swensel

I do think blockchain analysis will get more advanced over time and people who think they are anonymous now may have a rude awakening years down the line, but from what I can tell, you know crypto better than I do.

IMO, if folks wants privacy now they should actually use privacy focused crypto, but I also think the public nature of crypto is one of the interesting parts of it. I know there are privacy diehards and I can understand why, but I'm more interested about the technology in general.

For me it is that I think the general public has no choice in the matter now, the banks and governments do. That is the difference I see.

Analysis of the transactions could lead law enforcement to the attackers before they try to cash out. Centralized exchanges may also flag the attackers when they attempt to cash out. There is no guarantee they can cash out without getting caught first. It's not just that some poor new owner is left holding the bag. Addresses get blacklisted by law enforcement and the exchanges. I don't think those coins would continue to be transferred to new owners.

Those potential new owners would also probably just go trade on an exchange. If there is some big discount from a local party trying to get rid of the coins, wouldn't that raise some red flag?

The transactions for most cryptocurrency blockchains are viewable by all members of the public. With fiat, only the banks (or the governments) can see transactions. If I was to say there is some good thing, I would say that is a new innovation that hasn't been possible before. Cryptocurrency also does enable new illegal activities that weren't possible before, so there are definitely pros / cons, but I would say there are pros / cons to fiat as well.

Why Monero specifically though, with all the options in crypto available?

If you want privacy there are also Zcash shielded transactions. Or if all you want to do is eliminate central parties then why not just Bitcoin?

My understanding with Monero is if you don't run your own node there's not that much privacy guarantee anyway (otherwise you have to trust the third party node you point to). Someone please correct me if I'm mistaken about that.

Blockchain forensics are already used for tracking transactions and these will get more advanced over time. I think saying "risk-free" is a big stretch. Yes, this is made possible with cryptocurrency, the transactions are irreversible and are not controlled by a central authority (generally). However, many blockchains are also public ledgers, and you have to also figure in fiat gateways if the attackers don't just want to keep the money in cryptocurrency.

> You can drink openly at the beach.

In CA at least, drinking at most beaches is not legal: https://beachlifeexpert.com/beaches/alcohol-guide-california...

Speaking of jobs, at least in America, smiling is helpful even getting the job in the first place.

I don't like having to be on call 24/7 either and would prefer to work on a team that has 24/7 ops, so the devs don't have to do that. However, in the case of a startup where the devs also do ops, what is the option? I don't understand the part where you said that this means something in the company is not working and needs to be fixed if devs need to be on call. What happens if something goes wrong with an environment and an auto restart doesn't fix the issue? I am curious because I'd like to have a better answer for potential startup opportunities that won't spend money on a 24/7 ops team and ask this of their devs.

I'm aware of the ETC attacks. I don't think ETC can really be compared to BTC though. The ETC network is composed of the idealistic (or maybe stubborn) folks who didn't want to switch over to the new ETH chain after the DAO hack. I'm not saying ETC has no merit, but it didn't have the same network resilience due to the split.

Seems like you know a lot about PoS, would you be willing to check out my other comments on this post (https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=swensel)? I've covered some concerns / questions that I have about PoS that maybe you can answer in more detail.

My understanding is those who have more coins on a PoS network have more stake / power. This can matter if there are things like on-chain governance / voting rights, depending on their stake. Those with more stake would also get more staking rewards (it's like an APR % return based on the total staked), and if they stake their rewards as well, then they'd have even more total stake on the network. There also are concerns with those having a majority of the stake in a network being able to disrupt or attack the network (things like slashing based on poor behavior can prevent bad actors from wanting to do that, as they would lose some or all of what they had staked in that case). There are also different kinds of PoS though, and I'm not an expert on it.

Yes, I'd be curious what some PoS coin experts have to say about the centralization concern of PoS, and how network security and uptime is guaranteed in a PoS network that doesn't have slashing.

I'm also wondering about the resiliency of PoS. The PoW used in Bitcoin has demonstrated resiliency against attacks, and none of the attacks have been successful so far, that I know of.

