Shippou-Sensei
4:1:2.5
Also the prize is in dollars
Bitcoin discussion and news
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gosub
~#
Bitcoin miner makes millions selling electricity to Texas
Beats screwing around actually crafting these unloved tokens
www.theregister.com
What is "crypto" ?
I would regard myself as a keen crypto / blockchain adovocate. But I'm not yearning for a world in which I can by pizza or coffee with BTC or ETH.
I believe the danger is a CBDC that runs on highly centralised rails that could lead us down a dark path to a dystopian social credits system that carrying cash and angry letters to our local MPs won't prevent.
Besides, if I really wanted to pay for my coffee using crypto, I could simply whip out my Coinbase Visa card.
What I would love to see, is a number of algorithmic £GBP stablecoin that is widely accepted by everyone in the UK. Such stablecoins should ideally have nothing in their smart contracts that would allow the money to be frozen or even worse confiscated.
I could live with a "freeze" clause in the smart contract if it's run by a regulated bank, because then it would need a warrant from a judge to "freeze" the assets.
But a highly centralised CBDC that's run on a blockchain that the authorities can control would be a nightmare and cryptos are the only viable answer to making sure that doesn't happen.
Anyway, I'm starting to waffle. My main point is that it's a lot more naunced than many think.
Normal fiat money running on public blockchains such as Ethereum, is a very attractive proposition because it's normal money that normal people understand that has the desierable properties of conventional crypto - it's hard to confiscate and is very, very portable.
No because such currencies have to be secured by assets that have value and indeed are.
For exmaple it could be secured using ETH and that ETH would have been originally bought for hard currency.
IIRC MakerDAO works on borrow and lending between ETH + USD - but I admit, it's a long time since I last looked at that one, but I hope it answers your question.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
ime most 'normal people' don't really worry that much about their money being confiscated.
That would be the government's problem. I doubt it would stifle crypto.
Many people view crypto as a life-boat.
If my own country was that draconian, I'd be using crypto as a vehicle to get out of it!
We don't worry about our money being confiscated because:
1. Cash is still in existance, for now.
2. Cryptocurrencies exist and there are on and off ramps around the world.
3. CBDCs don't exist.
Therefore, if the government or other authorities start unreasonably confiscating money, off to the ATMs we all go AND/OR we all start buying stablecoins.
HOWEVER, if retail CBDCs come into existance - and it's a danger.
Some people on the right who don't know what they are talking about, are begging the government for a national ID card to fight illegal immigration, crime etc
If they get their own way on that - we have a national digital ID card ... that's one upgrade to being a financial wallet to hold £ as well as our Covid19 vaccination history.
We have a Tory leadership election. Have you actually been following Rishi Sunak over the past year or so? In his own written words he has admitted that he wants a CBDC and the man is in danger of being our next Prime Minister.
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- Refugees being able to prove which countries they have travelled through, even if they have ditched ALL of their paperwork, helping the authorites seperate economic migrants from genuine refugees, so that genuine refugees can be given the help they need.
- Zero Knowledge Proofs - To prove you're over 18 on the internet, instead of registering your debit card, along with all of your details to some database that could be hacked, revealing your sordid sexual fantasies to whole world - Zero Knowledge Proofs on Web3 will allow you to prove you are over the age of 18, without giving up who you are, or even what your age really is. Zero Knowledge Proofs allow you to prove something is true or false without giving up any other information and allowing you to keep your own data. Imagine being able to prove to an enquiring police officer, that you wasn't at the crime scene, without actually having to give up where you really was. I can't stress that this feature alone has endless possibilities that can't be replicated using conventional systems.
- Decentralised social media - the LENS protocol. Lens Protocol - I can genuinaly seeing this replace FB. Imagine being able to control how your own content across the internet is monitised while keeping your private data away from adverisers.
- Auditing - Companies that run all of their databases on blockchains can be audited within seconds, remotely. That is why ALL of the top auditing companies up to their necks in blockchain. Corporates will save millions on auditing and will constantly have a top down handle on every aspect of their business.
- Supply chains - Inventory in supply trains can be tracked much more easily. The actual money follows the inventory. Coca Cola bottling in the Americas is already doing that. And they have saving millions because no one nicks the merchandise any more.
