←back to thread

I wasted years of my life in crypto

(twitter.com)
681 points Anon84 | 7 comments | 07 Dec 25 12:57 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source | bottom
Show context
spicyusername ◴[07 Dec 25 13:28 UTC] No.46181533[source]▶
I've never understood the initial arguments about Bitcoin, no matter how many times they've been explained to me.

The block chain is, and always was, an extremely inconvenient database. How anyone, especially many intelligent people, thought it was realistic to graft a currency on top of such a unwieldy piece of technology is beyond me. Maybe it goes to show how few people understand economics and anthropology and how dunning-krueger can happen to anyone.

Now the uninformed gambling on futuristic sounding hokum? THAT is easy to understand.

That being said, I'm sorry the author had to go through this experience, the road of life is often filled with unexpected twists and turns.

replies(48): >>46181550 #>>46181552 #>>46181565 #>>46181570 #>>46181587 #>>46181592 #>>46181595 #>>46181598 #>>46181626 #>>46181627 #>>46181644 #>>46181650 #>>46181665 #>>46181684 #>>46181692 #>>46181705 #>>46181710 #>>46181747 #>>46181851 #>>46182086 #>>46182181 #>>46183207 #>>46183326 #>>46184155 #>>46188845 #>>46188916 #>>46189281 #>>46189390 #>>46189635 #>>46189752 #>>46190184 #>>46190277 #>>46190352 #>>46190438 #>>46190551 #>>46190980 #>>46192357 #>>46192629 #>>46192718 #>>46192829 #>>46193037 #>>46193082 #>>46193531 #>>46193609 #>>46194845 #>>46194934 #>>46195115 #>>46203155 #
dpedu ◴[07 Dec 25 13:51 UTC] No.46181684[source]▶
The anonymity aspect of it always confused me. If anything, bitcoin and almost all other cryptos are the ultimate surveillance state currency. Every single bitcoin, no matter how many fractions it is broken into, is traceable through every single transaction it has ever participated in, all the way back to when the coin was first mined.
replies(7): >>46182224 #>>46183099 #>>46188505 #>>46188848 #>>46189917 #>>46190419 #>>46191403 #
1. charcircuit ◴[08 Dec 25 04:52 UTC] No.46188505[source]▶
Technically there is no such thing as a bitcoin. Just unspent transaction outputs. Those get spent as an input of a transaction and then are gone forever. There is no concept of the output of a transaction being the same "bitcoin" as what comes from the input of the transaction. This means if you had 2 inputs and 2 outputs of the same amount there is no way to trace which input became which output. At best you can find which outputs potentially came from an input.
replies(1): >>46189349 #
2. lazide ◴[08 Dec 25 07:17 UTC] No.46189349[source]▶
That is called tracing. It’s also not hard - every node does it to verify blocks.
replies(1): >>46190075 #
3. charcircuit ◴[08 Dec 25 09:08 UTC] No.46190075[source]▶
When blocks are verified it just needs to validate that sum of the outputs isn't more than the sum of the inputs. It doesn't care about tracking what went where.
replies(1): >>46196196 #
4. lazide ◴[08 Dec 25 18:57 UTC] No.46196196{3}[source]▶
Except I can literally pull up a full node and see a wallets current balance - which is because it traces all the transactions through the blockchain, verifying all of them.

Literally the only way anyone can see their wallet balance is by doing this.

replies(1): >>46196737 #
5. charcircuit ◴[08 Dec 25 19:49 UTC] No.46196737{4}[source]▶
You can find your balance by looking at the UTXO set and seeing if your adress can spend it. There is no need to trace where those UTXO came from.
replies(1): >>46197532 #
6. lazide ◴[08 Dec 25 20:53 UTC] No.46197532{5}[source]▶
But every full node does, because it is required to validate the chain.

Near as I can tell, you just don’t know how Bitcoin actually works?

replies(1): >>46199190 #
7. charcircuit ◴[08 Dec 25 23:33 UTC] No.46199190{6}[source]▶
I will say it again. When validating the chain all it cares about is that the sum of the output UTXO for a transaction are <= the sum of the input UTXO. All the input UTXO are no longer valid once spent and can be forgotten.