A friend shared this article by Tim Swanson on Facebook this morning "without comment", and it caught my interest, so I wanted to comment on it:
Eight Things Cryptocurrency Enthusiasts Probably Won’t Tell You
Unlike many Kool-Aid-drinking cryptocurrency enthusiasts, I won't scoff at this post or disregard it. On the contrary, I think it's well-researched and well-written (though it may not get every detail correct). No, this Kool-Aid-drinking cryptocurrency enthusiast will at least attempt some rationality here in my response. :)
I bought my first bitcoin in early 2013. I spent $50 for 2.5 bitcoins. I am biased because I've only ever made money (I don't sell often). If cryptocurrency had personally harmed me more, I may think differently. As it is, I still agree with much of what is said here, but I mostly think it's missing the point. It's almost like saying, "Cars are really a problem because of how little they function like horses."
Much of this article could be summarized by what many in the space have been saying over and over again for years:
Don't Use Centralized Exchanges!
With a subtext that goes something like: The current centralized government-run financial system is completely broken. We're building a better one.
Taking programmable money which requires no third-party trust systems or counter-party risk and putting it into centralized systems of control is stupid. It defeats the entire purpose of this invention created after the massive financial disaster of 2008.
Most exchanges today are based on old-world, banker thinking. Decentralized cryptocurrency exchanges are the future of cryptographically secure distributed ledger money (BitShares, OpenLedger, EtherDelta, etc). We no longer have to give over our control of our own stores of value and most people simply do not understand this. Like children, they are still expecting mommy and daddy government to protect them when the protocols, if allowed to function as intended, could do that directly to prevent fraud before it happens, not respond to it with guns after the fact.
I'll briefly go through the eight things mentioned in the article and give some thoughts.
(1) Bitfinex
I completely agree. They are a centralized exchange which anyone who understands cryptocurrency should be very concerned about. When they still allowed US Citizens to participate, I did play around with their margin funding and made some fun returns on my lending of USD, knowing full well it could all go to zero, and it was a very risky thing to do. I understood the risk and was motivated by the potential for returns while never risking more than I was willing to lose.
(2) Ransomware, Ponzi’s, Zero-fee and AML-less exchanges
This is why people like Andreas Antonopoulos have been arguing for years that service providers should make everything public on the blockchain. I'm okay with regulation, but I want regulation which actually works (i.e. is programmed into the protocol directly) as opposed to approaches which can (and are) manipulated by central authorities with their own skewed motivations.
(3) Initial coin offerings (ICOs)
I agree, this whole space is out of control. As I've written about already, many speculators are chasing quick profits instead of utility. If fiat currency value wasn't bleeding so badly with people flooding into cryptocurrency, maybe this would calm down a bit.
(4) VC-backed entities
This one's pretty far outside of things I'm familiar with, but I do again see the connection with the problems raised and the traditional financial systems this technology is attempting to disrupt (fiat currency, central banking, KYC laws, and AML/CFT regulations "for our protection"). If there's a theme here I'm trying to point out, it's how much these old systems have failed us, stifled innovation, and increased the powers of the State in ways previous generations would not have imagined.
(5) The decline of Maximalism
This point kind of confused me. Is this really a critique? To me, it's a natural example of what happens when people try to centrally control something through primitive tribalistic means. The blocksize debates and those trying to control the Bitcoin blockchain for their own self interests opened the door for competition and value to flow into other more technically advanced projects that aren't stuck in endless rounds of in-fighting. I understand arguments like this one on what gives bitcoin value and why we may not need so many different currencies, but I also see a future as described by Andreas Antonopoulos: Bitcoin: Money as language & the multi-currency future. In a way, point 5 just says "people are tribalistic and tend to back their own team." Yep. Same with goldbugs, silver stackers, nationalists, Statists, USD supporters, anarchists, voluntaryists, etc.
