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Crypto & Blockchain

The most popular blog posts about crypto & blockchain on Hacker News. 488 posts.

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217

Crypto: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

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…

218

The entire crypto ecosystem is a ponzi

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…

223

Class Breaks

There’s a concept from computer security known as a class break. It’s a particular security vulnerability that breaks not just one system, but an entire class of systems. Examples might be a vulnerability in a particular operating system that allows an attacker to take remote control of every computer that runs on…

226

Bitcoin

I've mentioned Bitcoin a number of times on this blog. It is something our firm is watching closely. We thought briefly about making a Bitcoin specific investment earlier this year but ended up deciding to sit on the sidelines for now. We are quite taken with the idea of a currency that is not controlled […]

227

An NFT without a blockchain

This is a small proof-of-concept. It relies on PGP - but you could use Keybase, GPG, or any other hard-to-use encryption program. Background Suppose you want to support an artist and give them money. That's easy. Most artists take PayPal, bank transfer, or cash. But how can you prove that you've paid an artist for a…

240

Crypto, the Left and Technofeudalism

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 […]