Someone paid $2.6M in fees to move $134 worth of cryptocurrency

Re:Someone paid $2.6M in fees to move $134 worth of cryptocu... by camjohnson26 on Thursday June 11, 2020 @01:48PM (#23491417)

This is a ridiculous take. There’s plenty of problems with crypto but this isn’t one of them. The payment protocol has no reason to be irreversible, why would you ever want that. Reverse transactions should be handled by institutions, and institutions should use the protocol. If they make a mistake while using the protocol, they work together with the other institutions to fix it, exactly as happens with bank transfers.

Yes it’s stupid to use a crypto currency network to send personal raw transactions, but the tech is still young and a lot of people do it. Eventually that won’t happen.

Yes you can burn currency by sending it to an invalid address. You can also burn cash. Build controls so that people won’t do it.

The closest example is modern databases. If you let users run sql directly they could drop their own database. That’s an irreversible transaction. The solution is to abstract that power away so that it’s extremely hard to do extremely dangerous things.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Someone paid $2.6M in fees to move $134 worth of cryptocu... by toomuchtodo on Thursday June 11, 2020 @01:52PM (#23491466)

If institutions are going to run the network, and the transactions will be reversible, and you're not going to run your own wallet, why crypto? It's a solution for a problem that doesn't exist. The database works just fine.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Someone paid $2.6M in fees to move $134 worth of cryptocu... by camjohnson26 on Thursday June 11, 2020 @01:59PM (#23491545)

Anyone can join the network and start a new institution. Good luck starting a bank

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Someone paid $2.6M in fees to move $134 worth of cryptocu... by toomuchtodo on Thursday June 11, 2020 @02:00PM (#23491562)

You're not an institution unless you have a banking or money transmittal license, crypto or not. The nation state still makes the laws, a DLT node doesn't change the law.

I entirely agree it's hard to start a bank, but your problem won't be solved through technology, only through policy and regulation updates.

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/02/10/514577243/epis... (Planet Money: Blockchain Gang)

https://cointelegraph.com/news/charges-reduced-charlie-shrem... (Charges Reduced: Charlie Shrem Agrees to Plea Deal)

> Before getting locked up, Shrem had run the company BitInstant. BitInstant made buying Bitcoin as easy as purchasing a money order. By the time he was 22, Shrem had hired dozens of employees, found a brand new office in Manhattan, and was processing a million dollars a day.

> Shrem though ended up helping some of the wrong people trade dollars for Bitcoin: buyers and sellers of illegal drugs on the website Silk Road. As he was getting off a plane from Europe to New York, Shrem was arrested. He was convicted of aiding and abetting an unlicensed money transmitter, and sentenced to two years in federal prison.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Someone paid $2.6M in fees to move $134 worth of cryptocu... by camjohnson26 on Thursday June 11, 2020 @04:09PM (#23492859)

Absolutely agree, but what’s exciting about blockchain is that it makes the network accessible across country boundaries by default. Definitely countries can opt out by banning it, but the hope is that this interconnection becomes so valuable that banning it has too many negative consequences, just like with the internet.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Someone paid $2.6M in fees to move $134 worth of cryptocu... by olliej on Thursday June 11, 2020 @08:49PM (#23494830)

You still have to obey the laws of the company you operate in. So if you want to act like a bank, you have to obey banking laws - including all the capital and auditing.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Someone paid $2.6M in fees to move $134 worth of cryptocu... by camjohnson26 on Thursday June 11, 2020 @11:17PM (#23495675)

Yes but different countries have different laws. The hope is the technology forces the laws to change eventually.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Someone paid $2.6M in fees to move $134 worth of cryptocu... by olliej on Friday June 12, 2020 @03:11AM (#23496831)

What happens is that you need to obey both sets of laws. This is both good and bad.

e.g. one country requires you don't allow transactions with terrorists. So neither end can be a terrorist org.

additional e.g. one country says LGBT orgs are illegal so neither end can be an lgbt org.

etc.

[ Parent | on HN ]