GNU Taler is a working implementation of "digital cash" in the spirit of Ecash. Since it doesn't come with its own currency, it cannot be used for gambling. It is quite telling that it has seen essentially zero adoption in the "crypto" scene.
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.
my naive self was just looking at a lot of what apps were doing:
- waiting for users to do very simple things (gather a few fields, expand a template, store)
- sleep during the night (as their users were sleeping too)
- emit very small amount of data
- struggle with security
- reimplement 70s business but on top of digital network
somehow (and again, i'm naive and not knowledgeable) i felt that a lot of useful processing for society would be better if there was a global encrypted network that would enact the same simple things but without the human layer round trip. you get 24/7 operations, globally, open, encrypted.
in some corners of society this kind of tools (doctor appointments) seemed to be a net benefit, you can now book your GP even if it's 10pm, the system was ready to fire.
and when I see some news on zk parallel vm for smart contracts i feel some valid technical quality..
but maybe it's really just a fools errand i don't know
It is an amusing and potentially even good concept, but with one caveat - you only consider close enough exchanges with similar peers. To translate that into English - a fully libertarian self-sufficient settlement where people are exchanging home-made stuff between one another. Because everyone was the same and no one could abuse the system, it may even worked. We even seen it in the early criminal communities, when BTCs briefly were a medium of exchange for drugs. And then tokenbros made a leap of faith and magically scaled that to the whole world. Which obviously didn't work in practice. Their famous Lightening L2 is an abomination of hacks and centralization and it still doesn't scale.
The problem of BTC was at the same time overabundance of imagination in one area and a big gap in imagination how the world actually works. They only saw simple isolated scenarios and never a globalized economy.
> The block chain is, and always was, an extremely inconvenient database.
Care to elaborate? I have been using Bitcoin now 10+ to store my wealth and make payments, and it has been very convenient - not much time needed to use it, and I think I've gotten plenty of value for my time-investment.
What kind of database would you recommend to make it more convenient? Maybe you can write a guide how to implement decentralized value transfer and storage system on top of PostgreSQL, so that the amount of tokens is limited to 21 Million, with similar security guarantees?
> I've never understood the initial arguments about Bitcoin, no matter how many times they've been explained to me.
Because it's a cult, like the "AGI is coming in 2027" cult thinks we're on the brink of skynet level world destruction, it'll come and go and 99% of the people who fell for it will tell you they never really truly actually believed
Amen. Bitcoin barely manages to continue to function, while currently handling 0.0000001% of the worlds money transfers. The idea that we could base any substantial part of our financial system on a globally serialized transaction ledger is a laughable joke.
As a technical experiment, I love bitcoin, and I have thoroughly enjoyed wasting some of my own time on it. But it's not mainstream, and it never will be.
> The block chain is, and always was, an extremely inconvenient database.
It's the cost of it being out of control of any single party. Efficiency and convenience are worth nothing if you have a system someone can just wipe out or manipulate.
Have you experienced hyperinflation in your lifetime? Have the generational assets of your family been seized by totalitarian government? I think you'd understand better if you lived through events where your wealth very painfully was just an "entry" in the efficient system someone else controls (badly).
> The block chain is, and always was, an extremely inconvenient database.
That's the entire point when the goal is to achieve a public, immutable, decentralized ledger that prevents double-payments without needing to trust a third-party to adjudicate properly. It being inconvenient makes it exceptionally difficult to edit history.
Whether that's a useful goal is less clear when nearly all of modern society relies on trusting parties at some point along the way (will the thing you bought be delivered to you? Will the service you purchased actually be rendered? etc).
> Maybe it goes to show how few people understand economics and anthropology
A financial process being unwieldy hasn't really been an issue historically. Why are most publicly issued stocks in the US owned by Cede and Company for example? No one that has stocks really thinks about the underlying system (the fact that they have contractual rights to stocks rather than actually owning stocks), as long as it ultimately works.
Where things have broken down in my opinion is how centralized the systems have become with massive exchanges being the only realistic way to interact with them. In the same way that a bicycle wasn't designed to be a moving van, these systems weren't designed to be centralized. With that being the reality though, the entire blockchain backbone is mostly useless, and at that point it really is an inconvenient database.