(6) Market caps
I think this is a good point as well. There are plenty of silly coins which sell a fraction of their supply on the "open market" (surely could be some insider trading going on there as well to artificially inflate the price) and then try to claim a massive market cap. You know what's also silly? Trillions of USD literally created out of nothing which we believe has enduring value even though empirical evidence demonstrates massive losses in purchasing power over time. More on that here: USD Scam Coin Surpasses $20 Trillion in Debt, but You're Supposed to Fear Cryptocurrency.
(7) Buy-side analysts and coin media
This one raises some interesting points as well. There are rules in place for how people should act when they are promoting something they are also an investor in. Do these rules matter so much in today's world of the Internet and open access to information? Or, put another way, does anyone actually believe things online at face value? Maybe some people do and this is an important topic, but for me, I'm not going to solely base my investing decisions on posts which I already know to be from very biased sources of information. These biases are all around us and to pretend we can somehow control them with regulations outside of individuals acting in their own self-interest is a bit naive to me. That said, I applaud the efforts here to expose connections and biases many may not have been aware of. That's valuable journalism.
(8) Analytics
This point gets into some of the fundamental worldview differences between those who are excited about cryptocurrency and those who think it's not worth getting so excited about. Some think centralized, government-run regulation and "transparency" will solve these problems. It's a top-down approach to order. In many ways, it's what we've always known since the beginning of modern, organized civilization. It's not, however, the only way to achieve order. All throughout nature we see spontaneous order emerging out of chaos as the simple actions by individuals lead to much more complex emergent patterns. My argument is simply this:
What We've Done So Far Simply Does Not Work
Instead of eliminating all trusted third parties and the need for trust in general via the use of smart contracts and programmable money, many advocate centralization of trust into government-backed regulation and oversight. Were they not around in 2008 when trillions (with a "t") of dollars were stolen via government approved-processes? Do they not recognize how those who facilitated these massive frauds were never prosecuted by the current financial regulator system? On the contrary, they were rewarded for their efforts with government bailouts and bonuses.
I can't fault the author. They most likely see things from a specific worldview. They seem to see anarchy (as in no rulers, voluntary interactions only) as bad and government as good. I wonder, would they prefer to see cryptocurrency just become another regulated, integrated payment network like PayPal?
Thankfully, the founders of bitcoin had a greater vision than that.
In my opinion, this isn't about rediscovering "a vast framework of securities and consumer protection laws that already exist" but bypassing them completely to build trustless systems which don't rely on laws. Laws are threats of physical force backed by people with guns paid with value taken involuntarily from people ("citizens") who happened to be born in a geographic region. Those people didn't sign up for this voluntarily, it just is. The cryptographic revolution is about taking some of that power back and putting it into protocols which can't be manipulated by bad actors. That's why Bitcoin's greatest achievement was solving the Byzantine Generals' Problem.
This is the first time in modern history where we have a tool to build an alternative mechanism for consensus without introducing counter party risk or threats of force. The irony of criticizing the technolgy is that many of the problems we see relate to how it is being shoehorned into old-world financial systems. It was meant to completely break out of those systems.
That said, I really do appreciate the main point of the author's post which is that we should all be talking about this stuff more. We should all take personal responsibility for exposing fraud. Harry Markopolos (based on a quick wikipedia read) is mentioned in the post but somehow this irony is lost:
In 2000, 2001, and 2005, Markopolos alerted the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of the fraud, supplying supporting documents, but each time, the SEC ignored him or only gave his evidence a cursory investigation.
The very systems the author seems to be supporting and asking for more of are the very systems which do not work and are inadequate for regulating markets in today's digital age. We need far more advanced approaches than some bureaucrats who spend most of their time worrying about re-election or securing funding for their next budget increase.
Protecting ourselves is our job. Let's do a better job of it.
