Cryptocurrencies Aren't 'Crypto' (vice.com) 169
Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai, writing for the Motherboard: Lately on the internet, people in the world of Bitcoin and other digital currencies are starting to use the word "crypto" as a catch-all term for the lightly regulated and burgeoning world of digital currencies in general, or for the word "cryptocurrency" -- which probably shouldn't even be called "currency," by the way. For example, in response to the recent rise of Bitcoin's price, the CEO of Shapeshift recently tweeted: "don't go into debt to buy crypto at these prices." "Crypto Stocks Rise," read a headline on Tuesday from the trade publication Investor Business Daily. But the financial blog Seeking Alpha outdid them all by publishing a post titled "Tales From The Crypto." Excuse me, "the crypto" what? As someone who has read and written about cryptography for a few years now, and who is a big fan of Crypto, the 2001 book by Steven Levy, this is a problem. "Crypto" does not mean cryptocurrency. The above are just three examples picked at random, but if you don't believe me, just search "crypto" on Google News or Twitter. On the internet, "crypto" has always been used to refer to cryptography. Think, for example, the term "Crypto Wars," which refer to government (originally the US government) efforts to undermine and slow down the adoption of unbreakable communications systems. By the way, the book Crypto isn't about Bitcoin. It's about cryptography, and more in particular, about the cryptographers who fought the government in the so-called Crypto Wars.
Pedeantics Day (Score:2)
This must be the weekly Pedant day.
A whole story on how Crypto Currencies are not cryptography.
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I think he point is that cryptography isn't just about "crypto currencies".
It's another example of people who don't understand the world of technology changing the meaning of a word from the technical meaning (crypto being short for cryptography) to the meaning they want it to mean (crypto being short for cryptography based digital currency, a subset of cryptography itself).
It's like "literally" being changed to means "figuratively", mainly be cause people didn't understand sarcasm, and/or didn't know the w
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I didn't know it was that time already! The story wasn't really pedantic enough for me to realise...
The term "crypto" is not short for cryptography as many people (incorrectly) believe. The term cryptography only refers to the making of codes. The correct term is cryptology - which means both making and breaking codes. This is the actual meaning that people are using when they refer to crypto - cryptology. The common usage of the term cyptography is slightly incorrect.
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Try to complete the whole thought inside your head before you write it down. What do you think “breaking codes” refers to?
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So where is the error?
Re: Blockchain-currencies. (Score:1)
Let's Just Reuse 90s Buzz Words (Score:5, Funny)
We would benefit from just calling everything "cyber" and replacing hashtags with AOL keywords.
Re: Let's Just Reuse 90s Buzz Words (Score:1)
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cyber-currency is more appropriate anyway...
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No. These currencies use strong cryptographic hashing and cryptographic signatures, so 'crypto' is more accurate than 'cyber'.
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If you wrote an Eliza-like program to put "cyber-" prefixes before common nouns, you could call it "Cybercyber", of "Cyber-squared".
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We would benefit from just calling everything "cyber" and replacing hashtags with AOL keywords.
Only if we could figure out how to synergize the paradigms.
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Surely "Kryptocurrency" is copyrighted and trademarked by DC Comics.
Similar sounding, more accurate: kleptocurrency (Score:5, Funny)
Given that what you do with these things is give money to an exchange that will steal from you, I propose we call them kleptocurrency.
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Don't expect media and the markets to use the officially approved nerd dictionary.
Calling a police officer a cop was once a derogatory remark, you see how that one worked out.
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Hack / Crack
Ah yes, the most headbangingly desperate marketing failure since that vain attempt to get people to pronounce Canoe Men's Cologne "Can-no-way."
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T Reginald Gibbons tried to clarify the difference in this memorable article
http://adequacy.org/stories/20... [adequacy.org]
Best thing about it is the comments from l33t h@x0rz who couldn't spot the whole thing was designed to troll them. Good times, man. Good times.
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It's called GNU/Linux. GNU/Linux. Why won't you fucking call it GNU/Linux.
- rms
Cause that's encryption and from the code provided by Phil Zimmermann's PGP.
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Ah, I'm gonna cut the cryptographic community some slack here and say they get to put their foot down... after all we already stole "code" from them to now mean software.
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after all we already stole "code" from them to now mean software.