>I've never understood the initial arguments about Bitcoin, no matter how many times they've been explained to me.
>Proceeds to provide their opinion.
At this point you are wayyyy behind schedule, even if you hold an anti-crypto position like me, you recognize the benefits of Bitcoin, otherwise you would claim that even the most popular/first/best coin is completely useless.
I'd invite you to seek to understand the initial arguments on Bitcoin instead of trying to convince us of your views on Bitcoin. Like, the topic is very deep and you are stuck in the first step.
>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.
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
Most of my transactions go through credit card, that means every time I exchange money for services/goods a private corporation takes a 3% cut. That makes sense to you but the dream of BTC doesn't?
Of course it turned into a gambling scam filled cesspool like most human endeavours, but the initial dream was sound.
“The gamblification of the economy” is the real story here. Crypto, prediction markets, and omnipresent instant gambling apps are poisoning more and more of our society and draining money from folks in an entirely unproductive way. These things promise a quick path to fortune but the only people making money are the fraudsters or the platform owners (often the same people). Serious regulation of these things is long overdue, and no, forcing them to advertise gambling hotlines is not sufficient.
I’d hesitate to say it’s wasted. Aren’t these some of the most complex, electronic, decentralized systems in human history? That skillset is going to be more and more important the more and more computers there are.
I got into crypto back in 2011/2012. I used PayPal and bank wire transfer extensively back then, as I bought and sold a lot of stuff internationally - so to me bitcoin seemed like the natural next step, and a godsend to people like me. At my height, I had 100 BTC.
Eventually big events in my life happened, and I sold my coins out of necessity. I found myself unemployed, separated, and broke - so I sold everything I owned. I cashed in around $40k or so from the coins, which helped me pay off my debts and get a down payment for my house. To be honest, I personally don't know anyone from way back then that became filthy rich off crypto, most sold off their stuff when every boom cycle started again, afraid that it would be the last one...the people I know that became rich, were those that went all-in on crypto around 2017/2018. They dumped everything they had, and managed to 10x-100x their investments.
Of course, had I held onto those, I'd be set for life now. But hindsight is 20/20
But with that said, I remember around 2017/2018 when the first "real" boom occurred - that's when everyone pretty much abandoned ideals, and went into it for the money. Lots of people made life-changing money back then, and the idealistic dream was pretty much dead. "Store of value" won the war, and soon after "moon lambo".
At least for me, the writing on the wall was clearly that crypto would evolve into just another financial instrument that big finance would pump and dump periodically. Though I could not foresee a crypto-friendly US gov. entering the picture.
I always wondered what "clever" people expected from crypto, apart from getting rich quick schemes. Boring.
We had such know-it-alls still with their pimples from Frauenhofer and Max Planck giving presentations. Even back then, 99% percent of the audience were skeptical, but sadly too many decision makers are just emperors with no clothing.
There were so many immature, useless loud speakers given a junior professorship because old morons have FOMO too. That must have sucked for the valid academics with proven achievements. I'm glad I'm not one of the ones waiting in queue.
There no single project having any sign of impact, naturally. While that can be said of a lot of academic work, crypto: more buzzwords, even less delivered.
Everything you figured out about crypto was known then. You had to choose to disregard that information and continue on. And you did, and it took you eight years to figure it out. And now that you have money, you think you have special insight others did not.
Sorry, you don’t. There’s going to be a significant portion of people reading this saying, “No shit”.
But congrats on winning at the casino I guess.
I'm sorry this guy feels like that, and I agree that there are tons of fraudsters and casino players in the current crypto scene.
It also doesn't surprise me to read the reactions in here, as most of HN users are from the US or other first world countries.
For people like me who were born and have lived in developing countries or countries were we cannot fully trust our banking/monetary systems, Bitcoin IS a tool to escape possible problems. I'm old enough to have been in 3 monetary crises in my country: 1985, 1994 and 2008. I'm old enough to have seen countries like Argentina, Venezuela, Spain, Lebanon, Greece experience bank runs. And when that happens, only the rich and connected can do something, while individuals like us are left holding the bag and paying for the errors of others (Americans may remember the 1% movement, occupy wall street).
