Comment by Yizahi | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Yizahi | Hacker News Reader

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Inevitable for law avoidance? Sure. We know quite well that humans like very much systems which allow them to avoid laws of any kind, so of course such a system will survive for a long time.

Inevitable for lawful daily usage? Nope. Fundamental problems and lack of benefits will prevent blockchain based ledgers to be deployed in any useful scalable way. Actually not "will" but rather "did". Token proposals had a decade of time already and all failed (except for law avoidance of course). Any legitimate proposal has failed spectacularly:

1) Legal currency - failed due to no privacy, bad performance, atrocious UX, unstable exchange rate, shady providers;

2) Distributed storage - fail

3) Distributed calculator - fail

4) Distributed network (Helium) - fail

5) Smart contracts - neither smart nor contracts, very pricey, limited functions (on chain only), oracle problem unsolved

6) NFT - one big lie, impossible to implement any promise made about them because they don't facilitate transfer of the ownership

7) Supply chain ideas - fail, the problem is not securing the DB but securing the humans doing data input in the DB

Anything else I've forgot? Basically most of the good ideas on paper turned out to be either impossible or impractical with blockchains.

There are several thing you have missed

1) International transfers: crypto is the best here. No stupid regulations, fast and cheap unlike SWIFT or something like it.

I've used to work as international freelance programmer since 2003 or about and payments were the pain all time before 2015 or about when I have moved to crypto. Lost transfers, compliance investigations without any real reason with blocking funds for many months, failed transfers because of some stupid errors like missed letter in the receiver name, etc. And even in the best case you should wait for day or two without any info about the transfer progress. Instant card payments are illusion only, it works only in some cases until it fails (for example, my country currency exchange rate is very volatile sometimes, and some people used to buy with card payments smth nominated in US dollars during this periods, hosting for example, and they thought they have saved their money with this buys, but they were really surprised when their accounts were decreased in several days after that, because real transfer takes several days, and it is executed with the exchange rate actual at that time). There is nothing comparable with crypto in international transfers.

2) Distributed storage. I can't believe you don't know about IPFS. When I've tried to download the book I've failed to buy last time I've found that pirate sites use IPFS links more often than torrents now.)

3) Smart contracts allows amazing things sometimes. Do you know about the flashloans for example? You can loan a millions without any credentials, use it for exchange arbitrage for example and if you fail to get your profit and can't return loan plus interest it suddenly becomes like you didn't loan it at all.) Looks like some kind of magic for me.)

4) NFT is misused tech. It really guarantees the ownership, but not for associated media.) Best cases for NFT are tickets or license keys. But this cases can't give you millions in a minute that's why nobody knows about them.

1) You didn't read my comment carefully. I did say that crypto is great for law avoidance. So yes, international money transfers avoiding any taxes, fees and regulation is indeed better with crypto. The thing is, I'm not an oligarch plundering my country and funneling stolen money to offshores and UAE. I do value AML laws and all the "stupid" regulations which come with it. Even if I'm personally affected by them and have to procure papers for money origin, is limited by in amounts and time to transfer - it is better that a so called "free market" a wild west libertarian dystopia.

2) I have heard about IPFS and other file storage projects like Filecoin or Siacoin. All of them are noncompetitive with any centralized service. And as for illegal filesharing - sure, it may be useful, bittorents are better though and have no shitty monetization attached to them.

3) Yes, I have heard about flashloans, a lot. It's an amazing source of lulz and comedy godl, finding out how another bridge had been abused, often by the flash loan. It's a completely bullshit and useless idea for a normal human, unless you are a technically inclined hacker, who looks for vulnerabilities in the shitty code running on a virtual machine actively discouraging writing longer code with test coverage and better programming practices, because the longer the code the pricier it is to run. To such hackers flash loans are invaluable to properly abuse broken contracts.

4) NFT doesn't guarantee ownership of nothing but the token itself (and token is useless, because of the tech limitations). Tickets have no benefits on the blockchain because they are always issued by the centralized source. Any property you wish can and MUST be set by that same centralized corporation. NFTs add zero, nothing to it. Same with license keys, again issued by a central authority. NFTs is a cargo cult by tokenbros who don't know how business works.

> Anything else I've forgot?

Going by the claims I have encountered:

* Inflation proof/Store of value/Stock market hedge

* Bringing banking to the poor

* Web3

* Play-and-get-paid gaming

Also, preventing corrupt goverment and court from finding and stealing stored value.

Not daily and I think that's the thing. I suppose when one says "cryptocurrency," there are a lot of possible ways one might use it. I agree that for a daily driver, very unlikely.

But "store of value" is still very much in play.

Crypto as a competitor to the 401k or "money in the mattress" strikes me as damn near inevitable.

> Crypto as a competitor to the 401k or "money in the mattress" strikes me as damn near inevitable.

Yes, agreed. If you can stomach the volatility over decade-long time spans, of course - which very many people can't.

There's no way in hell you could convince me to invest in anything as volatile as a pile of crypto coin for my retirement. My retirement account is for slow, gentle, growth, not for a rollercoaster that could end up at zero (within the realm of reasonability - yes, the entire stock market could disappear, but at that point we're not retiring, we're firing up the pursuit special and heading into the desert). This is why ETFs are so popular - they remove a lot of the volatility.

Why would I put my money under the mattress if I could pull it out tomorrow and it'd be worth half of what I thought it was? Yes, inflation is a thing for fiat, but that's nowhere near as volatile as crypto has and continues to be.

And a lot would say "good luck with that?"

Putting a lot in a retirement account today is of course less dumb than putting a lot in crypto.

But neither is guaranteed or certain; and quite a few people diversify their portfolios.

Today, I'd say you're an idiot if you do a lot of crypto -- but also, you're not too bright if you don't throw in a little.

As for tomorrow, who knows. The technology of crypto definitely works. The humans might also decide that this is worth something, or they might not.

Not to mention that in that same decade crypto coins have failed at everything but item 1 the instant payment systems solved the problem of digital money transfer beautifully (and legally)

Yours is a great way to explain it. I'd say - bitcoin and siblings are 'inevitable' like drug trafficking, not like breathing air

I really like this analogy, especially if you go deep on "drug trafficking," -- a corrupted, but not "wholly corrupt" activity that has potential to be legitimized and thus there may be a need to consider something other than "legal annihilation."

(as in bootlegging was also once drug-trafficking)

The government/big pharma just have a monopoly on drug trafficking.

Heroin bad/Codeine good. Prozac good/marijuana bad.

etc...

My point exactly; Yes, "crypto" is useful for many presently illegal activities, but on its face, it is arguably "morally neutral," so you can reasonably throw it in with "encryption," "anonymity" etc -- potentially dangerous techs that the bad guys CAN use, but also important for freedom in the face of authortarianism.

Keeping your hands off of other people’s money - success.

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