If you enjoyed this write up, you might like related posts of mine as well:
- The Blockchain, Globalism, and National Demonetization
- USD Scam Coin Surpasses $20 Trillion in Debt, but You're Supposed to Fear Cryptocurrency
- Privacy, Identity, and Human Flourishing
- Understanding Blockchain Freedom — Why So Many Smart People Are Wrong About the Value of Bitcoin
- Playing in the Margins: bitUSD and BitShares on Open Ledger
- A Simple Example of Shorting the U.S. Dollar With BitShares
- The Promise of the Blockchain by Vinay Gupta
- The Best Explanation of a Blockchain I've Ever Seen
This post is full of goodies.
This is pure gold!
I love this one too. People need to wake up to what is happening and the possibilities blockchain tech are bringing. These tech bring new paradigms and people really need open up their mind to those new paradigms.
These new possibilities are testing our intellectual capacities. I'm not talking about the uneducated. I'm talking about the supposed intellectual class of our society. I'm not sure if they exist but if they do they are asleep.
Thanks as always for your encouraging comments and insight. I love the effort and detail you put into your posts and greatly appreciate your support. Congrats on making it to the top 50 as a witness. I like when a > 50 witness I support makes it into the < 50 list. :)
Yeah thank you so much for highlighting this. It made my day, week month or at least greatly help!
I support decentralized exchabges too. While they're still at risk for internal fraud or external hacking, I think the gross manipulation we see by the central banks is eliminated. What does blow me away are the ICOs. You can hear the drumbeat in the distance: "The regulators are coming. The regulators are coming." It happened to Forex traders and it will happen to some cryptocurrencies. So many ICOs are offering vaporware with the caution that their projects may never come to completion. But they're taking in multi-millions. Great post. Thanks.
In the coming years we are going to build the technology and infrastructure (have a look at cosmos) to replace centralised exchanges completely. If you are interested in ethereum based decentralised exchange, we are working actively on www.oasisdex.com .
Amazon may start accepting Bitcoin as early as October !!!
https://steemit.com/cryptocurrency/@rinaalone/amazon-may-start-accepting-bitcoin-as-early-as-october
One day the government will be the blockchain. No more elite. Power to the people!
It is somewhat comical that we are taking a decentralized currency and putting it on centralized exchanges. I understand the need for "practical use" to buy/sell and own crypto since most people don't understand wallets/aren't comfortable, but its defeating the purpose.
If it wasn't so sad, I could laugh. Maybe it'll just take time.
scaredycatguide, Is there any way to use USD to buy BTC on a de-centralised exchange? If so, what are the advantages of centralised over de-centralised?
Anything centralized you are at the mercy of that organization at the end. If they get hacked or crash or whatever your funds are locked up or gone. Ex. Poloniex with steem....peoples steem was locked on there for months as they worked out their issues.
Thank you for the reasoning you apply to a great post. As and older guy that has been praying for a change in our Econ system for so many years I have to say, This new tech called blockchain is very confusing to so many people, but one thing that IS apparent is, that to centralize any decentralized system completely makes the blockchain a moot point, imho.
There are so many good points in this post, thanks again for your involvement on steemit. This post is a great example of why I made you my witness voting proxy !
Keep up the good work Luke, really appreciate it. Your work here really helps me explain things to other people that I'm trying to get to steemit.
Read More, Reason more ... JTS
I'm really glad you found it helpful. :)
Have you checked out my understanding blockchain freedom videos yet? I link to them in my signature. I hope they are helpful as well.
not sure will have to check my steemit/video bookmarks, just got back .. But I WILL of course ... ty
Nearly all exchanges are electronic now. Ferris Bueller and Trading Places type exchange floors are all but extinct. So that human factor has been removed.
For trading, I'm interested in finding a trading exchange with a whole lot of volume first then maybe decentralized later. A large volume of trading gets fills so much better it often wipes out profits of harder to trade securities of any type.
If decentralized exchanges can bring the volume of traders together then of course it'll be better than centralized as we eliminate the single point of failure attacks by theft (political or otherwise).