I do think there will be some centralization at the exchange level. As of April 2021, Kraken had 600,000 ETH staked for ETH2 [1].

It's not in the interest of Kraken or Coinbase to disrupt one of these PoS networks, but there is some barrier to entry for staking ETH2 or other PoS coins on your own, vs staking them on an exchange. In the case of ETH2, if your staking node goes down, you get slashed and lose some ETH. If there isn't slashing (not all PoS coins have that), I don't see what guarantee of network security or uptime there is.

I'd be curious what PoS coin experts think about this part. It seems like PoS / staking can lead to centralization. PoW has energy concerns for sure, but it has so far demonstrated decentralization pretty well.

I'm legitimately curious about this. I'd love for PoS to be feasible and am trying to understand it more.

[1] https://en.cryptonomist.ch/2021/04/20/ethereum-2-0-600-thous...

This is one thing I've been wondering about new projects that start with PoS. How do they have enough distribution of the coins in order for them to be resilient against attacks?

What would you propose the Bitcoin core team should switch to? Have you looked into the other algorithms, the feasibility of migrating of the existing network, etc.? It sounds more to me like you've just written off cryptocurrency in general.

As far as I can tell PoW is the most proven consensus mechanism so far. PoS may be promising though. ETH2 successfully switching will be telling.

Are the people downvoting the above comment considering things like trapping excess flare gas [1]? This is energy that is literally wasted otherwise, and would be vented into the atmosphere, if not used for PoW mining (or put to some other undetermined use, but PoW is the only profitable alternative that has made sense so far vs just flaring the gas).

Maybe there need to be more guidelines around how to use excess energy instead of coal, but to totally disregard that PoW could be mined from excess energy is shortsighted. Flare gas is just one example.

[1] https://oilmanmagazine.com/how-and-why-natural-gas-flaring-i...

Come on... PoW provides no value? So the almost $1 trillion in Bitcoin is just, nothing? Not worth anything? I think the people invested would beg to differ.

Are there any proven PoS coins out there yet that have demonstrated resiliency under an attack? Honest question.

Doesn't the mining difficulty decrease then though without the massive mining farms, and thus the electricity required decreases? I'm not an expert in crypto mining.

I would have more confidence in Big Pharma if it wasn't an industry driven by profits, but for public good.

Look at ketamine vs esketamine, for example: "Why isn’t ketamine an approved depression treatment, then? It comes down to profits. Ketamine’s patent expired in 2002, meaning that further studies into the drug would not bring any financial returns to the companies funding them." [1]

I think it would make sense that there are also natural remedies that may be available, and cheap for consumers, but simply aren't considered because they would not be profitable. It's not worth it for them to look into these natural remedies if they can't put a patent on them and make money. Big Pharma, being primarily for profit, would even have an incentive to discredit these natural remedies, as it could harm their business.

[1] https://qz.com/1889308/why-isnt-ketamine-approved-as-an-anti...

Thanks! For the adoption, I meant more like new folks to crypto. I think sending someone new to Coinbase is a lot easier than having them set up Metamask, telling them how to get some ETH and sending them to Uniswap (and also having them understand gas fees, etc, otherwise their Uniswap transaction will take hours and maybe be cancelled due to slippage).

Anyway those third party GUIs sound interesting.

I also figured there already was HFTs on crypto, but good to know.

We'll see what happens with potential regulation. I do hope the US understands that not stifling crypto innovation would support them in having companies and leaders in this upcoming field. I do think crypto is in it's early stages at the moment and mainstream adoption to me is having crypto adoption at the level of say the US stock market.

There have been a few notable hacks to exchanges, Binance, for example [1]. The DAO hack on the Ethereum network, which caused the fork of Ethereum and Ethereum classic, is also notable [2].

I do think the fact that there hasn't been a successful attack on the Bitcoin network is an example of how resilient it is. Safely securing $1 trillion in value on a decentralized network that hasn't been hacked in over a decade of operation, when as you said, it's probably a top-level target, is pretty amazing.

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/08/binance-bitcoin-hack-over-40...

