Bitcoin discussion and news

[StakerOne]

@StakerOne , you're doing a great job of making crypto sound like a nightmare. Unregulated, unpredictable, opaque and even a 'simple explanation' is eye-crossingly complicated, full of jargon and acronyms.

A summarisation pretty much like "boring!!!!".

If you're really serious, just quote a chunk of my text and ask me for clarification and I'd be happy to help.

In any case, as much as I'm prepared to help, I'd never get into a tizz just because someone isn't convinced or finds it really hard to understand.

Because deep down you know these things will have front ends that will become more and more friendlier to the point you won't even realise you're using it.

I just want to earn money, keep it somewhere safe, and spend it on stuff I need. I'd like to save some for a rainy day in a place it will remain intact and I can access it easily. Not especially interested in unearned income. I have yet to read one statement that convinces me I should come within a thousand miles of crypto for any of this.

I don't mean this in a nasty way, but for the same reasons as above - I don't have to care, it doesn't matter if you're crypto-phobic right now, eventually you'll wind up using it without even knowing you are.

 

[StakerOne]

I’m not bothered if regulated banks use the tech in a regulated way. What I’m against is the anti government libetarians and the crypto bro’s looking for a new ponzi wave to ride. I very much doubt real banks using the tech will give you a wave.

Please play nice, you're implying I'm one such person.
There's a who bunch of different groups with different ideals, with some being more important than the other and besides, I don't know exactly what attributes of it you consider liberterian.

I love the immutability of it, the way that it's censorship resistant, permissionless and can't be confiscated. You may consider that as libertarian.

The crowd that are really into the high yield stuff, are nicknamed "degens" - short for "degenerate", I think it was a slur that was thrown at the crypto community by Warren Buffett, but I might be wrong!

Anyway, as I keep on repeating, Ponzi schemes can be spotted, sometimes they are and funnily enough, when they are reported to the authorities, the authorities really don't give a fuck, even if they are given strong leads as to who is behind such scams.

Do you know why?

I'll tell you why. The SEC in the United States has a proven track record of just going after highly succesful projects that have made lots of money. And the SEC is trying to get them through technicalities.

The crypto community has long asked the SEC for guidance - and been ignored.

Instead, they get back snotty letters with probing questions and at the end of it all they get legal threats or even taken to court.

In the meantime, scams ripping off every day normal people are ignored.

Similar things have been going on with the FCA in the UK. Not crypto but a bonds scandal, with many people complaining to the FCA about potentional fraud.

What the FCA do? Fuck all. Why would they? To them it's just the "plebs" losing money.

 

[mojo pixy]

A summarisation pretty much like "boring!!!!".

No it isn't, that's your snarky version lacking humility.

If you're really serious, just quote a chunk of my text and ask me for clarification and I'd be happy to help.

Your help would be entirely self serving. It's 100% in your interests, for more people to invest in your hobby. I've been watching crypto for long enough to know, nobody neutral 'helps' induct new investors.

In any case, as much as I'm prepared to help, I'd never get into a tizz just because someone isn't convinced or finds it really hard to understand.

Because deep down you know these things will have front ends that will become more and more friendlier to the point you won't even realise you're using it.

Unlikely in my cash-focussed, hand-to-mouth world.

I don't mean this in a nasty way, but for the same reasons as above - I don't have to care, it doesn't matter if you're crypto-phobic right now, eventually you'll wind up using it without even knowing you are.

I doubt it, because I will be actively avoiding it and doing my best to convince others to avoid it too

 

[pesh]

tedious cunt is tedious.

 

[Storm Fox]

When you interact with a smart contract on decentralised blockchain, there's no third party - you're dealing with a smart contract - code.

Code is written by humans and mistakes are made and may not be discovered for years. There are loads of Crypto examples, but look at some of the largest non-crytpo ones like ShellShock. That is in the open-source code for ages. The more complex a system gets the more bugs there are. Why is there a patch Tuesday for Microsoft Program, mostly to fix bugs.
Smart contracts will need to get very complex if they are going to code only to deal with all the contingencies. If everyone can look at the code and examine it for bugs it is going to be a race between white-hat and black-hat hackers. With traditional banks their internal code is hidden so if there is an obscure bug it is not going to be exploited.

