Bitcoin discussion and news

[q_w_e_r_t_y]

Yes. I want people to not being able to steal from me.

Then all you need to do is properly secure your private key. No-one can steal from a wallet that has a properly secured private key.

Therefore the law will also prevent me stealing from them.

The law does nothing of the kind. The law can cause you to be fined, arrested, jailed, but it cannot stop you stealing.
Suppose Bob wants to steal some money from Mr Jones's corner shop. The law doesnt prevent it, what prevents it is
- Mr Jones's security on his till
- The baseball bat Mr Jones has under the counter
- The other customers who might prevent you leaving until the police get there.
Not the law. The only effect the law has in this scenario is inhibitory, you dont want to steal because you might lose social standing/get beaten up/end up in jail/have a big fine.

I'm prepared to accept that infringement on my freedom

Those who trade freedom for security...yadda, yadda, yadda,

See web3isgoinggreat for the millions lost through poorly coded smart contracts

I had a bit of a look at that, but there's actually very little about web3 on there. If you really want web3 horror stories rekt.news is the place to go (you'll love it!), but then thats what audits and smart contract insurance is for.

Not really the are going to regulated by the government so people will know the rules and if there is not a Central Bank to underright it will fail.

My question is what are they going to underwrite the CDBC with?

Suppose we have a sterling CDBC and there is a bug, so someone prints £10tr of them, leading to immediate and enormous hyperinflation, how are they going to underwrite it?

I've worked on public sector IT projects and I've worked with contractors on public sector IT projects. The only thing that is keeping my fear about CDBCs in check is that public sector IT projects are enormously bloated, poorly managed with misaligned incentives and a fuck tonne of skimming, I have no reason to suppose this would be any different except that is a level of magnitude more complex.

But it better than the unregulated free for all there is now.

CDBCs are dangerous.
Right now, there are loads of tales about people getting their bank accounts shut down for various reasons and having to scrabble and borrow until they can open up a new account and get their cash out, causing them huge stress. Now imagine that with a CDBC.

You go to pay for your groceries and your card is declined, you try to get cash out, and your card gets eaten. You ring the Bank of England on the dedicated number to find that you were seen on CCTV at a save the badgers protest and the new Prevention of Badger related terrorism gives them the power to revoke banking services. All your money is gone, you have no food and you cant pay your rent.

Or a less dramatic, (but more plausible scenario) is that you go to pay for groceries with your last twenty quid, but you got caught by a speed camera on the way there and the £20 fine was immediately lifted from your bank account.
Now I know what you are going to say, those nice Tory people won;t do anything like that, there will be rules, safeguards and people will protest, no way will they get away with doing something like that. And thats fine, trust them if you want, but with a CDBC the central bank can impliment all kinds of nasties from the issuing government. With bitcoin they cant, its just not possible.

Cant is stronger than wont.

I don't know, but if the original protocols had been better written to prevent theft and dishonesty there wouldn't be the space for CBDCs to move into that area.

Bitcoin is perfectly secure.
No-one, not the worlds most accomplished hacker can steal a properly secured bitcoin, not governments, not 3 letter agencies, not militaries. No-one.

Whataboutary: so you admit bitcoin is dreadful for the environment, as can't defend it.

Not in the slightest. Bitcoin is the foundation to us getting out of this mess that fiat has created.

The cost of producing btc is the cost of power. Miners are incentivised to seek out the cheapest power possible, that includes stranded and waste power (eg methane flaring), and to maximise for the long rather than short term, as their entire business model relies on long term cheap energy. The cheapest long term energy is always renewable energy.

 

[Storm Fox]

I'm having a relaxing week away on a canal, so I haven't got time or inclination to rebut your points. Sorry

 

[littlebabyjesus]

The cost of producing btc is the cost of power. Miners are incentivised to seek out the cheapest power possible, that includes stranded and waste power (eg methane flaring), and to maximise for the long rather than short term, as their entire business model relies on long term cheap energy. The cheapest long term energy is always renewable energy.