As usual we are in the dim twilight of Poe's Law here, but just in case you were serious: no, no we did not. "Code" does not exclusively mean "secret code", and is not solely the domain of cryptology.
Etymologically, "code" means simply "writing" or "book". As a term of art, its use for systems of formal expression, and documents using such systems, is at least as old as its cryptological use.
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Appers are gonna app.
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its called code when its published and pushed on users with more than a few zeroday and other bugs.
if it ever reaches maturation/testing to be bug free then it can claim to be a program.
Not gonna fly (Score:2)
Any more than we were able to convince the marketing shitheads that a GB is 1,073,741,824 not an even 1,000,000,000
Maybe we can do something like was done to differentiate like Gigibyte vs Gigabyte? Cripto instead of Crypto?
Or Bloodto instead of Cripto? ;)
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1,073,741,824 is a much more even number than 1,000,000,000 is.
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but 1,073,741,824 is divisible by 2 32 times while 1,000,000,000 is divisible by 2 only 9 times.
So if a number is even if it is divisible by 2, it would reason it is more even if it is divisible by 2 more than once. In this case 1,073,741,824 is 23 times more even than 1,000,000,000. Or is that 32/9 times more even?
I think I need to go lie down for a spell.
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1,073,741,824 is divisible by 2 32 times
Isn't it 30 times (i.e. 2^30)? What am I missing?
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I think you meant Gibibyte [wikipedia.org].
"Blockchain" is the most dominant of the more accurate alternative terms to "cryptocurrency" as far as I can tell. Not that that does not have different meanings much broader than financial ledgers in cryptography, but it would be a smaller loss to lose that term to the abyss of meaningless drivel that fills the news cycle than losing "crypto" itself.
But "blockchain" doesn't sound gangsta enough for the trendroids and adderall-addled Crameresque wannabees, I would bet.
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I did, good catch, but I did a quick lazy lookup and this was the first result: https://www.collinsdictionary.... [collinsdictionary.com]
But at least back in the 80s, I fucked a chick called Gigi (Margary) while her husband watched and some weird gay guy rubbed my legs...\
Re:Not gonna fly (Score:4, Interesting)
The International System of Units (SI) defines the prefix giga to represent 10^9 (1,000,000,000). Therefore a GB (gigabyte) means 1,000,000,000 bytes.
The International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) defines the prefix gibi with symbol Gi to represent 1024^3 or 2^30 (1073741824). Therefore GiB (gibibyte) means 1,073,741,824 bytes.
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Those names are fringe newcomers; "kilobyte" meant 1024 bytes for over half a century before a sleazy hard disk manufacturer paid a committee to introduce these conflicting definitions.
You don't step over entrenched usage without a good reason. Heck, even when there's a very good reason, conventions are usually kept: see +/- signs for electricity for example. This case is nothing but a marketing gimmick that makes us suffer.
And I have an extra reason to care, personally. I've been using this login name f
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I prefer "kilokilogram".
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The rest of the world meant "thousand" by "kilo" thousands of years before there was ever such a thing as a byte. "Kilo"/"mega"/"giga"/etc for powers of 1024 instead of 1000 were always just shorthand.
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And the shorthand worked perfectly. Everyone undersood what everyone else meant.
It worked like shit. Networking and storage always had MB = 1000 KB. For some weird reason Windows decided to report disk size in MiB and GiB sizes, while calling it MB and GiB and to this day I hear people complain that disk manufacturers are conning them. The only place where MB = 1024 KB ever made any sense is CPU, RAM and cache, since they really use powers of 2 in storage sizes. Disk sizes, file sizes, network speed have nothing to do with powers of 2, so they don't use them. OS X and Linux have switch
How a GB equals a GiB (Score:2)
1 GB is 1,000,000,000 bytes (1,953,125 512-byte sectors) of usable capacity plus 73,741,824 bytes of spare space for remapping up to 144,027 worn sectors.
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But let's instead comment on the Criptos vs the Bloodtos.
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The SI unit is GB, which is 1,000,000,000 bytes. G-anything is 1,000,000,000 anything in SI units.
Hence why GiB came into being in order to distinguish between the SI unit and the power-of-two unit.
This isn't marketing (although HD manufacturers were/are notorius for using the SI unit correctly, while knowing that your average techy uses the power-of-two meaning [incorrectly]), it's standardisation of scientific values.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
OTOH, (Score:5, Interesting)
If you want to mean cryptography unambiguously, just say cryptography. But don't complain when someone else uses crypto as shorthand. Pot, meet kettle.
