> We’ve received some small donations here and there, in hindsight we should have secured these funds much earlier[1], but the relatively large recent donation has spurred us into action. Essentially what we did was move the funds to hardware wallets owned by the core development team. This way we have significantly reduced the risk of the funds being stolen.
Bitcoin's coolest feature is perhaps it's biggest weakness. I think virtually all of the people to whom Bitcoin is appealing have had access to a banking system which means we have never had to think about securing our wealth. IMO being able to safely secure the secret that would unlock a wallet from both destruction and theft is not easy. You can avoid the risk of destruction by redundantly storing the secret. Hardware wallets are a great option, probably the best one. Let's hope it's enough.
BTW: I did a mini-matching fundraising for a couple of days for Zig, based on some cryptocoins I had that were gathering dust. Conveniently enough there's a broker out there that was able to receive the cryptocurrency, exchange it and forward it to the Zig Foundation. This relieved the Zig team from the hassle of securing or exchanging the funds. See the thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28790988 -- I was able to donate my cryptocurrency to match funds donated using conventional means.
> You can avoid the risk of destruction by redundantly storing the secret.
Not disagreeing with you but then there are two places (or more) where the secret can be found and your funds stolen. As to having, in addition to that, a hardware wallet makes for yet another potential attack vector: is the hardware wallet unlocked by your fingerprint? Is the fingerprint reader secure? Is it protected by a PIN? How safe is your PIN? Is the HSM in the hardware wallet really unbreakable and really erasing everything after three tries and no attacker can bypass that?
You're quite right, there are risks with everything in life. I believe a hardware wallet to be far more secure than online banking. I think you'll find this interesting: https://trezor.io/shamir/
Using a hardware wallet doesn't mean you're physically storing it. It's just a user interface to make storing it a little easier and a little more secure than having it as a file on your computer or on a piece of paper.
I’m an amateur programmer and Nim was the first compiled language I properly tried after first learning to program with R and python. Love the language and found Manning’s Nim in Action a great starting point. Happy this popped up on HN as it spurred me to send a small donation.
Worth pointing out: notwithstanding the many and recurring howls of "Bitcoin is useless", "Show me an actual use case" often heard on HN, here is an actual example of a straight donor-to-receiver transaction where someone contributed to something he really likes and wants to support, and no third party being able to prevent it from happening or skim any of it.
If only for this specific use case (e.g. donate to wikileaks), there is actual intrinsic (and social) value in Bitcoin
That isn't really a use case in this particular instance not better served by a free ACH transfer.
It's also super disingenuous to suggest that the Bitcoin network isn't collecting its take. Miners are collecting block reward in the amount of 0.004BTC per transaction, roughly $250. This is a direct reduction in net welfare of the system. That's on top of the transaction fees of roughly $3-5.
So yeah, Bitcoin costs $255 to transact, vs a free ACH.
This is also not intrinsic value. Intrinsic value is the calculated value of Bitcoin which remains $0. All value ascribed to Bitcoin is extrinsic, and this transaction extracted non-trivial value.
There is strictly no such thing as intrinsic value. There is only supply and demand. We've talked about this before, but I guess there's no convincing you.
Sure there is. I can use gold for instance to manufacture bitcoin miners. This means gold has an intrinsic value. Can that value change over time? Sure. However, today, right now, I can't do anything with a bitcoin except pay to move it to a different wallet - and stare at it.
I can take gold and turn it into electronics, jewelry and so on. I can do things with it beyond looking at it. What that's worth is subject to market value, but intrinsic value is a math-based derivation of the present value of an asset based on its attributes and qualities (and their utility and marketability), not calculated from what the market will bear for its direct transaction.
Not that I'm advocating gold, I'm just using it as an example.
Intrinsic value is a subjective matter of philosophy.
Pickled cucumbers cannot be used to manufacture bitcoin miners, yet one can surely argue that they have “value” and a certain “price” (= “market value“) which is expected to be a proxy for the perceived intrinsic value.