Either way, I think holding in a wallet outside of the exchange also seems more important than central|decentral exchange.
Funny that having looked on this for months now, politicians (read statists) might have more to fear from the singularity & block-chain than any other profession. LOL
I see it as a chicken or the egg problem. Decentralized exchanges like OpenLedger will not have the volume we want it to have if we continue to use other exchanges which have more volume.
I agree, wallets should be kept off exchanges and secured individually, but at some point we have to decide what we value more: easy profits or a long-term, decentralized future.
And yes, I also think (and hope) that intelligent systems will replace monopolies on force within a geographic region. :)
I'd agree on the chicken & egg idea. Do you know a good current comparative review of decentralized exchanges? Google search of Steemit seems to not be very good for results. I might be willing to start with some crypto options trading.
The idea of being concerned about wallet comes from keeping the "savings" much more out of federal reach. I understand active trading funds in my present world are not in such a status. However, if we can move to decentralized exchanges for non-government safety, then we should be able to have wallets for that safety as well. It seems parking in Monero seems a good safe space? LOL
Thanks for getting my mind going in this area.
man, those Chinese exchanges really took the sitting funds and reinvested them.. Shaaaady. that was a lot of good info. A lot of stuff I had already heard of aside from that news, the pitato lol, and the connection between coindesk and filecoin.. We are in the wild west of crypto to be sure
Centralised exchanges will hopefully become a thing of the past when more decentralised exchanges are up and running such as Kyber and 0x. Centralised exchanges are just too risky because of hacking and they could run with your money whenever they want.
I hope so. I really do. The challenge, I think, will always be the fiat currency onramps. Governments will continue to try and control currency because it gives them power to wage war. Ideally, we can come together and build systems to meet our non-military needs in open, voluntary ways with effective competition so eventually people will see government (and the democide it causes) as an archaic system of organizing human beings.
The best approach may be to do as much commerce outside of the fiat system as possible. A little friendly agorism never hurt anyone, right?
Exactly, the problem is not trading our coins its exchanging our horrible fiat currencies for it. Once we get enough money into Crypto the governments will not be able to ban fiat to crypto exchanges because their will be to much money in crypto and loss of that money will severely damage the economy.
very helpful
Quality stuff. Dude, you got my witness vote.
Even only focusing on exchange as mean and end of crypto currency show how its already side tracked from original goal, and the fact that it all ends on centralized one show how much it become more about blind speculative profits than anything else lol
But yeah i start to see cultish trend of cool aid drinking guru more and more lol with positive things that become more myth than anything put in forefront and all the negative side being shunned as fud, all this to increase speculative profits of big owners.
Its clear it start to look like its not going to end well lol
I worked in e commerce industry for a little while, made many e commerce thing, its not really evoked here but there are many things that make btc akward for regular e commerce industry, like lack of tracability for customer, un predictible transaction delay, and high price volatility, plus incresaed complexity to process paiment and make good pipeline including clear accounrability for taxes and customer base make it very hard to be really competitive imo and those are never really talked about, at the profit of juicy ico and speculative profits made on exchange disguised as classic investment scheme.
I dont really see how this can benefit to small buisness as running btc node cost lot more than classic web stack, much more complex to handle, with many more factors of risks.
Its just going to be more either go back to full underground for initate, or benefits big organisations who can buffer price volatility and increased cost of operation, rather than something i really see helping small actors.
It will almost be a miracle if there is no massive money loss and jail time with this and i dont see how it can end well unless all those points are really bolded and taken care of by the community in a way or another rather than letting it slip into cool aid drinking to let the myth free ride t maximize speculative profits for the few initiate.
I understand your concerns, but you might be surprised to see how much more fraudulent fiat currencies are. Cryptocurrencies aren't perfect, but in my opinion they are a far superior ledger which is what money is. Bitcoin isn't doing well as a transactional payment currency, I'll agree there, but there are others which are more focused in that space. Many see bitcoin as a store of value.
