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The most popular blog posts about crypto & blockchain on Hacker News. 86 posts.
In the recent paper about "soulbound" tokens, Vitalik Buterin et al. write that they aim to build technology that is "acceptably non-dystopian". Do any of today's self-sovereign identity projects fit that bill?
I’ve been concerned about the excesses of the blockchain industry and their spread into all parts of society for some time now. Here I’ve summarized my thoughts regarding the subject.
It is safe to assume that in any useful cryptosystem C k there exists at least one person with access to the key k . An adversary with sufficient leverage can bypass the computational cost of a conventional attack by exerting their influence on this person.
I was asked at short notice to fill in for a speaker in Stanford's EE380 course who had to cancel. Below the fold is a hastily updated vers...
Before we begin, I’m not just some crypto FUDster.
If you look at a “Web3” offering and just think of it as a pump-and-dump onto retail investors, everything will make much more sense.
This a response to Moxie Marlinspike’s “My First Impression of Web3” Both gave me a feeling for how the space works. To be clear, there is nothing particularly “distributed” about the apps themselves: they’re just normal react websites. The “distributedness” refers to where the state and the logic/
On decentralization, servers and cryptography
In web2, we are beholden to centralized entities that monopolize and profit off of our data. Web3 promises to release us from these shackles by enabling everyone to access data living on the blockchain. While it is certainly appealing that institutions no longer have the power to hold our data hostage, it is still…
I dig into what's genuinely impressive about crypto (distributed trust, abuse prevention, true cloud computing) and what's deeply problematic: boundary interactions, governance concentration, transaction cost tradeoffs, and unclear incentives. My conclusion: crypto may only be useful for financial engineering, and…
Not really. As a counter example, gold is clear and very old ponzi. It's ok. And as a more general argument, crypto does have utility. For circumventing capital controls, buying drugs or laundering money. So there will be constant supply of new depositors who needs that and willing to pay. I would not bet on crypto…
Maybe Libra was just very stupid. Because it was a blockchain project started by bitcoiners. Maybe it was always just dumb as hell.
Earlier this month, I and others wrote a letter to Congress, basically saying that cryptocurrencies are an complete and total disaster, and urging them to regulate the space. Nothing in that letter is out of the ordinary, and is in line with what I wrote about blockchain in 2019. In response, Matthew Green has…
I'll say it - web 3.0 is a meaningless buzzword, and blockchain and cryptocurrency is nothing more than a giant fraud.
Rare is the person who could expertly comment – in a single interview! – on the rise of NFTs and their origins in the virtual worlds of gaming, the logic of the emerging regime of techno-feudalism, and the folly of El Salvador’s Bitcoin-heavy negotiating tactics with the IMF. Luckily, we have found this person in […]
Are we there yet?
The 'off-ramps' from crypto—that is, the firms who will exchange your cryptocurrencies back into traditional currencies—are increasingly taking the position that is so common in discussions about privacy: 'if you're not doing anything wrong, what do you have to hide?'
He Sent $80 Million a Month to Secret Wallets Before Terra Luna Crashed
A huge Rube Goldberg machine slapstick custard pie clown car, where each custard pie triggers three more custard pies.
My opinions on Web3 and why it is flawed
In some of Daniel Kahnemann's books and any other business advice-type articles, you always seem to read the same argument: The thing important people all over the world would like to see is incr
Social recovery wallets introduces new ways to authenticated with our own owned identities.
If you go out seeking to learn why blockchains and the systems built atop them are apparently the future of our web, you’ll begin to see some common themes. These fall apart under further scrutiny.
Lately I'm paying more attention to the crypto currency and "DeFi" spaces, again. One discussion that comes up regularly: are miners to blame for the high GPU prices? To add some facts to this discussion, I’ve done a small analysis of GPU and crypto currency prices to determine if they are related.