This bit's just not true. In China they were burning coal until the Chinese government stopped them. They were attracted to Venezuela by cheap oil.

 

[gosub]

Then all you need to do is properly secure your private key. No-one can steal from a wallet that has a properly secured private key.

The law does nothing of the kind. The law can cause you to be fined, arrested, jailed, but it cannot stop you stealing.
Suppose Bob wants to steal some money from Mr Jones's corner shop. The law doesnt prevent it, what prevents it is
- Mr Jones's security on his till
- The baseball bat Mr Jones has under the counter
- The other customers who might prevent you leaving until the police get there.
Not the law. The only effect the law has in this scenario is inhibitory, you dont want to steal because you might lose social standing/get beaten up/end up in jail/have a big fine.

Those who trade freedom for security...yadda, yadda, yadda,

I had a bit of a look at that, but there's actually very little about web3 on there. If you really want web3 horror stories rekt.news is the place to go (you'll love it!), but then thats what audits and smart contract insurance is for.

My question is what are they going to underwrite the CDBC with?

Suppose we have a sterling CDBC and there is a bug, so someone prints £10tr of them, leading to immediate and enormous hyperinflation, how are they going to underwrite it?

I've worked on public sector IT projects and I've worked with contractors on public sector IT projects. The only thing that is keeping my fear about CDBCs in check is that public sector IT projects are enormously bloated, poorly managed with misaligned incentives and a fuck tonne of skimming, I have no reason to suppose this would be any different except that is a level of magnitude more complex.

CDBCs are dangerous.
Right now, there are loads of tales about people getting their bank accounts shut down for various reasons and having to scrabble and borrow until they can open up a new account and get their cash out, causing them huge stress. Now imagine that with a CDBC.

You go to pay for your groceries and your card is declined, you try to get cash out, and your card gets eaten. You ring the Bank of England on the dedicated number to find that you were seen on CCTV at a save the badgers protest and the new Prevention of Badger related terrorism gives them the power to revoke banking services. All your money is gone, you have no food and you cant pay your rent.

Or a less dramatic, (but more plausible scenario) is that you go to pay for groceries with your last twenty quid, but you got caught by a speed camera on the way there and the £20 fine was immediately lifted from your bank account.
Now I know what you are going to say, those nice Tory people won;t do anything like that, there will be rules, safeguards and people will protest, no way will they get away with doing something like that. And thats fine, trust them if you want, but with a CDBC the central bank can impliment all kinds of nasties from the issuing government. With bitcoin they cant, its just not possible.

Cant is stronger than wont.

Bitcoin is perfectly secure.
No-one, not the worlds most accomplished hacker can steal a properly secured bitcoin, not governments, not 3 letter agencies, not militaries. No-one.


Not in the slightest. Bitcoin is the foundation to us getting out of this mess that fiat has created.

The cost of producing btc is the cost of power. Miners are incentivised to seek out the cheapest power possible, that includes stranded and waste power (eg methane flaring), and to maximise for the long rather than short term, as their entire business model relies on long term cheap energy. The cheapest long term energy is always renewable energy.

You paint a a truly dystopian picture that is to much for anyone....The idea of Anita Dobson rereleasing Anyone can fall in love just help her husband out...what fresh hell is this?

Compliance finally got back to me...but am in middle of moving house (again) at mo. Paperwork in morning

 

[kabbes]

The law can cause you to be fined, arrested, jailed, but it cannot stop you stealing.
Suppose Bob wants to steal some money from Mr Jones's corner shop. The law doesnt prevent it, what prevents it is
- Mr Jones's security on his till
- The baseball bat Mr Jones has under the counter
- The other customers who might prevent you leaving until the police get there.
Not the law. The only effect the law has in this scenario is inhibitory, you dont want to steal because you might lose social standing/get beaten up/end up in jail/have a big fine.

