You'll get nothing but up votes here on HN, a lot are still angry they missed the boat.
But solving the problem of how to transfer value trustlessly and anonymously, instantly anywhere in the world is one of the biggest breakthroughs since the Internet.
Amazing how in a few short years kids started growing up with Bitcoin and don't understand how it work or why it exists :(
It’s an interesting technical problem to solve. But after 15y still has no meaningful benefits for our societies. Other than gambling/speculation/illegal stuff. The transformative cryptocurrency shift didn’t happen
Some people think communication mechanisms shouldn't enforce policy. They don't want their phones automatically disconnecting if they talk to a friend about illegal or immoral things. They don't want their TVs shutting off if they watch stuff that's politically unacceptable. So it follows that they don't want their money throwing an exception if they try spending on an transaction too unsavory for Stripe or your bank.
Free speech is for all the stuff you personally detest and personally choose to avoid. In a free country you hold your nose and allow others to engage in it.
If money is speech, then having a kind of money that doesn't pass through policy gates is an essential component of a free society.
Is that something we want though? Why would it be beneficial to let money be used for anything without restrictions? Society has always relied on interdependence, not complete individual freedom. You have to make the case for it.
Respectfully, I disagree that anyone has to make the case for it. That's exactly what freedom is: if society fails to "make the case" for prohibiting something, it defaults to legal. There's no general law requiring people to be good people, or to have common sense, which would be the same as defaulting to illegal. I presume you wouldn't like that, or the surveillance state that would be required to enforce it.
Complete individual freedom as a concept is not a human right. There has never been a society oriented on it and it is not self evident why it would be beneficial for society as a whole to allow an individual to do whatever they like. If you want the benefits of a society, you must reciprocate; otherwise you can go live in the woods by yourself.
You seem to be earnestly and repeatedly attacking this strawman of "complete individual freedom" as antithetical to society, but I'd prefer that you not conflate it with the position I've taken in this discussion.
Happy to continue discussing if you'd like to reply to what I wrote.
When the USA collapses it could become the new global reserve currency (it won't but it could)
Point is, it's a currency you can use right now independently from the increasingly unstable-looking US dollar.
You could also use euros, yuan, rupees, or Australian dollars but it's really hard to get an account in those currencies if you don't live in those countries. Crypto is much easier to get access to.
We can create various use case scenarios, that‘s what has been done since 2009, but there is no signs that’s something we are moving towards and so far the only use cases that stuck are the ones I mentioned. For a global currency you would need something stable and while the US is declining, in comparison cryptocurrencies (ignoring stablecoins) are a nightmare of instability
You seem confused. The claim has never been that the paradigm will shift when all bitcoins have been mined. When all bitcoins are mined BTC will be even more deflationary and miners won’t get rewards from mining. But that has nothing to do with bitcoin being useful for society. And it should be pretty obvious that a deflationary currency is a terrible currency.
If it is actually useful as a currency in 2140 it is also way more likely that it will be forked to postpone that deadline, but that’s beside the point.
We are 15y in and there is still no trace of a meaningful use case outside of the ones I mentioned. I don’t think it’s a failure of bitcoin itself (it’s a neat proof of concept), I see it more as a complete delusion of people pushing cryptocurrencies
Well, it seems he wasn't, he's not gonna get upvotes though, HN is startup culture and startup culture is selling dreams until it works or you notice too late you got robbed.
And who's gonna admit that bitcoin is a ponzi scheme when all of their savings are in it? you can't, it would devalue your own money, so you're trapped, you can only further invest in it.
It was mainly the early wall street types that cashed in big. If it was used as suggested by satoshi, then you were using it as spending cash rather than an investment to sit on, in which case you shouldn't have made much money on it.
You would be surprised at how efficient cryptocurrency mining is compared to other ways of storing value. And most improvements happen to reduce the overall cost of securing value (PoS, PoST, etc)
Once you buy gold, you don't have to rely on other people continuing to burn resources indefinitely. You pay upfront for the cost of mining, and that's it.
Having dealt with hackers (not the HN variety unfort) who go to extraordinary lengths to cryptojack pennies, I completely agree. They always use Monero for some reason. In sum, what is this technology good for?
I can use my compute and energy how I like, whether that’s for AI or crypto or a Minecraft server. You don’t have a right to call one “wasteful” and one not
Legalities aside, You can use compute how you want, that doesn't stop anybody from accurately measuring its usefulness. Given that this is an objective measurement.
