#e: actually on reflection i guess you could also compute the initial hash client-side

[itsbenedict]

Huh- so, hang on. Isn't that an easy exploit to close? Have any external embed attached to a hash of the content of that embed, calculated server-side when a post with an embed is submitted- and then when a user goes to load the content later, the browser downloads the content but the site doesn't display the content until it recomputes the hash client-side and verifies that it matches the metadata on the embed. If not, it shows some sort of "sorry, this content is broken" message instead. You get a bunch of link rot, sure, but no worse than what forums had to deal with.

I think one of the biggest obstacles to getting a social media platform off the ground in 2023 is that big sites like Twitter and YouTube have created an expectation that registering an account should automatically come with effectively unlimited storage and bandwidth for whatever media you care to post, which creates a hard entry barrier for any platform without major financial backing. Like, we can wax rhapsodic about early 2000s forum culture all we like, but one of the main unwritten rules that allowed smaller forums to survive was never turning image hosting on for free accounts – either you made people figure out their own solutions for hosting images, or you charged a fee. If you were lucky, a forum with free registration might have let you host a banner for your signature on their servers, but that was it! Unless someone manages to convince large numbers of folks that a text-only social media platform is worth participating in, I'm not sure there's any good way forward for smaller outfits at this point.

[cryptoga-blog]

FUD From All Sides: In Defense of CME's Bitcoin Futures Approach

http://www.cryptoga.com/news/fud-from-all-sides-in-defense-of-cmes-bitcoin-futures-approach/

FUD From All Sides: In Defense of CME's Bitcoin Futures Approach

William Mallers, Jr. began To start with American Price cut Corporation with his father in 1984, eventually developing it into the third-most significant discounted futures brokerage. He offered it in 2001 to Gentleman Money and then retired. 

In this impression piece, Mallers argues CME Group’s plan to give bitcoin futures will gain the futures investing industry and the bitcoin neighborhood alike – notwithstanding hand-wringing in each worlds about the plan.

I am a member of the Chicago Mercantile Trade. I’ve also been a bitcoiner given that 2013. So, when CME Team introduced its intention to launch bitcoin futures in the coming months, I thought, “Excellent! Way to go, CME.”

The initially exchange to give a futures deal on bitcoin is good news for my CME friends: extra investing volume and and speculative possibilities. And it can be also good for my bitcoin friends: the legitimacy and entry is confident to help with adoption and better bitcoin price ranges. Acquire-acquire! Suitable?

Well, that wasn’t rather the response I got.

As an alternative I listened to just about every single damaging stereotype about each futures investing and bitcoin, from each communities. Let us try to place these misperceptions to rest.

‘Tulips’ in 5,4,3��

To start with, there is this from the futures industry’s most widely read through blog site, John Lothian Information:

“The threat of bitcoin is in its history and the cloud encompassing its creation and early fraudulent days. Who is Satoshi? Exactly where is he today? What took place at Mt. Gox? Is it even now made use of to launder dollars? Why won’t China allow people trade bitcoin and what does this have to do with dollars laundering or funds controls?”

Fantastic Lord. If you have been in enough arguments with bitcoin skeptics you know what is actually coming just after the drug-working, dollars-laundering slam, right? Subsequent up: the tulip-bulb analogy.

Guaranteed enough, Lothian suggests, “I never want to be on the erroneous aspect of history. But the history I am wanting at is … 1636-37. That was the peak of tulipmania.”

And that, my friends, is why I invested my initially two several years in bitcoin not sharing my passion with any non-bitcoiners. “Bitcoin? Never ever listened to of it.”

But simply because I have benefited from all the tough operate that other people have carried out to advance this project – web hosting meetups, dispelling misinformation – and all I’ve carried out is log into my account and simply click “Buy,” I thought I might try to do my component.

A margin clerk’s desire

Here’s what I wrote to Lothian (a former personnel at the futures brokerage I ran), and probably it will help you with your bitcoin futures doubters:

“Hey John, it can be Junior from your previous FADC [First American Discount Corporation] days and I’ll be happy to help you understand bitcoin.

“But initially – recall how you made use of to try to gather margin dollars by initially inquiring the shopper to deliver a make contact with at his bank who could affirm that he had adequate funds in his account and that he had initiated the wire. Why did we have you do that? Due to the fact we understood we would not get the dollars right until the subsequent day his bank, while debiting his account straight away, would wait around right until the finish of the day to wire us the dollars (unless of course he stopped the wire) and our bank would not credit rating us right until mid-early morning the subsequent day, at the earliest.

