Bitcoin discussion and news

[kabbes]

You do realise don't you that people are bringing in mney in the form of stablecoins?

Ah yes, reliable old stablecoins

The latest one to depeg:

HUSD stablecoin depegs

HUSD, a stablecoin linked to the Huobi crypto exchange, lost its peg and dropped to around $0.85. HUSD is a cash-backed stablecoin intended to be pegged to the US dollar, but the coin lost its peg due to "liquidity issues". HUSD later tweeted that, "We had made the decision to close several...

web3isgoinggreat.com

 

[Monkeygrinder's Organ]

Does crypto create dim witted psychopaths or just attract them? Genuine question - how do you get to the point where you think what the world needs is fewer barriers to Forex trading for infants?

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Does crypto create dim witted psychopaths or just attract them? Genuine question - how do you get to the point where you think what the world needs is fewer barriers to Forex trading for infants?

Bit of both. It nurtures them.

 

[q_w_e_r_t_y]

The electronic world is infinitely malleable, anyone in the modern age knows this by the time they reach voting age. Electronic records can be faked or deleted.

It was up until 2009, when the Bitcoin blockchain first started running.

THIS IS THE WHOLE POINT, we are 250 pages into this thread, you have commented several times and have clearly read much of it, yet you've missed the absolute fundamental, basic critical, important thing that defines crypto and makes it special. When you write to a blockchain ...unlike every other electronic record...it cannot be faked or deleted. It is there forever.

If its on the bitcoin blockchain it will only not be there forever if every single computer, both on earth and extraterrestrial stopped running bitcoin core. Let me repeat that again, even if the entire earth and all its inhabitants, all its computers, and all of its electronic infrastructure was wiped out tomorrow, someone on the International Space Station could still check every single interaction there has ever been with complete and utter confidence, by booting up their laptop, installing bitcoin core and verifying it against a satellite node.

Read the Bitcoin whitepaper. It has all the answers you seek.

It's much harder to do the same when you have to physically produce or destroy the paper ballots necessary to influence an election.
Electronic stuff is done in the background, where hardly any humans can see it. Paper ballots exist in the real world, which everyone intuitively understands.
Yammering about blockchain isn't going to instil confidence, because nobody can see that shit for themselves.

The source code for Bitcoin is held on every machine running a full node and is also available on Github. Anyone can see that shit for themselves.

You can have a secret ballot on the blockchain using a commit reveal cycle. A more complicated, but more elegant way, is to use homographic encryption.

People vote on the blockchain all the time, this is how DAOs are governed. See here for example of current open votes. There are a tonne of voting strategies in crypto, one of the most interesting is quadratic voting used by gitcoin for the distribution of grants. It would not be difficult to faciliate nation state voting through the blockchain and indeed many nations have done so.

There are quite a few platforms that will insure against smart contract bugs (and other things), Nexus mutual is probably the best known

 

[stdP]

Does crypto create dim witted psychopaths or just attract them?

Obviously I can't speak for any cryptocurrency enthusiasts - because I'm manifestly against almost every principle I believe it to be founded upon - but it's a very attractive philosophy to the right mindset. I'm sure, like many people of our generation, we feel that certain routes to wealth, certain paths to happiness, certain access to a better class of misery, certain ladders to freedom, are no longer available to us, the rank and file, and that the world of "we're all temporarily inconvenienced millionaires" are shrinking in to the unattainable. Much crypto-hawking is run off the back of this-is-the-last-chance-to-make-any-money-before-<insert your disaster scenario here>, in much the same method that gold-hawking has occurred previously, coupled with fear of missing out as the early adopters cash out on the backs of the fresh meat who want their Lambo's, and much like any scam in history, there's a certain level of no, I'm going to be one of the millionaires because I'm special and clever and nothing bad will happen to me - good ol'-fashioned human denial, resplendent in every aspect of society. The historical precedence for this is one of the major reasons that things like financial regulation came in to being in the first place because society figured out a long time ago that if you succeed in hoovering the wealth out of too many pockets, society suffers massively at the expense of the very few. But the essential ethos of much of crypto is people establishing themselves as the rent-seekers gatekeepers of the New World Currency, not just siphoning off a percentage of every transaction but also trying to turn every conceivable human interaction in to a transaction too. Ker-ching!