So, no. Bitcoin is and still will be a useful thing for me and a lot of people. First word.country citizens may not understand it, until it becomes too late .
Glad to hear the change of heart here and the guts it took to write it up. I know that's not an easy thing to do, and it likely burned some bridges.
The point about it being gambling, and therefore, taking advantage of idiots, yeah that rings true. The mass proliferation of gambling and the true compulsive addiction and ruin of mostly young men, it's hard to look at oneself and state that they caused that pain for other and their loved ones.
The next step is, of course, to do the very hard part: use the money gained for good. The author mentions that they are a hypocrite for only speaking out after making their money. They need not be so. Finding legitimate ways to use the ill gotten gains for good is a bit of what they built their skills in, after all.
I hope to someday see the next post of theirs detailing how many people they helped and how many lives saved, families reunited and made sound again, based on how they used this new wealth for good.
They are very far from the end of their story, but the midpoint, so to speak, has been passed.
173 comments
[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 106 ms ] threadBut, how else would you have driven towards your goal of building a new financial system?
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.
in some corners of society this kind of tools (doctor appointments) seemed to be a net benefit, you can now book your GP even if it's 10pm, the system was ready to fire.
and when I see some news on zk parallel vm for smart contracts i feel some valid technical quality..
but maybe it's really just a fools errand i don't know
The problem of BTC was at the same time overabundance of imagination in one area and a big gap in imagination how the world actually works. They only saw simple isolated scenarios and never a globalized economy.
Care to elaborate? I have been using Bitcoin now 10+ to store my wealth and make payments, and it has been very convenient - not much time needed to use it, and I think I've gotten plenty of value for my time-investment.
What kind of database would you recommend to make it more convenient? Maybe you can write a guide how to implement decentralized value transfer and storage system on top of PostgreSQL, so that the amount of tokens is limited to 21 Million, with similar security guarantees?
The point is to be a database that isn’t controlled by a central authority, rather by the majority of its users.
Because it's a cult, like the "AGI is coming in 2027" cult thinks we're on the brink of skynet level world destruction, it'll come and go and 99% of the people who fell for it will tell you they never really truly actually believed
As a technical experiment, I love bitcoin, and I have thoroughly enjoyed wasting some of my own time on it. But it's not mainstream, and it never will be.
It's the cost of it being out of control of any single party. Efficiency and convenience are worth nothing if you have a system someone can just wipe out or manipulate.
Have you experienced hyperinflation in your lifetime? Have the generational assets of your family been seized by totalitarian government? I think you'd understand better if you lived through events where your wealth very painfully was just an "entry" in the efficient system someone else controls (badly).
That's the entire point when the goal is to achieve a public, immutable, decentralized ledger that prevents double-payments without needing to trust a third-party to adjudicate properly. It being inconvenient makes it exceptionally difficult to edit history.
Whether that's a useful goal is less clear when nearly all of modern society relies on trusting parties at some point along the way (will the thing you bought be delivered to you? Will the service you purchased actually be rendered? etc).
> Maybe it goes to show how few people understand economics and anthropology
A financial process being unwieldy hasn't really been an issue historically. Why are most publicly issued stocks in the US owned by Cede and Company for example? No one that has stocks really thinks about the underlying system (the fact that they have contractual rights to stocks rather than actually owning stocks), as long as it ultimately works.
Where things have broken down in my opinion is how centralized the systems have become with massive exchanges being the only realistic way to interact with them. In the same way that a bicycle wasn't designed to be a moving van, these systems weren't designed to be centralized. With that being the reality though, the entire blockchain backbone is mostly useless, and at that point it really is an inconvenient database.
>Proceeds to provide their opinion.
At this point you are wayyyy behind schedule, even if you hold an anti-crypto position like me, you recognize the benefits of Bitcoin, otherwise you would claim that even the most popular/first/best coin is completely useless.
