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Comment by monero-xmr | Hacker News Reader

There is no such thing as true digital ownership for things built on anyone else’s platform. If you want to truly own something you need to use open protocols - like websites and bespoke software. If you build on someone’s API, or rely on “owning” a Twitter account which you literally have zero right to and is at the whim of the platform’s owner, don’t be shocked when it’s taken from you.

Of course, you can always use Bitcoin / Ethereum and the Ethereum Name Service which is true, legitimate digital ownership. But few on HN like that. There is a lot of cognitive dissonance when arguing that blockchain has literally zero use cases and then being angry when Twitter or Facebook or Google rugs you.

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> Of course, you can always use Bitcoin / Ethereum and the Ethereum Name Service which is true, legitimate digital ownership.

Why is this legitimate digital ownership vs other forms? Bitcoin and ETH are stolen all the time, and it’s not recoverable, even if you can prove it rightfully belonged to you.

People are wary of crypto because it’s controlled by a cabal of extraordinarily entrenched early adopters, many of whom established themselves on speculation, grift, and fraud. It’s no better than the centralized banking it purports to supplant, and worse in most measurable regards.

A lot of early people sold, it’s hard to buy and hold when you 10x. Then people in at $1 sell at $10, those buyers sell at $100, those at $1000, and so on. It takes deep, deep conviction to sit on 10000% gains and not sell.

And those people are true believers in the tech, and IMO deserve their riches. Same as anyone who bought FB or AMZN or GOOG at IPO and held until now.

As a separate issue, do the longer term holders pose a threat to the crypto ecosystem? You are so naïve - the traditional economic and banking system is the same! Except for centuries! Do I sound conspiratorial? Well, you said crypto has a “cabal”. Pot meet kettle.

At least in crypto it’s open source, and the addresses and balances are public. A fundamentally more equitable system at its core.

I have no love for the banks. But crypto is open source in name only. The deflationary nature of it ensures that expansion of adoption is exclusively to the enrichment of current holders. It’s a glorified ponzi scheme, posturing behind sham principles of openness and inclusion.

I feel like you are at an inflection point of understanding. The fiat economic system, which has been the global system since the gold standard went away, is a glorified Ponzi scheme! You are so close

Neither is a ponzi scheme, but I think you're both trying to say that each rewards the already rich, which is true.

But replacing one "rich get richer" economic system with another is not an improvement, except for a very few people who might become rich during the transition.

I am using a rhetorical technique to point to the traditional economic system to contrast it with the crypto system, and in this way crypto is at least equally bad (if not (much!) better). That technique is for observers of the thread.

Unfortunately, if you have a problem with “rich get richer”, I believe you are arguing against fundamental requirement of technological improvement.

It takes patience to do anything of value. Anything. Learning a skill, mastering a job, earning the trust of your peers, becoming a leader - this requires time, dedication, and discipline. A government cannot simply mandate that everyone can read, or everyone can be rich for that matter.

All risk has tradeoff. It takes those with more stuff in order to risk enough stuff to subsidize a lot of experiments, some of which will bear fruit. I would argue that even in the smallest communities, with everyone starting equal, very soon some will have more and some have less. This is simply human nature.

> It takes patience to do anything of value. Anything. Learning a skill, mastering a job, earning the trust of your peers, becoming a leader

I don't have a problem with "the hard working get richer", as in your examples. I have a problem with the way crypto would reward people for simply owning it as they did nothing.

It sounds like you have a problem with property in general. If I bought equities, or bonds, or a house, and sat on them for years, I would be rewarded for “doing nothing”. I took risk and was rewarded.

A deflationary currency does not encourage you took take risk. In fact the complete opposite, it's not quite the same a buying a house (not that there is anything particularly positive about growth in real estate prices outpacing inflation).

> It sounds like you have a problem with property in general

It sounds like you have a problem with economic growth and increasing productivity in general

> crypto is at least equally bad

It's objectively much worse. Especially bitcoin.

> government cannot simply mandate that everyone can read

To be fair they did and it turned out it's possible. It just took a while. More or less everyone can read nowadays.

> trying to say that each rewards the already rich, which is true

However deflationary currencies reward them significantly more than inflationary ones.

> gold standard

Was an objectively awful system. The 19th century economy was on a permanent boom and bust cycle alternating between severe inflation and deflation. 2009, let alone what has happened over the last few years would've been very mild by gold standard standards.

> I feel like you are at an inflection point of understanding

It's funny that the edgy people who are so excited about the gold standard/bitcoin/deflation are so clueless about economic history.

>controlled by a cabal of extraordinarily entrenched early adopters, many of whom established themselves on speculation, grift, and fraud

Aka buying the stuff while you lot were laughing at it and calling them magic internet beans over on /r/buttcoin

That's true of literally everything and yet we have figured out in other spheres how to have fair dealings, and have things like leases, and insurance, and other fair ways of working together when dealing with things owned by other people. As people build businesses on these platforms it is completely necessary that standards and duties between these parties be formalized, predictable, and non-capricious.

No I have a constitutional right to the property I own, except in exceptional circumstances. Your Twitter handle is not land, nor a physical object in your house, and the laws we have won’t protect you if the contract says you can’t own it.

Cryptocurrency is simply a different thing in terms of digital ownership. It’s not the same as other digital things.

What about domain names?

I have a really nice .app site and fear this every time I renew it.

(For those who don't know: .app is owned by Google)

This cannot happen with domains. If you were to drop the domain, they could potentially reserve it for themselves, but as long as you're not breaking laws and pay for renewals, the domain is yours.

I hope you're right!

(I'm quite honored to get your first comment on this site after lurking for around 3 years and a half, lol)

lololol the web as a distribution platform is very important to me! :-P

Are there actually legal restrictions to this? Does anything prevent a registrar from increasing the domain renewal price from $12 to $12,000 which effectively prices out everyone?

https://eth.limo/ is one attempt of several to map ENS domains to web addressable domains. Ideally all the major browsers will support ENS for domain-to-IP mapping and the issue is solved.

Squarespace owns it now. Google is leaving the domain registrar business.

Replace "digital platform" with the Internet and it sounds like a terrible dystopia. Just because the policies existed doesn't make it right. What next? @POTUS is claimed by X and is put up for bidding to the highest bidder.

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