I can have a computer on an endless loop without any idling, consuming as much CPU time as it can, I do not know any other classification of this action than wastefulness. crypto mining is useful of course, the end goal of mining is to get crypto, of course, there is no further goal beyond that.
Via comparison of the solutions, we measure objectives and actions performed and the time it requires to do them.
Objectively, Minecraft is a game, an objective of many games is to waste time, therefore this cannot be used as a measurement, but enjoyment is. as a game it fulfills its role. wastefulness could be classified in comparison to other solutions/clones, like minetest. If minetest fulfills exactly the same goals with less action as minecraft, then minecraft is in comparison wasteful.
Another measurement is mining solutions can we achieve the action of mining with less compute? can we not mine at all? does not mining achieve the same goal? if it does, then mining is objectively wasteful.
The objective of crypto is replacing fiat currency, it does not do this, therefore it is wasteful. Of course, this is only true until it does replace it, which is why we must compare, would this cryptocoin scale to the entire world? does it require more work for it to do so? if so then it is wasteful.
Hackernews is completely oblivious to cryptocurrencies. There we major hacks in April involving values 100x bigger than whatever gets upvoted here, and still I saw 0 posts commenting about it.
Just as an example, aave lost 295 million last month due to a hack in another protocol, and nothing was posted here.
And sending donations to causes the government doesn't endorse.
A good example was the truck manifestation in Canada a few years ago, they went after all the donors for what was a legitimate protest. Anyone using bank transfers or any crypto that wasn't Monero was persecuted.
Those who used Monero had their privacy assured and zero issues.
I'm not sure that I'd cite being able to donate to terrorists as a legitimate use case. I mean, at the protocol level, donating to a terrorist is the same as donating to anyone else, so a system that lets you donate to anyone will necessarily let you donate to terrorists, but it wouldn't be the example I'd bring up in polite conversation.
He received plenty of USD in cash delivered in hands by the US government through the three-letter-agencies. These kind of things always happened, it is unfair and incorrect to blame crypto currencies whereas the overwhelming majority of "special operations" continue to be paid today in plain paper money.
I bought legal things with Monero a while back when I was into "crypto". I've never bought illegal things with Monero (or any other currency/cryptocurrency).
I was interested in Monero because it actually was what people thought Bitcoin was.
The reason why cryptocurrencies exist is precisely to detach money from governments, reason why Monero is persecuted by every single western government whereas that coin you mention is endorsed by them. There is quite a world that needs and uses Monero every day.
What exactly are you missing that i.e. PhoenixWallet or Electrum is providing? The only thing missing is merchant adoption - but bitcoin is far ahead monero in this field.
Monero has utterly failed in merchant adoption. If you go to something like cryptwerk, which is what getmonero themselves recommends as a vendor list, It has about 1/2 the vendors of even the roughly same market cap coin Litecoin.
Well that's because it's illegal in most countries, and the reason it's illegal are the same reasons it's a good currency. States can't tolerate competition.
Still a global blockchain though with the associated throughput limits. You can't buy cereal with monero because you do that too often.
You'll get nothing but up votes here on HN, a lot are still angry they missed the boat.
But solving the problem of how to transfer value trustlessly and anonymously, instantly anywhere in the world is one of the biggest breakthroughs since the Internet.
Amazing how in a few short years kids started growing up with Bitcoin and don't understand how it work or why it exists :(
If it's actually a transformative technology, there's no boat to miss.
But it's still mostly about the speculation, it seems.
It’s an interesting technical problem to solve. But after 15y still has no meaningful benefits for our societies. Other than gambling/speculation/illegal stuff. The transformative cryptocurrency shift didn’t happen
No meaningful benefit? Tell that to the people in emerging economies who now have access to digital US dollars.
Bitso processes 10% of US-MX remittances. 12% of people in Argentina use stablecoins. The shift is happening in real time.
Some people think communication mechanisms shouldn't enforce policy. They don't want their phones automatically disconnecting if they talk to a friend about illegal or immoral things. They don't want their TVs shutting off if they watch stuff that's politically unacceptable. So it follows that they don't want their money throwing an exception if they try spending on an transaction too unsavory for Stripe or your bank.
Free speech is for all the stuff you personally detest and personally choose to avoid. In a free country you hold your nose and allow others to engage in it.
If money is speech, then having a kind of money that doesn't pass through policy gates is an essential component of a free society.
