kemonocode

> In the meantime, Tether will be worth $1 or so, and "be operational". So even a perfectly accurate crystal ball seeing into the future doesn't help you in the now.

I brought it up in another post here in this thread, but I think the easiest way to know when Tether is genuinely in trouble is to keep an eye on the settlement iFinex reached with the NYAG [0] and if it's unable to fulfill it. Until then, be as sketchy as it may, it's "safe".

[0] https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2021/attorney-general-james-...

At least they're disclosing their stake, it's more honest that most people putting out hokum about crypto.

If you want to know if/when Tether will crash, look at the NYAG settlement and the moment iFinex can no longer fulfill those transparency reports. [0] That'll be your canary in the mine.

[0] https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2021/attorney-general-james-...

I'm sure people will come up with a new bullet point to demonize NFTs after that. Not that there isn't a laundry list of things that are wrong with them, but the alleged environmental impact is the least of such issues yet it's the easiest to "understand" and so it overtakes any kind of discussion.

Nice try, but Coinbase is one of the most, if not THE most tightly regulated exchange out there. [0]

[0] https://help.coinbase.com/en/coinbase/privacy-and-security/o...

It angers me too, and most people are definitely getting upset with the wrong party- it is not to say crypto miners are magically devoid of guilt or that there aren't issues with scalpers, but these are all, deep down, supply issues that have sprung due to an over-reliance on Just-In-Time manufacturing. Pandemic-induced shortages merely compound what was already a problem.

Ethereum proof of work made it so the owners of the coins could be independent from the owners of the mining operations, even if in practice many miners end up keeping most of the block rewards themselves and only reinvesting what they need in new infrastructure and to maintain what they already have. Proof of stake makes it so the miners and holders are now the same (you stake the coins that you have, or you pool them up with others), however the cost to wreck the chain is much greater than it would have been 3-4 years ago.

The whole idea is that Ether is so spread out now, it'd be unfeasible for someone to snatch up enough of it for an attack, in a similar way to how an ever-increasing difficulty makes it harder for a hostile actor to coordinate enough of it to make such attack.

Truly, as you say, "in a well functioning democratic society", which is not the case for a not so insignificant proportion of the world.

For the people who criticize as to why they've taken so long in shifting to a PoS model: consensus takes time, so does developing and testing something that definitively shouldn't go wrong.

Also, there's the inherent issue with Proof-of-Stake that Proof-of-Work doesn't have: the initial distribution of the coin has to be wide enough before it could feasibly self-maintain a PoS shift without being immediately vulnerable to consensus attacks. Ethereum is definitively mature enough by now, it wasn't a few years ago.

I agree, and whenever I bring up that web designers can do anything but wrong, I've been piled up on before.

I'd still take a mildly broken AMP page to read an article over the "intended experience" with ads and trackers everywhere and any attempts to block them would break the page further.

Which is why I find it inevitable that any future cryptocurrency project will either have to start with Proof-of-Work during an initial minting phase then switch to Proof-of-Stake, OR use an existing blockchain to bootstrap itself, either as a fork or through airdropping. To these effects, any alternative consensus mechanism that is based on tying up a resource that's not the coin itself could be considered akin to Proof-of-Work (Such as Chia and its proof-of-capacity).

Anything resembling an ICO is a non-starter if it were to survive, especially with a shifting regulatory landscape. I was among the opponents to Ethereum's initial distribution (premine) but to wit, ETH has no supply cap so Vitalik's slice has shrunk over the years.

I don't like Tether as it's no different from fractional reserve banks, but as long as the NYAG remains content with what she sees, it's sound money. Been waiting its supposed collapse for half a decade now with bated breath, but it still has yet to happen.

Disclaimer: I own zero USDT and an insignificant amount of USDC, being rather skeptical on "stablecoins" in general.

Others have already mentioned how it's a non-starter if there isn't an option to self-host so I won't bring that up: instead, for those who don't mind that I'd suggest easier means to import data from existing formats. Offer an on-ramp for people who too are fed up of GnuCash or have been using Ledger up until now and could use something friendlier. Best of luck in your project!

They shouldn't be above the laws they enforce, yet they typically are (e.g. qualified immunity). I agree with one thing though, the solution is not to abolish LE, but just as with asset seizure which is what TFA was about, checks and balances should be in place and should work properly.

Admittedly it was rather snarky, but the main takeaways remain the same: don't use safe deposit boxes and don't make it trivial to get your assets seized.

Having property the feds can't easily seize sounds like something only criminals would want (after all, I'm an honest citizen- I got nothing to hide, surely a bank would be safer than my home) up until it happens to you.

Yes please, I'd like to hear more about this.

Except many stocks do not, in fact, pay dividends. Amazon doesn't and it's one of the most highly valued companies in the world. Meanwhile, just as a lot of crypto does not pay dividends I could make use of DeFi platforms to get it on the crypto I do own, or simply get Proof of Stake cryptocurrencies, then you can see the staking process as paying dividends of a kind.

I get your hatred towards crypto, but you're cherry picking. If all money is BS and made up then good ol' stocks have good company with crypto in hell.

Yes, only the winning bid would go to Noora. However, there would be a record of any other bidders' intent.

With a bit more of creativity/effort, someone could have created a smart contract for keeping track of all the donations and only releasing them once they reach a certain threshold, then giving a token back representing a "life saved" to donors if they truly wanted, but I get capitalizing on NFTs' hype right now.

Yes, they are; yes, the government is abusing a loophole and they also should be stopped; no, it's still not okay no matter who does it.

