[siftrics]

This is not true at all.

If you are the only person in the world with the private key to your coins, you are the only person who can move them. Period.

FTX is a centralized entity that custodies funds. It has nothing to do with a blockchain, which could have completely prevented this.

There are many examples of decentralized exchanges (DEXs) for which it is mathematically impossible to loan out depositor's funds without their consent, because the only person capable of signing a transaction to move the funds is the depositor themself.

[stouset]

> If you are the only person in the world with the private key to your coins, you are the only person who can move them. Period.

Right up to the moment you lose your laptop in a fire, forget the password to your wallet, accidentally run malware on your personal computer, etc. Or if you die and haven't gone through the complication of setting up a way for your heirs to gain control of your accounts.

Yes, you can take steps to mitigate these risks. Those steps are absolutely insane from the POV of everyday human beings.

[siftrics]

Totally valid criticism.

But blaming blockchain for the failures of centralized finance, which we've seen time and time again throughout all of history, is literally intentional deception.

If a politician or lawmaker or business person blames blockchain for this, it is FRAUD. Full stop.

[LeafGuild]

Well I'm not a politician or lawmaker and I have no problem blaming blockchain for this. I'm technically a "business person" because I have a job, but technically all crypto people who intend to use it to make money are also business people. The way bitcoin and all its friends are designed is intentionally done so in a way that allows centralized entities to run amok and cause havoc without any accountability until the entire thing collapses. It's blockchains that are the fraud. The designers of blockchains, including Satoshi, were aware of these problems and the risks of the system becoming unstable or getting targeted by scammers. They went forward with their designs anyway knowing the risks. Because they thought they were better than the central banks and they wanted to say they were sticking it to the man. How were they better though, when their inventions gave way to one giant fraud after another in a shockingly small amount of time? These Enron-level and WorldCom-level events are a weekly occurrence in crypto.

[Fnoord]

All these blockchain cryptocurrencies end up being traded on unregulated exchanges. These don't have same protection and requirements as banks. They are a wild west. And why do people use these exchanges so much versus blockchain? Because blockchain is highly inconvenient. I mean for starters how on earth is it user-friendly to require the entire thing on a device, requiring synchronization as well. It also requires a high quality always-on connection.

[pshc]

Pretty easy to download a wallet that’s stored in the Secure Enclave of your iPhone with an encrypted backup to your Apple ID account and all those problems go away.

[TedDoesntTalk]

Even this one? “ you die and haven't gone through the complication of setting up a way for your heirs to gain control of your accounts.”

[pshc]

I think this one is actually possible, they have policy for letting loved ones into accounts.

Better to be sure and write the account password in the will.

[TedDoesntTalk]

> they have policy for letting loved ones into accounts

Who has this policy? The blockchain??

[pshc]

Apple

[LeafGuild]

>If you are the only person in the world with the private key to your coins, you are the only person who can move them. Period.

This is completely and utterly irrelevant and has not stopped anyone from performing massive fraud. Just look at the long history of crypto scams. They still happened constantly despite blockchains having that feature. It's just impossible for a blockchain to prevent these frauds. It doesn't matter if you still have all your coins if the value of that coin drops to zero after it's revealed the whole market for that coin is fraudulent, which is exactly what happened this week! And multiple times earlier this year, and multiple times before that! It doesn't matter if it's stored on a DEX either, when you're still stuck with a worthless coin that no one will trade you for! How many shitcoins need to collapse before this is understood? Blockchains do not and will never solve this problem because they create the problem, by design, by allowing anyone to manipulate and dump tokens anywhere they want with no regard for what's fraudulent and what isn't. On a DEX you can't even know if the person on the other end is a real person or not without going outside the chain. I can't believe I'm still talking about this after the long, long string of fraud that's happened over the last 12 years. FTX is not the problem, they are the symptom. The problem is blockchains. They're intentionally built to enable fraud. They have no other purpose, and they aren't even particularly good at that because they stop working when everyone notices the fraud.

I should also mention, your statement isn't even correct! There's a very easy way to get someone else to move their coins for you: threaten them. That's the entire principle that ransomware is built on. It's real easy for criminals and the police and anyone else using the threat of force to get people to give up their coins, blockchains don't prevent that and it's impossible for them to do so because they can't affect anything that happens in the real world outside the chain. I really can't understate this. Blockchains are a fraud. Every claimed authority or security provided by a blockchain is trivially defeated by just routing around it or by gaming the market, which is ridiculously easy for anyone with some cash to throw around because there are no real rules or safeguards. They're probably the worst "invention" that's come out of the tech sector in the last 15 years. I really hope this crash is the end for crypto.

[tl_donson]

> On a DEX you can't even know if the person on the other end is a real person or not without going outside the chain.

why does it matter if the counterparty is a human?

[LeafGuild]

If I'm trying to arrange a trade on the exchange so I can get a pizza for my dogecoins, because the pizza guy says he only wants BCH and not dogecoins, and I would rather not pay double transaction fees just to buy a pizza, how do I know the other person is a real pizza chef and not a bot trying to scam me?

[dmak]

Your arguments are very misguided, long, rambly, and often digresses. It's hard to decipher your points and it is very exhausting to read. Would love to have discourse, but your points need to be shorter, concise, and clear.

[caminante]

I didn't find the comments unclear.

You can read the first 1-2 sentences of each paragraph and get a sense for the main points.

[100001_100011]

I don't find this argument coherent.

Did someone pay you to come here and write these things?

Are you a lawyer?

Are you a crook?

> This is completely and utterly irrelevant and has not stopped anyone from performing massive fraud.

So is fiat currency.

[astrange]

When that guy hacked the DAO and Ethereum reversed the transaction, did he keep the coins or not?

[2muchcoffeeman]

They forked the blockchain right? So the person still has them on the old chain.

[astrange]

And what are they good for there?

[fellellor]

It's a democratic decision. Everyone agreed that chain is no good. Just like everyone agrees on the current state of the chain.

[astrange]

I agree with that, but that's the reason you can't truly store value forever irreversibly. If you can't reverse transactions, you can just abandon the whole currency and start over, and eventually they'll do that.

[fellellor]

Irreversible permanent value storage seems like a dubious aim. Gold seems like a good storage of value now but what if in the future there were an explosion in gold supply because humanity developed the capability to mine the asteroids? Same with crypto because people might just stop mining and move on to other “disrupters”. Ultimately people need to understand that value of something itself is a social decision and not inherent. In my opinion the entire crypto space has been propelled in the wrong direction by treating these tokens as assets which presumably “store value” rather than developing them into fast moving easily transactable currencies, cross chain swapping etc. This would have led to freer taxless societies and communes. Instead the greed of “number go up” took over and now people will reap what they sowed.