This is difficult to express so please bear patience. Able manipulators of money do exploit the interest in cryptocurrency to affect the prices thereof, purchase and sell cryptocurrency increasing their stockpile of national and international currencies while sustaining their supply of cryptocurrency. The practice of buying low and selling high, is generally accepted, but I refute it. Not only does no way of proving if they manipulated the price practical, but buying low and selling high can only be possible if someone somewhere tries to change the price of whatever their trade includes. This means the price of bitcoin should be decided by netizens across internet forums and some powerful actor is ensuring that can't happen. As a store of economic influence, I fully agree and support the decision to hold donated bitcoin. However to convert it by means of trade into any other currency, while what is happening is happening, I can't stomach this morally. Individuals who are getting tricked into purchasing cryptocurrency at exactly the wrong moments are losing all the have. This is not simply gambling with high-stakes, there is a concerted effort to deceive people into purchasing bitcoin and other currencies. If anyone sells cryptocurrency now, they very likely risk funding these scams. Please do not sell donated bitcoin or any other donated cryptocurrency for the foresee-able future. This is not a permanent problem, but one we can't know when will be resolved.
Thank you. -J. L.
On Tue, Mar 20, 2018 at 6:15 PM, Jean Flamelle eaterjolly@gmail.com wrote:
This is difficult to express so please bear patience. Ablemanipulators of money do exploit the interest in cryptocurrency to affect the prices thereof,
yep, i know. there's no way to regulate or prevent the blatant insider trading and pump-and-dump scams. interestingly, mining is inviolate.
l.
Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton lkcl@lkcl.net writes:
On Tue, Mar 20, 2018 at 6:15 PM, Jean Flamelle eaterjolly@gmail.com wrote:
This is difficult to express so please bear patience. Ablemanipulators of money do exploit the interest in cryptocurrency to affect the prices thereof,
yep, i know. there's no way to regulate or prevent the blatant insider trading and pump-and-dump scams. interestingly, mining is inviolate.
I've no idea why you think that -- it seems to me rather like saying that farming poppies is automatically ethical, regardless of whether you expect anyone to harvest the crop and perhaps sell it to people who then profit and spend the resulting income on weapons, say.
Anyway, never mind that -- this seems timely:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/20/child-abuse-imagery-bitco...
erm, oops!
Cheers, Phil.
On Tue, Mar 20, 2018 at 8:44 PM, Philip Hands phil@hands.com wrote:
Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton lkcl@lkcl.net writes:
On Tue, Mar 20, 2018 at 6:15 PM, Jean Flamelle eaterjolly@gmail.com wrote:
This is difficult to express so please bear patience. Ablemanipulators of money do exploit the interest in cryptocurrency to affect the prices thereof,
yep, i know. there's no way to regulate or prevent the blatant insider trading and pump-and-dump scams. interestingly, mining is inviolate.
I've no idea why you think that -- it seems to me rather like saying that farming poppies is automatically ethical, regardless of whether you expect anyone to harvest the crop and perhaps sell it to people who then profit and spend the resulting income on weapons, say.
there's a key difference [or there was until those abuse-links were noted...] which is that the transactions are [or were] "neutral". the "money" (the mining reward) was literally created out of thin air, i.e. was not being received as part of a transaction from criminals, not being received as part of drug-dealing, or in exchange for a contract on someone's life or anything else clearly unethical...
*and* in addition [up until those abuse-links were noted] there was no way to know if the transaction(s) were quotes good quotes or quotes bad quotes.
even _with_ such links (which people will now have to add filters into crypto-mining algorithms in order to discard them), you can clearly see that anyone putting such links is "bad" (and choose not to include them in a block being mined) however for everything else not so identified they *are* unidentifiable.
that lack of identifiability makes mining "neutral" rather than "specifically good" or "specifically bad".
Anyway, never mind that -- this seems timely:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/20/child-abuse-imagery-bitco...
erm, oops!
sigh yehhh... and they paid transaction fees to put them there. main problem is, distribution of or ownership of bitcoin has now become illegal in many countries... whoops...
l.
That link goes back to the fundamental concept of illegal numbers.
