News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on The Vietnam government has banned rooted phones from using any banking app. Parent comment

Re:The Vietnam government has banned rooted phones from usin... by roenxi on Friday January 09, 2026 @06:04PM (#46560660)
In principle I'm certainly on board with the idea, but the problem is - at least in the Anglosphere, probably further - that the financial system is part of the military and policing systems. They are a powerful and persistent lobby that want a phone to be able to provide enough who-what-when-where to be able to put someone in jail or in extreme cases drop a missile on them.

That is one of the reasons the crypto market is behaving like some radical innovation instead of just a group of bozos speedrunning financial history. For the first time since the invention of capital we have an asset class where it doesn't take the cooperation of a group of armed thugs to guarantee the integrity of the system.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The Vietnam government has banned rooted phones from usin... by Retric on Friday January 09, 2026 @09:16PM (#46562097)
Crypto is decentralized but that only goes so far. There’s plenty of instances where bunch of armed guys have taken over data centers not just vaults.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The Vietnam government has banned rooted phones from usin... by sudoshred on Saturday January 10, 2026 @06:56PM (#46571231)
I would like to have the opportunity to consider a decentralized consensus algorithm that could accommodate nation state adversaries regularly. Not simply something cryptographically secure and distributed but something which can retroactively route around nodes who are temporarily bad due to external circumstances.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The Vietnam government has banned rooted phones from usin... by arter45 on Saturday January 10, 2026 @02:52PM (#46569297)
What kind of integrity are you talking about?

Merkle trees can prevent tampering after the fact, yes.

But if you include collusion, there's no way for the blockchain itself to know who is colluding and where they are so.

Smart contracts may be vulnerable or malicious.

Wallets can be emptied.

Centralized exchanges and similar entities still exist.

Policing systems are still needed, because as long as there is something of value and there is still "evil" in the world, someone will try to steal it or damage it.

[ Parent | on HN ]