And, there's nothing wrong with calling them "cryptocurrencies," they're a medium of exchange based on cryptography.
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The currency part is being dropped, which makes it just as ambiguous. I think the article is a fair critique of the current vernacular.
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The part you're ignoring is that this is how language works. Words change meaning over time particularly when they are abbreviated forms. You need to use context to understand them, much like all other language you use.
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Yes, for example "crypto-fascism [wiktionary.org]" means a hidden affinity for fascism. "Cryptobiology" is hidden or secret biology.
"Cryptography" comes from the root words meaning "hidden writing" or "secret writing".
People are sloppy with words; the only thing that really matters is whether that they make themselves understood -- presuming there's enough meaning in their utterances to even raise that question. If you want to play the word-police card in response to the sloppy use of "crypto", the deck is stacked against
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You might want to get a newer dictionary [ahdictionary.com].
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And, there's nothing wrong with calling them "cryptocurrencies," they're a medium of exchange based on cryptography.
Is that why they are called that? I thought it was because they were obscure or hidden (or bogus) currencies, similar to say cryptozoology.
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It refers to a biological study of long-necked African wildlife.
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Sometimes words literally change meaning. Keeping up is literally the hardest thing to do.
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Great story, Seinfeld! (Score:2)
Also, why do we park on driveways, and drive on parkways?
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You must have a short driveway [alamy.com].
Lorenzo, I have one question for you (Score:2)
Like a Swiss bank account (Score:2)
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They are both. Discuss.
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Cryptocurrencies are neither crypto, nor currencies. Discuss.
True. I would use the term 'digital commodities' because their perceived value derives from the notion that the amount of each is algorithmically fixed. A currency is managed by a central bank to stay at a fixed ratio to the total value of goods they can be traded for.
please help me i am confused (Score:2, Funny)
I do not understand how a bunch of drinking glasses is capable of writing an article. This is so confusing! I think that the author is actually a person, but that doesn't make sense! The word "bicchierai" has always referred to plural drinking glasses, which is a slightly non-standard plural of "bicchiere" by the way. This person is not even a singular drinking glass, and as someone who has used drinking glasses for many years now, this is a problem! The author shouldn't even have the name "Bicchierai"!
Obligatory Simpsons reference (Score:2)
Inflammable means flammable? What a country!
All those words, when once sentence covers it (Score:3)
"As someone who has read and written about cryptography for a few years now, and who is a big fan of Crypto, the 2001 book by Steven Levy, this is a problem."
Right here is the author's true gripe - but he knows no one will care about something this trivial and stupid, so he writes an entire article attempting to convince himself and others that there's an actual reason other than his silly little snit.
Too bad, too sad ... (Score:2)
... you lost what you had.
Look at "floppy."
Yes, the very early removable storage was floppy, but when the rigid 3.5" drive came out, they were listed in Hardware Devices as "floppy."
Look at "google," a verb meaning, "to search."
"Crypto," will mean what the masses decide it will mean.
Those who object will be labeled, "crypto-nazis."
Re: Too bad, too sad ... (Score:2)
"crypto-nazis"? I've always just called them "cryptos"
hmmph. I just fought a battle with auto- correct trying to change "cryptos" to "cryptosporidium". That's stupid, I almost never say "cryptosporidium" I just say" crypto" and no one has ever asked me to clarify.
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{clarity needed}
Re: Too bad, too sad ... (Score:2)
I'm sorry, I didn't mean to imply that I could, or was able to, clarify.
I was only pointing out that no one had asked me to. Before now, that is. If I could now edit my previous post, I would change "no one" to "only one".
Re:Too bad, too sad ... (Score:5, Informative)
The "floppy" in "floppy disk" always referred to the medium inside the cartridge, not the cartridge itself. Even in 3.5" disks, that medium was a flexible, floppy film. In contrast to the hard ceramic plates of hard disks. Putting a hard plastic shell around a floppy disk doesn't mark it a hard disk any more than putting a HDD in a plastic bag makes it floppy.
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Really, no. The term "floppy disk" was coined when the medium was still encased in a flexible plastic sheath, not a hard cartridge as in 3.5" disks.