How you perceive the intrinsic value is subjective, while market value is (though to be) objective. For example, if you personally don’t know what to do with pickles then they have zero (or even negative) value to you. Other people might have different valuation.
It's honestly, genuinely not a question of philosophy. It is in the "does anything mean anything?" way but we're not talking about that. We're using the economists definition. Which is well-defined and well structured and you can't just re-define away because it doesn't suit your narrative.
It's like trying to tell your debt collector "the real money is the friends we made along the way." Ok, maybe to you, but those kneecaps are still going to hurt in the morning.
> Pickled cucumbers cannot be used to manufacture bitcoin miners, yet one can surely argue that they have “value” and a certain “price” (= “market value“) which is expected to be a proxy for the perceived intrinsic value.
I cannot make sense of this argument. Pickled cucumbers have an intrinsic nutritional value. They're food. Sure they don't have calories, but they have vitamin A, K, calcium, potassium, sodium. You know, things you need, to live.
Folks are welcome to have their extrinsic valuation of pickles too, but that doesn't mean they don't also have an intrinsic value.
It’s an analogy, exposing the flaw in the previous statement:
> Intrinsic value is the calculated value of Bitcoin which remains $0.
You ascribe no intrinsic value to Bitcoin arbitrarily, because from your viewpoint there is no useful applications for it. And yet, one can use Bitcoin, for example, to store data on Bitcoin blockchain permanently, or to pay miners for performing transactions – this is intrinsic value, similar to nutritional value of pickles.
> You ascribe no intrinsic value to Bitcoin arbitrarily, because from your viewpoint there is no useful applications for it. And yet, one can use Bitcoin, for example, to store data on Bitcoin blockchain permanently, or to pay miners for performing transactions – this is intrinsic value, similar to nutritional value of pickles.
Not because there's no applications for it - there's crime - but because the value created doesn't accrue to Bitcoin, it accrues to the miners. You cannot use, touch, look at, do anything with a Bitcoin. You can pay miners to move it. That value accrues to miners.
[edit] It's like hoping your Starbucks gift cards go up in value because Starbucks sells more coffee.
>This is a direct reduction in net welfare of the system
Mining rewards are incentive to secure the network. Security increases the net welfare of the system.
Let's compare apples to apples. If you're including mining rewards in the cost for a bitcoin transaction, you should also includes Wells Fargo's payroll in the costs for a "free" ACH
> Mining rewards are incentive to secure the network. Security increases the net welfare of the system.
Only to a point. That's the problem, Bitcoin does not and cannot have a negative feedback cycle. It's got the 50 seatbelts problem. If you keep adding seatbelts at some point you're so far beyond safe that any additional incremental seatbelts are simply waste. If you're already consuming 10x as many resources as anyone can possibly muster to attack the network, then any incremental expenditure is simply waste, not added value, not security.
> If you're including mining rewards in the cost for a bitcoin transaction, you should also includes Wells Fargo's payroll in the costs for a "free" ACH
Wells Fargo provides far, far more services than simply facilitating interbank transfers.
ACHs aren't exactly free but they're close, it's like 3/10th of a cent in volume. Low enough that banks are willing to eat it to keep you as a customer. This is actually enough to cover all the costs associated with operating the network, including payroll, as it operates on a cost recovery basis. Because they're not setting fire to all the world's coal to achieve their security model, and a few server racks at the NACHA just aren't that expensive.
Have... you? Rwanda btw has a GDP per capita of $797. One bitcoin transaction costs 0.6% of GDP per capita at today's low rates. And that's just the direct fee. Once you take into account the indirect fee it's about 33% of GDP per capita.
I wasn't being flippant, that's the only reason I can think of that someone would end up utilizing Bitcoin to make this particular payment. If you have others I'm of course happy to hear you out but it's been 14 years and I haven't heard one...
