mjnaus

I was just informed by the Thai embassy in The Hague that the 15th of January cut-off date for Test&Go QR codes has been revoked. As in there will not be any cut-off date. This message was posted on the official FB page of said Thai embassy. Myself and my wife are scheduled to arrive on the 17th, hence we have been following the recent developments closely. My wife has also send the embassy a message to double checked and they indeed confirmed that we will be able to enter with the Test&Go QR code that has been issued to us. Link to the FB post: https://www.facebook.com/ThaiEmbassy.Hague/posts/4896993847019655

Is not newsworthy now either....

Just because something is decentralized and permission-less, does not mean it can not be regulated. It sure can, and will be. That, and only that, is the way forward for the industry as a whole. What we're already seeing right now is on and off-ramps being regulated; exchanges, trading apps, etc. And since, at least at this stage, the world of crypto does not yet stands on its own feet, this effectively (although indirectly) regulates the crypto industry as a whole to an extend. But regulation does not stop there. Regulators in the US and EU have stablecoins in their crosshairs at the moment. Looking at the market caps of the largest ones, and the way they're collateralized (looking at you Tether!) these stables are an obvious target for regulators. Even though the underlying tech is decentralized and permission-less, the largest stablecoins are run by US legal entities and are therefor open to regulation from authorities. Furthermore, the SEC can simply classify certain digital assets as securities, and thereby automatically applying an existing legal framework (as done with Ripple for example). Don't make the mistake of thinking regulation isn't coming, it's a given that it is. And it's a good thing.

Bunch of clueless fud. Keep your assets in a cold wallet; problem solved. Depending on the worth of your assets and your preferred wallet, there's plenty of recovery options to choose from. The whole point of using hardware wallets is you do not have to remember your private keys. With actual full control and ownership of your digital assets comes responsibility; there's nobody to call when you fudge things up. If that scares you, digital assets aren't for you. Best stick to buying trad-fi assets while your bank or broker holds your hand...

Let's rephrase this, shall we? Regulators who envision a limited, reduced role for cryptocurrency in the economy may have to rethink their options as they gradually come to terms with the fact that their permission is irrelevant and not needed.

Oldtimer, my brain cycles are better spend on being productive rather than feeding some dusty internet troll. Have had you on ignore for quite a while now, but noticed that little gem by accident. Couldn't resist. Anyways, happy trolling and make sure to pick up some shares in one of those last remaining phone book companies (I have it on good authority that they're gonna make a huge comeback and give blockchain companies a run for their money).

This one takes the cake ???? Damn near ruined my computer as I was just taking a sip of coffee while reading this little gem. Comparing a blockchain that's decentralized, trustless, permissionless and censorship resistant to the phonebook.... Yeah bud, they are indeed one 100% the same. Bitcoin would have definitely gained the traction it did if SN decided to track the currency in a paper book. All joking aside, your posts in various crypto related threads the past years are finally starting to make sense to me. In your world, a world where blockchain = phonebook, none of this makes sense. And for what it's worth; I also don't think phonebook technology makes a better financial system or solves any real world issues ????

I know, right? Magical times we’re living in eh? ????

This is going to be my last reply on the subject. The pointless going around in circles is just not worth it. I never said nobody pays for security of the chain. It's these non-sensical assumptions that makes it feel I am arguing with a 10 year old. It's painstakingly obvious that securing the chain costs money and that this security is paid for by transaction fees and new coin issuance (block rewards). I also never stated that this is cheap; it is obviously not (one L1's that is, L2's is a different story). Which is fine, as a higher security budget allows for better security. Fall out of this is a short term problem, or long term depending on the specific chain and the use case the chain is chasing. I honestly have lost what it is you're trying to argue at this point. It seems you're just continuing this simply for the sake of the argument. All you're doing right now is making painstakingly obvious statements that nobody has argued against. I certainly haven't. Perhaps we agree more than we think? I don't know. Anyhow, throwing in the towel for now. Enjoy the remainder of your journey and for God's sake, try and keep an open mind (saying you do obviously isn't quite the same as actually doing so ????).

Man, this is getting tiring. Let me try this again. I take 96 ETH and stake it on the Beacon chain. As a reward I receive 4.8 annually (0.4 ETH monthly). These rewards are paid directly from a portion of the transaction fees on the network. Voila; cashflow generated by ETH. If you're still arguing that it's the staking contract that generates the yield, which is akin to making the non-sensical statement that it's my stock broker account that's paying me my dividends as opposed to the stocks held in the account, I don't know what to tell you other than we should all be thankful you're not working in financial services.

I thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for your patience. You are, indeed, too kind ser ???? It's hard for me to have a serious discussion about the merits of L2's when you're, seriously, asking why they'd need an L1 at all. This just clearly show you do not grasp the most basic concepts than define a true L2. Go do your homework and try again.

Definitely not perfect. It depends on the type of L2. Since there seems to be consensus in the dev community that roll-ups are, currently the best option, I’ll focus on those. Loss of composability is a problem; as smart contracts on the roll-up L2 can not directly communicate with smart contracts on the L1 or other L2’s. This is a problem for DeFi protocols that would, ideally, span both the L1 and (multiple) L2’s. Eventually bridge protocols will solve this, but we’re not quite there yet. Another problem is fraud proofs. Since roll-ups move computation off the L1 and the roll-up L2 will post computation results to the L1 while the smart contract is located on the roll-up L2. So the L1 can’t verify the posted data is indeed correct. Going into the details of how this is tackled is going to be long technical affair, so I’ll limit myself to the downsides of the two main solutions to this problem. Either we’re dealing with a long time to finality (about a week) on the L1 (with optimistic roll-ups) or extremely resource intensive cryptography (zero knowledge roll-up). The first generation will face the long time to finality on the L1 problem; however this isn’t always a problem; it boils down to the nature of the transaction. And there are ways around the problem, but these come with trade-offs. So L2’s are by no means perfect and won’t solve everything. They’re a part of the solution and will solve certain problems (like high gas fees for low value transactions)

Fine. ETH held in a wallet isn’t not a productive asset. Stake ETH is. Semantic bickering IMO, but whatever. Yes, definitely in agreement here; Bitcoin is not a productive asset afaik. As far as the greater fool theory goes; at it’s core it’s nothing more then market forces (supply vs demand). As long as demand is higher then supply, the price will go up. As to wether demand is mainly driven by the hopes of selling for profit later; I definitely think it plays a large role with Bitcoin, but even more so with meme coins. With Bitcoin, there’s still a large segment of buyers who will hold no matter what, in which case greater fools theory doesn’t exactly apply.

Close, but no cigar. It’s the ETH that generates the yield, not the smart contract. Have a look at this article, perhaps the author does a better job explaining (although I thought I explained it pretty clearly).

I thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for your patience. You are, indeed, too kind ser ???? It's hard for me to have a serious discussion about the merits of L2's when you're, seriously, asking why they'd need an L1 at all. This just clearly show you do not grasp the most basic concepts than define a true L2. Go do your homework and try again.

Honestly don't think that posting random anon's thoughts on the matter is going to do anything for this discussion. I can go and grab quotes from posts that argue the other side; then what?

No, that is obviously NOT what keeps people away. The $2.5mil/hour I referred to is the cost of sustaining a 51% percent attack per hour, however this only refers to maintaining the needed hashrate. This does NOT include the capital requirements for building the infrastructure needed to perform the attack. Honestly, I am surprised you do not know/understand this stuff. And I actually don't mean that as an insult. You claim you have researched blockchains above and beyond; yet you do not understand the basics of how the largest chains secure themselves. The economic security budgets and models for both Bitcoin and Ethereum are well-known in the public domain, have been discussed for years and come down to basic math. They also have been scrutinized by people way smarter then me, and yes, you. Estimates put the value of the economic fence around Bitcoin at ~$7.5bil (based on roughly 150 million terahash per second, costed at $50 to manufacture and deploy 1 terrahash per second). For Ethereum, the math is roughly the same, depending on the current hashrate. Once the merge to PoS happens, the situation becomes different where a 51% attack would require half of the ETH locked in the staking contract on the Beacon chain (currently 6.5mil ETH, so the math comes to 3.25mil * $4k), so somewhere around the $13bil mark. Those numbers are current; when PoS goes life the expectations come to around 10mil ETH staked, putting the fence at roughly $20bil, depending on the price of ETH. Even with the above numbers, in theory, such an attack is still possible. Yet, extremely unlikely as is empirically evident. This does not take into account the fall-out of such an attack. Even if the attack is succesfull from a technical point of view, the ramifications could be such that the "haul" becomes worthless pretty quickly. Assuming PoW, it's not unlikely that the now longest chain (the result of the 51%) will be discarded by the miners not participating in the attack which will continue mining the shorter chain. If the community agrees the shorter chain is now the true chain, the haul of the 51% attack would now loose most if not all of it's value. Now, you want to go back to argue the merits of L2's? Or do you need me to explain once more why true L2's can't exist without the L1? ????