Anywhere a number can be written, illegal data may be written. Anywhere a number can be written immutably, illegal data may be written immutably.
This also gets at a fundamental issue of ethics of censorship, as censorship was viewed a few centuries ago: pieces of communication which enable wasted life being disabled & contained.
Do these images do that? Can abuse be stopped without censoring images of abuse?
===
Phil raises an interesting suggestion that what-if blockchain miners weren't neutral?
Miners aren't neutral, after all. They just enforce minimal rules.
Could technological means be given to enforce cultural rules including with regards to reputation and past economic contributions? What would happen, if so?
===
@Lasic - There are many large corporations developing blockchain research programs, including banks, microsoft, ibm, institutes funded by grants, etc.
This is not a viable complete protocol, but regulators are much more likely begin regulating claims. There is a saying that the code should speak for itself. I think this applies.
On 2018-03-20 21:44 +0100, Philip Hands wrote:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/20/child-abuse-imagery-bitco...
There's always someone isn't there? This is why we can't have nice things.
I'm quite surprised that the format allows inclusion of random extra files. Why isn't it just a list of transaction IDs (or however it works), i.e. the data needed to make the blockchain work. Or are they just abusing some 'Name' or 'Comment' type freeform field?
It seems to me that bitcoin needs to fail on energy terms alone - it's mind-bogglingly inefficent (and, contrary to my initial understanding, this problem doesn't get better over time as more coins are mined). Plenty of other cryptocurrency algorithms exist, using much more sensible amounts of energy (Wh/transaction: bitcoin: 634,000, Ethereum: 43,000, (Visa: 1.69) Stellar: 0.03). The tricky bit is making sure that remains true when the thing gets popular.
If those numbers are right bitcoin is generating the same emissions as a flight to Spain from the UK (300kG) _per transaction_ which is completely nuts. Buying a beer in the Haymakers really shouldn't have that sort of footprint.
Wookey
--- crowd-funded eco-conscious hardware: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68
On Wed, Mar 21, 2018 at 12:08 PM, Wookey wookey@wookware.org wrote:
On 2018-03-20 21:44 +0100, Philip Hands wrote:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/20/child-abuse-imagery-bitco...
There's always someone isn't there? This is why we can't have nice things.
*sigh* i would be curious to know if monero (designed with privacy in mind) suffers the same problem. https://monero.stackexchange.com/questions/3958/what-is-the-format-of-a-bloc... https://monero.stackexchange.com/questions/5916/why-some-coinbase-transactio... https://monero.stackexchange.com/questions/3595/how-to-use-tx-extra https://monero.stackexchange.com/questions/2549/why-is-the-payment-id-specif...
apparently the tx-extra field is used as a payment-id... interestingly though it looks like it's down to the miners to decide that field's contents... which would, if that's correct, take away the problem.
I'm quite surprised that the format allows inclusion of random extra files. Why isn't it just a list of transaction IDs (or however it works), i.e. the data needed to make the blockchain work. Or are they just abusing some 'Name' or 'Comment' type freeform field?
https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/29592/can-you-put-additional-dat... https://digitalcommons.augustana.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1000&co...
ok so there's apparently about 8 separate and distinct methods, all of them "abusing" various fields, some of them security violations / exploiting flaws in the design. oops.
It seems to me that bitcoin needs to fail on energy terms alone - it's mind-bogglingly inefficent (and, contrary to my initial understanding, this problem doesn't get better over time as more coins are mined).
arms / energy races don't get better without consensus, and this one's an arms / energy race where (at the moment) individuals can participate as opposed to businesses.
*if* people agree - world-wide - to slow down on the mining *then* the hashrate - world-wide - will slow down. however the only way that's actually realistically likely to happen is when the "reward" drops sufficiently (halves every 18 months) for the financial incentive to lower.
*then* when the financial incentive lowers, the number of people mining will also lower (non-financially-viable equipment switched off) and the hashrate will correspondingly drop.
the problem with that assumption is that the people mining will only be motivated by profit. if they're genuinely interested in going over the 50% share in order to corrupt / control the blocks then that doesn't happen, and bitcoin goes to hell in a handbasket.
