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685 points jclarkcom | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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chaps ◴[] No.45948347[source]
Once did some programming/networking work for a company that did the networking of a office sharing building that Coinbase was running out of. Early in my work there I noticed that the company had its admin passwords written on a whiteboard -- visible from the hallway because they had glass for walls. So I sent them an email to ask that they remove it (I billed them for it).

Their fix was to put a piece of paper over the passwords.

What a time.

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650REDHAIR ◴[] No.45948413[source]
This doesn’t surprise me at all.

Bitcoin, and really fintech as a whole, are beyond reckless.

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KetoManx64 ◴[] No.45948453[source]
Bitcoin is a crypto-currency/blockchain. Coinbase is a corporation that allows users to buy/trade crypto-currencies.

With Bitcoin you do not get government bailouts like what happened with the beyond reckless banks in 2008.

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dahinds ◴[] No.45948881[source]
"With Bitcoin you do not get government bailouts" -- yeah maybe not yet? Is it beyond belief that a government with leadership deeply invested in crypto currencies might take action if something super disruptive happens?
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KetoManx64 ◴[] No.45948937[source]
Possible. But Bitcoin is hard capped at 21 million coins. The government can peint more paper money to bail a company out if it makes stupid decisions, but they cannot print more Bitcoin. This will devalue the paper currency even more and also increase the value of Bitcoin. Bitcoin is called a hedge against inflation for a reason.
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kibwen ◴[] No.45949015[source]
> But Bitcoin is hard capped at 21 million coins

Bitcoin is not an immutable law of nature. If the coin minting cap is reached, all that needs to happen is for miners to start running a fork with a higher cap. Tada, more coins conjured out of the ether, just like all the previous ones. If you want enforced scarcity, you need to be tied to something physically scarce.

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1. Sargos ◴[] No.45949382{3}[source]
all that needs to happen is for countries to destroy their nuclear weapons

all that needs to happen is for governments to stop burning fossil fuels

all that needs to happen is for researchers to publish boring papers replicating others results

all that needs to happen is for fishermen to stop overfishing

Coordination problems seem easy but never really are. The chance of all the miners just suddenly agreeing to do something all at once is pretty low to impossible.

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2. mapt ◴[] No.45953140[source]
A million times this.

The point of a hypothetical suggestion is to direct a specific course of action. I am simultaneously amazed at how complex the 'hypothetical' construct is, and also how many people aren't able to reason around them... since this is basically what our big brains are for.

If you assume everybody involved just stops responding to their current incentives, you can solve any coordination problem, in a manner of speaking. But it's useless as a battle plan. Operationalizing a change demands that you pick a party you're talking to, and with full view of their capabilities and limitations, modify their current course of action in the smallest possible way that accomplishes a change.