- Real Estate / Housing - Once the land registry, planning registry and whole bunch of other databases are on the public blockchain, then it will be possible to view and buy a property on the same day....probably within the hour.....no lawyers.
- Lending and borrowing - yeah yeah yeah, we already have DeFI. But as more assets become tokenised, it will become much easy to borrow money. If we combine all of that with my last point, then yes, it's going to be possible to get a mortgage and get a house same day, without a single human being involved.
- Decentralised Automous Organisations that allow local communities to run organisations without worrying about whether the treasurer is going to nick all the money, or whther some outside entity will distrupt financial ops for poltiical reasons.
- Transparency in trading - Regular centralised exchanges have been know to allow others to frontrun your trades. That's impossible to do on a decentralised exchnage, everything is in the open.
- Transparency in government and state finances - if it was all on the blockchain.
- Businesses can do business with each other, while having privacy (Main blockchain won't give anything away) but having their transactions enforced by smart contracts that have been agreed ... meaning that businesses don't have to trust each other, opening up new opportunities whiile saving costs (See earlier point re auditing).
- Universal Basic Income - With no naughty nasty government involved - Circles UBI – A basic income system for communities
Smart contracts - Ethereum basically, is the most important invention since the internet itself. It will spread into every aspect of our lives. The list of uses are infinate, there is no market it won't disrupt.
Cryptocurrencies is an awful name.
We are talking about protocols.
Protocols don't care about your race, gender, religion, sexuality or even your political beliefs.
Most of the time, protocols don't even care about your age.
Protocols don't discriminate. Blockchains empower the marginalised.
In effect, it's possible for me to copy the trades of a very talented African child who has nothing more than a laptop, mobile phone and and the desire to learn and progress....except that I don't know that it's an African child who has a tokenset that I'm following.
All I'm allowed to do, is look at his past trades on the blockchain, to know that he's good.
Isn't that they way it's supposed to be?
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gosub
~#
Coinbase’s ‘End of Story’ Is Just the Beginning for Crypto Regulation
A few days ago, Coinbase Global Inc.’s top lawyer issued an unequivocal rejection of the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s allegations that digital tokens it offers its customers were, in fact, unregistered securities. “Coinbase does not list securities,” Paul Grewal wrote in a blog post...
english.aawsat.com
The wider story is that the SEC is investigating all US based exchanges.Coinbase’s ‘End of Story’ Is Just the Beginning for Crypto Regulation
A few days ago, Coinbase Global Inc.’s top lawyer issued an unequivocal rejection of the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s allegations that digital tokens it offers its customers were, in fact, unregistered securities. “Coinbase does not list securities,” Paul Grewal wrote in a blog post...
Their motivation is that there is a Senate bill to put cryptos under the regulation of the CFTC.
So the SEC's short term objective is to investigate as many US exchanges as possible and get them to agree to fines - of which 80% goes back to the SEC.
I can't see it working out well for the SEC because many exchanges have an awful lot of money they can use to defend against the SEC by way of litigation.
For starters, the SEC have said why they don't like 9 tokens listed on Coinbase - and believe me, a lot of the reasons cited by the SEC, have never been expressed by them before.
Thesaint
Active Member
Most people don't worry about government confiscation as they assume such things never happen.
The gov could effectively steal money from the people by printing new money and devaluing their savings. Or maybe make converting assets into liquid money difficult, regulated or expensive via taxes (my issue with crypto I asked about) Alternatively utilise covid pass technology to grant rights to those only with a gov approved barcode - a kind of good citizen rationing.
It seems sunak won't be PM but in terms of ID cards that's not a right or left specific idea (labour tried last here around 2006 ish) but either way they are bad news.
Most people in thie UK?
Yes at the moment that is true.
** ETA **
It's a good job the case for crypto doesn't rest on being resistant to confiscation! - But it's important that people have that option.
Money being resistant to confiscation, doesn't impede governance or compromise the security of the state.
If someone is money laundering, not paying their taxes etc, then they go to prison.
**************
But Palpatine only rears his ugly head when the time is right.