Is that something we want though? Why would it be beneficial to let money be used for anything without restrictions? Society has always relied on interdependence, not complete individual freedom. You have to make the case for it.
Respectfully, I disagree that anyone has to make the case for it. That's exactly what freedom is: if society fails to "make the case" for prohibiting something, it defaults to legal. There's no general law requiring people to be good people, or to have common sense, which would be the same as defaulting to illegal. I presume you wouldn't like that, or the surveillance state that would be required to enforce it.
Complete individual freedom as a concept is not a human right. There has never been a society oriented on it and it is not self evident why it would be beneficial for society as a whole to allow an individual to do whatever they like. If you want the benefits of a society, you must reciprocate; otherwise you can go live in the woods by yourself.
You seem to be earnestly and repeatedly attacking this strawman of "complete individual freedom" as antithetical to society, but I'd prefer that you not conflate it with the position I've taken in this discussion.
Happy to continue discussing if you'd like to reply to what I wrote.
When the USA collapses it could become the new global reserve currency (it won't but it could)
Point is, it's a currency you can use right now independently from the increasingly unstable-looking US dollar.
You could also use euros, yuan, rupees, or Australian dollars but it's really hard to get an account in those currencies if you don't live in those countries. Crypto is much easier to get access to.
We can create various use case scenarios, that‘s what has been done since 2009, but there is no signs that’s something we are moving towards and so far the only use cases that stuck are the ones I mentioned. For a global currency you would need something stable and while the US is declining, in comparison cryptocurrencies (ignoring stablecoins) are a nightmare of instability
We are very far from 2140, the year the last bitcoin will be mined. 15 years is nothing, this is a very long term paradigm shift.
You seem confused. The claim has never been that the paradigm will shift when all bitcoins have been mined. When all bitcoins are mined BTC will be even more deflationary and miners won’t get rewards from mining. But that has nothing to do with bitcoin being useful for society. And it should be pretty obvious that a deflationary currency is a terrible currency. If it is actually useful as a currency in 2140 it is also way more likely that it will be forked to postpone that deadline, but that’s beside the point.
We are 15y in and there is still no trace of a meaningful use case outside of the ones I mentioned. I don’t think it’s a failure of bitcoin itself (it’s a neat proof of concept), I see it more as a complete delusion of people pushing cryptocurrencies
Is 2140 how far we're moving the goal posts now? All these resources burned will totally be worth it in over a hundred years?
No, Bitcoin is absolutely a waste by every measure. It was a prototype that never should have continued after all of its flaws became apparent.
There was a boat to jump on? To gain what?
Uh, billions of dollars? If you bought or mines bitcoin when it was new and sold it today, you're now at least a hundred millionaire.
Well, it seems he wasn't, he's not gonna get upvotes though, HN is startup culture and startup culture is selling dreams until it works or you notice too late you got robbed.
And who's gonna admit that bitcoin is a ponzi scheme when all of their savings are in it? you can't, it would devalue your own money, so you're trapped, you can only further invest in it.
It was mainly the early wall street types that cashed in big. If it was used as suggested by satoshi, then you were using it as spending cash rather than an investment to sit on, in which case you shouldn't have made much money on it.
Don't forget about the pineapple fund : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pineapple_Fund
Also wall street never considered it seriously until a few years ago.
You would be surprised at how efficient cryptocurrency mining is compared to other ways of storing value. And most improvements happen to reduce the overall cost of securing value (PoS, PoST, etc)
Once you buy gold, you don't have to rely on other people continuing to burn resources indefinitely. You pay upfront for the cost of mining, and that's it.
It's both a waste of compute and it also solves problems. Namely, how to transfer money without the government stopping you.
Having dealt with hackers (not the HN variety unfort) who go to extraordinary lengths to cryptojack pennies, I completely agree. They always use Monero for some reason. In sum, what is this technology good for?
1. Illegality 2. Speculation (i.e., gambling)
So yes, +1. :-(
This talking point is so silly
I can use my compute and energy how I like, whether that’s for AI or crypto or a Minecraft server. You don’t have a right to call one “wasteful” and one not
Legalities aside, You can use compute how you want, that doesn't stop anybody from accurately measuring its usefulness. Given that this is an objective measurement.
I can have a computer on an endless loop without any idling, consuming as much CPU time as it can, I do not know any other classification of this action than wastefulness. crypto mining is useful of course, the end goal of mining is to get crypto, of course, there is no further goal beyond that.
