timbowhiteThe Resolv hack: How one compromised key printed $23M
https://www.chainalysis.com/blog/lessons-from-the-resolv-hack/
If the admins can "lock all transactions", what's the point of it being a crypto?
Exactly. Stablecoins make zero sense.
Stablecoins enable cash-like (instantly redeemable and verifiable) payments for large amounts, for almost free.
In EU countries, you can't now buy a car with cash. You have to buy a bearer's check from your bank, which is expensive, requires that both parties have a brick and mortar bank, and doesn't work cross-border. Stablecoins solve this.
I don't know how this specific thing works, but I don't really see any fundamental problem with mixing and matching. If you believe in the benefits of crypto, then 50% crypto is still possibly better than 0%.
It's not like I forgo a lock on my front door just because my windows are made of glass.
Currency isn't a homebrew computer or backyard car project; it is either centralised or not; there is no in between.
Blockchain with central authority is the worst of both worlds.
Not really. At a traditional bank I have to trust n people with varying degrees of access. Et ceteris paribus, any reduction in n is an improvement, even if n is not zero.
Of course n can be smaller and the specific people less trustworthy, but that's quite a different thing.
At a traditional bank you have your national deposit insurance scheme; you get that in return for converting your "assets" to the said nations issued currency but accept the authorities control of the money supply and your funds.
With decentralised money, you get the safety of a globally distributed attestation backed by cryptography without a single authority controlling the supply of money or your funds.
There is no halfway option. You either have a single authority that can exercise control or you do not; number of delegates for exercise of control is almost irrelevant since you can change banks.
That access is to provide account support, no? Reverse fraudulent transactions and the like. A "bank" could just not do that save for if you're a large enough client to merit attention but why would I want to bank there if I'm not a large enough client?
FDIC does not cover bank theft[].
FDIC deposit insurance does not protect against losses due to theft or fraud, which are addressed by other laws.
That's covered by private bankers bond insurance, much like you could get for a decentralized stored pots of gold or you can buy insurance in the form of put options (like on IBIT) on the loss of value of bitcoin or if your cold wallet is stolen you can initiate legal proceedings against the thief.
[] https://www.fdic.gov/news/fact-sheets/crypto-fact-sheet-7-28...
That's good to know. I guess that makes sense though as those swindled by Madoff had to recoup their money through Madoff's estate instead of FDIC.
I guess Hollywood has mislead us yet again in pretty much every bank robbery scene with dialog like "Nobody panic. We're not stealing your money, we are stealing the bank's money".
Stablecoins aren't cryptocurrencies in any sense of the word. It's just electronic FIAT.
I mean they use Blockchain, right? Isn't that like the only real requirement for the name crypto?
As long as you burn as much electricity as Andorra does in a week just to make a transaction, you're probably a cryptocurrency. And that's their sole benefit it seems.
>I mean they use Blockchain, right? Isn't that like the only real requirement for the name crypto?
Absolutely not. Cryptocurrently exclusively refers to permissionless, decentralized, cryptographically secured, irreversible, fungible monetary system with a disinflationary or non-inflationary supply, following a voluntary, collectivized governance model.
A vast majority of tokens colloquially referred to as "cryptocurrency" couldn't be further from these principles. There are no stablecoins that are cryptocurrency. Ethereum is not cryptocurrency. Any coin issued by a corporation (e.g. Ripple) is not a cryptocurrency.
If your definition excludes Ethereum your understanding of the term so differs from everyone else's that we aren't talking about the same thing
Ethereum is a great utility token. Smart contracts absolutely have utility in the digital economy. It's just not a cryptocurrency, is all. It had a massive premine, there's no supply cap, it's subject to OFAC censorship, and has effectively demonstrated that just ~4.8% of the total ETH supply can vote to cause rollout and widespread adoption of a fork that reverses transactions.
We need different words for these fundamentally different things, because conflating them causes real confusion, as this very hack demonstrates. People are surprised that an admin can lock transactions precisely because the word "cryptocurrency" led them to assume properties that don't exist in stablecoins.
Is there even any currency that meets that definition? Iirc even bitcoin had some kind of reversal back in the day, or am I misremembering? I seem to recall bitcoin splitting in 2 for a while as there was some disagreement on whether the reversal should be made or not.
Idk, it's been a while and my memory is fuzzy.
Most blockchains nowadays are not proof of work anymore.
Makes it easier to do pump and dumps, was never about "privacy" or "decentralization" as web3 types parroted 4-5 years ago. Monero is the exception btw.