There's a lot of nihilism in the world, and this is the way beyond it, whatever flavour your salvation happens to come in.

Not that you are technically wrong, not at all, that's where Jump came from. It's just that this is all completely blockchain-driven optimization, but the b-word is so dirty now that we've gotta go back to using TradFi for the rep.

All you had to do is download a wallet and transfer your Bitcoin directly.

In the UK and the rest of Europe, plant-based meat alternatives have been growing in popularity, quality, and variety over the last decade. It's never been easier for someone to go vegan without "giving up" their favourite foods.

When I see those 2-packs of Beyond Burgers on the shelves in the supermarket, they are marked down 40%, and they are still more expensive than a 4 pack from other brands. Makes zero sense to buy them.

You're assuming a world where digital content is administrated and supported by a centralized organization. If they stop respecting the license, it becomes worthless, no one can argue otherwise and no one is trying to.

A world where digital content is administrated by anyone (including by the user themselves) and interops with other services (games, social apps, or otherwise) does not see the assets suffer or lose value when one such service shuts its doors. They can just be taken elsewhere. One game goes down, a fork goes up, etc.

Blockchain does absolutely nothing to fix what's broken with today's systems, it provides the infrastructure for the alternative.

In principle (not always in practice), crypto protects you from that.

TypeScript would have my vote. I have my eye on Deno and Bun but they aren't there yet, Node gets the job done every time.

A similar thing happened to me the last time the Strid popped up on Reddit and HN. It was only a day after I had just returned from a popular walking route which passes alongside it and the Abbey.

> There isn’t a “Bitcoin classic” chain floating around with an old set of consensus rules.

Yes, there literally is a Bitcoin Classic, and prior to that was a Bitcoin XT. There's also Bitcoin Cash, and many others.

Even excluding hard forks which were chain splits (so upgrade only), there have been several. There were two hard forks in 2010, one to add OP_NOP and one fixing a critical bug where anyone could spend any Bitcoin. There was a hard fork in 2013 (BIP-50) because a block broke a limit and at least one double spend occurred.

Why comment if you aren't educated on the topic? Or rather, why actively spread misinformation?

Yes, a blockchain gives you an (ideally) immutable foundation. No, that doesn't mean that every transaction that invokes a smart contract has to be immutable. If a smart contract for a particular use case needs to have the ability to "backtrack", so it can, there's nothing stopping it.

It does help when you check the numbers before making your assertions.

> Clearly coinbase would have a bias to promote userbase

You discount the post because it is from Coinbase, yet every point made is backed up with up-to-date sources from firms you have already deemed appropriate, such as CipherTrace and Chainalysis. That's an... interesting perspective to hold. A bit of cognitive dissonance going on there, methinks?

> How do you think those scams will cash out ? Next step - Places like Tornado.

From your own sources, usually exchanges which implement KYC/AML policies equivalent to traditional banks. Did you actually read them or do you just plop a few keywords in Google and hope for the best?

> And the 'Facts' given ignore services like Tornado.cash. Conveniently wouldn't you agree ?

You think so, do you? Yet in your other source (https://www.unive.it/pag/fileadmin/user_upload/dipartimenti/...), we get this nugget:

> However, in spite of the money laundering risk associated with cryptocurrency mixing services, tumblers are used for lawful activities more often than for illegal ones.

You don't seem interested in a rational or data-driven discussion so there's little fruit to harvest here, I'll leave you to your imaginings.

Actually, I can quite easily argue that. Neither of your sources give evidence or numbers that justify your assertion.

In fact, less than 1% of transactions are shown to be illicit activity, and the majority of that is scams, not money laundering. Here's a report from your 2018 source, CipherTrace, only using more recent data: https://ciphertrace.com/2020-year-end-cryptocurrency-crime-a...

I quote:

> Cryptocurrency, with its similar characteristics, may likewise struggle to ever completely shake its bad reputation, despite illicit transactions making up less than 0.5% of Bitcoin’s yearly volume in 2020.

A more important clarification, which is precisely the reason I used blockchain instead:

Crypto != cryptocurrency.

You conflate the two several times across this thread, they are not the same.

With that aside, I'll ask again. Can you show some figures that back your assertion that there is a "high rate of money laundering flowing through crypto[currency]"? I would assume not, given that the very firms actively working with regulators and monitoring this activity disagree with that assertion.

Here's a nice, sourced writeup for you so that you can spread accurate information and not assumption construed as fact in the future: https://blog.coinbase.com/fact-check-crypto-is-increasingly-...

Incredibly high relative to what exactly? The total exchange volume of the cryptocurrency industry? Can you show some figures to back that assertion? OR are you talking relative to the global economy? In that case, it's not even a drop in the bucket.

Clearly the Tornado Cash team should have simply started a bank instead, then they would only need pay a fine and carry on.

I believe we're still very early on this front, there's lots of opportunity for innovation in terms of Sybil defense. Dox Your Customer is the easiest and naturally the most at odds with the Web3 paradigm, but there are others that make fewer compromises which have been tried with varying levels of success. Vouch networks/social graphs, attestation or reputation systems, video identity registries, recurring cost, time-coordinated Turing tests, etc.

I am certain novel approaches will continue to emerge until we land on something robust without sacrificing decentralization or the right to privacy.