Avoiding the law is a genuine and legitimate use case of Bitcoin not better served by the classic financial system.
There is, in fact, a good reason for a donor to use Bitcoin over ACH. If the donor obtained his Bitcoin through shady means, or does not want to pay taxes on it, spending the Bitcoin directly can allow the donor to avoid disclosing his identity. Converting to dollars and using an ACH transfer requires associating the money with his real name and identity.
There are no bank fees in the EU? In the US, most accounts need to maintain a minimum balance, otherwise they get hit with a monthly fee. Then there's the whole state and banking bureaucracy to deal with in setting up an account in the first place (citizenship, identification, paperwork, etc.) Whether it's hidden in fees or taxes a bank is not a charity so I doubt it costs "nothing at all".
Some banks charge "maintenance" fees monthly, usually some cents, afaik. But there are also banks that don't charge anything at all. Fact of the matter is that banks don't make their money on your account maintenance fees or sign-up fees, they make their money by investing YOUR money, so effectively the balance you see on your account might not actually be there, and is allocated for you only when you withdraw. That's how banks work, afaik. That being said, money transfer as such from one EU bank to another doesn't cost anything at all.
Also, opening bank accounts these days is done entirely online and usually you get approved within an hour or so. Apart from having to scan my ID with my phone's camera, I don't remember any bureaucracy.
Irreversibly sounds awful lol. However, that aside, how many people do you know with this particular problem? Have you ever run into an issue transferring $1,000,000,000? Has anyone you know ever run into that issue?
I always find it funny how the crypto fanboy counter-argument is something so edge-case that it would never happen to 99% of people. So you're saying that to benefit from crypto I should be a billionaire?
99% is actually generous lol. There's 2,200 US dollar billionaires globally, and if you're sending $1B you probably have at least $2B which is going to narrow down the problem space pretty significantly. However, being generous, that's a problem that 99.99997% of the world cannot by definition have.
Maybe crypto just isn't for us plebs. On the other hand when I get paid my salary I can be pretty damn sure it still has enough value to be able to pay my bills even a year from now. With crypto I don't think I could even get a good nights sleep not knowing if my money is worth 50% less tomorrow, or 50% more. I also tend to lose things a lot, which with a regular bank is no problem, I just call support and show my ID or what-not, but with crypto I would end up homeless, and those conveniences are very much worth the tiny bank fees if you ask me.
There may not be a price directly associated with the transaction, but it certainly has a cost. The fact that the cost is externalized does not eliminate it.
Lol. In my country there is no easy way to do an international bank transfer. Crypto is literally the only solution I can imagine if I want to donate a few bucks to a FOSS project, all other options would be too much effort and too expensive.
I personally feel that Visa and other major transaction providers should be treated as critical infrastructure and either nationalized or regulated such that they are required by law to process every legal transaction.
However it does not therefore follow that making your own money that consumes as much power as Poland (60 days of power for the average US household per transaction) or generates as much e-waste as the Netherlands each year is a better solution in any way. Certainly not while miners re-activate shuttered fossil fuel plants and burn Kazakh coal. It's an abject, unmitigated disaster. All while processing the transaction volume of a small Costco.
People have trouble coming to an agreement with their neighbors — and here you are asking for all countries of the world to decide how they are going to legislate multinational entities like Visa in simple, straightforward, and mutually fair way. And United Nations is going to ensure that no country can forbid Visa to operate on its territory.
Each country is surely going to legislate within its borders, but outside it's quickly turning into the international law territory. And the great secret of international law is that there isn't any.
Bitcoin at least provides actually internationally enforceable operation framework. You cannot unilaterally alter the deal.
You've created quite a strawman here. None of that is really necessary. Each individual country can legislate how they want Visa to operate within their borders and Visa can take it or leave it. Most major countries or regions have their own payment rails, and if Visa wants to play, they'll have to play by the rules. It's not nearly as hard as you make it out to be. No UN needed.