You've missed out by far the most important thing that stops you stealing. I'm not surprised by this omission, because it sums up the whole dystopian cryptoverse representation of humanity.

 

[StakerOne]

Temporarily unignored Staker to see what the latest kerfuffle is about, wasn't worth it. People need to stop feeding him negative attention - yes he's a deluded narcissist touting conspiracy theories and hilariously bad political takes, but continually telling him so is like emptying a glass of water into a sea of piss.

You think that I'm a narcissist, so you decided to talk about me rather than copy any important terrain in the topic of conversation - cryptocurrency.

 

[StakerOne]

Yes. I want people to not being able to steal from me. Therefore the law will also prevent me stealing from them. I'm prepared to accept that infringement on my freedom

See web3isgoinggreat for the millions lost through poorly coded smart contracts


Not really the are going to regulated by the government so people will know the rules and if there is not a Central Bank to underright it will fail.
But it better than the unregulated free for all there is now.


I don't know, but if the original protocols had been better written to prevent theft and dishonesty there wouldn't be the space for CBDCs to move into that area.

Whataboutary: so you admit bitcoin is dreadful for the environment, as can't defend it.

The people who you trust can steal from you. New regulations and laws would also permit them to steal from you.

Debasing a currency is also stealing from you and is perfectly legal.

On top of that, people who are entrusted go rogue all the time and steal from organisions. Rules within DAO would limit the potentional of theft. There are countless examples of rouge accounts and treasurers within organisations comitting fraud.

This is why most if not ALL of the major auditing companies are working on public and private ledgers to prevent fraud within their customers organisations.

The future, thanks to crypto, is that a corporation would be able to account for every single last penny in realtime, with water-tight systems that prevents prevents anything beyond petty theft, with all cases of petty theft being prevented.

All the things you want, crypto has in abundance. Anything held on a public ledger is way more secure than anything down the bank.

 

[StakerOne]

See web3isgoinggreat for the millions lost through poorly coded smart contracts

How many times are we going to debunk this shite for you to keep repeating it?

As said MANY times before, the most popular smart contracts can be insured and some are even insured on the backend.

 

[StakerOne]

I'm having a relaxing week away on a canal, so I haven't got time or inclination to rebut your points. Sorry

The posts will still be here in a week. Have a nice time.

 

[StakerOne]

They are not going to give away free money. One of the stated motivations for the digital pound is to ensure confidence in sterling in an increasingly digitised economy. You don't do that by chucking out freebies, because that makes it obvious that you're trying to bribe people instead of letting it stand on its own merits. Especially since these digital pounds are going to be freely interchangeable with the physical versions, what's to stop people spending the free cash and thereafter never giving a solitary fuck about the digital version of it ever again?

People will take the bribe. The government won't be offering GBP as a bribe as GBP will be worthless. It will be a new national currency and people will have no choice but to take it as they will have fuck all else to buy the shopping for the next week.

Assuming that we don't need to ration food at that point.

 

[StakerOne]

Why should he care about fascists being able to raise funds and spread their propaganda? He's got his freedumbz thanks to crypto and so the rest of society can go fuck themselves. He's alright, Jack.

Facists are a very difficult subject matter to cover because many people have different views as to what a fascist actually is.

Considering that fascism normally involves:

• A supreme leader
• An authoratarian government...
• ...highly nationalistic, focused on national issues
• Control and cooperation with business / corporations to carry out gov policy

Fascism isn't really compatible with cryptocurrencies and would require the fascists to betray many of their values to particpate in, because crypto is about decentralising power for things to happen from the ground up rather than top down.

It's impossible to exclude anyone from a new financial system, without recreating all the same old problems of the old financial system.

I don't mean this as an insult, but the fascists would actually be on your side, because if they got into power, they would give you all the things that you want.

Let's not forget that the status quo that we have today, is much closer to fascism than cryptopia.

