> Trust is the most important thing in crypto

That’s not what the crypto shills have been saying for years. It’s supposed to solve everything because it’s trustless.

Cryptocurrency removes two pieces that you previously needed to trust:

Validity of execution and order of execution.

Without considering smart contracts that's basically enough. With smart contracts there are many valid states that are very undesirable (e.g. pegs breaking, manipulation of prices to liquidate positions) this one would be a peg breaking that subsequently would trigger a cascade of liquidations, at the current state of solana that would also flood the network in people racing to try and grab the liquidation fees[1]

[1]: (a quirk of all of the smart contract platforms I know is that there is no way to ensure that X happens under Y conditions, so instead what people do is set up there systems such that if Y there exists riskless profit for anyone who can make X happen. So once collateralized positions become undercollateralized (e.g. backed by 1.1x) anyone that can return the lended assets (which need to be liquid & fungible) gets the collateral)

crypto shills will say anything to get people to buy into crypto and thus inflating their holdings

It is an amusing dichotomy IMO.

> From the creator of ethereum.

Who happens to be just one actor in the whole thing.

> Maybe if you spent an hour learning about cryptocurrency and it’s culture instead of calling people shills,

You mean like this culture?

https://old.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/search?q=trustless&r...

> as an aside: hacker news comments become a dumpster on cryptocurrency

And replies like this make it no better. Comments like this

> the whole thread isn’t calling anyone who works for Google “shills” but that decorum is totally acceptable on these threads

are basically not true. This whole thread isn't saying everyone is a shill, there is ONE comment that said that.

Crypto is full of scams, just like traditional banking. Yes there are people who absolutely shit on crypto here, but there's also crypto enthusiasts who can't take ANY constructive criticism. Both extremes aren't warranted. Stop pretending that crypto advocates are being victimized here...they aren't.

I think you’re both right. Vitalik is not a shill; his clarification is useful. And there are, objectively, lots of crypto shills around, engaging in pump and dump etc. I don’t think the GP was necessarily saying that all crypto people are shills.

> Trust is the most important thing in crypto.

No it is not and neither should it be. Blockchains are 'supposed' to be trustless with no need to trust a particular group or some group of keyholders. Otherwise, what is the point?

There is no point in promoting decentralization when the whole chain was reversed due to a hack (The DAO hack) or users still resorting to using centralized exchanges rather than 'decentralised' ones or even running most of the nodes on a centralized server.

I hope you have not proven that you have misunderstood the point of their decentralization claims. It makes it very easy for them to dismiss your comment.

> exchanges are making billions in profit

Is this realized profit in real cash, or book profit based on valuations?

Who puts real money into crypto by billions? I somehow doubt that enough actual physical people come to buy crypto. Is this money "invested" by funds?

This whole ethereum thing sounds like the old joke "we exchanged a dog worth 1 million for 2 cats worth 0,5 million each".. yet now they try to find someone who will buy this stuff at those bullshit valuations - to be the one left holding the bag.

Also if so much real money is generated then where are the billionaires? Actual ones who divested from crypto (to lower risk) and bought unsexy real world stuff. I understand that in theory crypto is always growing, but who is coming to buy that 1 BTC for 36k usd? To get billions it would have to be a lot of people.

I'm no accountant, but I trust Bloomberg knows about these things:

> Binance generated at least $20 billion of revenue last year, according to a Bloomberg analysis of its trading volume and fees.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-01-09/binance-c...

> Also if so much real money is generated then where are the billionaires

Same article:

> With $96 billion, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao is closing in on tech titans including Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Google’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

It's pretty easy to swap BTC and the like for USD on Kraken or Coinbase. According to Kraken's order book can buy or sell US$14bn of ETH at the moment and move the price less than 2%. We are not talking $1m cats. I've done stuff like $36k for BTC. That's a small trade really.

> Trust is the most important thing in crypto

What? I thought the whole point was to be trustless?

This is what I was thinking. The first players have made excess returns to patch the hole up and it's in their best interests. If everyone panicked due to the hack they would have lost a lot of the value/confidence of their assets that they didn't pay that much for. Whereas original asset holders would much rather keep the confidence/value in the asset.

It does create a morale hazard if that was indeed what happened - at this point just speculation.

Ahahahahaha!

Why hello J.P. Morgan.

So can we stop pretending that cryptocurrency is anything but an attempt to recreate the financial system in a way that facilitates ignoring banking regulations?