not much has changed, only the direct to consumer nature of the scams without needing an investment bank in the mix.
Same old game.
If they want to be dishonest about things there is no decentralized magic tech that can prevent them doing so.
Some examples of threads that I felt were representative.
https://twitter.com/molly0xFFF/status/1513184187498569729
https://twitter.com/molly0xFFF/status/1516610542588284931
I think the most generous summary of these interactions would be that leashless is solidly convinced of two things: blockchains are the answer to pressing world problems, and skeptics are simply not on his intellectual and moral level.
The home page of Mattereum appears to be a pitch to create one NFT per physical item and then make transactions about it on the blockchain. I confess I am also unsure of how this technology adds value to e-commerce. Nor does this scheme seem to be sufficient to bring about such levels of transparency that it could meaningfully combat slavery, or address issues of climate justice. I hope that leashless is correct about all of that.
You can find a ton of material here about exactly why tagging one NFT per object is worth doing. It’s a possible pretty decent fix for many of the problems continuing to run consumer capitalism in the current mode. Basically it gives a place for wear and use data to accumulate.
The wear and use data is accurate and trustworthy because it’s presented in a legal framework which provides real accountability for the people involved in the transaction.
We don’t know if consumers will accept it or not, but we do know that it works legally and technically. Early stage research.
Serious policy people who are worthy of respect are doing this thing. Molly can snark all the likes but all that she’s demonstrated is arrogance, poor judgement, an unwillingness to admit when she is out of her depth on real world issues like modern slavery, and a willingness to use lynch mobs to defend her point of view rather than to discuss the actual topic. The world is filled with people who point and laugh for a hobby, but once it becomes a living all intellectual honesty goes straight out the window.
If you want to understand what we really do, read on.
https://podcast.mattereum.com/episodes/ending-slavery-with-t...
“You just have to do more research to understand” is the crypto founder’s refuge from all criticism.
You have not demonstrated that your claim is worthy of investigation.
While I am not the most intelligent person you have met, I am a very smart person. Someone who claims that the CAP theorem proves the inevitability of blockchains has understood neither, or is perhaps deliberately using words to bamboozle mildly technical people. But perhaps you are ahead of your time and merely look like a scammer. Nevertheless, if you are unable to explain the idea to others who are not as smart as you, at minimum you are incompetent as a visionary or founder. Educating is your job, not mine.
Move on.
https://medium.com/humanizing-the-singularity/why-global-tra...
I think you will find that if you think carefully the blockchain presents an opinionated solution to building useful globally distributed databases.
This breaks it down more explicitly. https://ancapalex.medium.com/a-cursory-introduction-to-byzan...
You actually have to think about this to understand it. From first principles.
Bitcoin is 14 years old at this point. We are _not_ early. Surely if blockchains are as great as their proponents claim, at least one clever company would have done something unquestionably impressive with them? But maybe I'm the crazy one here.
(For context the time between the launch of Sputnik and the first commercial communications satellite, Intelsat I, was 8 years)
The only mess here is the snake oil.
There's no freedom. There are no big goals.
It's a scam, end to end.
It can not be anything else. It never was and for the foreseeable future it will not be anything else because as long as there are transaction fees it's a negative sum game. (And no, cash, stocks and golds are each not such.)
Everything else is just talk trying to cover this. The very nature of a negative sum game requires you to talk up the game. Talking of freedom, big goals etc. that's just required by any scam of this sort.
Your personal biggest problems appears to be that the person doing it is you.
You re not on an innovation engine, you re selling a dream, and the moment it would come true, its actual realization would be so disappointing that its value would crater.
If @phphphphp isn't available or doesn't want to continue, I'd be willing to wager $10k on the same terms that he offered.
Meanwhile, retail banks effectively steal $30B from poor consumers _every year_: https://breckyunits.com/the-great-bank-robbery.html
I do enjoy Molly's work and I would love it if we didn't hear about all the NFT grifters, but I see crypto as the best hope to offer the average person an honest banking experience, and I see the "scams" of retail banking to be 1-2 orders of magnitude larger.