Even if we ignore the greed aspect and focus on the fundamentals, like most technical solutions to societal problems, it largely doesn't work because it ignores the human aspect and focuses solely on the technological aspect that it thinks it can solve, and ceases to work as a model once you factor in humanity not acting like perfectly controllable obedient little objects. If contract law (or indeed any other law) was quantifiable as code, people would have started writing smart contracts in to the statute before Babbage was an itch in his dad's breeches, and the legal system would have been replaced by simple Hollerith machines a century ago. The fact that society continues to not be simple boolean logic - but is continually looked at as such by the cryptocurrency fraternity - is just further evidence of their disconnect from what I euphemistically refer to as the real world.

As with any such system, there's a massive level of hype generated from the people for whom it's benefited, at the expense of those who won't.

Genuine question - how do you get to the point where you think what the world needs is fewer barriers to Forex trading for infants?

An unshakeable belief in the power of The Market to do good (and not just hoover up the disposable income of a bunch of rubes), perchance? It's always been a popular illusion that a really clever 6yr old can somehow outwit the multi-billion dollar trading fund employing a fleet of researchers with an HFT platform. But an illusion is all it is.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

This is from last year, so it's a bit out of date. But it's by a blockchain engineer. He wants this to be a success. But he doesn't exactly enthuse about the results thus far.

Good luck getting my mum to remember her password. She would be confused to fuck by all of this. Bewildered by it. And so... disenfranchised.

Which Countries Are Casting Votes Using Blockchain? | HackerNoon

Russia has been interested in a blockchain-based voting system for several years now and has created several state-funded systems that have gone through multiple iterations. Not all of them have been successful, but they have been deployed in elections, with each election ending in accusations of mismanagement, data leakage, and ballot-stuffing.

This past summer, Russia voted on a constitutional amendment to let Vladimir Putin stay in power. In Moscow and Nizhny Novogrod, voters could vote remotely on a system built on Bitfury's open-source platform Exonum. The system, built by Kapersky Lab, used a proof of authority method to ensure voter identity and push votes to the ledger. However, the system reportedly came under a node attack, and experienced other hiccups like crashing during the voting window. Russian authorities ensured that all votes were still recorded properly.

The September by-elections saw two different blockchain voting pilots. Russian Telecoms giant Rostelecom ran a pilot in Kruskaya and Yaroslavskaya. The platform they used was a private version of blockchain system Waves, which uses a similar proof of authority method and encrypts the votes until voting is over. It ran into problems. French researcher Pierrick Gaudry cracked the encryption scheme. The system used a variant of the ElGamal Encryption scheme with key sizes small enough so that most modern computers could crack the key within 20 minutes. To compound their problems, reports from Russia showed that they had trouble checking the identity of voters.

The other pilot was run by the Department of Information Technologies and was a second iteration of the Exonum-based system used in the constitutional amendment election. It faced much of the same problems as the first go around.

Deserves to be on Molly White's site really.

Bottom line. You can't trust it to be truly private or not to be corrupt. You have to trust the code. But only a vanishingly small number of people will know anything about the code. And there is every reason not to trust the code. Gimme paper and pencil please, and all those pesky humans counting by hand.

 

[elbows]

Trade. Trade is about buying low and selling higher. That one thing, is legite and not only is it legite it's beneficial to the market, because it makes the market more efficient.

Oh fuck, its 'the invisible hand of the marketplace' propaganda.

Maybe crypto can make that magic hand visible for all to see....

 

[Supine]

If everything is on the blockchain, all our drug purchases are recorded for ever. Brilliant

 

[littlebabyjesus]

It would not be difficult to faciliate nation state voting through the blockchain and indeed many nations have done so.

See my link. Turns out it is really quite difficult. And due to all the predictable reasons - who's commissioning the system, who's building the system, what are they paying, who's profiting from it, who has motive and opportunity to subvert the process, what oversight exists?

It's as bad an idea as automatic voting machines. Paper and pencil ftw.