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Nevertheless it is not the enclosure being referred to, it is the medium inside it. Magnetic storage media is either hard or floppy, and a 3.5" disk is not a hard disk.
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When it was 8" and 5 1/4" media, it was the entire assemblage which was called "floppy", because it was. 3.5" disks only got the name as a kind of legacy, because by then the term had become more or less interchangeable with 'removable low-capacity magnetic storage'.
Really, is it so hard to just admit you were wrong?
Tales from the Crypt(o) (Score:3)
I would have thought it was a play on the name of an old TV series, based on a quick Google search for "Tales from the Crypt," which just sounded like it would exist. So, maybe the problem is not understanding interesting writing.
Losing battle (Score:2)
Cryptographers like the meteorologists screaming STOP --- Clouds are these formations of moisture and dust in the sky, they have NOTHING to do with hosting, and Cloud Computing is one of the most obscene utterances ever. Too late.... too late.
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Seems like a play on "Tales from the Crypt" to me (Score:2)
Because good headlines need to be short and clever.
For those who don't remember or know Tales from the Crypt:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
yawn (Score:2)
there are a lot of words that don't mean what they used to:
"crypto"
"drone"
"AI"
"president"
Hash (Score:2)
So it's nothing to do with cryptohashes?
Yet we use.... (Score:2)
Cloud defined (Score:2)
Or more specifically, someone else's farm of rapidly provisionable partitions of computers.
True (Score:2)
But they're definitely hypsto and hypesto.
Let me translate . . . (Score:2)
. . . this into plain English:
"Wah, wah, wah, language usage changes and I can't make people talk my One True Way."
Somebody change subby's diapers.
Cryptos (Score:2)
PC, supposed to mean personal computer but it's synonym with Windows these days.
Lag, supposed to mean network latency but gamers use that word to describe a low frame rate.
Etc.
Fight all you want, if there's 100K people saying it right and 50 million people saying it wrong then it's the wrong usage that will stick.
This is unprecedented! (Score:2)
The general public has never before misused a technical term. Surely this heralds the end times.
Words on the Move (Score:2)
John discusses his recent book, Words on the Move [goodreads.com], in the following podcast: John McWhorter on the Evolution of Language [econtalk.org] — August 2017
no worries mate ! (Score:2)
Within a week or two it won't be 'crypto' any more ...
it will be cleverly reduced to 'crip'; far more hip.
But that will annoy the LA street gang called 'the Crips' and may lead to mayhem.
Thus a slight turn of term to 'crap', which will stick, as crap tends to do;
causing future historians to struggle to understand the odd term.
Welcome to America. (Score:2)
You 'merkins have been corrupting the English language for decades, and this habit of shortening a word to its otherwise widely-used prefix annoys me on a regular basis.
What is a 'semi' ? I had to look that one up.
It certainly is crypto. (Score:1)
-o- (Score:1)
Good luck with that. The masse's shape language [wikipedia.org].
Shortening a word... (Score:1)
Language changes. Get over it. (Score:2)
Dudes who creep on post-pubescent but under 18 girls are pedophiles.
Folks who hate gay people but aren't even slightly afraid of them are homophobes.
People use the word "anymore" in place of the word "currently," anymore.
And apparently, now "crypto" means "funky internet money," not cryptographic keys, or a prefix to the word "jew" meaning "pretending not to be one."
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If there are 20 people at the party whose names all start with 'Pat', that seems reasonable.
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If there are 20 people whose name start with "Pat", there's a good chance several of them will be named "Patrick". What kind of party is that anyway? The anuual meeting of "People named Pat, Chris, or Sam"?
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If there are 20 people whose name start with "Pat", there's a good chance several of them will be named "Patrick". What kind of party is that anyway? The anuual meeting of "People named Pat, Chris, or Sam"?
With a name like "Pat" [wikipedia.org] you never know...
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If there are 20 people whose name start with "Pat"...
"Pat" was the example that AC gave, so I used it. There are more ways to complete "Crypto-*" than there are "Pat-*". I didn't think I needed to explain that.
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We'll make ourselves a new culture, with blackjack and hookers.
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I don't understand either of those things to mean what you say they do. So they absolutely do not mean that. Fun game, this.
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any number of fascinating quirks of Indian Standard English
Do any of these quirks involve needing a techneecian to remove each and every wirus from your Vindows dextop?