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681 points Anon84 | 4 comments | | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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spicyusername ◴[] 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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fsh ◴[] No.46181710[source]
It's an ingenious solution to achieve a "trustless" currency that prevents double-spending without a central authority. Unfortunately, this solves the wrong problem. Spending money usually involves getting a good or service in return, which inherently requires "trust" (as does any human interaction). Your fancy blockchain is not going to help you if you order something with Bitcoin and no package arrives.
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AnthonyMouse ◴[] No.46189658[source]
> Unfortunately, this solves the wrong problem. Spending money usually involves getting a good or service in return, which inherently requires "trust" (as does any human interaction). Your fancy blockchain is not going to help you if you order something with Bitcoin and no package arrives.

That problem already has solutions. The problems cryptocurrency is supposed to solve are, I want to buy subversive literature from someone I already trust not to rip me off, or for an amount I'm not worried about losing, without anyone requiring me to give them a government ID. Or I want to sell it to people without requiring them to give anyone an ID. I want to donate money to Wikileaks. I want to commission art or software from someone in South America who doesn't have access to US banks. I have the same name as someone on a list and I want a way to move money without the government ruining my life. I live in an oppressive country and I want to finance the rebellion, or buy contraception or some other thing which is banned by the baddies when it ought not to be.

It's for doing the things where the existing system fails you, not the things where it works. But it can do those things too. Cash works the same way. You're not worried about a restaurant stealing your money because by the time you pay them you've already eaten. You're not worried about Newegg sending you a brick with "lol" written on it instead of a GPU because they're a well-known company and if they did that it would cost them more in damage to their reputation than they'd gain from the theft and people would sue them independent of payment method.

You don't always need your trust in other people to come from the payment system when it can come from a dozen other things instead.

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blitzar ◴[] No.46191536[source]
The blockchain and every transaction being public effectively disproves your entire supposed usecase.
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1. cowboy_henk ◴[] No.46191622[source]
But wallets aren't associated with a real person by default, unless it's created through some service that does KYC. If you can get anonymous tokens in an anonymous wallet, who cares if the transactions are public?
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2. hypeatei ◴[] No.46192100[source]
It takes one OPSEC slip up for someone to link a wallet address to you. So yes, your transactions being public doesn't matter as long as you are cognizant of that 24/7 365 days a year.
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3. OneDeuxTriSeiGo ◴[] No.46192250[source]
That is unfortunately a fairly weak form of anonymity. With a fully public network you can trace even the most meticulously tumbled and laundered tokens. And while they may not exclusively trace back to you, they'll trace into a mixer and out of a mixer with a large majority of the inputs and outputs being tainted.

Most exchanges, etc won't really touch accounts or UTxO that are messing with mixers.

Because of that it's generally just better to use "properly" private and anonymous blockchains instead. If they are fully opaque then tracing becomes effectively impossible.

4. wizzwizz4 ◴[] No.46192280[source]
You can resolve this issue by repeatedly tumbling your money, using the same tumbling scheme as everyone else. This will reduce the value of your wallet slightly, to pay the mining fees, but it's… hm. That sounds equivalent to inflation or tax, except that the lost money doesn't go towards anything useful: it just goes towards buying ASICs and burning electricity.