 

[StakerOne]

Your help would be entirely self serving. It's 100% in your interests, for more people to invest in your hobby. I've been watching crypto for long enough to know, nobody neutral 'helps' induct new investors.

Game theory. It has to be like that by design, it's the only way to get greedy politicans onboard.

There are far more profitable ways to make money than trying to get your social circle involved, besides, you'll be involved one day. Everyone will.

 

[StakerOne]

Code is written by humans and mistakes are made and may not be discovered for years.

Buy insurance for it then. It's very cheap.

 

[StakerOne]

Smart contracts will need to get very complex if they are going to code only to deal with all the contingencies.

Naaah. Smart contracts tend be very very simple. They have to be, because if they wind up being complicated, they'll be expensive to deploy. The blockchain is like real estate, the more space you take up, the more expensive it all becomes.

Anything complex is done in Web3 which is normally javascript.

 

[Storm Fox]

By insurance for it then. It's very cheap.

So how does the insurance Smart Contract know that the Smart Contract you insured against is faulty? Or are you putting your trust in an unregulated insurance company and whether or not you get a payout is dependent on trusting a human?

 

[Storm Fox]

Naaah. Smart contracts tend be very very simple. They have to be, because if they wind up being complicated, they'll be expensive to deploy. The blockchain is like real estate, the more space you take up, the more expensive it all becomes.

Anything complex is done in Web3 which is normally javascript.

So it cannot cover all the contingencies of everyday life.

 

[t0bytoo]

...

I don't mean this in a nasty way, but for the same reasons as above - I don't have to care, it doesn't matter if you're crypto-phobic right now, eventually you'll wind up using it without even knowing you are.

I found the notion of 'crypto-phobia' irksome. So I looked up the word 'phobia'.

The NHS suggest:
'A phobia is an overwhelming and debilitating fear of an object, place, situation, feeling or animal'

Overview - Phobias

Find out more about phobias, which are an overwhelming fear of an object, place, situation, feeling or animal.

www.nhs.uk

I don't think any of the non-crypto-bros on this thread are suffering from a debilitating fear of the blockchain.

EDIT:
Seems the term is commonplace, though:
'Those who are users of Fiat currency and have a distrust and misunderstanding of Cryptocurrency. These individuals can be Cryptophobic if they are unable to dismantle their bias for Central Banking currencies and see Crypto for what it can be.'

Urban Dictionary: Cryptophobia

Those who are users of Fiat currency and have a distrust and misunderstanding of Cryptocurrency. These individuals can be Cryptophobic if they are unable to dismantle their bias for Central Banking currencies and see Crypto for what it can be.

www.urbandictionary.com

 

[StakerOne]

So how does the insurance Smart Contract know that the Smart Contract you insured against is faulty? Or are you putting your trust in an unregulated insurance company and whether or not you get a payout is dependent on trusting a human?

When you do a normal insurance claim, say for car insurance, it's a private matter - the whole world doesn't get to know about it. So if your insurance is denied or there is some dispute, you could scream from the rooftoops about it, people will think what they want to think, but it sure as hell won't damage the reputation of the insurance firm involved - granted, you've got legal recourse or perhaps regulator recourse from them.

Turning to the smart contract world, imagine a smart contract that had $180 million in it blows up. That's a very public incident, it would be all over the news.

All eyes would then turn the project in charge of the smart contract.

It's actually very rare that a project doesn't just stump up the lost money to users from the projects treasury.

But let's imagine the project said "Ouch that must have hurt a load of people, mine's a pint!"

Then all eyes turns to the insurance providers. One popular one is Nexus: Nexus Mutual | A decentralised alternative to insurance

A proposal would be put to their token-holders to pay out customers for the money they lost within the smart contract.

As night follows day, they would vote for a payout, because if they block the proopsal for the payout, then guess what? All of the Nexus tokens they hold would instantly become worthless, because it would become obvious that no one in their right mind would ever use them for insurance ever again.

As soon as they vote to pay out, the pay out happens automatically, up to the value you got yourself insured for.