I'd invite you to seek to understand the initial arguments on Bitcoin instead of trying to convince us of your views on Bitcoin. Like, the topic is very deep and you are stuck in the first step.
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
Of course it turned into a gambling scam filled cesspool like most human endeavours, but the initial dream was sound.
You can wake up with your bank / broker / PayPal balance = 0, what do you do?
you understand how to construct complex & stimulating games that people will play compulsively for money. that’s good.
next, craft games for which you can guarantee a house edge. should be small yet assured.
you’re already an experienced casino game developer
I'm glad OP has been enlightened. Growth can be painful.
There are paths towards redemption - the author could begin by donating every ill-gotten cent to a worthy charity.
What's that? Crickets? Thought so.
Eventually big events in my life happened, and I sold my coins out of necessity. I found myself unemployed, separated, and broke - so I sold everything I owned. I cashed in around $40k or so from the coins, which helped me pay off my debts and get a down payment for my house. To be honest, I personally don't know anyone from way back then that became filthy rich off crypto, most sold off their stuff when every boom cycle started again, afraid that it would be the last one...the people I know that became rich, were those that went all-in on crypto around 2017/2018. They dumped everything they had, and managed to 10x-100x their investments.
Of course, had I held onto those, I'd be set for life now. But hindsight is 20/20
But with that said, I remember around 2017/2018 when the first "real" boom occurred - that's when everyone pretty much abandoned ideals, and went into it for the money. Lots of people made life-changing money back then, and the idealistic dream was pretty much dead. "Store of value" won the war, and soon after "moon lambo".
At least for me, the writing on the wall was clearly that crypto would evolve into just another financial instrument that big finance would pump and dump periodically. Though I could not foresee a crypto-friendly US gov. entering the picture.
Well, there's your problem. Here is a potentially interesting math paper that comes to very different conclusions: https://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/BTC-QF.pdf
We had such know-it-alls still with their pimples from Frauenhofer and Max Planck giving presentations. Even back then, 99% percent of the audience were skeptical, but sadly too many decision makers are just emperors with no clothing. There were so many immature, useless loud speakers given a junior professorship because old morons have FOMO too. That must have sucked for the valid academics with proven achievements. I'm glad I'm not one of the ones waiting in queue. There no single project having any sign of impact, naturally. While that can be said of a lot of academic work, crypto: more buzzwords, even less delivered.
Everything you figured out about crypto was known then. You had to choose to disregard that information and continue on. And you did, and it took you eight years to figure it out. And now that you have money, you think you have special insight others did not. Sorry, you don’t. There’s going to be a significant portion of people reading this saying, “No shit”. But congrats on winning at the casino I guess.
It also doesn't surprise me to read the reactions in here, as most of HN users are from the US or other first world countries.
For people like me who were born and have lived in developing countries or countries were we cannot fully trust our banking/monetary systems, Bitcoin IS a tool to escape possible problems. I'm old enough to have been in 3 monetary crises in my country: 1985, 1994 and 2008. I'm old enough to have seen countries like Argentina, Venezuela, Spain, Lebanon, Greece experience bank runs. And when that happens, only the rich and connected can do something, while individuals like us are left holding the bag and paying for the errors of others (Americans may remember the 1% movement, occupy wall street).
So, no. Bitcoin is and still will be a useful thing for me and a lot of people. First word.country citizens may not understand it, until it becomes too late .
I mean, isn't it the goal of US libertarians?
The point about it being gambling, and therefore, taking advantage of idiots, yeah that rings true. The mass proliferation of gambling and the true compulsive addiction and ruin of mostly young men, it's hard to look at oneself and state that they caused that pain for other and their loved ones.
The next step is, of course, to do the very hard part: use the money gained for good. The author mentions that they are a hypocrite for only speaking out after making their money. They need not be so. Finding legitimate ways to use the ill gotten gains for good is a bit of what they built their skills in, after all.
I hope to someday see the next post of theirs detailing how many people they helped and how many lives saved, families reunited and made sound again, based on how they used this new wealth for good.
They are very far from the end of their story, but the midpoint, so to speak, has been passed.