bendtheblock
Joined 18 years ago
Karma
403
Submissions
196
Member since
Jan 12
https://webtwoboomer.com
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Comment · 4 days ago
Funny that for all the hype around decentralisation and the libertarian ideals that surround crypto Binance, Circle etc were able to unilaterally freeze funds when it came down to their own self interest... I thought the code was the rules etc seems like the best player won here.
Crazy that most of this gets put into North Korean weapons programs.
Comment · 1 month ago
I am the author... long time HN reader (2009).... Eager to get other founder's feedback and thoughts experiences building an AI-first company today.
Comment · 4 years ago
Molly White, David Gerard and a few other academics and researchers did a 'correction' of a recent NY Times fluff piece from March 2022 here.
https://www.mollywhite.net/annotations/latecomers-guide-to-c...
It seems as if NYT have a couple of relatively pro-crypto (or just naive) writers.
Comment · 4 years ago
That was price fixing - nothing to do with the bank's ledger. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/libor-scandal.asp
Comment · 4 years ago
That wasn't a change in the ledger - it was the misselling and fraudulent opening of accounts. And it was remediated, there was a change in the leadership and settlements to the victims. You're proving my point, as a system we do a decent job of enforcing good behaviour.
Comment · 4 years ago
A better title would be Ledgers in historical perspective. The hypothetical he ends with (what if ledgers could be decentralised) is a classic example of blockchains looking for a problem. In recent history have there been examples of banks changing their own ledgers? As a civilisation we have already solved the problem of trust in a much more efficient way.
Comment · 4 years ago
what's wrong with this comment?! that it's anti-crypto? currency needs to be a medium of exchange, unit of account, and store of value. Given its volatility, Bitcoin could only ever realistically be useful for the latter, and only then as a risky speculation.
Comment · 4 years ago
but what's the benefit of these?
- decentralised: why is this good?
- trustless: I trust the companies I use, it works
- censure resistance: OK, fringe case for most
- pseudonymous: why do I want anyone to be able to see my transaction history?
Comment · 4 years ago
Due to blockchain's architectural shortcomings, you need to do the transactions off chain. Fine...
But crypto-"currencies" are actually highly speculative assets (as South Africa declared today [1]). No bro will spend them - the ideology is to HODL for 100k remember [2]? Earnest patron saints like Laszlo Hanyecz bought two papa john’s pizzas in 2010 for what would be worth today roughly $200,000,000 [3]. They wanted a new currency, but today the purpose is speculation. The whole point is not to be the greater fool.
Bitcoin was never meant to be gold, it was meant to be spent. But that hasn't happened.
[1] https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-not-a-currency-south-...
[2] https://www.wealthsimple.com/en-ca/magazine/laser-eyes-crypt...
[3] https://www.the-sun.com/news/2935660/bitcoin-pizza-laszlo-ha...
Comment · 4 years ago
The centralized nature of these oligopolies is a property of capitalism, i.e. capital consolidates power. You are saying that search, storage etc are centralised because of the tech? Why are they any more centralised than the other (pre-internet) examples I mentioned?
Comment · 4 years ago
I think you're right about online fraud being much reduced with public private key tech, but if it's such a good idea why has no one been able to do it?
Comment · 4 years ago
it does imply that the value doesn't stick - in fact that's exactly what I'm saying. there is no value beyond the expectation that another greater fool will buy it from you in future.