[Cryptography] threat models, was Krugman blockchain currency skepticism

grarpamp grarpamp at gmail.com
Wed Aug 8 12:34:57 PDT 2018


On Mon, Aug 6, 2018 at 6:05 PM, John Levine <johnl at iecc.com> wrote:
> In article <CAD2Ti29oru2WUyQ01gr+UL1M-cAAvj0ZuVraPGeULnYz7TqtvQ at mail.gmail.com>,
> grarpamp <grarpamp at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Cryptocurrency value moved every month is 30x paypal's and growing.
>> Ten more years and those 200 million users will be on cryptocurrency.
>
> Paypal's current transaction volume is about $40 billion/month,
> growing at a modest rate.  Can you tell us where you get your number
> of $1.2 trillion/month for cryptocurrencies?

> https://www.statista.com/statistics/277841/paypals-total-payment-volume/

That should have been ~3x (2.7x) coming from just the BTC value volume
moved, and ~385B$/mo for the entire cryptocurrency space, both using
today's coinmarketcap rates.

Paypal is also doing ~295 tx/s, which might just be eclipsed by
even early iterations of below stress work with a single cryptocurrency
(even more when summing the current capabilities of top 10
decentralized cryptos for example representing and carrying
the market space for tx / tps)...

https://stresstestbitcoin.cash/

~25.6M tx/d will beat Paypal, with perhaps only 33% of that needed
to make news waves.

Paypal claims ~245M "active" users, or 3.2% of world pop, which
smells a little fishy. BTC alone has ~55M utxo's, consolidated
down into owned wallets at recent oppurtunity from peak of ~68M,
some study estimates try taking that down further to approx body count.
Cryptocurrency has no worries there either, and again, starts
making waves before then.

And Paypal has never made the world's daily syndicated TV
and print news like cryptocurrency has.

Regardless of which sources you choose, cryptocurrency
is close at the heels of Paypal, already biting off chunks in
some areas, including philosophical ones. Expect Paypal to
be completely eclipsed by cryptocurrency in five years or less.



>>> If an issuer doesn't redeem a bill
>>> what recourse do you have other than to denounce him?

>> Cryptocurrency... you either have the keys and value or you don't.

> I don't want a wallet hash

That's smart, because whoever told you you could
spend such a construct is a fraud.

> these were bills redeemable in real assets.
> I want my kilo of platinum or whatever.
> What's my recourse when the platinum doesn't show up?

Precisely, such bills are a risk with variable recourse.

"Bills of exchange by different issuers"

The blockchain takes care of issues with "issuers" "bills" and
reputation, you either have the confirmed spend or you don't,
and you're stupid if you walk off before you do.
And the market takes care what other "assets" one can
get in "exchange" for the UTXO's you're about to spend.
You're of course free to make and sign whatever other
contracts / bills you want, call them private pegs / tethers
if it makes you happy, and accept all their risks.
This is basically arguing volatility again, and what cryptocurrency
is saying, Neo, is that you won't need to.

[1] Those who argue volatility against decentralized cryptocurrency
shouldn't do so as what they're saying is they...
- really want centralized regulated fiat equivalents
- clearly don't get that *of course* by their very nature decentralized
cryptocurrencies are *expected* to be "volatile" early on.
This is an innate feature, not a bug.


But hey while people are on the "volatility" tip, look at all the
other *volatile* central regulated fiats out there both new and old...
https://wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_date_of_formation
https://wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_currencies

And lots of other reasons you might not want them...
https://wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_former_sovereign_states
https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_historical_geopolitical_changes

All that pegging, tethering, backing, and government guns people say
gives [nonvolatile] value... doesn't seem to be doing a very good job of it.

Perhaps it's time the world, and you, tries something truly different,
for once, in like thousands of years, of not doing so, lol.

It's out there, and could be in your wallet today,
and spent in some equitable trade tomorrow.





# other
> Obviously, you can be cut off by governments, payment processors,
> exchanges, [etc list of formal entities]

Nowhere in those blurbs was the direct P2P functionality of decentralized
cryptocurrencies  mentioned... much harder to cut that off without nuking
the underlying [sneaker] nets, the difficulty of that mentioned in
another thread.

> Reputation is entirely based upon non-repudiation, and liability (provably
> having sufficient real assets to cover their outstanding balance).
> Blockchain currency doesn't have either of those properties.

Neither does fiat. Try and invent them on top of them
if you want.

> Manafort is also learning

About decentralized cryptocurrencies, and the gold watch,
along with the rest of the world's people.



[bcc cypherpunks]




Reposting bcc cyphepunks as censorship
on an approved variety thread where moderator
already logged in and finished the daily queue
is hypocritical.
Or as to afford another chance to non fat finger,
or delivery.



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