206 karma · joined February 13, 2022
The point of perps is:
- Easy access to leverage. Unlike options or futures, there's no need to roll over.
- It's the easiest way to short a coin. Most of the time you even get paid the funding rate to be short.
- Trading fees are typically much lower than for spot.
- Volume and liquidity can be better for perps than for spot. The BTC/USDT perp did 10x the volume of the spot pair in the last 24h on Binance.
Also, there's no reason to affirm that an eventual cure for cancer requires fundamentally new methods. Maybe the current methods are sufficient, it's just that nobody has been "smart" enough to put the pieces together. (disclaimer: not an expert at all)
One interpretation is that crypto companies need security and privacy, while big tech doesn't seem to care all that much.
One example is all the amazing new research in zero-knowledge proofs, MPC, FHE, and modern cryptography in general, that is motivated and funded by cryptocurrency projects.
Or generally, anything that's much better experienced directly than through a screen. Think about virtually hiking Mt Everest, diving the Mariana Trench, walking on Mars, etc. The technology certainly isn't there yet, but I can imagine a future where for a majority of the population, especially those with lower income, VR provides the only affordable* escape from reality.
* In a few years obviously, $3500 is far from affordable.
Fundamental cryptographic primitives (encryption, signatures,...) don't require any advanced math to understand if you don't go into the concrete instantiations. The technical community should really try to better teach these concepts to the general public as we move further into the digital age.
The real bug is that irreversibility, and immutability in general, isn't possible in centralized systems. Which is why you can never be 100% sure that your bank account won't be empty next time you check. This doesn't happen in crypto.
Being able to anonymously transfer value should be a fundamental right, as part of our fundamental right to privacy. In the past, cash could be used for that, but with society going increasingly cashless and some governments trying to make large cash transfers illegal, crypto is now the only way to keep this right.
What about transferring value anonymously? Apart from cash and stable coins, every way of transferring stable assets (wire transfer, Venmo, WU,...) requires a copious amount of KYC and hence a complete loss of privacy (as well as serious security risks given how some of these private companies can misuse personal data).
I don't mind people criticizing Binance, CEXs, and even the crypto industry in general, but I find it quite sad to see people, especially here on HN, essentially advocating for the end of any sort of financial privacy.
Here is the Tether USDT contract https://etherscan.io/token/0xdac17f958d2ee523a2206206994597c....
There is a map `isBlackListed: address => bool` that stores blacklisted accounts. Then the transfer function starts with
function transfer(address _to, uint _value) public whenNotPaused {
require(!isBlackListed[msg.sender]);
...
}
So a blacklisted account cannot send USDT.Worldcoin tries to solve this exact problem. There's already a way to involve your identity in crypto, namely centralized exchanges using KYC. I don't have data to back this, but I would guess most crypto accounts are in some way doxxed via links to KYCd exchanges. Worldcoin provides a way to prove you're a human (that doesn't already own an account) without having to provide any info about yourself, except a scan of your iris.
I share the overall negative sentiments about Worldcoin, mainly due to it being a VC-backed for-profit project. But you cannot ignore that it solves a real problem in crypto: Sybil resistance without access to hardware (mining in PoW) or capital (staking in PoS).