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I wasted years of my life in crypto

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681 points Anon84 | 3 comments | 07 Dec 25 12:57 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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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.

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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.
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nout ◴[07 Dec 25 16:56 UTC] No.46183099[source]▶
When you start transacting on Bitcoin Lightning network (which is essentially sending pre-signed bitcoin transactions in a smart way, without submitting them on the main chain), then you no longer see each transaction. Lightning introduces decent privacy, not perfect, but decent.
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tsimionescu ◴[08 Dec 25 07:34 UTC] No.46189470[source]▶
It's also not guaranteeing double spend protection (especially not passively), and is not actually using Bitcoin, except occasionally and optionally.
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1. nout ◴[08 Dec 25 11:22 UTC] No.46191033[source]▶
It does guarantee double spend protection, that's exactly what the lightning nodes do. If someone tries to double spend, they lose their bitcoin. I have a different definition for "using bitcoin" than you do.

Similarly I believe that HTTP Live Streaming is using Internet...

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2. tsimionescu ◴[08 Dec 25 12:18 UTC] No.46191400[source]▶
That's only true if they observe the channel being fraudulently closed in the right time window. You have to actively monitor the BTC chain to see if your Lightning network partner might steal from you. If you don't (e.g. There is some network or power issue and they take this opportunity to steal), tough luck.

Basically Lightning is like a tab that you open in a bar. You perform various transactions on the tab, and only settle later. No one would say that you're using Visa when you tell the bartender to put some drink on your tab, even though at the end of the day or week or whatever, the transaction will go through Visa.

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3. nout ◴[09 Dec 25 13:39 UTC] No.46204818[source]▶
Bar tab is so very bad analogy here that breaks for multiple reasons:

- At the bar is almost always a single direction: customer pays the bar. Lightning is both directions - sending money between friends and sometimes to shops.

- In this (bad) analogy bitcoin would not be Visa, but bitcoin would be "dollars". Both the bartender and customer would say that they are using dollars for the tab.

- The tab analogy doesn't really match the fact that you establish a "channel" (e.g. both you and the bartender would put some bitcoin into this channel and then you can pay your grandmother in another country with bitcoin in this channel... see the analogy doesn't work here), you can resize ("splice") the channel if you want, you can swap in and swap out...

In most solutions your wallet monitors the chain and it automatically resolves any of the dispute (e.g. Phoenix wallet, or Zeus). The time scale is also different, so even if power goes out for multiple days and you are running your own very private wallet without any associated service (LSP), then you still have on the order of weeks for your wallet to automatically resolve any issue.