“Now, think about, as a substitute of that 24-hour headache, your underneath-margined shopper simply waved his cell cellphone at our FADC QR code and we got the dollars in just 10 minutes, or at most a number of hrs. Bitcoin is a margin clerk’s desire occur genuine: in the vicinity of-prompt peer-to-peer price transfer! It really is quick to see why Jamie Dimon does not like it, but a former margin clerk? You ought to be loving this technology and cheering for its adoption!                                                                                     

“I know acquiring an asset protected by the computing electric power of a globally distributed community doesn’t sense as secure as acquiring armed guards safeguarding a bank vault, but if you get some time, there are web-sites that estimate the value of amassing enough computing electric power to defraud the bitcoin community. This web page estimates about $1 billion in electrical energy for each day, furthermore above $1 billion in products, to counterfeit one transaction. In other text, it would be way cheaper for the Hunt brothers to corner today’s silver sector than it would be for me to con an on line retailer like Overstock into sending me free patio furniture. It really is termed a ‘51% attack’ simply because I’d will need to manage a the vast majority of the community hashing electric power to get a consensus mechanism to settle for my phony accounting.

“Bernie Madoff-type negatives are tough to pull off I will need several years to receive my victims’ believe in, I have to get a reliable accounting business to bless my cast statements, and so on … but Madoff’s con was far simpler than likely undetected while amassing billions’ worth of computing electric power. Additionally, given that new bitcoins are awarded to the miners proportionate to their computational contribution, if I did have that much computing electric power, I may as perfectly amass bitcoins the straightforward way, right?

“That’s one of the pleasurable insights into this project: it manages to align all members by way of financial incentive.”

Overpowering need

When Terry Duffy, CME’s CEO, suggests it can be featuring bitcoin futures in response to shopper need, I am confident he’s right.

I know from crafting brochures for commodity investing advisors that dollars managers want non-correlated belongings. That’s the only reason they have gold.

When the stock sector tanks or a terrorist assault comes about, which is when gold rallies. Just after 9/11, the stock sector dropped above 7 percent, but gold spiked.

Bitcoin, like gold, is a ideal non-correlated asset to incorporate to an investment decision portfolio. I am not stunned that there is such mind-boggling need for bitcoin futures from traders. Now, every single trader is likely to have the choice to spend right there on their display devoid of acquiring to do the onerous operate of shopping for and securing bitcoin alone.

Chance controls

As for claims that CME futures investing will place the exchange at threat, they are overblown.

CME clearing privilege involves a large quantity of funds. If a member’s funds level drops under the threshold demanded to obvious, the CME gets rid of shopper accounts and spots them with a business that has the funds to assist them. Once again, clients occur initially.

Inventory index futures functioned as designed during the 1987 crash, grain futures similarly during the 1988 drought, currencies during the superior volatility just after the Plaza Accord. Contemplate this: prior to 1982, if you’d predicted wherever the most effective stock index deal would launch, you’d guess likely the New York Inventory Trade, right? But S&P 500 Index Futures introduced at the Chicago exchanges subsequent to the pork-stomach pit, U.S. Treasury futures subsequent to the soybean pit.

CME has carried out its homework on bitcoin it can be perfectly informed of bitcoin’s volatile selling price history and has the knowledge and controls in location to obvious bitcoin futures.

Wonderful, just isn’t it? The exchange that gives threat-management solutions ought to keep away from bitcoin simply because it is “dangerous?” Huh? I’ve under no circumstances seen anything at all like bitcoin that inspires such lame arguments from its opponents.

This ain’t Wall Avenue

Then, there is certainly all the bitcoiners’ FUD: “In this article comes Wall Avenue to push the selling price of bitcoin down, manipulate the sector and damage it for us!”

Suffice it to say, for lots of of the exact same motives I gave above, I never think that to be genuine.

Preserve in intellect that CME is not Wall Avenue. The Chicago exchanges have an ethos like bitcoin’s: transparency, security, independence and accountability.

To all the people hand-wringing on each sides, let us just see how this plays out. I have decades of knowledge with the Chicago exchanges and sense reasonably specific that you all are wasting your breath and spending as well much for entire-webpage ads in print newspapers.

Let us get this thing to the moon!

Disclosure: CME Team is an investor in CoinDesk’s dad or mum company, Digital Currency Team.

Downtown Chicago picture through Shutterstock.

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