Plenty of other cryptocurrency algorithms exist, using much more sensible amounts of energy (Wh/transaction: bitcoin: 634,000, Ethereum: 43,000, (Visa: 1.69) Stellar: 0.03). The tricky bit is making sure that remains true when the thing gets popular.
i've been thinking about this, beyond what monero does (which plans to hard-fork to increase the random-access memory usage). monero is not possible to do on a custom ASIC because it deliberately requires large amounts of memory (6gb, 8gb). if you were to make a custom ASIC it would *be* a GPU... therefore you might as well buy... off-the-shelf GPU Cards.
beyond that i think you need to specify and agree hard limits about mining capabilities that, if exceeded, result in PENALTIES not REWARDS. such mining contracts would need to be stored *in the blockchain* rather than being hard-coded. miners would be required to sign up to the mining contract (in the blockchain) in order to participate, along-side a declaration of running some CPU benchmark tests which indicate the computing capacity that they are declaring that they intend to use.
if they go OUTSIDE of those parameters, by responding too fast on a block (which can be verified by other miners re-running the same algorithms that they did), they get PENALISED *not* REWARDED.
if that's combined with the ability to fork a coin *within* a coin (by placing an ID or #tag on transactions that indicate that it is totally separate and completely distinct from other coins *within the sam e blockchain*) the nice thing about such a scheme would be that isolated communities, for example those running off of isolated sporadic internet, on smartphones only rather than having access to GPU resources, could declare the mining contract to be within the capabilities of the average smartphone... and the community as a whole. an "outsider" would then NOT BE ABLE to destabilise their "local" currency.
If those numbers are right bitcoin is generating the same emissions as a flight to Spain from the UK (300kG) _per transaction_ which is completely nuts. Buying a beer in the Haymakers really shouldn't have that sort of footprint.
even up until 2016 it didn't... but it does now. and it's an exponential rise of about 20% *per month* and shows no sign of slowing https://blockchain.info/charts/hash-rate
l.
On Wed, Mar 21, 2018 at 8:11 AM, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton <lkcl@lkcl.net
wrote:
crowd-funded eco-conscious hardware: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68
On Wed, Mar 21, 2018 at 12:08 PM, Wookey wookey@wookware.org wrote:
On 2018-03-20 21:44 +0100, Philip Hands wrote:
abuse-imagery-bitcoin-blockchain-illegal-content
There's always someone isn't there? This is why we can't have nice
things.
I believe that grin ( http://grin-tech.org/ ) should be immune to this from the way that its transactions work. From what I remember off the top of my head anyway. I really like the way that the developers are approaching creating a new cryptocurrency.
Now the discussion is starting to get interesting....
On 03/21/2018 07:11 AM, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote:
[...]
*if* people agree - world-wide - to slow down on the mining *then* the hashrate - world-wide - will slow down. however the only way that's actually realistically likely to happen is when the "reward" drops sufficiently (halves every 18 months) for the financial incentive to lower.
*then* when the financial incentive lowers, the number of people mining will also lower (non-financially-viable equipment switched off) and the hashrate will correspondingly drop.
the problem with that assumption is that the people mining will only be motivated by profit. if they're genuinely interested in going over the 50% share in order to corrupt / control the blocks then that doesn't happen, and bitcoin goes to hell in a handbasket.
Exactly, this is something most people fail to understand about mining. There's nothing inherent to the algorithm or the protocol that makes Bitcoin so power-hungry. If the entire network agreed to all shut off the ASICs and run everything on low-powered SBCs running on photovoltaic cells only (for example), the network *itself* would continue to function just fine. The difficulty would adjust itself (eventually, up to two weeks for BTC) to match the processing power available to it. That's the design.
When I first came across Bitcoin, the idea was to let your wallet solo-mine all the time in the background. Pools didn't even exist yet when I first tried mining (on an ASUS netbook in rural Peru, no less), or at least I wasn't aware of them. At the time, I compared it to something like SETI@home, which looks for signals from space-brothers as a screen-saver, basically. Everyone mines a little bit, and everyone gets a little bit of the reward. One CPU, one vote. That was the original intent.