If normal people don't get a grip, then that's one mighty carrot to incentivise those with centralised power to consolidate.
I understand that it's not a left or right thing.
It's an authoritarian v libertarian thing. It's an issue that cuts across the left and the right, so much so, that at least to me, whether someone is left wing or right wing, is nowhere near as important as to whether they are authoritarian or libertarian.
There are other important factors out there, such as people not giving a stuff through either ignorance, or simply not being tech savvy enough to comprehend what the threats really are and the dynamics of it all.
Maybe people don't appreciate decentralisation because it hasn't changed their lives (yet) and they haven't experienced the horrors of a corrupt centralised power like that of the Communist Party of China.
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Storm Fox
Trying the find the next noun to verb
Most of the biggest proponents of Crypto are right-wing libertarians heading toward anarcho-capitalists.
So as has been asked of another poster here who failed to answer.
If Crypto is decentralised and not under government control. How is taxation going to work?
How will public works such as roads, rail, schools, libraries, health care and welfare be implemented and paid for?
So as has been asked of another poster here who failed to answer.
If Crypto is decentralised and not under government control. How is taxation going to work?
How will public works such as roads, rail, schools, libraries, health care and welfare be implemented and paid for?
1. Crypto is already decentralised and isn't under government control. Belive it or not, many people pay their taxes because it's the right thing to do ... failing that, they still at least agree with the government what they owe them and eventually pay up.
2. Taxes. And believe it or not, taxes will be easier to pay.
Further on question 2, I see more and more communities running more and more for themselves through DAOs.
I also see local authorites launching their own DAOs and that's when things can get to be quite exciting because we will see more direct democracy and more interopearability with community DAOs and local authority ones.
National governments could launch their own DAOs to govern .. along with smart contracts to pay the taxes to, along with publishing example code that people, DAOS and smart contract developers can use.
I see a future where governments still get their taxes, but in many more ways that aren't really that invasive or painful.
A decentralised system is so much fairer, I genuinly believe that a lot less people will need welfare in it's conventional guise.
* ETA **
I think you might find this youtube video interesting as it does touch upon this subject and it's bang up to date:
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Thesaint
Active Member
I do wonder if there was a public forums that couldn't be controlled and censored would have more impact than currency.
magneze
🎧
It's been tried a few times.
Just about every crypto evangelist there is would agree that "cryptocurrency" is an awful way to describe the tech but we are where we are.
Mastodon isn't decentralised in the same sense that a blockchain-centric one would be.
It's more a "distributed network" where everyone who owns a server is king of their little kingdom.
Lens is far more powerful as it has the potentional to work across websites running DAPPS.....
...but once something is written to the blockchain, everything stands even if someone pulls the plug on their DAPP.
While the IPFS is a distributed file system, because of the way it works, many hosts may share the same file ... so if the authorities see content they don't like, then they would have to go after quite a number of IPFS nodes in different durastictions.
And we're back to NFTs and how powerful they will be. If you accept someone as your friend, then you (and they) recieve an NFT that represents that friendship ... a lot of it works on NFTs. Everytime you post content to it - that's an NFT .... minted on Polygon, so it's green.
Lens is powerful because just about any Web3 enabled website will able to take advantage of it ... and anything can be built on top of it.
Imagine being able to harness Lens to encourage social interaction between members of DAO, or even recruit people to your DAO ... a lot of it occuring within a few clicks seamlessly for users.
tim
EXPLODED TIM! (Help me!!!)
I do wonder about your syntax.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
You're american I'm guessing from your use of the word welfare.
Problem is that we disagree at a fundamental level. Communal provision as exemplified by state provision isn't just for those who can't finance themselves within the system. Nobody can provide for themselves. Nobody. And the only way to provide things equitably is through communal provision. That requires some compulsion, particularly from a starting point of unequal distrbution of resources. The rich don't pay up voluntarily.
You say lots of words but they all boil down to one thing. Fuck the poor.