For each individual country in isolation – relatively easy, yes. What’s hard is universal consensus.
If organization X is considered shady by country A, but totally legit in country B, then Visa operating in both countries A and B cannot allow transfers from B to A. Regardless of what country B and its residents think, Visa would get into trouble with country A. Country B cannot legislate Visa to ignore the laws of A, and there is no recourse for residents of B.
Universal consensus isn't required. It's up to individual countries to decide how they choose to run their payment networks and if that means you cannot transfer between countries, that's a choice they make. They can just achieve this with local or regional subsidiaries, as they already do. Multinationals already handle this exact situation all the time.
Marijuana is a federal crime in the US and basically everywhere else on Earth, but you can buy pot at Canada's government-run pot dispensaries online with your Visa, Mastercard and American Express cards. Like at http://ocs.ca
I once donated a few Bitcoin to a free software project. At the time 1BTC cost about one tank of gas. I sold the remainder when I doubled my investment and thought I walked away lucky. Now 1BTC costs more than the car I’m putting the gas in. Oh well.
Well, it required people like you actually using it to have any value in the start didn’t it? There had to be “losers” for there to ever be winners. But you’re not a loser because you still came out ahead.
I’m not an economist or even an intelligent person, so this could be a terrible assessment of the situation.
It accrues value specifically because people don't use it.
Currencies don't skyrocket in value because it cripples the economy if that happens. In currency terms, it would yield a deflationary spiral. What happens is people save their currency instead of spending it, which causes retailers to lower the prices to incentivize spending. This in turn means they have less money to pay their workers, and they have to cut their pay and lay them off. This means the workers have less money to spend and the cycle continues.
Even without a deflationary spiral, there's something called the paradox of thrift. [1]
Something like 80% of Bitcoin hasn't moved in the last year.
If we set aside the influence of USDT, the narrative you're pointing to would be that people are valuing Bitcoin more highly because of its utility as some form of currency - maybe, one day. In reality, due to its fundamental limitations and incentive structures (2-3 tx/sec), it cannot be a currency. It will always be the currency of the future, forever.
I wish that when people put up crypto donation addresses, they at least included _one_ from a coin that doesn't have astronomical transaction fees. I like donating a couple bucks here and there to cool projects, but that will cost me three dollars if I use Bitcoin.
Most crypto chains suck for small-to-medium payments. The fees on some layer 2 solutions for Ethereum look promisingly low (between $0.06 and $0.30 depending on the specific L2), but these are just starting to get adopted and integrated into existing tools. Hopefully the tangle of ponzis will eventually emit a usable payment solution.
Just Google searching and looking at some random sites. haha. But they all agreed with each other, which is why I was wondering. It sounds like OP was listing bundled fees, not the actual block fee.
I'll censor reference to the coin but then it won't communicate the message to the intended audience: the dev team themselves who are clearly open to other coins.
If the dev team allocates the address (or if every.org adds support for that coin), I'll post a link to the transaction here.
BTW I donated BTC to Zig earlier this month [1], only reason I mentioned a different coin here is that the Nim team mentions both BTC and Eth in their post and I don't prefer going to an exchange.
And let's say another 500 USD up for grabs as a match. Any donations from HNers to the Nim project (in any kind of currency) I'll match for the next 48 hrs up to $500.
Wow, amazing. Thank you so much! Unfortunately this thread was demoted by HN mods so unlikely to be seen now, I don't suppose you'd allow me to tweet this out? :)
hey, just an fyi. I believe we definitely reached the $500 during the 48 hours. Not sure if you matched it yet, but even if you don't get a chance to, thank you for helping us get donations :)
Presumably people will gradually increase acceptance of lightning payments over the next few years. The downside it it requires a server somewhere to be online to accept donations, whereas just slapping up a Bitcoin address requires no infrastructure.
Agreed, but for a donation why not just go ahead and use super low fees anyway. The recipient can wait a few days for the transaction to confirm, or speed it up with Child Pays For Parent.