The problem is greed. Some clever bastard decided "Why limit myself to just a single background process?" That's when dedicated mining rigs started, and the arms race began, even before GPUs came into the picture.
i've been thinking about this, beyond what monero does (which plans to hard-fork to increase the random-access memory usage). monero is not possible to do on a custom ASIC because it deliberately requires large amounts of memory (6gb, 8gb). if you were to make a custom ASIC it would *be* a GPU... therefore you might as well buy... off-the-shelf GPU Cards.
beyond that i think you need to specify and agree hard limits about mining capabilities that, if exceeded, result in PENALTIES not REWARDS. such mining contracts would need to be stored *in the blockchain* rather than being hard-coded. miners would be required to sign up to the mining contract (in the blockchain) in order to participate, along-side a declaration of running some CPU benchmark tests which indicate the computing capacity that they are declaring that they intend to use.
if they go OUTSIDE of those parameters, by responding too fast on a block (which can be verified by other miners re-running the same algorithms that they did), they get PENALISED *not* REWARDED.
Yep, the Monero devs are very much dedicated to "egalitarian mining", which I think gets closer to Satoshi's original intent,[1][2] and makes something like javascript browser-based mining possible, which then opens up an entire new set of ethical concerns, even if it's a tiny step towards fair hashrate distribution. [3][4]
What are the other options? POS coins take very little energy, but "the rich get richer", and the more coin you have, the more you stake, etc. Not very egalitarian either. Or some insta-premine like Ripple, where I just make a bajillion tokens out of thin air and then start selling them for a tenth of a cent each? Neither of those seem like better distribution schemes to me. So, how do we get newly mined coins into as many hands as possible?
Definitely an interesting conundrum.
- krt
---
[1] https://getmonero.org/2018/02/11/PoW-change-and-key-reuse.html [2] https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitmain-announces-new-monero-mining-antminer-... [3] https://arxiv.org/pdf/1803.02887.pdf [4] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/02/27/ethical_coinhive/
Excessive power consumption by bitcoin miners is an indication that either power is undervalued, bitcoin is overvalued, or both.
On Mar 21, 2018, at 3:48 PM, KRT Listmaster listmaster@beauxbead.com wrote:
Now the discussion is starting to get interesting....
On 03/21/2018 07:11 AM, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote:
[...]
*if* people agree - world-wide - to slow down on the mining *then* the hashrate - world-wide - will slow down. however the only way that's actually realistically likely to happen is when the "reward" drops sufficiently (halves every 18 months) for the financial incentive to lower.
*then* when the financial incentive lowers, the number of people mining will also lower (non-financially-viable equipment switched off) and the hashrate will correspondingly drop.
the problem with that assumption is that the people mining will only be motivated by profit. if they're genuinely interested in going over the 50% share in order to corrupt / control the blocks then that doesn't happen, and bitcoin goes to hell in a handbasket.
Exactly, this is something most people fail to understand about mining. There's nothing inherent to the algorithm or the protocol that makes Bitcoin so power-hungry. If the entire network agreed to all shut off the ASICs and run everything on low-powered SBCs running on photovoltaic cells only (for example), the network *itself* would continue to function just fine. The difficulty would adjust itself (eventually, up to two weeks for BTC) to match the processing power available to it. That's the design.
When I first came across Bitcoin, the idea was to let your wallet solo-mine all the time in the background. Pools didn't even exist yet when I first tried mining (on an ASUS netbook in rural Peru, no less), or at least I wasn't aware of them. At the time, I compared it to something like SETI@home, which looks for signals from space-brothers as a screen-saver, basically. Everyone mines a little bit, and everyone gets a little bit of the reward. One CPU, one vote. That was the original intent.