 

[q_w_e_r_t_y]

it's a very attractive philosophy to the right mindset. I'm sure, like many people of our generation, we feel that certain routes to wealth, certain paths to happiness, certain access to a better class of misery, certain ladders to freedom, are no longer available to us, the rank and file, and that the world of "we're all temporarily inconvenienced millionaires" are shrinking in to the unattainable. Much crypto-hawking is run off the back of this-is-the-last-chance-to-make-any-money-before-<insert your disaster scenario here>, in much the same method that gold-hawking has occurred previously, coupled with fear of missing out as the early adopters cash out on the backs of the fresh meat who want their Lambo's, and much like any scam in history, there's a certain level of no, I'm going to be one of the millionaires because I'm special and clever and nothing bad will happen to me - good ol'-fashioned human denial, resplendent in every aspect of society.

That philosophy is what attracts people to bitcoin. As I've said before, its a revolution disguised as a get rich quick scheme.

Every cycle the promise of free and easy money attracts another set of newbies who find their coins worth can be exchanged for a lot of fiat, think that they are geniuses, that "nothing bad will happen to me" mindset, then once the crash comes they panic sell, often for less than they bought for.

They then split into two groups. The self-reflective ones, that recognise their greed and stupidity and learn from it, and the dafties that denounce it as a scam, because it didnt work the way that they thought it should, so the fault must lie with bitcoin not with their thinking.. Group 1 sticks around, learning, building evangelising, group 2 vows never to touch crypto again....until they see number go up again and their greed gets the better of them, Some folks just constantly stay in Group 2 getting more and more frustrated. In the meantime, Group 1 has been hodling, buidling and learning, so that for the next cycle they are less greedy and stupid.

If contract law (or indeed any other law) was quantifiable as code, people would have started writing smart contracts in to the statute before Babbage was an itch in his dad's breeches, and the legal system would have been replaced by simple Hollerith machines a century ago. The fact that society continues to not be simple boolean logic - but is continually looked at as such by the cryptocurrency fraternity - is just further evidence of their disconnect from what I euphemistically refer to as the real world.

But smart contracts dont encode contract law, they enforce contract law.

Pre-ethereum there was encoded contracts (Riccardian contracts, developed in the 90s), the problem was that they still relied on trad-law to actually make the thing happen. The difference with smart contracts is that they make the things happen as part of the contract.

So if I put a bitcoin in a smart contract that has instructions to send it to you in 2025, you will get that bitcoin in 2025, and I can do nothing to stop it, it is perfectly trustworthy. Now suppose I make a promise to you that I will send you £20k in 2025. There is no way whatsoever that you can absolutely guarentee that you will receive that £20k. You can minimise risk, but you cannot eliminate it.

This is from last year, so it's a bit out of date. But it's by a blockchain engineer. He wants this to be a success. But he doesn't exactly enthuse about the results thus far.

Good luck getting my mum to remember her password. She would be confused to fuck by all of this. Bewildered by it. And so... disenfranchised.

Which Countries Are Casting Votes Using Blockchain? | HackerNoon

Key is in the sub-heading "these blockchains are not bitcoin". These are permissioned blockchains. Any blockchain that is not open, neutral, censorship resistant, borderless and public is vulnerable to corruption.

Bottom line. You can't trust it to be truly private or not to be corrupt. You have to trust the code.

You dont need to trust the code, you need to verify that the code does what it says it does on the tin. For permissioned private censorable blockchains, you need to trust the controlling entity, because you cannot independently verify the code. The code will do exactly as it is programmed to, the question is whether it has been programmed to do what the controlling authority tells it to do.

But only a vanishingly small number of people will know anything about the code.

Most smart contracts are written in solidity. Its not a difficult programming language and any descent smart contract will be annotated to indicate what each section is doing. Here is a basic auction contract, even with no solidity knowledge at all, you should be able to follow along with roughly what it is doing..

About 10h of learning would allow you to read a simple smart contract. With about 100h, you should be able to read most of them, (wrting them is much harder!)

 

[q_w_e_r_t_y]

If everything is on the blockchain, all our drug purchases are recorded for ever. Brilliant

Indeed they are. But if you dont want other humans to see it use Monero.