For something so built on lack of trust on human systems, this all relies on a superhuman faith and trust in the systems others build in the form of smart contracts. Unlike a normal contract, which are subject to legal review and alteration where asymmetry of information has unfairly disadvantaged one party, a smart contract is inviolable. If you didn’t understand something hidden in the complex code, tough shit. We’re either all going to have to be expert programmers or we’re all going to have to rely on the honesty and expertise of those doing the programming.
newbie
undisambiguated
Care to estimate the total number of transactions made by government annually and from that, the energy expended if they were all on the blockchain? Where's it going to come from? How does that play into carbon reduction targets?
No, I'm British. I don't recall making the case for replacing state welfare systems, though we should always strive to replicate them - and indeed that's what the Circle UBI does if enough people in a local economy particpate.
"You say lots of words but they all boil down to one thing. Fuck the poor." - that's a very serious accusation to make, with no evidence.
There are many good crypto projects out there that helps the poor. Even airdrops are often classic Robin Hood stories, where crypto treasuries that need to be tokenised after being swelled up by richer crypto users, have to be distributed to those who simply used a crypto product regardless of how much they spent.
A classic was the Ethereum Name Service - ENS, with many people who spent £20 or £30 on ENS domain names, winding up with £15k windfall.
I hope you're not seriously suggesting that humanity invents nothign new unless it's carbon neutral, as that would be pretty much impossible with any new software.
Ethereum is moving over to PoS which would mean Ethereum will use 1% of the energy that the current PoW system uses.
Many have argued the date for PoS keeps being put back, but progress towards it is getting closer with more and more Ethererum PoS test chains launched.
Besides, many projects at the moment are using layer 2 chains on top of Ethereum and those layer 2 chains tend to already be PoS.
So getting back to your question - no I can't estimate the total number of transactions the government would make, but considering that it would make systems more efficient in that middlemen are cut out AND that blocchain tech has functionality that is simply not available using conventional systems.
With sharding and all the other new functionality that PoS brings, Ethereum will scale at lot better - but until it does, there are plenty of viable layer 2 solutions out there ... and those solutions are constantly being worked on so they scale better.
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It costs money to execute a smart contract that writes to the blockchain, therefore they have to be as simple as possible, otherwise no one will want to use your smart contract because the transaction fees would make normal users wince.
Because the smart contract itself lives on the blockchain, that's it, unless of course it's deleted - and in the case of Ethereum (or any other EVM based smart contract) - it would need to be published with the selfdestruct() function.
Now I don't speak to that many developers, but I don't like leaving that selfdestruct() function in there.
The reason being is that one of the biggest attractions for developers into this field, is that developers are sick to the back teeth of corporates like FB, Google, Microsoft and just about every other commercial software outfit under sun, creating products with APIs for the products later to be withdrawn or functionality removed just because it's no longer in the commerical interests of that company.
Remember Google Wave? There would have been an awful lot of excited 3rd party developers who developed for that .. for the whole lot to go up in smoke.
Do you see why this isn't going away? There is a growing army of developers who are actually making money by working for protocols or DAOs without even having to disclose who they really are or having to worry about what they are building on top of, will be rug pulled from underneath them. Furthermore, their own work is very likely going to stay around for a long time to come, because the whole lot is immutable and indestructable.
Of course, simple smart contracts can go wrong, so how can they be fixed? How can upgrades be performed?
Professional smart contract developers are taught to create a proxy smart contract that uses a state value to point to the real smart contract that has the real meaty stuff.
That way, if there is anything wrong with the meaty smart contract, a new version of that can be created, with the pointer state value being updated so that the proxy smart contract calls the new meaty one.
That's yet another reason to keep it modular.
DeFi in particular is layered so no one devloper team is going to remove functionality in their smart contract.
Regarding the consequences fo smart contracts going wrong, there are a number of different insurance protocols out there - and some developers build them into their smart contracts so that users don't need to buy that insurance.
There is at least one commercial monitoring service that can constantly monitor the Ethereum mempool for any suspecious transactions related to a smart contract.
As for everyone needing to be coders, I disagree. Smart contracts tend to be generic and 99 times out of a 100, you simply be another user of the exact same smart contract. The longer a smart contract is around, the more it can be trusted.
Some products generate new smart contracts. I admit that's more complicated, but I would say the longer those products are around, the safer they are.
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