The problem is greed. Some clever bastard decided "Why limit myself to just a single background process?" That's when dedicated mining rigs started, and the arms race began, even before GPUs came into the picture.
i've been thinking about this, beyond what monero does (which plans to hard-fork to increase the random-access memory usage). monero is not possible to do on a custom ASIC because it deliberately requires large amounts of memory (6gb, 8gb). if you were to make a custom ASIC it would *be* a GPU... therefore you might as well buy... off-the-shelf GPU Cards.
beyond that i think you need to specify and agree hard limits about mining capabilities that, if exceeded, result in PENALTIES not REWARDS. such mining contracts would need to be stored *in the blockchain* rather than being hard-coded. miners would be required to sign up to the mining contract (in the blockchain) in order to participate, along-side a declaration of running some CPU benchmark tests which indicate the computing capacity that they are declaring that they intend to use.
if they go OUTSIDE of those parameters, by responding too fast on a block (which can be verified by other miners re-running the same algorithms that they did), they get PENALISED *not* REWARDED.
Yep, the Monero devs are very much dedicated to "egalitarian mining", which I think gets closer to Satoshi's original intent,[1][2] and makes something like javascript browser-based mining possible, which then opens up an entire new set of ethical concerns, even if it's a tiny step towards fair hashrate distribution. [3][4]
What are the other options? POS coins take very little energy, but "the rich get richer", and the more coin you have, the more you stake, etc. Not very egalitarian either. Or some insta-premine like Ripple, where I just make a bajillion tokens out of thin air and then start selling them for a tenth of a cent each? Neither of those seem like better distribution schemes to me. So, how do we get newly mined coins into as many hands as possible?
Definitely an interesting conundrum.
- krt
[1] https://getmonero.org/2018/02/11/PoW-change-and-key-reuse.html [2] https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitmain-announces-new-monero-mining-antminer-... [3] https://arxiv.org/pdf/1803.02887.pdf [4] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/02/27/ethical_coinhive/
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Yep, the Monero devs are very much dedicated to "egalitarian mining", which I think gets closer to Satoshi's original intent,[1][2] and makes something like javascript browser-based mining possible, which then opens up an entire new set of ethical concerns, even if it's a tiny step towards fair hashrate distribution. [3][4]
What are the other options? POS coins take very little energy, but "the rich get richer", and the more coin you have, the more you stake, etc. Not very egalitarian either. Or some insta-premine like Ripple, where I just make a bajillion tokens out of thin air and then start selling them for a tenth of a cent each? Neither of those seem like better distribution schemes to me. So, how do we get newly mined coins into as many hands as possible?
Definitely an interesting conundrum.
- krt
I think it is safe to say that cryptocurrencies aren't very feasible right now.
My thoughts are: Liberapay is a good idea,
I don't know if anything else is anywhere near as good.
[1] https://getmonero.org/2018/02/11/PoW-change-and-key-reuse.html [2] https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitmain-announces-new-monero-mining-antminer-... [3] https://arxiv.org/pdf/1803.02887.pdf [4] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/02/27/ethical_coinhive/
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-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
On 03/21/2018 11:03 AM, zap wrote:
I think it is safe to say that cryptocurrencies aren't very feasible right now.
My thoughts are: Liberapay is a good idea,
I don't know if anything else is anywhere near as good.
Liberapay is good, though I'm afraid their funding model isn't sustainable in the long term.
The development costs are probably mostly upfront, but there are the ongoing server costs, and much more significantly, the costs of dealing with disputes, fraud, etc. I think the disputes should be fairly minimal given the nature of their transactions, but they are sure to come up, and it will take manpower to deal with them.
In the interests of their long term sustainability, I would like to see them figure out what they need to deal with that, and charge it. Probably somewhere around 1-3% from what I gather. It would be good to let the donor choose whether to pay it on top, or give a set amount and take it out of what the recipient gets.
I really like their design of figuring out their costs for getting money in/out of Liberapay, and charging that when those transactions occur, so people know where their money is going.
Tor
- -- Tor Chantara https://art.torchantara.com GPG Key: 2BE1 426E 34EA D253 D583 9DE4 B866 0375 134B 48FB *Be wary of unsigned emails* Stop spying: http://www.resetthenet.org/
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA256
Hi,
Am Wed, 21 Mar 2018 11:26:29 -1000 schrieb "Tor, the Marqueteur" Marqueteur@FineArtMarquetry.com:
In the interests of their long term sustainability, I would like to see them figure out what they need to deal with that, and charge it. Probably somewhere around 1-3% from what I gather. [..]
I really appreciate their current model: they ask for a voluntary amount of long-term donation right after sign-up. The default value is zero. I was impressed by this and committed a small weekly sum.
