agorabinary

Yes, as a Westerner I hadn't even heard of this massive invalidation of 86% of India's cash currency.

Pretty dramatic, certainly could have helped the massive crypto price run-up in late 2017. Also helps to demonstrate the value of a currency that can't be manipulated by state actors.

You can't regulate corruption, by definition

One of the major concerns of EU skeptics has always been the ability (and the gall) to push ambitious acts of centralized control by like-minded European leaders. And more likely that big players like Google/FB will just buy off protections from mega-regulators than actually be "reigned in" as it always happens

In case anyone is still using the ad-plagued bitorrent.com client:

https://transmissionbt.com

Lots of features, easy to use.

Some interesting points here regarding design improvements to bring us a more mainstream Linux desktop, but what about price point as well? I just configured a System76 Gazelle laptop with the same specs (albeit newer cpu, but moore's law) as my 2 year old ideapad and it's $400 more than what I paid back then.. AND no gpu either. :/

Just read whitepaper. I'll check in on this project once there they open source the code so I can run my own payment channel hub. Until then it's a centralized system (and even then.. maybe still).

"LiquidChain GmbH plans to operate several Liquidity.Network hubs on top of the Ethereum blockchain building the foundation for instant and cheap transmission of crypto. Anyone however will be able to operate a Liquidity.Network hub once the software is open sourced."

It peaked not from a lack of demand but from hitting an inevitable scaling roadblock. Now the community is busy deploying a layer 2 (Lightning) to the Bitcoin mainnet that can offer transactions per second that exceed any financial system today, not to mention a whole host of breathtakingly innovative developments powered by this new layer.

I understand the justifiable HN frustration at the prevalence of scams and overpromises that have plagued the blockchain (mainly ICO) world as of late. But the blockchain is getting better, and with developments that make SWIFT innovations seem trivial by comparison.

And the evidence that this is actually Satoshi is what exactly?

> Private storage

Easier to store a private key that gives access to a blockchain datastore than to store a decryption key + private storage file that would need to be replicated across all systems you want password access.

> HA system

That's a hosted solution, so it isn't completely trustless.

> closed-source softwares will not just read your passwords

I agree that this has nothing to do with a blockchain.

Ok interesting. Maybe their plan is that once all the claims are in, if total valid claims amount < recovered coins, everyone (who filed) gets full amount back. Hopefully anyway

Just read it through and it seems that:

a) any owed assets will be paid in Bitcoin, unlike the bankruptcy proceedings which gave you fiat at (I believe) the rate when mtgox went under

b) a form will be posted to mtgox.com to fill out and send to them before October 22, 2018

Has anyone who filed in the bankruptcy proceedings got any money back? If so did you get it all back?

Yes this is a misleading title. Please fix OP

Also curious about Linux vulnerabilities to this particular attack - any Linux wizards in thread?

The only reason Ripple is worth anything is because of PR to convince the world that a wholly premined coin that isn't even necessary to use the Ripple network holds any value at all. So... a $29 million PR move to boost a $22 billion PR move?

You only need to open a few channels to reliably connect to the network - the network allows you to transact with those you don't have a direct channel with. And in actual usage you won't ever need to close them. Lightning solves transaction costs.

Every single project I've seen that is looking into Lightning has simply offered lofty promises and roadmaps but without any compelling advantage of Lightning on their coin as opposed to Lightning on Bitcoin. If anything, they have a big hurdle to overcome - Bitcoin's first mover advantage with regards to LN development. PLEASE correct me if I am wrong, but as far as I have seen 99% of off-chain development progress has been Bitcoin/Litecoin, with other coins simply following the progress made and hoping to change a few parameters to make it compatible with their coin.

And the speed difference you mention is an important point - so many of these coins have acted as artificial capacity surrogates during Bitcoin's scaling woes. But with LN, I don't see their use at all...