[2] https://www.gemini.com/cryptopedia/the-dao-hack-makerdao

I've used Uniswap and IMO, the UX doesn't compare to the centralized exchanges. I think that will prevent mainstream adoption except for those who are pretty crypto savy. I'm also concerned that decentralized exchanges may have tough regulation applied to them in the future. I'm not sure what that looks like, but it seems like a risk to me. The charges brought against the founder of EtherDelta comes to mind.

That is interesting what you said about the shadiness of centralized exchanges. I wasn't aware of that. Maybe a more clear regulatory framework will help.

However, it seems like whenever more regulation is put upon traditional markets, folks just find a loophole in it and it makes the situation worse for retail investors (best price / HFT comes to mind, but maybe I just took the Flash Boys book too seriously). Anyway, I'm not sure what the answer is there. Curious if you have more thoughts on this.

OK, so you just don't like Ethereum? Why "garbage to fools"?

Have you actually looked into the technology behind Ethereum? Do you understand how complex it is? You make it sound like Vitalik just quickly threw something together and had good marketing, however, Ethereum is quite technical and has been since the beginning [1].

[1] https://ethereum.org/en/whitepaper/

Bitcoin is a worldwide network storing $1 trillion in value without a central party or government. That has never happened before. Are you sure you're just not open to considering the technology at all?

Ethereum is another one to look more into. Smart contracts are doing things that no classical solution has ever done. Have you done a deep dive on how the technology of Bitcoin or Ethereum actually work?

FWIW, I think plenty of the altcoin tokens are garbage, but some of the top players, like Bitcoin and Ethereum, are doing things that classical solutions simply do not allow today.

Good point. Would I notice? Yes, most likely. Would people who don't pay attention notice? No, probably not.

I was giving an example that Bitcoin and layer 2 solutions are related, similar to how dollars and credit cards are related. My point was if the layer 2 networks have value, it doesn't mean Bitcoin doesn't have any value.

Even in the cases you raise, dollars still probably will have some value. I don't see the dollar collapsing any time soon.

Is Bitcoin the best settlement layer? I'm not sure yet. IMO, Bitcoin / cryptocurrency in general does have some value since it is enabling new technologies, like layer 2 solutions, to be developed, when they otherwise would not have been. I think new technology is valuable.

True. One solution could be to incentivize miners to use cleaner energy.

The market cap of Bitcoin is currently larger than Facebook [1]. The total market cap of all cryptocurrencies is over $2 trillion, which is larger than Microsoft, Amazon, Google or silver, and nearing the market cap of Apple. I would not consider that a small market.

It is not unregulated. There have been several lawsuits brought on to the space already [2][3]. Exchanges that don't enforce AML/KYC have charges brought against them [4]. It is less regulated than the stock market, but it is by no means the wild west, at least in the US.

1: https://companiesmarketcap.com/assets-by-market-cap

2: https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2020-262

3: https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2020-338

4: https://news.bloomberglaw.com/bloomberg-law-analysis/analysi...

Thank you! I come to HN to have intelligent discussion as well, and I totally agree. If I go to Reddit it's mostly just a bunch of garbage, even with crypto fans. I do think HN is warming up to crypto, a little bit, at least, or maybe it's just that more crypto fans are speaking up here.

Anyway, like you said, crypto is already working. The network effects are real.

Also, PoW does require a lot of energy, which is a common argument, but this is energy that includes audits, transport and security of the system. For Bitcoin, that's currently over $1 trillion, which to me seems like it is worth securing.

There also do seem to be ways to use excess energy for PoW and make it more green, which seems promising. The energy can be captured anywhere on the planet and used to support the global Bitcoin network from wherever the energy is. There is so much potential in this network.

In all fairness I think we should consider the amount of energy spent to mine gold every year too (as well as the environmental impact), and that's just to mine it, not to mention refining, auditing, transporting, securing, etc.

The energy spent on Bitcoin includes mining, auditing, transporting, securing, etc. It is interesting, at least, to consider that mining Bitcoin is all inclusive. All the energy spent supports the global network.

I think it's worth looking into if Bitcoin actually has some benefits. I don't think this is a clear cut issue and outright statements like, "it really has to stop", IMO, isn't going to help at this time.