The statistics show that currently the users of liberapay honor this open approach: the group [1], the founder [2] and the organization [3] of liberapay collect a combined sum of 420 Euros per week. This is quite impressive, considering that currently approximately 2200 Euros are distributed per week [4] among all creators. This funding ratio (currently almost 20%) will surely drop with a growing number of users. In general the strategy looks very healthy and honest to me.
Cheers, Lars
[1] https://liberapay.com/Liberapay/ [2] https://liberapay.com/Changaco/ [3] https://liberapay.com/LiberapayOrg/ [4] https://liberapay.com/about/stats
On 21 March 2018 at 21:58, Sam Huntress samhuntress@gmail.com wrote:
Excessive power consumption by bitcoin miners is an indication that either power is undervalued, bitcoin is overvalued, or both.
ask yourself simple question: If all cryptocurencies are gone tomorrow, what would you miss?
On Wed, Mar 21, 2018 at 9:16 PM, Hrvoje Lasic lasich@gmail.com wrote:
ask yourself simple question: If all cryptocurencies are gone tomorrow, what would you miss?
crypto-currencies are literally the first time in human history where contracts can be made and honoured between one or more parties in an atomic fashion *WITHOUT* third party intervention or arbitration.
what would be missed? we would return to centralisation and abuse of power at the hands of central banks, corrupt governments, expensive and flawed judicial systems, overcharging and underpayment by unethical insurance companies - the list goes on and on.
crypto-currencies are right now in their infancy.
l.
I completely disagree. You are mixing block chain and cryptocurrencies.
Also, I disagree on second point. We still have ` power at the hands of central banks, corrupt governments, expensive and flawed judicial systems, overcharging and underpayment by unethical insurance companies` *This is my main point, there is no actual business processes implemented.* Now this is all on speculation basis because it is `great technology`. Now is more about greed then something that can be good for all of us.
Not too mention very inefficient process for exchange that spend way too much energy, just the opposite what main idea was. Paying with cryptos looks expensive right now. Then fraud practices, literally taking your money etc, criminal practices etc. These are all valid problems.
I think we all agree that blockchain is really good technology but it should not be about speculation. Also, I am a bit skeptical about how we are to avoid third parties completely. Wherever there are humans there could be disputes, frauds etc. Then again you need some kind of regulation.
On 22 March 2018 at 05:10, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton lkcl@lkcl.net wrote:
On Wed, Mar 21, 2018 at 9:16 PM, Hrvoje Lasic lasich@gmail.com wrote:
ask yourself simple question: If all cryptocurencies are gone tomorrow, what would you miss?
crypto-currencies are literally the first time in human history where contracts can be made and honoured between one or more parties in an atomic fashion *WITHOUT* third party intervention or arbitration.
what would be missed? we would return to centralisation and abuse of power at the hands of central banks, corrupt governments, expensive and flawed judicial systems, overcharging and underpayment by unethical insurance companies - the list goes on and on.
crypto-currencies are right now in their infancy.
l.
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On Thu, Mar 22, 2018 at 6:40 AM, Hrvoje Lasic lasich@gmail.com wrote:
I completely disagree. You are mixing block chain and cryptocurrencies.
not entirely
Also, I disagree on second point. We still have ` power at the hands of central banks, corrupt governments, expensive and flawed judicial systems, overcharging and underpayment by unethical insurance companies` *This is my main point, there is no actual business processes implemented.*
that's not entirely true... and bear in mind i did say, "it's early days". ripple implements a business process, and cryptokitties definitely implements a business process.
Now this is all on speculation basis because it is `great technology`. Now is more about greed then something that can be good for all of us.
yes that's very true. like i said: "early days".
Not too mention very inefficient process for exchange that spend way too much energy, just the opposite what main idea was. Paying with cryptos looks expensive right now.
paying with *bitcoin* looks expensive [but didn't only 2 years ago]
Then fraud practices, literally taking your money etc, criminal practices etc. These are all valid problems.
look at where the fraud primarily occurs: i think you'll find that there's a direct correlation between *central choke-points* and the fraud. oh. sorry, i forgot to add the other qualifier to crypto-currencies / blockchain: *individuals* have to take *direct* responsibility [where previously they could abdicate that responsibility to a third party / central authority]. if they fail to take responsibility, they get ripped off [viruses, lost wallet passwords etc.].