 

[wemakeyousoundb]

I see it learned to spell FACT in all caps at least once, the process is painfull to watch.

 

[BigTom]

Maybe we should all take one of these each? I'll take this one.

Elections are an excellent example of how low-tech, human-run systems can be best. Compare the UK and its paper and pencil with the US and its voting machines. Elections are safeguarded by the thousands of volunteers (including Tories!) who give up their time to act as invigilators. Human participation creates trust. The more technology you introduce, including your beloved blockchains, the more scope there is for fraud and distrust of the system.

Let's not forget that the vast majority of electoral fraud in the UK at least, is input fraud - usually postal votes being done for other people. Blockchains can't do anything do protect against the GIGO problem, and the idea that they are somehow infallible recorders of the truth makes this even worse because there's a blindness to it being an issue. Like with this example where the claim is later made that there'll be no way to inspect a blockchain vote to see if votes have been recorded correctly, because all you get is a tally. That's fucking scary to me, having no way to inspect a vote to see if the tally is correct.

FACT: The Returning Officer is NOT legally obliged to allow you to inspect anything.#

Everything is done above board. Most of the time. It's only when "that cunt" actually has a chance of winning, does the bizarre and out of ordinary start to happen.

You can't defraud an election when the votes are counted on a blockchain. When political parties realise how secure it is, they will support it.

lol. another stakerone fact. there's an old jpg for an old user who was just as full of bullshit as you are that might get edited for you soon.
Let's see what the reality is:

https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/sites/default/files/electoral_commission_pdf_file/Code-of-practice-for-electoral-observers-Web.pdf

on page 13, in the section detailing the responsibilities of the returning officer, this handbook from the electoral commission says:

4.13 Relevant officers are not entitled to bar all observers from electoral proceedings, only to limit the number of observers present at any one time, and this discretion must be exercised reasonably

(my emphasis)

So in fact returning officers are legally obliged to allow observers to inspect proceedings - they can limit the number of people who can do so at any one time, in a limited set of circumstances, with a clearly documented audit trail explaining their decision but they are legally obliged to allow inspection.

 

[Storm Fox]

If its on the bitcoin blockchain it will only not be there forever if every single computer, both on earth and extraterrestrial stopped running bitcoin core. Let me repeat that again, even if the entire earth and all its inhabitants, all its computers, and all of its electronic infrastructure was wiped out tomorrow, someone on the International Space Station could still check every single interaction there has ever been with complete and utter confidence, by booting up their laptop, installing bitcoin core and verifying it against a satellite node.

Read the Bitcoin whitepaper. It has all the answers you seek.

Commerce on the Internet has come to rely almost exclusively on financial institutions serving as trusted third parties to process electronic payments. While the system works well enough for most transactions, it still suffers from the inherent weaknesses of the trust based model. Completely non-reversible transactions are not really possible, since financial institutions cannot avoid mediating disputes. The cost of mediation increases transaction costs, limiting the minimum practical transaction size and cutting off the possibility for small casual transactions, and there is a broader cost in the loss of ability to make non-reversible payments for nonreversible services. With the possibility of reversal, the need for trust spreads. Merchants must be wary of their customers, hassling them for more information than they would otherwise need. A certain percentage of fraud is accepted as unavoidable. These costs and payment uncertainties can be avoided in person by using physical currency, but no mechanism exists to make payments over a communications channel without a trusted party. What is needed is an electronic payment system based on cryptographic proof instead of trust, allowing any two willing parties to transact directly with each other without the need for a trusted third party. Transactions that are computationally impractical to reverse would protect sellers from fraud, and routine escrow mechanisms could easily be implemented to protect buyers. In this paper, we propose a solution to the double-spending problem using a peer-to-peer distributed timestamp server to generate computational proof of the chronological order of transactions. The system is secure as long as honest nodes collectively control more CPU power than any cooperating group of attacker nodes.

So even in the original whitepaper the main points are giving sellers more power and screwing over buyers, but we might throw the buyers a bone with some kind of escrow.

