Comment by CryptoPunk | Hacker News Reader

Comment by CryptoPunk | Hacker News Reader

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>>If you lose your wallet your money is gone? No FDIC protections? Good luck waiting for government to catch up on proper regulations.

You can use a smart wallet where you assign your own set of n guardians (even your own phone can be a guardian), and m and n of those guardians can recover your wallet, with you deciding on m and n.

Such wallets can even have software enforced daily withdrawal limits, which can only be overriden with the approval of the guardians.

It's a completely open system which can be configured any way one wants. A one-size-fits-all government solution destroys innovation and breeds rent-seeking bureaucracy.

I suspect the people most vehemently lobbying against open-finance/Web-3.0 are those most deeply entrenched in the centralized power structures of the establishment.

One thing I could agree on is the multitude of scams, deceptive marketing etc in the Web 3.0 space. This is a consequence of money being freed from its reigns. It has both positive and negative consequences, and those are the negatives.

But finance is on the balance beneficial to humanity, by facilitating more sophisticated coordination, so when you turbo-charge finance, you get a net boost to human coordination.

> I suspect the people most vehemently lobbying against open-finance/Web-3.0 are those most deeply entrenched in the centralized power structures of the establishment.

Crypto shills are not the underprivileged, poor/homeless class of society either? They’re usually well-paid, educated tech/finance bros.

Yes, I wouldn't be surprised if crypto holders started off as wealthier. They're certainly overly-represented amongst the wealthy now. But they'll be under-represented amongst the centralized establishment.

Some interesting facts about crypto asset holders:

Nearly half of Millennial millionaires have more than 25% of their wealth in crypto. Millennials have otherwise been floundering relative to older generations in terms of wealth. Crypto is a rare bright spot for the younger generations, so it's unsurprising much of the older establishment wants to crush it.

Also, 44% of crypto holders in the US are non-white: https://archive.md/slVPj

I recall crypto ownership is 2X more common amongst hispanic Americans, and 3X more common amongst black Americans, relative to white Americans.

> With regard to lottery play for respondents of various racial/ethnic groups, non-Hispanic whites and Native Americans had the highest proportion of gambling on the lottery (51% for each group); however, with regard to mean levels of gambling on the lottery, blacks and Native Americans had the highest averages (20.6 and 25 days, respectively).

> Those in the lowest fifth in terms of socioeconomic status (SES) had the “highest rate of lottery gambling (61%) and the highest mean level of days gambled in the past year (26.1 days).

The wealthy people are the ones selling the lottery tickets (/crypto).

https://journalistsresource.org/economics/research-review-lo...

Lottery tickets don't store value. Crypto assets do. The analogy therefore fails.

> have more than 25% of their wealth in

.. highly volatile assets? Where has all this money come from, other than people bidding each other up?

Wealth is not always zero sum.. it could very well be a case of the pie getting larger.

> Also, 44% of crypto holders in the US are non-white

Depending on how Hispanic people are counted, thats almost exactly in line with the 2020 census, which puts the non-hispanic white population at 57.8% [0]. I think if you adjust for the average age of cryptocurrency holders, 56% white would actually be more white than the demographics of the overall age group, which I think is not the point you were trying to make.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_Sta...

The proportion of the US population that is white is 72% if hispanic whites are included. That would be more in line with the statistics I saw showing black and hispanic Americans are over-represented among crypto holders.

That's true. But it's also true that those that brush off the idea of whats essentially a checking account denominated in a currency of their choice (i.e. stablecoins) is unnecessary. They're usually well-paid, educated bros from a developed country where they have access to a well developed financial network, have banks in their neighborhood, have a stable currency and don't live under capital controls.

That is such a fun attack vector, can't wait to see all the stories about socially engineered attacks when this tech will spread.

Now crypto user not only will need to audit all source code of his wallets ans every smart contract written in whatever flavor of the day language including Haskell. But they will also need to do an interview and assess technical knowledge of every signer of his wallet. Every wallet. It will be glorious :)

People don't need to personally audit the software they use or create their own security protocols. Software will emerge that has undergone audits from recognized software security firms and best practices will emerge for how to create personal security networks. Devices will also be created to simplify and make user-friendly the process of acting as a guardian.

Ah yes, centralization.

1. Much less centralization than legacy finance, as you only have to be able to trust in the integrity of open source software released at one point in time, not trust a black box corporation and government over the course of a long period of time while your funds are deposited at a bank.

2. The centralization is not mandated - you can choose to audit the software yourself.

3. If you do choose to rely on a trusted third party, the set of parties you can choose from is open, with no restrictions on who you can choose to rely on.

Overall it enables a much more configurable and open financial system, with a larger set of parties able to participate in the market, and a much larger range of configurations that those parties can utilize.

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