 

[StakerOne]

So it cannot cover all the contingencies of everyday life.

It would depend what the contingency is. Some contingencies would not be possible today, but might be another time because related things wound up on the blockchain.

 

[StakerOne]

I found the notion of 'crypto-phobia' irksome. So I looked up the word 'phobia'.

The NHS suggest:
'A phobia is an overwhelming and debilitating fear of an object, place, situation, feeling or animal'

Overview - Phobias

Find out more about phobias, which are an overwhelming fear of an object, place, situation, feeling or animal.

www.nhs.uk

I don't think any of the non-crypto-bros on this thread are suffering from a debilitating fear of the blockchain.

EDIT:
Seems the term is commonplace, though:
'Those who are users of Fiat currency and have a distrust and misunderstanding of Cryptocurrency. These individuals can be Cryptophobic if they are unable to dismantle their bias for Central Banking currencies and see Crypto for what it can be.'

Urban Dictionary: Cryptophobia

Those who are users of Fiat currency and have a distrust and misunderstanding of Cryptocurrency. These individuals can be Cryptophobic if they are unable to dismantle their bias for Central Banking currencies and see Crypto for what it can be.

www.urbandictionary.com

I didn't even know anyone used that word!

I just thought, "What do I call someone who is anti-crypto?"

And that's what I came up with. But it's fairly obvious tbh.

 

[t0bytoo]

I didn't even know anyone used that word!

I don't think it's widely used - 3 upvotes on the urban dictionary.
Scepticism is not a phobia, though, I think it's important to make that distinction

 

[StakerOne]

I don't think it's widely used - 3 upvotes on the urban dictionary.
Scepticism is not a phobia, though, I think it's important to make that distinction

I'm not going to fight you on this hill!

 

[Storm Fox]

It would depend what the contingency is. Some contingencies would not be possible today, but might be another time because related things wound up on the blockchain.

So which is it? Simple code, less likely to have bugs, but not do much, or complex code that does a lot and is likely to have bugs?
Saying it's built on blocks isn't an answer if one of the blocks as a bug then everything built using that code has the bug. The more block you use the more likely there is a bug. As ShockShock was in the bash command interpreter, which is fairly simple. Just a building block in Linux.

Also, who am I relying on to payout the insurance? Human or Smart Contract. How can I trust the unregulated human or how does the simple (as you state they are) Smart Contract know there is a bug in another Smart Contract?

It's not a phobia, it's just that apart from gambling, Crypto doesn't make sense. There are too many contradictions which you have helpfully highlighted.

 

[t0bytoo]

I just thought, "What do I call someone who is anti-crypto?

Crypto-sceptic seems to be widely used. That doesn't mean 'anti-crypto', though, It means sceptical.

 

[BigTom]

I have given you real world use cases of that, including:

• .
• Automatic refunds without involving humans - for example when a train is more than 20 minutes late.

These things, CAN'T be done in traditional finance.

But you just ignore these facts.

Yeah. This is why no-one will listen to you.

Delay Repay for Delayed & Cancelled Trains | South Western Railway

Delay repay is a compensation that you can claim when your train is delayed or cancelled. Claims can be made up to 28 days after your journey.

www.southwesternrailway.com

Automated Delay Repay (ADR) is only available for customers who have added train tickets to a SWR Touch Smartcard (including Tap2Go) or have purchased an Advance ticket through our website and have signed up for ADR.

When you tap in and out on your rail journey, we’ll use those taps to assess if your journey has been delayed by 15 minutes or more, ADR will generate a claim and add it to your Delay Repay account.

A claim is usually raised within 3 days of your journey.

Once a claim has been raised, we will send you an email to tell you this.

You must then follow the instructions in the email to accept, decline or amend the claim within 14 days of the claim being generated.

Once you approve the claim you should receive your compensation within 10 working days.

Now sure they want you to approve the claim but there's no reason that couldn't also be automated.
You make all these claims but you really don't have a clue.

I won't be answering you if you respond to this btw, there's no reason to speak to you but I think you should have a check on your own arrogance as to what can be done on a blockchain that can't be done by other database and computer systems.