 

[Monkeygrinder's Organ]

[QUOTE="q_w_e_r_t_y, post: 17810290, member: 8987]

So if I put a bitcoin in a smart contract that has instructions to send it to you in 2025, you will get that bitcoin in 2025, and I can do nothing to stop it, it is perfectly trustworthy. Now suppose I make a promise to you that I will send you £20k in 2025. There is no way whatsoever that you can absolutely guarentee that you will receive that £20k. You can minimise risk, but you cannot eliminate it.

[/QUOTE]

Those aren't equivalent at all. In the smart contract version your Bitcoin is tied up for three years. With the £20k it's not. In fact you could put the £££ in Escrow but the reason nobody does isn't technological it's that it's generally pointless. Why would you do that? The only reason I can think of is where people might want their kids to have funds at a certain age but in that case they invest the money rather than just having it sitting there. It's a stupid example.

 

[mojo pixy]

That philosophy is what attracts people to bitcoin. As I've said before, its a revolution disguised as a get rich quick scheme.

This is the exact opposite of the truth btw. It's a get rich quick / tax evasion scheme painted as something revolutionary.

 

[mojo pixy]

Oh sorry, let's not forget the thriving trades in drugs, weapons, payment card details, PINs and passwords, photos and film of sexual abuse and all the rest that's bought and sold untraceably in crypto only to enrich our world.

Some people apparently just don't care about enabling and indirectly funding that. Maybe they see it merely as collateral damage. No doubt their attitude is "cryptos don't sell rape footage, people do", if they consider it at all.

Me and my positions.

But it all resembles, more than anything a kind of 'code-magic' to be used with 'word-magic', to create an ideal currency for Sovereign Citizen - Freeman on the Land - Conspiraloon extremists - Antisocial separatists and Preppers etc.

Buy now, it's going mad! I know a really good exchange run by a friend, PM 4 link..

/rant

 

[NoXion]

THIS IS THE WHOLE POINT, we are 250 pages into this thread, you have commented several times and have clearly read much of it, yet you've missed the absolute fundamental, basic critical, important thing that defines crypto and makes it special. When you write to a blockchain ...unlike every other electronic record...it cannot be faked or deleted. It is there forever.

No it's not. Computers wear out and data can be corrupted. Blockchain does NOT transcend physics.

It's also completely unrealistic to expect every average end-user to have sufficient technical knowledge to examine the code for themselves in order to unsure that it actually does what it claims to do.

Fakery happens on different levels too. For example, the supposed value of Bitcoin is fake. It's not based on any intrisic value of bitcoin itself or any real economic activity, it only has value because a foolish minority of the world's population have tricked themselves and a few others into believing that there's something worthwhile there.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Those aren't equivalent at all. In the smart contract version your Bitcoin is tied up for three years. With the £20k it's not. In fact you could put the £££ in Escrow but the reason nobody does isn't technological it's that it's generally pointless. Why would you do that? The only reason I can think of is where people might want their kids to have funds at a certain age but in that case they invest the money rather than just having it sitting there. It's a stupid example.

[/QUOTE]

Yep, it's ignoring an important aspect of money's function - namely that it circulates. If you want your money not to lose value over time, you have to lend it out. Within our system, that circulation stops the economy from freezing up. We've seen what happens when it stops: we got the Great Depression.

I don't think StakerOne is capable of understanding this point as he doesn't get how money is created, but qwerty is. The consequences of this kind of hoarding are potentially catastrophic for a functioning economy. (If I'm understanding correctly - namely, there is a btc in my account now, and a smart contract ensures that it stays there for three years not doing anything so that it can be paid out when the time comes. I don't see how else it could work - a contract can't pay out something that isn't there. That's hoarding, not lending.)

 

[Supine]

Oh sorry, let's not forget the thriving trades in drugs, weapons, payment card details, PINs and passwords, photos and film of sexual abuse and all the rest that's bought and sold untraceably in crypto only to enrich our world.

Some people apparently just don't care about enabling and indirectly funding that. Maybe they see it merely as collateral damage. No doubt their attitude is "cryptos don't sell rape footage, people do", if they consider it at all.

Me and my positions.