How is it an objective measurement? What is useful and what is not useful? Is Minecraft useful? What does useful mean?
Via comparison of the solutions, we measure objectives and actions performed and the time it requires to do them.
Objectively, Minecraft is a game, an objective of many games is to waste time, therefore this cannot be used as a measurement, but enjoyment is. as a game it fulfills its role. wastefulness could be classified in comparison to other solutions/clones, like minetest. If minetest fulfills exactly the same goals with less action as minecraft, then minecraft is in comparison wasteful.
Another measurement is mining solutions can we achieve the action of mining with less compute? can we not mine at all? does not mining achieve the same goal? if it does, then mining is objectively wasteful.
The objective of crypto is replacing fiat currency, it does not do this, therefore it is wasteful. Of course, this is only true until it does replace it, which is why we must compare, would this cryptocoin scale to the entire world? does it require more work for it to do so? if so then it is wasteful.
I don't have free speech?
Hackernews is completely oblivious to cryptocurrencies. There we major hacks in April involving values 100x bigger than whatever gets upvoted here, and still I saw 0 posts commenting about it.
Just as an example, aave lost 295 million last month due to a hack in another protocol, and nothing was posted here.
is privacy of financial transactions not a valuable problem to be solved in your opinions?
It's solving a lot of people's problems, they just aren't your problems.
It's great for buying drugs though! (Which is funnily the only actually legitimate usecase)
And sending donations to causes the government doesn't endorse.
A good example was the truck manifestation in Canada a few years ago, they went after all the donors for what was a legitimate protest. Anyone using bank transfers or any crypto that wasn't Monero was persecuted.
Those who used Monero had their privacy assured and zero issues.
I'm not sure that I'd cite being able to donate to terrorists as a legitimate use case. I mean, at the protocol level, donating to a terrorist is the same as donating to anyone else, so a system that lets you donate to anyone will necessarily let you donate to terrorists, but it wouldn't be the example I'd bring up in polite conversation.
You can be sure that those truckers were not terrorists.
Courts deemed as unlawful this government persecution to whoever donated to the protest using transparent cryptocurrency: https://usethebitcoin.com/news/canadian-court-rules-against-...
The point is that only those who used monero were safe from unlawful government persecution.
Remember that nelson Mandela was considered a terrorist too
So was Osama bin Laden.
Bin Laden was at some point pushed as a freedom fighter hero by the US government: https://www.businessinsider.com/1993-independent-article-abo...
He received plenty of USD in cash delivered in hands by the US government through the three-letter-agencies. These kind of things always happened, it is unfair and incorrect to blame crypto currencies whereas the overwhelming majority of "special operations" continue to be paid today in plain paper money.
Blocking critical infrastructure is not a legitimate protest in any country.
I bought legal things with Monero a while back when I was into "crypto". I've never bought illegal things with Monero (or any other currency/cryptocurrency).
I was interested in Monero because it actually was what people thought Bitcoin was.
Absolutely true, no one needs monero when you can have bitcoin (and lightning for private instant bitcoin payments).
That is obviously ignoring that transactions on that old tech are transparent (no privacy whatsover) and governments will persecute whomever donates to inconvenient causes: https://usethebitcoin.com/news/canadian-court-rules-against-...
The reason why cryptocurrencies exist is precisely to detach money from governments, reason why Monero is persecuted by every single western government whereas that coin you mention is endorsed by them. There is quite a world that needs and uses Monero every day.
Lightning Network, ready in 18 months for the last 5 years! Lol.
What exactly are you missing that i.e. PhoenixWallet or Electrum is providing? The only thing missing is merchant adoption - but bitcoin is far ahead monero in this field.
Monero has utterly failed in merchant adoption. If you go to something like cryptwerk, which is what getmonero themselves recommends as a vendor list, It has about 1/2 the vendors of even the roughly same market cap coin Litecoin.
Well that's because it's illegal in most countries, and the reason it's illegal are the same reasons it's a good currency. States can't tolerate competition.
Still a global blockchain though with the associated throughput limits. You can't buy cereal with monero because you do that too often.
Where I live there is only Monero as serious cryptocurrency to use between people.
Wouldn't risk sending large transactions where everything is visible to others when compared to LTC or any other non-private virtual coins.
I have used LN quite a lot for the last 3-4 years or so. Seems to work good enough for quite many use cases.
It's very usable. It's just not the PoS some expected.