Because I don't know about the other 3 things but I can see you either don't know anything about this claim you have made or you are lying so either way I won't be paying any attention and can safely assume the other things you say can be done already by traditional finance.

 

[mojo pixy]

Game theory. It has to be like that by design, it's the only way to get greedy politicans onboard.

Anything intended to appeal to greed is fucked. Read the room ffs. You're outing yourself as a nasty piece of work here tbh.

I don't mean this in a nasty way, but ---

Yes you do, that's why theres a 'but'

There are far more profitable ways to make money than trying to get your social circle involved, besides, you'll be involved one day. Everyone will.

This is a mere half step away from conspiracism and religious fundamentalism lol.

I've been reading up on crypto ever since I declined to be paid 100btc for a job I did in 2011 and asked for cash instead. I've read this entire thread, every post, for years. Have you? Clearly not.

You should. But you won't.

Nothing you are posting is going to have the effect you think it is, and if you'd read the thread from the start, you'd see why.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

As for NFTs, I don't think you know what they even are. Describe what they are!

This thread has been going a long time. It has had quiet periods and busy periods. It's currently going through a busy period because of you. One of its previous busy periods centred around NFTs. I'm not going to repeat what I've said before. I'm just going to invite you to scroll back a few months on this thread and read the NFT-related section. There are some very good links in there as well. You might learn something.

But you won't.

 

[Cid]

Yeah. This is why no-one will listen to you.

Delay Repay for Delayed & Cancelled Trains | South Western Railway

Delay repay is a compensation that you can claim when your train is delayed or cancelled. Claims can be made up to 28 days after your journey.

www.southwesternrailway.com

Now sure they want you to approve the claim but there's no reason that couldn't also be automated.
You make all these claims but you really don't have a clue.

I won't be answering you if you respond to this btw, there's no reason to speak to you but I think you should have a check on your own arrogance as to what can be done on a blockchain that can't be done by other database and computer systems.

Because I don't know about the other 3 things but I can see you either don't know anything about this claim you have made or you are lying so either way I won't be paying any attention and can safely assume the other things you say can be done already by traditional finance.

I mean for example in this sentence, a collateralised loan is just a loan secure by an asset, so let's insert a commonly used form of collateralised loan:

'The automatic liquidisation of your mortgage when your house has lost too much value, including selling back to the market AND for traders to be able to pick up the cheap your house with uncollaterised loans to sell at profit'

Sounds fun in an unregulated environment.

Obviously shit like this happens in the regulated environment, but usually at least after negotiations, with some protection from regs, ombudsman etc. Of course the answer I guess would be that you have automated renegotiation built into smart contracts or something, along with mutual insurance (which... complexity spiral). I can see on some level the appeal here, but I think the problem is that it absolutely does not get rid of third parties. The smart contracts have to come from somewhere, and - until we have some kind of omnipotent AI (by which point er... probably other factors will come into play) - that's going to involve humans. The kind of humans who want to write smart contracts for crypto bros. I can definitely see the appeal there. Any developers fancy collaborating? I've only got an undergrad law degree to contribute, but I'm sure I can bru$h up.

 

[elbows]

The crypto wankers are such obvious profiteering bores that I can at least look forward to thinking of their plight when things crash.

On a related note, are any coders interested in helping me to launch schadenfreudeCoin?

 

[t0bytoo]

schadenfreudeCoin

I think we missed that boat: SchadenCoin: Why you love to celebrate cryptocurrency crashes

Edit: not a coin, though

 

[StakerOne]

Now sure they want you to approve the claim but there's no reason that couldn't also be automated.
You make all these claims but you really don't have a clue.

Oh but I do have a clue.
Who decides how late the train is? Who decides that the customers get their automatic refunds, you know, who actually authorises it?

I won't be answering you if you respond to this btw, there's no reason to speak to you but I think you should have a check on your own arrogance as to what can be done on a blockchain that can't be done by other database and computer systems.

I could write a book on what can be done on blockchains that can't be done on databases or other computer systems.

On this thread, I've actually listed a number of examples that simply can't be done on centralised systens.

