I see I’m not doing any work today, so rest day. Watching YouTube day.
@adi@twtxt.net What work would you be doing? mkws?
@adi@twtxt.net remember, there is a distinct difference between being decentralized and distributed network.
cryptocurrencies are not decentralized, they are a very complex distributor network.
The only part that you could remotely consider decentralized are your private keys (du’h)
@adi@twtxt.net No not quite. The transaction verification process is just how the network works to validate the chains that end up in the ledger and which chains to consider. It’s all based on Proof of Work (PoW) which suffers from the 51% problem.
it’s very much a distributed network, but you are essentially centralizing the storage of transactions, the so-called block chain, ledger, onto infrastructure and computers that aren’t yours or in your control.
@adi@twtxt.net Yes of course, but that wasn’t my point. See also: https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/92013/does-every-node-have-a-whole-copy-of-the-blockchain
It is a distributed network. Not decentralized.
@adi@twtxt.net @prologic@twtxt.net Sharding a cerntralized storage structure is not the same as decentralization. Blockchains, for all the hype, are essentially the same as sharded databases where every user has the entire database as a shard (!!!). The worst of every world. It’d be like having a RAID array where every disk was a mirror of every other disk.
@abucci@anthony.buc.ci Exactly! 💯
@adi@twtxt.net How is an institition different from a few powerful players that control >50% of the network? 🤔
@adi@twtxt.net like literally the entire cryptocurrency industry has collapsed in the last year, year and a half? Having institutions stewarding this shit is a net positive.
@adi@twtxt.net The cryptocurrency industry collapsed because the idea at its core is a Ponzi scheme. It doesn’t matter how you implement the Ponzi scheme in software. The only way to accrue value is to bring in more people who are willing to pay more money for the currency than what you paid for it. That’s the literal definition of a Ponzi scheme and is inherently unstable (it crashes the moment the of rate of incoming new users slows down).
Love it or hate it, institutionalized fiat currency has value because the issuing country has people with guns who will drag you off to a metal box if you don’t use the currency in the intended ways (unless you’re super rich I guess). That aside, cryptocurrency stupidly throws away many thousands of years of accumulated human knowledge about how currencies work and don’t work. For that reason alone it’s stupid and untrustworthy.
@abucci@anthony.buc.ci Yup 💯
That’s the problem, people saw cryptocurrencies as way to make money quick (classic money making problem), it’s not that the idea of cryptocurrency is a Ponzi scheme, is that people are using it to engineer Ponzi schemes or do fraud with it as they do with fiat money.
I think you are confusing the idea of a blockchain, a distributed leger. That idea has its merits, btu, and I stress but in reality it also has its own sets of problems too.
Crypto increases or decreases in value just as any other good (or currency), based on demand, you can do Ponzi schemes with potatoes, you can’t say potates at their core are Ponzi scheme.
This is not true, because cryptocurrency is unique: it has no inherent value whatsoever. Potatoes have value as food, and so yes while they can be used as the underpinning of a Ponzi scheme, the presence of potatoes as a kind of currency does not immediately imply that you’re looking at a Ponzi scheme. You might be looking at a perfectly viable economy grounded, ultimately, in the value of a potato as a food.
There is no grounding for cryptocurrency. You can’t eat it, wear it, or live in it. You can’t use it to pay taxes, fees, or fines from a nation-state without first converting it into the fiat currency of that nation-state.
You might argue “well, you can exchange the crypto for those other things!” and the answer to that is: no you can’t, unless you have enough people participating in the Ponzi scheme. That’s how these schemes work. It’s a con game where the token only has a value if enough people believe it has a value. That’s a Ponzi scheme.
And cypto’s value is that it’s a currency outside the (at least the digital) reach of a countries institutions.
That is not a value. I have absolutely no need or desire for that, nor do the vast majority of people. People avoiding accountability from their community might view it as such.
No institution can give an order to block your transactions! Even if you’re bank account is blocked, you can still trade with crypto! That’s at least one of the reasons it has value!
You’re literally trying to say that if your community has decided that you should not have access to certain funds, you should be empowered to thwart that decision. A profoundly anti-social stance to take.
Because that’s the notion here. Banks can’t legally decide that you no longer have access to your funds. You have a right to those funds that is protected by law. Legal authorities in some cases can restrict your access to your funds, but there is a reason and purpose to that, and in theory that reason and purpose is protection of the community. Yes I know I’m being simplistic, but the alternative is to take the extreme libertarian view that these institutions are all broken and hostile beyond hope, we should resist them at all costs, everyone else be damned. To me that’s far more simplistic, naive, and dangerous than believing that these institutions approximate the ideals we have for them and can be improved through time.
And honestly, if that’s your worry–that a bank would restrict your access to your money–why in the actual FUCK would you think that cryptocurrency gives you better access? Get a bunch of cash, bonds, and prepaid debit cards and bury it all in your backyard. That’s far better.
I’ve talked to many people who are enthusiastic about cryptocurrency, and almost to a one I find that they have a limited understanding of how actual currencies work. I’d urge you to read up on how banks work, how fiat currencies work, etc., before saying stuff like this.
@adi@twtxt.net well, fuck Russia lol. Crypto should burn if only to deny those genocidal pricks access to money.
@adi@twtxt.net You seem to think, bizarrely, that cryptocurrency can’t be blocked. It can. Any cryptocurrency currently in existence, or yet to be invented, can be blocked, and will be. As things stand now, a script kiddie can steal all your funds if you screw up one tiny configuration detail lol
@adi@twtxt.net what are you talking about?
@stigatle@yarn.stigatle.no Tor is well-known to be thoroughly infiltrated by law enforcement and other state actors, who even run their own exit nodes. There are playbooks for taking it down. It could be fully compromised right now for all we know. i2p I know less about, but human engineering–meaning, coercing, tricking, or otherwise persuading people to do stuff that compromises security–is always the way to compromise these things, and it always will be.
@stigatle@yarn.stigatle.no Please don’t blindly trust these technologies. #wrrgnnq
@stigatle@yarn.stigatle.no You didn’t read the articles.
@stigatle@yarn.stigatle.no Research suggests users of hidden services are even more vulnerable to de-anonymization:
Hidden service users face a greater risk of targeted deanonymization than normal Tor users
@stigatle@yarn.stigatle.no Like I said you didn’t read the articles. Which is fine, but my points stand as far as I’m concerned. 🤷♂
@stigatle@yarn.stigatle.no This sounds like a scary event and I’m sorry that it happened to you.
This sounds like a scary event and I’m sorry that it happened to you.
No reason to be afraid of law enforcement! People are people!