 

[StakerOne]

This is not healthy. You should get a proper hobby.

It's a great hobby. I received an airdop worth about £6000 this week.

To get it, I did an hours work with a few hundred quid on the right blockchain.

In crypto, there is proper wealth redistribution. That's exactly what happens when a project with hundreds of millions if not billions in it's treasury does, when it wants to decentralise.

 

[StakerOne]

Tools like Tornado Cash have facilitated the laundering of billions of dollars, including nearly half a billion dollars stolen by those DPRK patriots in the Lazarus Group. I must say that the financial enrichment of rogue state actors is a very big downside compared to funding some crypto projects I've never heard of and that the world would never miss anyway. So overall an L for cryptocurrencies and their tumblers.

Tornado Cash has not been shut down, that's true. It has however been sanctioned by the US government, meaning that it would be illegal for any US citizen, organisation or company to do any business involving Tornado Cash. Which means if you're an enterprise that wants to continue operating legitimately in the US, one of the most important economies in the world, then it might as well have been shut down.

Banning US entities from Tornado cash displays a jaw dropping lack of understanding how the tech works.

For staters, Tornado cash is a front end website with a smart contract on the backend, that can easily be reproduced - the genie is out of the bottle.

There are many mixers out there. They aren't "banned" or sanctioned as such.

Please explain to me how Tornado cash is being used to launder money by the DPRK,

I'm assuming the allegation is that the DPRK washes money using Tornado Cash. Then it sends that money onto those who buy stuff? Right?

Please confirm with me that is the problem.

Because from where I'm sitting, the US gov isn't stopping any money laundering, but it is stopping the legit business transactions of it's own citizens.

 

[StakerOne]

I don't know about that but it has allowed them to fundraise and continue to operate and propagandise when pretty much all other ways of accepting funds were cut off.

I mean, you can say you hope the experience detadicalises them but that's just like me saying I hope Wednesday win the champions League in 2025. Both would be nice, neither is going to happen.

Now go outside, the sun is shining.

Very good ... and the corporates / banks then went after a shit tonne of others.

May I remind you that Mastercard by proxy (the payment processor "Square" went to Patreon and told them to pull Jordan Peterson or Patreon's Sqaure account would be shut down. So Patreon were forced to pull Jordan Peterson.

You might have a dim view of Peterson, but you have to conceed, that any minute, someone else who you like could be pulled as they don't tow the line with the "narrative".

All of this isn't going away. Today right now ANYONE can raise money and say what the fuck they want.

That's what the internet was originally supposed to be.

Of course, we can't technically say anything we want.

If I was to incite murder and raise money for illegal firearms on the internet, quite rightly the police would smash my door door in and put me in cuffs.

That costs money and rightly so.

Because if all it took to switch off my website and my crypto fundraising, was a flick of the switch, costing pennies, then surely you know that they'd just switch off millions of people, if not tomorrow, then the day after.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

It's a great hobby. I received an airdop worth about £6000 this week.

To get it, I did an hours work with a few hundred quid on the right blockchain.

In crypto, there is proper wealth redistribution. That's exactly what happens when a project with hundreds of millions if not billions in it's treasury does, when it wants to decentralise.

'work'

Boasting about how much money you've made from doing fuck all isn't quite what you think it is, you know. You're a freeloader taking other people's hard-earned money from them. Where did the value get added in the 'work' you did? (Clue: it didn't.) You're as socially useful as a hedge fund wanker.

Add 'capitalism' to the long list of things you don't understand.

 

[Rob Ray]

Tbh on the evidence of the bitcoin enthusiasts on this thread "doesn't understand capitalism" seems to be a requirement.