I think we all agree that blockchain is really good technology but it should not be about speculation.
because the carrot dangling free money in front of people gets them interested like nothing else....
Also, I am a bit skeptical about how we are to avoid third parties completely.
by designing algorithms that take that into account. Zero Knowledge Proofs, Pederson Committments, proper peer-to-peer distributed protocols and much more. i reiterate: it's early days yet.
Wherever there are humans there could be disputes, frauds etc.
if there is fraud and disputes, then the design of the algorithm has failed and/or the user has not taken proper responsibility. again: i reiterate, it's early days yet.
Then again you need some kind of regulation.
if regulation is needed then the design of the algorithm has failed. again, i reiterate: it's early days yet.
l.
Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton lkcl@lkcl.net writes:
oh. sorry, i forgot to add the other qualifier to crypto-currencies / blockchain: *individuals* have to take *direct* responsibility [where previously they could abdicate that responsibility to a third party / central authority]. if they fail to take responsibility, they get ripped off [viruses, lost wallet passwords etc.].
I'd like to announce a revolution in data privacy. Individuals can take control of their data, and ensure that it doesn't leak into the hands of people that they don't want to have it.
Just install PGP.
Thirty years later, where do the vast majority of people do their crypto? In Google's data centres.
Even people that have been using crypto for 30 years almost never actually encrypt their email. I still sign most of mine, but that's really just nostalgia for the time when I still thought that we could expect everyone to end up doing that sort of thing.
I'm pretty good at looking after my keys, and would not for instance need to revoke them if you stole my laptop, so am in a tiny minority.
Would I be willing to make my current account balance contingent on my not screing that up?
NO! and I definitely want a court to go to if my bank tells me they lost track of my money.
I think you can be sure that the people will fight viciously to avoid taking any sort of responsibility. See: Facebook & Cambridge Analytica.
Cheers, Phil.
--- crowd-funded eco-conscious hardware: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68
On Thu, Mar 22, 2018 at 9:45 AM, Philip Hands phil@hands.com wrote:
I'd like to announce a revolution in data privacy. Individuals can take control of their data, and ensure that it doesn't leak into the hands of people that they don't want to have it.
Just install PGP.
hurrah! :)
so let's think about that case for a minute... PGP/GPG were designed for encrypting / signing static data. if that was all that was involved, crypto-currencies would have been replaced by people using PGP/GPG to sign static text files containing "money" or the digital representation of the same.
the difference then is that extra step - the guarantees of an "atomic transaction". so it's the combination of *both* factors: putting responsibility into individuals' hands (so that banks cannot literally empty your account if they so choose) *and* the atomic inviolate contract / transaction guarantees.
I'm pretty good at looking after my keys, and would not for instance need to revoke them if you stole my laptop, so am in a tiny minority.
yehyeh
Would I be willing to make my current account balance contingent on my not screing that up?
... did you hear about the banks in ... i think it was portugal italy, when they were going bankrupt they decided blithely to just... take peoples' savings. one pensioner actually committed suicide as a result.
they would almost have certainly done that with the blessing of the courts / government. so going to court would have no effect.
I think you can be sure that the people will fight viciously to avoid taking any sort of responsibility. See: Facebook & Cambridge Analytica.
i shouldn't laugh at that happening, but i can't help it.
l.
Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton lkcl@lkcl.net writes:
crowd-funded eco-conscious hardware: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68
On Thu, Mar 22, 2018 at 9:45 AM, Philip Hands phil@hands.com wrote:
I'd like to announce a revolution in data privacy. Individuals can take control of their data, and ensure that it doesn't leak into the hands of people that they don't want to have it.
Just install PGP.
hurrah! :)
so let's think about that case for a minute... PGP/GPG were designed for encrypting / signing static data. if that was all that was involved, crypto-currencies would have been replaced by people using PGP/GPG to sign static text files containing "money" or the digital representation of the same.
