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How does someone verify the authenticity of a unknown coin based solely on API requests to an endpoint that the 2nd party provides?

Also, if we hold the Trilemma to be true then presumably some point in the network will have weaker security to improve the other 2. Thereby compromising the entire network.

You don't beat CAP/Trilemma by gluing 2 databases together.

If you don't know the coin but you can see that its blockchain is connected to a blockchain that you know and trust, you can look at DEX chain-to-chain trade volume between your blockchain and the unfamiliar blockchain to determine its value and the amount of volume trustlessly (the volume would be measured in your own trusted coin coming from its own blockchain in a cryptographically verifiable way).

If you can see that $1 million worth of your own coin is being exchanged for that other unknown coin each day and people are paying $50K worth of your own coin every day to cover cross-chain transaction fees, surely you can take a risk and accept that unknown coin as payment for a $100 product. The risk of the coin being a scam goes down with the amount of verifiable trade volume.

The problem is not solved by having excellent support for interoperability between chains. The security of any bridge interaction between chains is no better than the weaker chain.

And the security of two chains does not add up, in fact, the more resources are split up between multiple chains, the less secure they all become. So this doesn't solve for the security side of the trilemma.

If the chains are distinct and tokens are merely easily interchangeable, they are isolated security-wise. Of course, accepting payment in a token you've never heard of presents a risk, but this risk isn't significant if that new token's blockchain is connected to a blockchain which you trust via a DEX or bridge. It's possible to build simple client-side cryptographic tools to verify trades or bridging across different blockchains... If you can cryptographically verify that a new token is traded chain-to-chain against a token you trust with a certain amount of volume, then you know you can trust that new coin to some extent.

Also, as a business owner, you can charge an additional fee when accepting unknown or low volume coins, or coins that are backed by blockchains which have a small number of nodes.

Imagine how many more people would be able to afford to buy your products if you would accept just about any token as payment. It could be a way to gain a competitive edge and boost your profit margins by accepting riskier coins from unfamiliar communities.

It's not quite the same as if everyone could print their own money on pieces of paper; we know that wouldn't work because nobody would have an incentive to do any work to produce anything... But the opposite extreme (which is our current reality) also doesn't work; there are all these people with no money and no opportunities who could be doing business with each other, but they can't because they have no money and are not allowed to create their own money to get their parallel 'unbanked people' economy going.

> So you could use the same passphrase to log into all the different chains (including ones you never heard of) and you would already have an account there.

The UX on this has improved significantly in just the last year or so. We have wallets, like Rabby, which interact seamlessly across multiple (many!) chains and can even switch within the same dapp on a per transaction basis. It just works.

> Wouldn't it be great if you could just walk up to a local business and offer to pay them in some new cryptocurrency they've never heard of.

Not being snarky but why would this be great for anyone? What would be the point?

1. Business gets a sale they might not have received otherwise.

2. Business receives funds in their preferred currency.

3. Customer gets what they want.

Not much different than me going to Vietnam with USD and then trying to buy a Nước mía (sugar cane juice) from a local vendor that can't legally accept USD.

My only alternative is to rely on a third party to convert my USD to VND. Which begs the question, why isn't this digital and why do we need the middlemen taking their cut of the transaction? Expand that out into larger purchases, which then imply you're a criminal unless you provide full KYC.

> Expand that out into larger purchases, which then imply you're a criminal unless you provide full KYC.

Well yeah, that's the whole point isn't it? Like, the business doesn't want to be getting paid out of ransomware ransoms, they want money in a clean currency, and so at some point someone has to exchange clean money for ransom tokens, and if you offer to do that without verification then you're essentially part of the ransomware industry and people will treat you accordingly.

You lost me at "clean currency". No such thing.

Come on man, you know exactly what he meant don't be like this

  * business doesn't want to be getting paid out of ransomware ransoms

Exactly why I said my point 2 above.

  * at some point someone has to exchange clean money for ransom tokens

There is no such thing as "clean money" or "clean currency". There is fiat (aka: government money), which definitely isn't something I'd describe as "clean". It is usually backed by a bunch of people who tend to kill others (aka: US military) and that tends to be rather... dirty.

What is really going on is that they are referring to the crypto industry as some sort of "ransomware ransoms" and if you combine those two nonsense arguments (ransomware+clean), with the HN crypto hater bias, I didn't see it worth the effort to continue on, regardless of the downvotes I received.

Honestly, no it would not be great to be able to pay with any cryptocoin.

It basically makes it even more opague.

This will only create a meta game for people on a meta level managing coins and arbitrage.