But it all resembles, more than anything a kind of 'code-magic' to be used with 'word-magic', to create an ideal currency for Sovereign Citizen - Freeman on the Land - Conspiraloon extremists - Antisocial separatists and Preppers etc.

Buy now, it's going mad! I know a really good exchange run by a friend, PM 4 link..

/rant

Not a fan then?

 

[q_w_e_r_t_y]

his is the exact opposite of the truth btw. It's a get rich quick / tax evasion scheme painted as something revolutionary.

Why isnt everybody doing it then if its such a sure fire get rich quick scheme.
The sad fact is that most people who see it that way get rekt before they've had their breakfast....but they learn....or dont

No it's not. Computers wear out and data can be corrupted. Blockchain does NOT transcend physics.

Ok, you got me. Yes, if the entire planet and all humanity was wiped out, eventually the satellite computers running the code would wear out in around 20 years, as there was noone around to fix them.

Data cannot be corrupted on the blockchain because the data is verified every 10 min (bitcoin), any computers that are returning corrupted data are excluded. It would take over 50% of the computers on the network to be corrupted in exactly the same way to damage the data on the blockchain. Again, this is what makes blockchain special, the fact that data cannot be corrupted.

It's also completely unrealistic to expect every average end-user to have sufficient technical knowledge to examine the code for themselves in order to unsure that it actually does what it claims to do.

I am not a programmer, but I can read a basic smart contract to check that it does roughly what it claims. Pretty much anyone could.

Now yes, I wouldnt catch a sophisticated bug, or well hidden potential exploit vector, but there are teams of audit firms who check code to make sure that they are safe. Using audited contracts is highly recommended.

Fakery happens on different levels too. For example, the supposed value of Bitcoin is fake. It's not based on any intrisic value of bitcoin itself or any real economic activity, it only has value because a foolish minority of the world's population have tricked themselves and a few others into believing that there's something worthwhile there.

But it is. Its based on the energetic input into the bitcoin network.
The economic activity that has gone in is the purchase of that energy.energy generating entities.

Yep, it's ignoring an important aspect of money's function - namely that it circulates. If you want your money not to lose value over time, you have to lend it out. Within our system, that circulation stops the economy from freezing up. We've seen what happens when it stops: we got the Great Depression.

This is a feature of fiat.

I don't think StakerOne is capable of understanding this point as he doesn't get how money is created, but qwerty is. The consequences of this kind of hoarding are potentially catastrophic for a functioning economy.

For a fiat economy, it is catastrophic to the economy.

Look, take a tomato.

I can grow a tomato in my greenhouse, pluck it,and eat it, and no economic activity has occurred, but I got to eat a tomato
or
I can get in my car (boosting the car manufacturers), use the petrol in the car (boosting the oil industry), go to the supermarket (boosting the supermarket industry), take a pack of tomatos (boosting the packing industry), that arrived via big lorries (boosting the lorry industry) from a spanish farm (boosting the farming industry), grown with industrial fertilisers (boosting the chemicals industry), then go home (more benefits to car+oil industry), chuck away the packaging (benefits to the refuse industry) and then eat that tomato.

The outcome is the same - someone ate a tomato. The first has no economic benefits, the second has loads of them.

Which is better?

(If I'm understanding correctly - namely, there is a btc in my account now, and a smart contract ensures that it stays there for three years not doing anything so that it can be paid out when the time comes. I don't see how else it could work - a contract can't pay out something that isn't there. That's hoarding, not lending

Not quite but nearly. You would move the btc from your account to a smart contract that would hold the btc until it is ready to be released. That would mean that 1/21millionth was now unavailable to spend for 3 years. Its neither hoarding nor lending. The btc is now in a 3 year limbo, extracted from the economy until the contract releases it.

Edit - mucked up the quotes, sorry, hopefully still understandable

 

[NoXion]

But it is. Its based on the energetic input into the bitcoin network.
The economic activity that has gone in is the purchase of that energy.energy generating entities.

But the energy is gone, and along the way it hasn't been used to do anything apart from a bunch of calculations. It's not like that energy has been used to process any materials, manufacture any products or construct any buildings. It's energy that could have been used to do things like that, but instead it got diverted into a load of GPUs and turned into waste heat and solved sums. Not useful sums, like what physicists, engineers or computational biologists use. It's literally just proof that you've taken a whole bunch of energy and wasted the fuck out of it.