You miss my point completely.
What I was saying was that we have the existing experiment of a decentralised system, capable of providing a significant benefit to the public, if only they were willing to take some responsibility.
We ran the experiment for decades, and the point at which it partially succeeded was when the likes of whatsap provided people with a way of avoiding responsibilty.
I therefore suspect that citing benefits of crypto-currencies that will acrue, if only the public would take responsibilty for themselves, is pointless.
Cheers, Phil.
--- crowd-funded eco-conscious hardware: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68
On Thu, Mar 22, 2018 at 10:29 AM, Philip Hands phil@hands.com wrote:
so let's think about that case for a minute... PGP/GPG were designed for encrypting / signing static data. if that was all that was involved, crypto-currencies would have been replaced by people using PGP/GPG to sign static text files containing "money" or the digital representation of the same.
You miss my point completely.
mmm ... more that i've not made mine clear (apoligies)
What I was saying was that we have the existing experiment of a decentralised system, capable of providing a significant benefit to the public, if only they were willing to take some responsibility.
yes, i agree, and understand your point completely. however look at the steps that are required, that the users are required to take, to achieve the same result. it's too much for the average person to cope with, isn't it? 20+ years shows that it's too much...
... yet put pretty much the exact same crypto-primitives from OpenSSL into a crypto-currency wallet, and suddenly they're interested... because it's *convenient and easy*.
We ran the experiment for decades, and the point at which it partially succeeded was when the likes of whatsap provided people with a way of avoiding responsibilty.
there's another one... what's it called... telegram? that has become extremely popular amongst libertarians because of the convenience.
l.
On Thu, Mar 22, 2018 at 10:49:40AM +0000, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote:
We ran the experiment for decades, and the point at which it partially succeeded was when the likes of whatsap provided people with a way of avoiding responsibilty.
there's another one... what's it called... telegram? that has become extremely popular amongst libertarians because of the convenience.
l.
I think that Telegram use suspicious crypto and I know that the Russian government has been leaning on them to hand things over.
Maybe you were thinking of https://www.signal.org/ ?
Bob
On 20 March 2018 at 19:15, Jean Flamelle eaterjolly@gmail.com wrote:
This is difficult to express so please bear patience. Ablemanipulators of money do exploit the interest in cryptocurrency to affect the prices thereof, purchase and sell cryptocurrency increasing their stockpile of national and international currencies while sustaining their supply of cryptocurrency. The practice of buying low and selling high, is generally accepted, but I refute it. Not only does no way of proving if they manipulated the price practical, but buying low and selling high can only be possible if someone somewhere tries to change the price of whatever their trade includes. This means the price of bitcoin should be decided by netizens across internet forums and some powerful actor is ensuring that can't happen. As a store of economic influence, I fully agree and support the decision to hold donated bitcoin. However to convert it by means of trade into any other currency, while what is happening is happening, I can't stomach this morally. Individuals who are getting tricked into purchasing cryptocurrency at exactly the wrong moments are losing all the have. This is not simply gambling with high-stakes, there is a concerted effort to deceive people into purchasing bitcoin and other currencies. If anyone sells cryptocurrency now, they very likely risk funding these scams. Please do not sell donated bitcoin or any other donated cryptocurrency for the foresee-able future. This is not a permanent problem, but one we can't know when will be resolved.
I think this complete idea has gone very much into wrong direction and it is not going to end well. Cryptos are worth billions but you cant buy pizza. Blockchain is bullet proof technology that is taking notice of any transaction so it is impossible to take money, but it is easy to hack account where people actually hold money, most probably by bank owners them self. Then they say `we are sorry`. But since all this is unregulated, nobody is responsible. Also, the guys with most crypto-money are now most probably calling for regulation so they hope that cryptos will be used for transactions (not only speculating like now is the case) and will be able to hold some of `values` they have in speculating cryptos. Meanwhile, there are very powerful players who actually try to sell as much as possible and in the same time keep hype so more suckers keep buying.
Meantime no or very few actual business are build on blockchain idea and I know few that are trying but it is quite slow process for many reasons (regulation, taxes, old business etc.)...
Thank you. -J. L.
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