Hacker News Reader

nprzon Bitfinex just spent $23.7M in fees to make a single Ethereum transaction

How would you know which miner would pick up this transaction and process it?

nprzon Visualize 3D hyperbolic honeycombs and sphere packings

Yeah there's this whole lecture about the hyperbolic geometry commonly seen on a DMT trip: https://youtu.be/loCBvaj4eSg?t=504

nprzon Visualize 3D hyperbolic honeycombs and sphere packings

Interesting, I was just watching this last night: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loCBvaj4eSg

nprzon Practical Front-End Architecture

I haven't spent much time with Next.js, but luckily React will soon natively support[0] SSR. Wonder if Next.js will still be around once React Server Components are fully released.

[0]https://reactjs.org/blog/2020/12/21/data-fetching-with-react...

nprzon Reddit seeks to hire advisers for U.S. IPO – sources

Remember digg.com?

nprzon Regulators should treat stablecoins like banks

> I hope to live in a society where economic experiments can be executed

Totally read experiments as experts

nprzon U.S. Senate Vote in Favor of Amendment That Threatens Crypto Industry

The bill expands the definition of broker to include anyone who facilities the transfer of crypto: miners, wallet providers, smart contract devs. These people are now made responsible for collecting transaction records for the IRS. That's just not how cryptocurrency works. Miners, smart contract devs, don't know who is transacting with who. It's effectively a ban on cryptocurrency.

nprzon Senators move to exempt Bitcoin, crypto miners from proposed U.S. tax rules

So you're saying sending money to a bitcoin address would help obscure the identity of the receiver?

nprzon Senators move to exempt Bitcoin, crypto miners from proposed U.S. tax rules

So why not just send the payment to a Russian bank?

nprzon Senators move to exempt Bitcoin, crypto miners from proposed U.S. tax rules

Wouldn't it have to be an agency in their own jurisdiction that would prevent the hacker from accessing banking services? They would make an effort to shut down the hackers bank account but not prosecute them?

nprzon Senators move to exempt Bitcoin, crypto miners from proposed U.S. tax rules

Why not just ask for a paypal or a wire transfer then? If they don't care about revealing their identity?

nprzon Senators move to exempt Bitcoin, crypto miners from proposed U.S. tax rules

So they might as well just ask for their ransom via a wire transfer or paypal? Since their identity will be known anyway.

nprzon Senators move to exempt Bitcoin, crypto miners from proposed U.S. tax rules

So why are ransomware hackers never prosecuted?

nprzon Infrastructure bill cryptocurrency surveillance provision is a privacy disaster

You say all this, but where are all the thousands of silk road/DNM vendor/ransomware arrests? The gov has the tech to deanonymize these transactions, but fails to make any arrests?

nprzon Infrastructure bill cryptocurrency surveillance provision is a privacy disaster

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLYYh4aPXAM

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/jul/31/out-of-co...

nprzon Infrastructure bill cryptocurrency surveillance provision is a privacy disaster

Cubans do use bitcoin: https://www.coindesk.com/cuba-protests-bitcoin-donations

It doesn't matter if you use VPN with your paypal account, you can still be locked out of your account and your funds frozen. This is not true of bitcoin. No one can freeze your bitcoin, no one can prevent transfer.

nprzon Infrastructure bill cryptocurrency surveillance provision is a privacy disaster

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/jul/31/out-of-co...

nprzon Infrastructure bill cryptocurrency surveillance provision is a privacy disaster

Read the article linked above and I think it will be difficult to resist the conclusion that Nigeria is an oppressive regime. There's even a wikipedia page dedicated to documenting human right abuses in Nigeria: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Nigeria

> Last October, Nigeria was rocked by the largest protests in decades, as many thousands marched against police brutality, and the infamous Sars police unit. The “EndSars” protests saw abuses by security forces, who beat demonstrators, and used water cannon and teargas on them. More than 50 protesters were killed, at least 12 of them shot dead at the Lekki tollgate in Lagos on 20 October

> The clampdown was financial too. Civil society organisations, protest groups and individuals in favour of the demonstrations who were raising funds to free protesters or supply demonstrators with first aid and food had their bank accounts suddenly suspended.