 

[Storm Fox]

As q_w_e_r_t_y states upthread. "Not your keys not your bitcoin" and that's a major problem. Most people will not care about that. Most people want to work* get paid and have easy access to money to spend it on things they enjoy or need to live. They don't want to spend hours organising it. If q_w_e_r_t_y and StakerOne you want to spend loads of time doing that great. We all have our hobbies. I don't, I probably spend less than 1 hour a month on financial transactions, and the includes the time tapping my credit card or putting my PIN in. Until crypto is that easy it is never going to have mass adoption and that is going to require regulation and trust in a banking type of organisation.

*For a given value of wanting to work. But that's for a different thread.

 

[StakerOne]

As q_w_e_r_t_y states upthread. "Not your keys not your bitcoin" and that's a major problem. Most people will not care about that. Most people want to work* get paid and have easy access to money to spend it on things they enjoy or need to live. They don't want to spend hours organising it. If q_w_e_r_t_y and StakerOne you want to spend loads of time doing that great. We all have our hobbies. I don't, I probably spend less than 1 hour a month on financial transactions, and the includes the time tapping my credit card or putting my PIN in. Until crypto is that easy it is never going to have mass adoption and that is going to require regulation and trust in a banking type of organisation.

*For a given value of wanting to work. But that's for a different thread.

They don't have to spend hours organising anything.

There are plenty of wallets that manage the user's key so they don't have to.

Argent is a very good example of that.

 

[Storm Fox]

They don't have to spend hours organising anything.

There are plenty of wallets that manage the user's key so they don't have to.

Argent is a very good example of that.

But you have to trust the Argent are not a scam and even if they are not, if there is a bug in their software you say goodbye to your coin without recourse as there is no regulation or backstop. Unlike banks.

 

[SpineyNorman]

It's a great hobby. I received an airdop worth about £6000 this week.

To get it, I did an hours work with a few hundred quid on the right blockchain.

In crypto, there is proper wealth redistribution. That's exactly what happens when a project with hundreds of millions if not billions in it's treasury does, when it wants to decentralise.

I was talking about your obsessive posting habits on here not really your crypto delusions.

 

[SpineyNorman]

Very good ... and the corporates / banks then went after a shit tonne of others.

May I remind you that Mastercard by proxy (the payment processor "Square" went to Patreon and told them to pull Jordan Peterson or Patreon's Sqaure account would be shut down. So Patreon were forced to pull Jordan Peterson.

You might have a dim view of Peterson, but you have to conceed, that any minute, someone else who you like could be pulled as they don't tow the line with the "narrative".

All of this isn't going away. Today right now ANYONE can raise money and say what the fuck they want.

That's what the internet was originally supposed to be.

Of course, we can't technically say anything we want.

If I was to incite murder and raise money for illegal firearms on the internet, quite rightly the police would smash my door door in and put me in cuffs.

That costs money and rightly so.

Because if all it took to switch off my website and my crypto fundraising, was a flick of the switch, costing pennies, then surely you know that they'd just switch off millions of people, if not tomorrow, then the day after.

You've got zero chance of making me read that but fuck Jordan Peterson - he's a borderline fascist himself.

And people like me don't get cancelled because we don't have a platform to begin with.

Jordan Peterson. For fucks sake.

 

[mojo pixy]

Facists are a very difficult subject matter to cover because many people have different views as to what a fascist actually is.

Considering that fascism normally involves:

• A supreme leader
• An authoratarian government...
• ...highly nationalistic, focused on national issues
• Control and cooperation with business / corporations to carry out gov policy

Fascism isn't really compatible with cryptocurrencies and would require the fascists to betray many of their values to particpate in, because crypto is about decentralising power for things to happen from the ground up rather than top down.

It's impossible to exclude anyone from a new financial system, without recreating all the same old problems of the old financial system.

I don't mean this as an insult, but the fascists would actually be on your side, because if they got into power, they would give you all the things that you want.

Let's not forget that the status quo that we have today, is much closer to fascism than cryptopia.

Each time you make a stupid, poorly considered statement I think you've hit rock bottom - but each time you manage tooutdo yourself. It's astonishing!