I'll try you again, even though you say you won't answer. This is just one useful thing, that simply can't be done using conventional means.

Arbitratge traders in the traditional financial system cannot borrow morning for a arbitrage opportunity without having collateral.

In the DeFi world, an example:

1. Borrow n amount of money ($500,000 in USDC for example) from the AAVE lending pool.
2. Buy GBPT with the $500,000 from a DEX that is selling GBPT cheap, UNISWAP in this example.
3. Sell GBPT for USDC to an DEX that is buying GBPT at a better price.
4. Leaving a balance of £500,200
5. Repay £500,020 to AAVE

All 5 of those are wrapped in one super-transaction within the same block.

If I didn't repay £500,020 to AAVE, I didn't borrow it, I didn't buy GBPT and I didn't sell it. Such is the magic of the blockchain and smart contract. That cannot be done in the conventional financial system and it's amazing that such opportunities can bring a lender, borrower, buyer and seller together in one transaction.

You may think it's greedy and immoral that somone earns £180 out of an arbitrage bot - but arbitrage traders are actually helping the exchanges because it shifts the assets around to exchanges that need then, improving liqudity which is of course good for normal customers.

Nothing you are posting is going to have the effect you think it is, and if you'd read the thread from the start, you'd see why.

Please don't assume what I think.

 

[StakerOne]

The crypto wankers are such obvious profiteering bores that I can at least look forward to thinking of their plight when things crash.

On a related note, are any coders interested in helping me to launch schadenfreudeCoin?

Most of us are mentally prepared for crashes of 95% - The rest used leverage and that's a mistake everyone makes - once.

 

[StakerOne]

I mean for example in this sentence, a collateralised loan is just a loan secure by an asset, so let's insert a commonly used form of collateralised loan:

'The automatic liquidisation of your mortgage when your house has lost too much value, including selling back to the market AND for traders to be able to pick up the cheap your house with uncollaterised loans to sell at profit'

Sounds fun in an unregulated environment.

Obviously shit like this happens in the regulated environment, but usually at least after negotiations, with some protection from regs, ombudsman etc. Of course the answer I guess would be that you have automated renegotiation built into smart contracts or something, along with mutual insurance (which... complexity spiral). I can see on some level the appeal here, but I think the problem is that it absolutely does not get rid of third parties. The smart contracts have to come from somewhere, and - until we have some kind of omnipotent AI (by which point er... probably other factors will come into play) - that's going to involve humans. The kind of humans who want to write smart contracts for crypto bros. I can definitely see the appeal there. Any developers fancy collaborating? I've only got an undergrad law degree to contribute, but I'm sure I can bru$h up.

I've never endorsed using smart contracts to police a collaterised loan on property. Besides, for that to even be possible, the land registry would need to be on the blockchain and while I believe that will happen one day, not just yet.

When that does happen and the land registry is on an EVM blockchain, they'll be working on streamling the property market so that people can buy a house same day.

 

[elbows]

Most of us are mentally prepared for crashes of 95% - The rest used leverage and that's a mistake everyone makes - once.

Good luck convincing us that its a brilliant idea to rely on currencies where the prospect of such massive crashes needs to be baked into our thinking.

The only circumstances where I could have a proper conversation about some of the underlying technology would be if it was tied to a currency that was intrinsically stable. That would take all of the loud scumbags who are only attracted to this stuff because of the prospect of the currencies value soaring and making them a load of money (or making money via betting on crashes) out of the equation.

 

[mojo pixy]

Please don't assume what I think.

I'm just replying to what you post; you're the one busy in other people's heads, with your cryptophobia and your you'll be using crypto whether you want to or not. Please at least read your own posts, even if you don't bother reading anyone else's.

 

[Storm Fox]

Oh but I do have a clue.
Who decides how late the train is? Who decides that the customers get their automatic refunds, you know, you actually authorises it?

The times are publicly available.
For example realtimetrains.com which uses a feed from nationalrail that has public APIs anyone can connect to. https://www.nationalrail.co.uk/static/images/structure/css/NRE Feeds_Developer Pack v.01-05.pdf Not a blockchain in site.