We need a social network experience where users own their data, and are presented with a simple and user friendly interface that connects this data with their chosen friends. Currently we have user data mined en masse at great privacy risk and for endless profit, ad infinitum.

Facebook has not decayed because of an influx of new users beginning with this "eternal september", but because of the pointed decisions by its leadership to choose greed over respect for its users. The paramount decision is the decision to go public, necessitating indefinite growth at any cost in order to satisfy investors. It must have been obvious to Facebook's early employees that a Facebook at the behest of investors would increasingly dilute the user experience, and yet only now do they lament what they created.

This is standard Alex Jonesian "association implies conspiracy" type thinking. They are associated and that's it. LN development is as open source as can be.

You're missing the point of the article. A particular smart contract, or zk-snarks, or a new Bitcoin protocol functionality... these are not application layers, they are a particular application. Lightning is an application layer that enables a whole new set of applications.

And this is groundbreaking stuff, you can't expect it to have been released in Bitcoin's original 2009 client.

Great article, great analogy. There are many interesting applications being built (distribution applications), but distinguishing them from the application layer is an important point. Bitcoin Lightning and Ethereum's version of it (raiden network) are better compared to an application layer, whereas a particular Dapp is more like a particular application powered by that layer. And so far, many of these applications have been hindered by the lack of such a layer, up until 2018 when I think it will see mainnet usage.

repost. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16313925

Your first link has refuting or critical comments from such notables as Vitalik Buterin and Brahm Cohen. In case anyone wanted a tl;dr to actually reading and evaluating that 15 minute logical fallacy of a read. And the other ones just reference the first link.

How is Lightning impractical? I encourage you to try it out on testnet right now, it works great. It also solves your PoW concerns.

Surely a lot of frauds but where are the flaws?

Instead we have:

- Open source flexibility: Hundreds of competing coins seeking to optimize upon an original design

- A decentralized payment system: Beyond the reach of currency-manipulating state actors

- Programmable money: The key ingredient for trustless and automated next-gen services and products

- Working as designed: 9 years strong

- And soon: Scalability to global volumes

https://twitter.com/bramcohen/status/959973688035631105

Don't go public. Look at major companies like Facebook that have become massive user data and time exploiting machines for the sake of increasing share price. Stay private and recognize what place your product has in the world - many ideas CAN be billion dollar ideas if they pervert their original vision, but many ideas ought to remain much smaller and focused to stay true to themselves, not investors.

And is this article really arguing that Americans are underinvested in the stock market and not grossly overinvested?

If there is a fatal flaw in Bitcoin somewhere, there are hundreds of other attempts to improve upon this idea by forking the code. We will surely see dramatic changes in valuation amongst these different coins as the crypto community develops, but to think that ALL the coins will fail in their game-changer level ambition.. this does not logically follow.

In all possible worlds, individuals will fork Bitcoin and the competition for economically and technically sound digital monies will only increase. And in all possible worlds, individuals will manipulate markets with very low volume, ie. Bitcoin for most/all of its existence.

This is all deterministic. It could not be otherwise.

"it still doesn't explain the hundreds of alt coins"

It's open source. How many Linux distros are there?

This is naive of Buffet when his only evidence of a "bad ending" is the existence of a massive rally. The entire near-future automated economy depends on programmable money. There is literally nothing interesting happening in FinTech right now apart from the crypto space.

And this is completely expected - any market with low volume can be easily manipulated.

1. LN is not deployed because it is conservatively developed like all development in a space with $500B on the line.

2. My claim is simply that Bitcoin is worth significantly more with LN than without? You then take a more preliminary argument that Bitcoin is worthless to begin with, which is laughable.

3. 6 on-chain transaction fees that support millions of off-chain payments. And your hub argument is a feature of a distributed network itself, not of LN in particular. Say a "hub" emerges and starts charging fees. Market competition paired with efficient routing solves this easily.

If you don't understand Brahm's argument, I suggest reading through it again. He's a pretty smart guy when it comes to distributed networks.