What makes you say that? Do you have specific concerns?
I agree there should be more support for valid criticisms, but I also see a hell of a lot of FUD so I understand if the knee jerk reaction is to think it's all FUD.
Because i see the pattern as focus shift to easy money making scheme, rather than to genuine buisness, and all the many abuse and scam which make btc propaganda not mentioning this, decreasing creativity in general replaced by sale pitch without much in depth tech analysis, without true dedication to good interest, lack of rigor and used to easy cash, all this remind of other community and motion before it started to get ugly lol
Maybe there are still good surprise to come and it can find a second breath , and fixing all the issues or being honnest about them, instead of calling fud each time a pb is pointed, or sending back to conspiracy as cheap anti system counter argument instead of seeing things as they are, which is btc hold more scam, ponzi and laundry and shady agenda than genuine income making buisness, cause you wont say me honnestly there are billions of declared income with tax paid behind the "market cap".
Making it a pure store of value ok, but that will put it as a security or so, with following regulation, and tracability that is required by it, and then need to stop the moto with decentralization, and should rename it something else than currency lol
And even as store of value its not backed by anything, and cover many shady buisness that could easily fireback at it.
Its not giving me currently the impression of being focus on self improvment, customer care, and oriented toward becoming mainstream with good quality software, transparent functioning and all this, more quickly made things enough for bare minimum to run exchange and basics centralized app, with many security issues, regular hacks, prone to bad manulation or pb, and zero safety net.
I see that same pattern. Thanks for replying.
It remind me the pattern i saw with free parties and cracking scene :)
A long as it remain underground in small circle making some few money here and there it can stay undetr the radar of prosecution.
When it starts to get big, with big organized thing, making tons of cash, and going pseudo mainstream on shaky fundation, they start to crack down and it can come very fast lol
I still remember the operation fastlink ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Fastlink ) and wen they do big crack down like this when things becoming too wide spread, it can happen very fast once al the section & judges are on the same line.
Always the same story :D
banditos - vamos con electromad :D
Fbi & co are already probably tracking & infiltrating and building case, and the day the law is falling, and judges have the good procedures bye folks :)
Just saying lol nobody can tell for sure how thats going to end, but need not to take authority for fool too much either, and its probably going to be cleared up at some point, and we'll see what and who remain when all the gray area become under the spot and all the crack down start to get in.
Usually what remain is only big player who operate under big legal buisness, and we ll see how many people are still in without the easy cash and empty promise and scams of all kinds, to do the real tedious work of organisation and clean things.
We'll see. Unlike many other examples, peer to peer systems are notoriously difficult to stop. Napster got us Itunes, Amazon Music, Pandora, etc. We no longer have to pay for a full CD just for the song we want.
Yes probably some system are going to get out of this, but given that all the scam and ponzi & co that make up the thing, need to see what remain if all those get taken out, how much traffic and real use will remain.
Im pretty sure without the easy cash and shady stuff, 90% of the actual scene is out.
Verynfew people actually want to get throught the hassle of cleaning code, increase safety, and deal with all the issue to operate actual genuine buisness with much thinner profits with more tedious hard work.
Most people are in for quick return sitting on coin or trading on exchange like pseudo gamble, rather than doing all th hassle to work out real system who can fit with real economy.
All the crypto & p2p never prevent them to bust the people they want to bust when it become too blatantly out of the line.
Even with p2p & all, there are still not so much actors who make the thing spin, and where there start to be real investigation & head fallings, p2p & crypto doesnt help all that much. Because most people are mostly leech or passive users, and its never too hard to make blow on the system when it become too much out of the law on big scale.
Nobody is going to invest too much ressource or time if its to end in jail or with potential trouble, and not that many people are dedicated and skilled enough to really make the thing spin, even if there is large number of user on a p2p network for fast easy reward and gain.
