[Cryptography] Krugman blockchain currency skepticism

jamesd at echeque.com jamesd at echeque.com
Mon Aug 6 19:08:27 EDT 2018


> On Mon, 2018-08-06 at 14:11 +0800, jamesd at echeque.com wrote:
>> The downside of Chaumian e-cash is very simple.  You need a single
>> centralized trusted server holding a small number unshared secrets.

On 07/08/2018 04:11, Benjamin Kreuter wrote:
> Not true, you can create a threshold scheme if you wanted to do so.

Threshold cryptography neither scales nor helps.

>> At
>> two in the morning Mueller kicks down your door and demands you
>> alter
>> the behavior of your server in ways that make it profoundly
>> untrustworthy.

> As others have asked, what is the problem we want to solve? 

Crytocurrency took off when quasi state entities started freezing the 
accounts of "Nazis".

Therefore that is the problem we want to solve.

> The
> beginning of this thread was a proposal that the problem is that the
> government might target an activist group's finances.


The government *is* targeting activist group's finances, which targeting 
has directly caused the boom in crypto currency.

> Now it sounds
> like you are talking about the government trying to attack the entire
> payment system.

If you have a payment system that allows the politically incorrect to 
buy and sell, the government will attack the entire payment system, as 
it did with e-gold and is now attempting to do with crypto currency. 
Crypto currency is not being shut down, but conversion between cash and 
crypto currency that is not linked to a tax file number is being shut 
down.  If that fails to have the desired result, expect further escalation.

And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, 
to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:

And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the 
name of the beast, or the number of his name.

> No, e-cash is not going to help if the government wants to forbid any
> use of the system -- but neither will cryptocurrencies based on proof-
> of-whatever.

The government has been trying to shut BitTorrent down.  How is that 
working out for them?

Cryptocurrency is difficult to shut down, short of turning off the 
entire internet.  Or it could be if done right.  Everyone in the world 
with sufficient money or connections seems to be able to get onto a vpn.

If it is decentralized, the only way to attack is to go for end users, 
and hard to stop end users short of taking them off the internet 
altogether, short of shutting down the internet itself altogether.



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