Fwd: [Cryptography] Electronic currency revived after 20-year hiatus

[Zenaan Harkness]

On Tue, Aug 23, 2016 at 05:24:26PM +0300, Cari Machet wrote:
> From: Ray Dillinger <bear at sonic.net>
> On 08/17/2016 06:21 PM, Natanael wrote:

> The "Lightning Network" solves a problem for people who do many
> transactions per day with each other.  There is no merchant nor client
> with whom I do more than one transaction per day, so absolutely none of
> my transactions would wind up using it.  I expect it to have some real
> impact on the bandwidth and size of the block chain because some
> business models are absolutely pathological in terms of number of
> transactions per day by individual customers (like casinos or
> speculative markets) but not nearly as much as its proponents hope
> because it simply isn't applicable to ordinary tx (like grocery
> stores, office supply vendors, restaurants, or investment markets).

Thanks for forwarding Cari.

Why is there a seemingly continual focus on "hegemonic" or "single
network" solutions to worldwide online $ tx?

Today, "national central banks" have their daily (or more frequent) bulk
tx balancing, some networks inter-operate where it makes sense (ATM and
plastic card networks).

Example: PayPal seemed (to my naieve viewing) for a time like it would
be the Amazon.com payment network. Just another "plastic card" that
works a bit better in the internet world. Of necessity they interoperate
with existing $ networks - VISA, Mastercard and national banks (SWIFT I
guess).

BitCoin is a newer network again, and seems to make it even easier to
democratise a network of payment and value storage networks - i.e.,
anyone can spin one up if their tribe, company or network is otherwise
large enough for that to make sense.

"Financial instrument exchanges" and casinos have solved the problem for
their particular pathological cases, they become small worlds, which
interact with external $ networks.

My gut feeling is that the more independent $ networks the better. I
don't know that it makes sense if you're only two people, but hey, if
that works for two particular people, go for it ... GPG would probably
be adequate in that scenario to "sign" a contract.


> And it still doesn't solve the problem that Trusted parties have emerged
> in the form of online wallets and exchanges etc, and they are failing
> and/or goxxing people on a regular basis.

The problem of computer "security" generally is far from being solved,
unsolvable in the general case (social engineering), possibly solvable
in specific cases (https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68/micro-desktop
seems a rational start to a sane manufacturing regime that might
successfully work towards systems exhibiting sensible security
characteristics).


> Multimillion dollar losses, thefts, and swindles impose public as well
> as private expense.

Perhaps it would be useful to target micro banks running on Eoma 
hardware.

Point is, we really ought continue the $ democratisation thinking,
not the centralisation "one hegemonic network" thinking.


> Legislators, Law enforcers, and civil courts cannot
> ignore them because the people who get goxxed when they happen won't
> allow them to.  Legislation, law enforcement, and both civil and
> criminal prosecutions in court are damned expensive, and will
> accordingly attract taxation and regulation as the taxpayers
> underwriting that expense use their governments to seek to limit their
> losses.

I do suggest anyone personally capable of using a word processor learn
how to write an Affidavit. It's not complicated, but if not done before,
may not be quite obvious (everything I personally saw, did, spoke or
heard is a start).

Democratise legal process - better to try and fail initially, than fail
to try at all.

The mindset of "lawyer monopoly on legally successful court cases"
really ought be busted.


> Being a self-sufficient or self-regulating system does not include
> placing fiscal burdens on the public without taxation.

It doesn't?

So goxxing isn't part of the market that discovers "secure online low
latency easily accessed monetary stores" is a hard problem, and perhaps
an easy "solution" to game by unscrupulous players?

Can we consider that being nonchalant about goxxers might actually
encourage folks to think about trust, who they trust, who they can trust
and how to discover trustability (of different types of trust)?

Surely we need a market for "engendering human sanity"? As in,
unscrupulous folks doing unscrupulous things should be punishable by
those who choose to punish them, by legal and or lawful means of course.
But why punish the rest of us who have developed genuine trust networks
- or at least, value the possibility of developing such trust networks
without the overloads of arbitrary regulation/legislation, which as
we've seen since ancient Greece, inevitably devolves into tyranny?


> Nor does it
> include freeloading on public law enforcement,

I have a problem with the phrase "public law enforcement" - when was the
damn law "publicly enforced" in my favour, to overturn bad statute laws
and oppose the tyranny of the state?


> [freeloading on] legislative [resources],

Now that's one fucked up concept, except if we view it as corporate
monopolist predation on the population through statutory monopoly
protection rackets - this is why demoncratic states are so reviled.


> and [freeloading on] judicial resources without regulation.

I don't even understand this one..

>                                 Bear