Sci-hub has a Nano address set up, but then the issue is they still need to redeem them into a more usable currency at some point and the work to do that is barely worth the bit that they have received. This is the one area that I am still holding out hope for crypto to improve, but the vision is lacking.
Don't reuse addresses not even for the sake of donation transparency (no other kind of donation would get this level of transparency, it is easy to re-raise crypto to those standards and also exceed it)
The master public key will let you cycle to an infinite number of new and unique addresses to send funds to.
But purely client side merchant solutions for bitcoin (and other crypto assets) are sorely lacking!
The first BTC usage I remember (before hearing that it was also used to buy drugs) being talked about was poker players using it to do "person to person" transfer between poker sites. Someone had money on PokerStars and you didn't but wanted some immediately. That person would send you $100 on PokerStars (using a "player to player" transfer) and you'd sent that person 200 BTC (back when BTC was at 50 cents). This was kinda common on poker forums between regulars (sadly I was too dumb to realize the value back then).
Sure it was gambling but it was neither black market nor money laundering.
P.S: an estimated 3% to 5% of the world's GDP is linked to criminal activities. There are hundreds of politicians in the Pandora papers. Money laundering predates cryptocurrencies by a very long time and it's a problem on a whole different scale.
Yep, you could even buy groceries with BTC, but the haters seem to overlook some things. I actually bought coffee with it before, and yeah, it is legal.
Nice, we’ve got $100k! I wonder what we’re going to spend our $88k on? Maybe we should use our $112k to hire somebody to work on the compiler full time? Would $85k be enough for them?
If I were a developer receiving cryptocurrency donations I'd be much happier to receive > $0 than $0 which would probably be the alternative if I didn't have a address people could send to.
It’s a joke about the volatility of Bitcoin, not a dismissal of donations.
I know Bitcoin proponents can be quite dismissive of anything that could potentially sound negative towards crypto, but I feel like we should not be having a discourse on HN where a joke like this has to be explained or which has people downvoting OP for making it. No matter your stance on Bitcoin it’s volatility is a matter of established fact, and it’s a fun joke, how the hell did humor die in the crowd of wallstreet bets HODL’rs screening yolo while betting their house on a stick because the ticket has high meme-value?
> It’s a joke about the volatility of Bitcoin, not a dismissal of donations.
I understood that :) My point was that although Bitcoin is volatile at this moment, I much rather receive donations in a volatile currency than no donations at all.
People who choose to attempt to understand bitcoin are either loud zealots, or stay quiet because why would they expose themselves? So the superficial criticism of volatility or "how do I reverse a fraudulent payment" is left to those who don't even bother to explore the subject.
Not really. $300k+ still isn't normal outside of the US (or even in the US outside of certain cities / companies). And that's the case even if you take benefits into account.
Historically there’s been a mentality on HN to avoid these repetitive shallow jokes (sorry, but it’s true) since they don’t lead to much interesting discussions, but maybe times are changing.
My big beef with crypto is that it seems to be very hard to convert it to cash when needed. The world is far from being the one in which BTC can actually pay the bills.
Bitcoin's coolest feature is perhaps it's biggest weakness. I think virtually all of the people to whom Bitcoin is appealing have had access to a banking system which means we have never had to think about securing our wealth. IMO being able to safely secure the secret that would unlock a wallet from both destruction and theft is not easy. You can avoid the risk of destruction by redundantly storing the secret. Hardware wallets are a great option, probably the best one. Let's hope it's enough.
BTW: I did a mini-matching fundraising for a couple of days for Zig, based on some cryptocoins I had that were gathering dust. Conveniently enough there's a broker out there that was able to receive the cryptocurrency, exchange it and forward it to the Zig Foundation. This relieved the Zig team from the hassle of securing or exchanging the funds. See the thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28790988 -- I was able to donate my cryptocurrency to match funds donated using conventional means.