 

[kabbes]

He’s also simultaneously agitating for something that would stop a centralised ability to prevent something (namely, transactions) but also agitating FOR something that allows precisely that (smart contracts, which embed corporate power over individual behaviour)

 

[SpineyNorman]

Nonces really like the way crypto militates against 'discrimination' too. Currency of choice for child pornographers.

Want to buy bash laced with fentanyl that you can sell on the streets as smack?

 

[StakerOne]

Each time you make a stupid, poorly considered statement I think you've hit rock bottom - but each time you manage tooutdo yourself. It's astonishing!

Well I suppose that's one way of conceeding defeat.

 

[StakerOne]

Nonces really like the way crypto militates against 'discrimination' too. Currency of choice for child pornographers.

Want to buy bash laced with fentanyl that you can sell on the streets as smack?

Devils Advocate : Nonces are indeed scum, which is why children should be seperated from all adults and taken in by the state, to be taught by AI, just like out of that film "Mother". If children have no contact with adults, then nonces can't possibily get at them.

"Because nonces" and "Will somebody think of the children!!!!" are not arguements for restricting the freedoms of normal law abiding citizens.

Someone caught producing child porn has their internet access restricted, including mobile phone use.

People would be using fentanyl without crypto.

Besides, crypto has always been a stupid means of payment for criminals because the evidence is left online forever and that evidence eventually comes home to roost.

 

[maomao]

Isn't this fella also the weird freeman type who was saying lots of disturbing stuff about the Constance Marten and Mark Gordon case?

 

[StakerOne]

He’s also simultaneously agitating for something that would stop a centralised ability to prevent something (namely, transactions) but also agitating FOR something that allows precisely that (smart contracts, which embed corporate power over individual behaviour)

Smart contracts can allow a trustless distance between the corporate / DAO and an individual. All that would matter is if the individual delivers. The individual would also be free to interact with other DAOs.

Some corporate structures could even wind up being broken up to be a collection of DAOs with different roles.

 

[StakerOne]

You've got zero chance of making me read that but fuck Jordan Peterson - he's a borderline fascist himself.

And people like me don't get cancelled because we don't have a platform to begin with.

Jordan Peterson. For fucks sake.

You do have a platform. This one.

 

[kabbes]

Smart contracts can allow a trustless distance between the corporate / DAO and an individual. All that would matter is if the individual delivers.

Exactly the problem. That’s a massive power asymmetry. How to judge whether an individual “delivers” will be buried in the coding equivalent of a 50 page contract, completely impenetrable to 99% of the population. And yet if the non-delivery clause triggers, there is no way to challenge that judgment. It just happens, and the individual is compelled by the coercive corporation to behave on rails. That’s anti-society. It’s the opposite of trust because no trust is required. It destroys the notion of trust.

The individual would also be free to interact with other DAOs.

Some corporate structures could even wind up being broken up to be a collection of DAOs with different roles.

You do like to go in about DAOs but nice cuddly collectives don’t rule the neoliberal universe — corporations do. And something like this, which increases information and power asymmetries — will exacerbate that process, not disrupt it.

Aviva are not going to be replaced with an insurance cooperative. This technology is not going to dismantle the house of neoliberal capitalism — it is neoliberal capitalism. No, Aviva are going to use this technology to force individuals to behave as they want those individuals to behave, and thus increase their capital, not decrease it. When your car simply won’t start because your phone has detected something that Aviva doesn’t like, that’s good for them and not good for you. You won’t even know why you’ve been prevented from driving. You won’t need to know why.

Except that won’t actually happen, because real-world financial industries are heavily regulated by the state, with consumer needs placed at the centre of that regulation. The regulator would stop the kind of power asymmetry I have described from being packaged into an insurance product. The regulator, who is authoritarian and gets in the way of individuals and corporations just agreeing to do any old thing. Thank goodness.