> Feminist Coalition, a collective of 13 young women founded during the demonstrations, came to national attention as they raised funds for protest groups and supported demonstration efforts. When the women’s accounts were also suspended, the group began taking bitcoin donations, eventually raising $150,000 for its fighting fund through cryptocurrency.

> Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter and a prominent advocate of cryptocurrencies, reshared the FemCo bitcoin donation page, further drawing the ire of Nigeria’s government, which last month suspended Twitter in Nigeria.

nprzon Infrastructure bill cryptocurrency surveillance provision is a privacy disaster

> The dollar volume of crypto received by users in Nigeria in May was $2.4bn, up from $684m last December, according to blockchain research firm Chainalysis. And the true scale of crypto flows through Africa’s largest economy is likely to be much larger, with many trades untraceable by analysts.

Over $2.4bn in value transferred, but you're telling me no one is using it? Transfer in BTC and convert to a stable coin if you're worried about volatility. Also Nigeria's currency, the naira has a 12% inflation rate. I'm not sure holding BTC is more of a risk than a currency that's guaranteed to lose 12% of its value each year.

A VPN will not protect you if PayPal decides to freeze your account. It will also not hide any of your transactions from PayPal.

nprzon Infrastructure bill cryptocurrency surveillance provision is a privacy disaster

> I don't see any scientific or technological application that could benefit humanity and would be developed from blockchain technology.

Bitcoin is helping humanity right now as I type. There are millions who live under authoritative regimes that do not have access to banking services. Bitcoin gives anybody with an internet connection the ability to hold, save, and transfer value. You are condemning something you do not understand. Bitcoin is a technology that improves human rights.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/jul/31/out-of-co...

nprzon Infrastructure bill cryptocurrency surveillance provision is a privacy disaster

Because the original commenter is not arguing in good faith. There are countless examples of crypto and bitcoin helping civilians escape tyrannical states, conveniently non were mentioned.

nprzon Infrastructure bill cryptocurrency surveillance provision is a privacy disaster

Bitcoin is a technology that improves individual freedoms. No institution can prevent you from holding or transferring bitcoin. When you buy a bitcoin you can remain confident there will never be more than 21 million btc minted, btc will never become diluted.

Claiming the BTC protocol is without utility is completely disingenuous.

nprzon United States sells Wu-Tang album forfeited by Martin Shkreli

This is getting downvotes, but it is true Shkreli got his bail revoked for offering $5000 for every strand of hair collected from HRC.

nprzon Bye-bye, Bitcoin: It's time to ban cryptocurrencies

Who knew a distributed/decentralized database could be so threatening.

nprzon China's Ban on Bitcoin Follows a Pattern Frequently Used by Beijing

> has produced nothing more than something to gamble on in the stock market

So then why did China ban it?

nprzon Husband of Amazon employee sentenced to prison for insider trading Amazon stock

They can't arrest a husband and wife for the same crime.

nprzon Let’s Talk About Hot Tub Streams

> being found to be sexy by others is not against our rules

Phew! Glad I'll still be able to host my twitch stream!

nprzon $365B wiped off cryptocurrency market after Tesla stops accepting Bitcoin

It's 100% honest. Palestinians have been using bitcoin for exactly the reason I mentioned above. [0]

[0] https://www.coindesk.com/crypto-gaza-west-bank-bitcoin-pales...

nprzon $365B wiped off cryptocurrency market after Tesla stops accepting Bitcoin

Say you wanted to pseudonymously send funds to a family member with a frozen bank account in say, Gaza, by the end of the day. What tech would you use to accomplish this?

nprzon $365B wiped off cryptocurrency market after Tesla stops accepting Bitcoin

Yes, that’s how the btc network works, that’s what censorship-resistant means. You would primarily transact on a payment layer, which true, may not have all the features of the base layer. But you also have the ability to opt-in and transact directly on the blockchain and get all those nice features listed above, however the transaction fee would be higher and the speed of the transaction slower.