Quote from: DeboraMeeks on March 29, 2015, 09:13:56 PM

Quote from: andytoshi on March 29, 2015, 06:35:48 PM

Quote from: BlockaFett on March 29, 2015, 06:10:40 PM

Tok said cryptography 'wasn't a significant part' of cryptocurrencies. He didn't say they don't require them, so what was your point?

Can you (or Tok) point to a part of a cryptocurrency which isn't cryptography?

Quote from: gmaxwell on March 29, 2015, 06:45:16 PM

Quote from: toknormal on March 29, 2015, 04:08:41 PM

Cryptography has never been a significant part of cryptocurrency - even though it may share the first few letters. It works on a system of digital signatures.

It would seem that you actually do not understand what cryptography is in the modern sense.

A fundamental nature of information is that it wants to be freely copied everywhere to everyone. That any bit is equal and indistinguishable from any other bit of the same value and that any bit is eventually known to all who care. Cryptography is all that technology by which we hope to confine and constrain the nature of information, to put up fences and direct it to our exclusive purposes, against all attacks and in defiance of the seemingly (and perhaps actually) impossible. Digital signatures are cryptography by any modern definition and utilize the same tools and techniques (for example, a DSA signature is a linear equation encrypted with an additively homorphic encryption), and suffer from most of the same challenges as the message encryption systems to which you seem to be incorrectly defining cryptography as equivalent. Moreover, the use of digital signatures isn't the only (or even most relevant) aspect of cryptography in cryptocurrencies-- e.g. the prevention of double spending of otherwise perfectly copyable and indistinguishable information in a decentralized system is a cryptographic problem which we address using cryptographic tools, and-- like all other practical cryptography-- achieve far less than perfect confidence in our solution. As are more modest ends like interacting with strangers but not being subject to resource exhaustion from them.

Far more so than other sub-fields of engineering, cryptographic systems are doing something which is fundamentally at odds with nature and share an incredible fragility and subtly as a result (and perhaps all are failures, we have no proof otherwise).

A failure to understand and respect these considerations has resulted in a lot of harmful garbage and dysfunctional software.

I had been quietly amassing a little pile of Dash, but these two responses have crystalized the debate for me. BlockaFett got asked a question by a highly respected Bitcoin researcher and he is too afraid to answer, choosing instead to deflect and try point out Monero's failings (especially when the continuous shout of 'gui' is crap, I can see several options on the Monero website). toknormal got smacked down by a Bitcoin core developer for saying things I can only describe as childish rubbish.

I don't know if I'll ever buy Monero but I do know that Dash is perfectly described by gmaxwell in the post above: a lot of harmful garbage and dysfunctional software. My Dash is going to be sold over the next few days. I refuse to a cryptocurrency where the fanboys imagine that cryptography is uneccessary. What a stupid thing to say.

I suggest the Dash boys go read a book on crypto before they come back to this thread. They're embarassing themselves and they're embarrasing Evan Duffield. There's a very, very small chance Evan can come into this thread and respond to andytoshi and gmaxwell and redeem Dash from the mess these idiots have made...but I'm not holding my breath.

Deborah...that's not fair because I didn't see that post..i will reply now