Hacker News Reader

Comment by SomeCallMeTim | Hacker News Reader

The problem is that crypto doesn't really solve those problems either. As the article says far more eloquently.

I understand that you are saying you were burned by a central authority. But the truth is that the only way to get everything to work is with a central authority. The article gives examples of crypto being fully reliant on central authorities, for instance.

Everything being done by crypto today could be done better by trusted companies putting together a semi-open peering arrangement that both doesn't waste pointless electricity and that doesn't allow just any potentially hostile actor join the group of authorized peers.

View on HN

The question to me really is which central authorities you trust less...

And for me it is at the moment the crypto side. I don't trust exchanges and I can't be bothered to do local transactions. So central government "approved" system is easier for my life.

And this is the case for basically everyone.

In fact, given that ownership is fundamentally a mutually agreed upon social norm, and not any sort of real truth - Even if you trust the central authority of your locality less, they are likely a much better resource regardless.

I really think crypto advocates just don't actually understand how power works. Power is not the number in the ledger, it's the number of people who will step up to enforce it for you.

It turns out that number is very, very tiny for crypto. Much, much larger for your local currency - even if it's not as large as you'd like it to be, or "fair" as you think it should be.

His example and your support is mixing up central authorities that matter for crypto.

Crypto companies with legal exposure? Yes can be censored.

Open source crypto protocols? As long as raspberry pi’s and digital comms exist, it’s akin to saying the govt can shut down Linux. This is the censorship resistance that matters. It’s not perfect (some ungodly amount of nodes are in AWS and the Trail of Bits report did a good write up as well).

The central authority here is open source software. The author spent a lot of words demonstrating they didn’t know this at all.

Open source crypto protocols are completely irrelevant without connections to crypto companies.

There's this fantasy that crypto can replace money, and that you would therefore never need to trade it for real dollars. That's not going to happen, for reasons outlined in the article and because no medium of exchange that's deflationary can ever be a currency.

If it goes up in value over time, it's an investment and people won't spend it.

Will the open source be free forever? Sure. Whatever. Can people run nodes that burn electricity? Yup. Does that matter? In no way that's relevant to the general public.

Worse, even the crypto networks themselves are subject to issues with their authority: Enough bad actors who join can steal the value of a large percentage of the network.

When we're looking at potential theft of billions of dollars, you better bet that someone will invest the hundreds of millions required to rewrite the chain and take control of a large number of coins.

Then what? Then everyone will need to get together and act like a central authority to either rewrite the chain back to its state before the attack, in which case you do need to rely on a central authority, or you need to admit that _allowing untrusted nodes into a financial network is a Bad Idea._

"Censorship resistance" is irrelevant too, by the way.

> Open source crypto protocols are completely irrelevant without connections to crypto companies

Bitcoin, an open source crypto protocol, launched without the existence of crypto companies.

Mt Gox, instead of helping btc, almost set it back years due to the hack.

Bitcoin grew adoption and scale on tor/DNMs and localbitcoins, both of which had organic, non-exchange economic activity which kept accounting in pure crypto vs returning to fiat/needing an exchange.

The attack you’re describing is a 51% attack, and it had yet to happen due to protocol design on the main chains. If it does, I suppose you’d be right.

But I generally think you don’t understand how the tech works and what proof of concepts exist to disprove your opinions, or at least strongly counter your opinions. and without addressing why they’re wrong you have a weak argument.

What good is Bitcoin without the ability to trade it then?

Your assertions are the ones that are extraordinary, so yours is the side that requires proof. You're effectively claiming that a distributed peer database with a somewhat secure history has some kind of intrinsic value. I'm calling that BS.

Where is the money? Where is the _value_?

The fact that a few people were trading Bitcoins doesn't mean it can ever go mainstream. Something that's a niche hobby isn't going to change the world. If you want to use Bitcoin as a hobby barter medium, then have fun, but that doesn't imply value outside of a tiny community.

Prove me wrong. A "proof of concept" is in the technology domain. For crypto to work outside of a community of crypto-libertarians, it needs to be usable by regular people. Libertarians are famous for not actually being able to design social systems that work in the real world; last time they tried they were chased away by bears. [1]

And as the article pointed out (did you read it?), most apps that support crypto rely on a centralized server since the chain can't be downloaded to mobile devices. How useful is a medium of exchange that requires you to bring a laptop with you everywhere?

[1] https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/21534416/free-state-...

> Your assertions are the ones that are extraordinary, so yours is the side that requires proof.

Ah, or your assertions are akin in a technical sense to saying “the internet is a complex series of tubes, prove me otherwise!” Your criticism is based on a pretty clearly patchy technical understanding.

Banning Linux would result in stagnating development because most Linux developers do not want criminal prosecution. Only the most diehard contributers would remain. No more drivers upstreamed from vendors.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com