Ah shoot! Does that mean I now have to live without your “sage counsel”? Sure gonna miss our little chats ???? Now, oh wise one, please explain me how in the following example, ETH is not a productive asset: stETH (tokens representing a share of ETH in the Beacon chain staking contact) deployed into a DeFi protocol is generating an APY of 8%. This APY is automatically converted into stable coins deposited into my company’s wallet monthly. So the staked ETH is generating 0,66% of monthly cashflow without affecting the principle. Can’t wait for your explantation on how, somehow, that 8% APY (0.66% monthly) that lands in my company’s wallet isn’t cashflow generated by our staked ETH. Let’s hear it bud ????

I never said “all”, did I?

Says the religiously anti-crypto fanatic who’s never bought or sold crypto in his life….

I never said it does not happen. Of course it does. But it's not systemic by any means. Cash is still king in the money laundering game.

That’s nice if it weren’t for the simple fact that crypto’s like Bitcoin and Ethereum are total <deleted> when it comes to money laundering. Virtually every single on/off ramp (ie exchanges) have KYC and AML measures in place. Hell, even Binance caved and implemented KYC for most of their customer base. So with transparent on/off ramps combined with the fact that once on-chain, every single transaction is transparent and traceable, main crypto’s like Bitcoin and Ethereum make for pretty <deleted>ty money laundering mechanics.

Ok, I am not going to respond to everything here, because all of this discuss has been discussed to death. You think you're the first person to come with the brilliant idea of a 51% attack? Trust me, people a whole lot smarter than yourself and me have been working on this since the dawn of crypto. If you would have looked into the difference between Bitcoin mining and Ether mining, you'd know the two are not compatible. Bitcoin mining rigs can not mine Ether. And even if they could, it wouldn't change anything as you'd still face the same issues. Let me just leave you with this: no system ever, anywhere, has zero attack surface. Every possible system has, at least, theoretical attack vectors and the Ethereum and Bitcoin networks are no different. Nor is the traditional banking system. Once a blockchain network reaches escape velocity and the network reaches scale, performing a 51% attack becomes extremely unlikely. As is evident by reality. If it could be done, it would be done. It is as simple as that. Again, do you honestly believe you're the first person to come up with this? It's been tried by people a whole lot smarter with a whole lot more resources. And guess what.... they failed. The conventional banking system's attack surface is many, many times higher than that of a properly secured blockchain. As is evident by the numerous incidents and hacks over the years. Both the Bitcoin network and the Ethereum network, have experienced ZERO, I repeat ZERO, hacks since they came into existence. But hey, if you sleep better trusting the archaic security of the conventional banking system, by all means. Sigh.... because an L2 depends on the security of the underlying L1? Both Optimism and Arbitrum are working, and have increasing liquidity. Both use the native Ethereum asset. Evaluate whatever you want. At this point, I seriously doubt you're in a position you actually can, even with your "CS background". But by all means, give it a whirl. At the very least, it'll allow for some entertaining reading material ????

That's just hilarious. "They all think it's stupid", yeah? ???? Stupid crypto, stupid! As yourself, I also come from a CS background. I have yet to meet the first engineer that would call any emerging tech field "stupid". But I guess you and I move in different circles. And the entire CS field is ignoring the space, eh? You sure about that? It's statements like this that, honestly, just make you sound completely ridiculous and make it hard for me to take anything you say seriously. You only know of one university with a blockchain program? Perhaps you should look beyond the local community college world and broaden your horizon a bit: 1. University Of Singapore 2. University of California Berkeley 3. University of Zurich 4. MIT 5. HK Polytechnic University 6. RMIT 7. UCL 8. Stanford 9. Oxford 10. Delf University of Technology All of the above teach courses on the subject and run research programs related to blockchain tech and crypto currencies. Love to see how you'll be spinning this one. I am sure you'll come up with something fun ???? Now, here's a challenge for you: find me any technical university in the top 20 institutes in the world that does not run a blockchain program.

Ok. So with all the "research" you have done and "knowledge" you have acquired, you have somehow completely missed the fact that you're able to stake your ETH and earn 5-6% without doing much of anything? Combined with a yield farming position, I am earning around 8% at the moment on my ETH. Alright bud; let's see some mental gymnastics. Can't wait to see how you'll be spinning this one.