It's fucking parasitic.

 

[mojo pixy]

Why isnt everybody doing it then if its such a sure fire get rich quick scheme.

According to StakerOne everybody will be soon, whether they realise it or not.

 

[StakerOne]

But the energy is gone, and along the way it hasn't been used to do anything apart from a bunch of calculations. It's not like that energy has been used to process any materials, manufacture any products or construct any buildings. It's energy that could have been used to do things like that, but instead it got diverted into a load of GPUs and turned into waste heat and solved sums. Not useful sums, like what physicists, engineers or computational biologists use. It's literally just proof that you've taken a whole bunch of energy and wasted the fuck out of it.

It's fucking parasitic.

Most bitcoin mining isn't done using GPUs.

This is from last year, so it's a bit out of date. But it's by a blockchain engineer. He wants this to be a success. But he doesn't exactly enthuse about the results thus far.

Good luck getting my mum to remember her password. She would be confused to fuck by all of this. Bewildered by it. And so... disenfranchised.

Which Countries Are Casting Votes Using Blockchain? | HackerNoon



Deserves to be on Molly White's site really.

Bottom line. You can't trust it to be truly private or not to be corrupt. You have to trust the code. But only a vanishingly small number of people will know anything about the code. And there is every reason not to trust the code. Gimme paper and pencil please, and all those pesky humans counting by hand.

You have a point. Democracy had been tried and it's an absolute failure. /s

If it's done right, the code is on the blockchain explorer and can be verified by anyone on the planet.

There are loads of well funded election monitoring groups out there and if you think it's only a small number of people who can verify whether the code is genuine, you are misinformed, don't know what you're talking about or even worse, willfully lying.

 

[StakerOne]

According to StakerOne everybody will be soon, whether they realise it or not.

I think you're the kind of person who needs a nice simple Venn diagram.

I haven't got time for that so I'll try you again.

Normal fiat money can be sent across public ledgers.

The Bank of International Settlements are experimenting with this as are Visa.

 

[mojo pixy]

I think you're the kind of person who needs a nice simple Venn diagram.

I haven't got time for that so I'll try you again.

Normal fiat money can be sent across public ledgers.

The Bank of International Settlements are experimenting with this as are Visa.

No you've lost me. Where does the greed come in?

 

[NoXion]

Most bitcoin mining isn't done using GPUs.

However they're doing it, they're wasting energy and calling it value.

 

[StakerOne]

The latest one to depeg:

HUSD stablecoin depegs

HUSD, a stablecoin linked to the Huobi crypto exchange, lost its peg and dropped to around $0.85. HUSD is a cash-backed stablecoin intended to be pegged to the US dollar, but the coin lost its peg due to "liquidity issues". HUSD later tweeted that, "We had made the decision to close several...

web3isgoinggreat.com

I wouldn't touch it with a barge pole.

USDC and DAI are the ones I trust.

 

[StakerOne]

Obviously I can't speak for any cryptocurrency enthusiasts - because I'm manifestly against almost every principle I believe it to be founded upon

Different cryptocurrencies were setup for different things with different values. There might be overlapping values that are largely the same.

I'm not going to assume what you believe they are, but I believe these are the most common reasons:

1. Globally trusted around the world because no one state can interfere with it for their own politiclal interests.
2. Can't be debased. (Obviously not most stablecoins).
3. Is permissionless so no one is excluded down to not having any formal government paperwork (See point 1).
4. Is censorship resistant and immutable. The power of this is underestimated as it helps with proving transparency, building trust.
5. Cannot be confiscated or seized by a third party including government.

 

[StakerOne]

However they're doing it, they're wasting energy and calling it value.

They are calling it value because they are converting the energy into it's value. Besides, it will be eventually mined on pure renewable energy.
I'm an Ethereum enthusiast. Team Ethereum is doing it's bit, with Ethereum moving to PoS, using 99% less energy than before, in just over 3 weeks time.
If you still think it's a waste of energy, well ... so is arguing with people on the internet, yet here we are!