And i still wonder what are real advantage of using graphene over classic web things, as its still more costly and complex to operate than regular web things, it can find a model probably as its still more transparent and open than facebook or twitter, and clearly a buisness model and thoughful system, need to see how it turn on the long run, and if true investigation and stuff are made on the model, if it doesnt go against some law or so.
But in the end, the fast and deterministic block time come at price of sophisticated delegation of mining and control over relatively small number of high end highly connected witness node, in the end need to see if it has real effective advantage over other system, given the increased complexity and cost, for ending with something not so decentralized, outside of the hype of blockchain and promise of high return for investors.
The random fly by night ICOs in fact any ICO should be gotten rid of. Your buying something that does not even yet exist its completely dumb other then a pump and dump or total scam. If ICOs where removed we would be in a much better spot all around right now.
I think that's a bit too extreme. There are many great cryptocurrency projects going today that started as ICOs. Why shouldn't early investors be rewarded for the risks they are willing to take? Why shouldn't innovative entrepreneurs raise funds to build something great? I don't think all ICOs are bad, but I'll grant that many, if not most of them, are. Especially right now. If someone buys ETH at $10 and then it goes to $300, it only makes sense to diversify a bit. I think that's why people (myself included) throw ETH at various projects as they come up. It's like angel investing. Even if most fail, the one that don't will give a nice return.
Name one real ICO that offered coins before it was launched that has brought anything new to the table and has been a positive part to the community. You cant list stuff like ANT coin etc they where not ICOs ICOs are coins offered before there is even a real block chain etc 99 out of 100 have turned into flat out scams, pump and dumps or people running away with investments.
Ethereum was an ICO between July–August 2014 and not launched as a beta until May 2015 according to Wikipedia. It brought functional smart contracts and has been hugely important for the blockchain ecosystem.
I see no mention of it being an ico ? but yes Ethereum brought in a bunch of new things to the block chain. Don't know of any other ICOs that have though.
It's listed here as the second ICO after Mastercoin. My point in bringing up Ethereum (and more specifically, the date) is that it's far too early to know if any of the ICOs we're seeing now will be valuable or not. It's much like angel investing. For every 10 or even 100, we may get a very real and important project that brings a lot of value to the world. We may not know that for several years.
They aren't all bad, even if most of them are.
'That's why Bitcoin's greatest achievement was solving the Byzantine Generals' Problem.'
I have always found the Byzantine Generals' Problem to be badly described, and answrered in too complicated a way. I had my own go at re-writing it here on Steeemit. I hope it is technically correct.
Surely exchanging decentralized currencies on centralized exchanges is strange.
Thanks for sharing your insight.
"Protecting ourselves is our job. Let's do a better job of it." I could not agree more.
Following, voted and resteemed. Have a nice day.
Thanks for the advice and explainations. Have a great sunday
I'm hoping that eventually Atomic Swaps will solve that "centralized vs decentralized exchange" problem for us. That's going to be awesome in the future!
Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't OpenLedger the same as using a centralized exchange? You are trading BTC for Open.BTC which is an IOU and they attempt to keep your BTC safe. I'm not sure I trust that and I'm also not sold on BitShares. It seems very centralized to me with only 100 nodes staking blocks and the idea of pegging assets seems like a ticking time bomb to me.
I think the future of decentralized crypto trading will be using cross chain atomic swaps but there would still need to be a way to trade fiat to crypto (maybe OTC).
The OPEN.<currency> stuff is a bit odd in that you do have to trust the coin you're buying actually exists, but from what I understand, it's demonstrable on the blockchain and is controlled by a smart contract. The OpenLedger team could explain it better than I, though.
The way DPOS works, you don't need that many nodes at all for very robust security. Some call that "more centralized" but I think in practice it's much, much better than a POW or POS system because those have not voting mechanism built in at all. If a bad actor (or many) start to hurt the community, nothing can be done. We've seen this happen already with miners controlling the future of bitcoin even if it's not in the best interests of the users.
Atomic swaps seem really interesting. I need to learn more about that.