Likewise, with an attitude like this:

> Before I begin the infamous “cola punching” story, I should point out that I am quite short, and sport curly ringlets atop my short head. It’s been a constant battle to be taken seriously in the workplace; I detest the word “cute,” and woe betide anyone who perceives me as such.

...she's just setting herself up for disappointment- repeatedly. I'm also rather short and baby-faced and clients and coworkers are often surprised when I tell them I'm nearing 30 when I could just as easily be the fresh intern not a day older than 18. People aren't necessarily going to be malicious with behaviors like those. Could it be internalized misogyny/ageism or something along those lines and that no matter what it'd be out of the line? Maybe, but it wouldn't come from a place of genuine malice.

Modern ransomware gangs focus more on data exfiltration rather than actually locking down data, and it lets them remain undetected for longer too. That said, yes, correct, having good and reliable backups is vital.

I'm admittedly rather disappointed with Chia after reading up on it, as I thought it was closer to Sia [0] or Storj [1] where you got rewarded in coin to provide storage space, but instead it's more akin to Burstcoin [2] and indeed, proof-of-capacity cryptocurrencies are nothing new and the only supposedly added value would be on Chialisp for (safer?) smart contracts. It IS factually correct to say proof-of-capacity is far less resource intensive than proof-of-work crypto as even the least efficient hard drive will consume orders of magnitude less energy than a mining rig, but it's still based on tying up a resource, this time it's just a majority of hardware and a minority of electricity instead of the other way around.

One issue that most people advocating for proof-of-stake gleefully ignore is to work through the initial distribution of the coin- can't stake what you don't have. So you either have a sizable premine, you bootstrap your coin using someone else's ledger or you start out with proof-of-work (or like Chia, proof-of-capacity) and then move on to proof-of-stake once there's a stable ecosystem for it. It does seem like Chia comes with a sizable premine, which is also disappointing but not entirely surprising as practically every new cryptocurrency that has come out as of late has had it to "financially bootstrap" its development and what not. I'd also have some choice words about Bram Cohen, but they'd be rather out of scope here.

[0] https://sia.tech/

[1] https://www.storj.io/

[2] https://www.burst-coin.org/

Still seems strange to me they focused so hard on the ad fraud part of it, unless they had a sudden change of heart and needed an excuse to get Droidscript out of the Play Store. They could just as well simply have said that any app that allows for easy, arbitrary code execution is a security liability and won't be accepted on the Play Store, which does include a fair number of root-required tools that have been removed at some point before. I don't necessarily agree with it, but that'd be a pretty believeable justification.

My gut feeling says these devs aren't telling the whole story.

I've been exposed to the ludicrous US credit system through my fiancee who was affected by the Experian hack, and frankly, I completely get anyone who wants to see it all torn down. I find it ludicrous there are three different credit bureaus and they all seem to be equally incompetent for something as critical as an attempt to summarize a perception of your trustworthiness into a neat little file.

Sure, you could say the onus is on the people who use cryptocurrency for more than just crime or speculation to give proof about these uses, but for most detractors it'll never be enough, and for these users the benefits outweigh these negatives (or else they wouldn't be using crypto to begin with) so it's all an exercise in futility except maybe to convince any neutral bystanders one way or the other.

If I say cash and banks get used by the vast majority of organized crime I'd be factually correct, but I'd also be accused of whataboutism. In a world without crypto I'd be seriously hampered by an unfair economic system, so to me personally the pros outweigh the cons, but it'd be anecdotal evidence. Hope you see what I'm trying to get at.

I'd hardly consider myself "wealthy" (certainly NOT by Western standards) but sure, whatever fits best your own views. ;)

I'd say if you have enough money to be a capital flight risk, there are far less cumbersome means to get your money out of the country than crypto.

You might want to check LocalBitcoin's usage in Venezuela [1] to get a clearer picture. It's not pure propaganda.

[1] https://coin.dance/volume/localbitcoins/VES

I respect his opinion (especially if his biggest exposure to it was through CI abuse to mine Monero and other CPU-based PoW crypto, I won't even deny that's an extremely shitty situation many service providers have had to deal with these past months more than ever), even if I disagree with it.

It's not difficult to be negative on crypto when it personally brings you nothing but grief. Our point of views are unequivocally tainted by our personal experiences; I'm sure had I been born in a reasonably free country, with competent social structures and the means to actually own the fruits of my labor, I'd probably hold a different view on the entire ecosystem: I'd see nothing but grifters and scammers polluting the planet while taking advantage of gullible fools.

And as the article says, I'll disclose my stake (Even if I see it as pretty spiteful): I sold off the majority of BTC I had when it touched $60k but most of it is in stablecoins, so I'm still part of the ecosystem. A considerable part of my net worth is in cryptocurrency I've been slowly accruing over the years, converting however much I could save up in local currency to a minority in cold hard cash and the rest in crypto, and it wouldn't have been possible for me to save up otherwise. Yes, I am in one of those so-called "isolated examples of failed national economies" that maybe aren't nearly as isolated nor as uncommon as he seems to allude to.

Two things worth noting here:

- Not your keys, not your coins. Never keep in an exchange what you cannot afford to lose.

- Governments, especially tyrannical regimes that don't even need to pretend to respect human rights, will hamper your attempts at circumventing them at every step.

I wouldn't go so far as to declare the whole endeavor hopeless as some people have done here, only that you must be far more careful when covering your tracks. It's not a turnkey solution, there are few ways to get it right and a myriad ways to get it wrong, it sucks but it is how it is. If it weren't working, then they wouldn't be bothering trying to ban payments in crypto.