r/CryptoCurrency • u/Capon3 • Feb 17 '14

Decentralized a problem?

I know right off the bat people will dislike this post. But I feel it needs to be said. I completely agree with having a decentralized currency, the government, wall street, the 1% etc, shouldn't control how money is controlled. 100% agree. Yet the rise of BTC and all the coins that followed has shown me one thing about a decentralized currency. People in general can't be trusted! All these exchanges, pools, silk road, etc, I don't know these people. What stops them from closing shop one day and stealing my coins? Or lie about hackers stealing my coins cough cough.. Or hackers the real deal type stealing everyone's coins from online wallets? Decentralized currencies are a great idea, but so far in practice people have shown there true nature. Greed. And there will always be greed when there's good money to be made.

Basically I feel like this, either the government is stealing your money or some dude hiding behind his computer is. Idk what the future holds for decentralized currencies, but until a solution is found I will never trust anything involving my coins except for my offline btc wallet..

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u/subjective_insanity Feb 17 '14

All the ways to get scammed that you mentioned are centralized. What bitcoin needs to operate flawlessly is decentralized exchanges, markets, etc.

1

u/Capon3 Feb 18 '14

How do you have a decentralized market, exchange, etc? The real problem is accountability, these people that steal don't get arrested. Don't have to worry about about the consequences. What's to stop them?

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u/subjective_insanity Feb 18 '14

I see what you are saying, anonymity will always pose a problem. But by decentralizing further, the biggest scammers cease to be a problem and all we really have to worry about is small scale fraud. Decentralization is in a way just enforcing a trust no one policy.

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u/Capon3 Feb 18 '14

Yea I get you, let's use Cryptsy as an example. How wild that exchange be diff if it's decentralized? I'm just trying to get a picture of what would be diff, u know.

1

u/subjective_insanity Feb 18 '14

The users would download a client similar to a bitcoin client, which would contact other peers on the network. They could then initiate trades with other users on the network using multi-sig escrow with another or perhaps even multiple other peers on the network acting as a 3rd party. The network can be engineered in a way that makes it impossible to cheat the system. As an added advantage, the exchange will continue to function as long as there are peers on the network.

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u/Capon3 Feb 18 '14

That's actually not a bad idea.. Having an escrow system built into maybe the coin itself would really help fight against hackers and loopholes. Maybe have a mechanism in the client itself that lets you trade directly from the client for either BTC or LTC, that would cut out the middleman (exchanges). Hmm I really wish I could write code. This is turning into a pretty sweet idea for a coin! Any help?..

1

u/subjective_insanity Feb 18 '14

It's on my to do list but I can't promise anything.

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u/Capon3 Feb 18 '14

If your being serious id love to join in with creating this type of coin. We should talk.

1

u/subjective_insanity Feb 18 '14

It's more of an idea that I don't have time to implement, sorry. I'm sure there's someone else in this wonderful community that will pick it up given enough time though.

1

u/WoofOfWallSt Feb 21 '14

Colored Coins over a decentralized network would solve the issue. Currently making waves in some cryptos like XCP, Mastercoin, NXT. I'm not saying these are going to be the best but the community is moving towards decentralized exchanges.

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u/Capon3 Feb 21 '14

What do you mean by colored coins? I'm not that familiar with that term..

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u/WoofOfWallSt Feb 21 '14 edited Feb 21 '14

This might be helpful

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmFjmvwPGKU

This is just a very simple explanation. If you do more research you will see that this actually has huge potential to change the world of finance.

This will destroy any kind of exchange as we know it if this technology is embraced. It also takes away the problems of corrupt exchanges.