Partnership with Forte

#21

Their core business is promoting a scam. Blockchain is utterly unsuited for any use outside cryptocurrencies. This is not up for debate: people have been trying to come up with uses for Blockchains for years and they’ve only failed in various ways. Big reputable companies who once were interested in Blockchains have quietly abandoned them.

So anyone promoting Blockchains now is involved in a scam, trying to con people. The good thing is they are not trying to con us out of money. They have their money in the form of a $100m fund (though how much of that is real money, how much worthless cryptocurrencies is unclear).

Or even you don’t need to take my word for it:

#22

So basically what Forte does is that they allow in-game items to be traded using cryptocurrency?

#23

For those who have watched the video, it’s worth highlighting the three ‘benefits’ of blockchain (9m 15s into the video). “Ownership”, “provenance” and “digital markets”

Ownership? We have that already. You own your stuff. There’s nothing magical about it, and the current system works. In theory blockchain could enforce it in such a way that it would eliminate duping but as such it’s just a massively overengineered way of doing object IDs. Object IDs are an obvious solution but would be very disruptive and have not happened. Blockchain would be much much worse.

Provenance? This is things like unique assets (the example in the video is a physical baseball!). But these make no sense for most games. Assets once created can be infinitely cloned. Developers might want items to be exclusive and limited, but this normally means they are still available to thousands of players. In a game like ROTMG with two dozen servers, dozens of realms, containing hundreds of dungeons, adding content that can only be used by one player makes no sense as almost no-one would see it.

Digital markets? We have in-game trading. We have trading outside the game on RWT sites. All blockchain would do is make the latter easier. You would no longer need to e.g. paypal an anonymous website and trust they deliver the goods to you. It could all happen automatically (except for the normal delays associated with blockchain implementations). Somehow think DECA will not want to be helping facilitate RWT like that.

The actual example in the video is worse: buying and selling accounts (look at this guy selling WoW accounts, isn’t that a good way to make money!). Yes, that would be much easier if accounts were built on the blockchain. Somehow though I doubt DECA will want it added to ROTMG.

#24

*sweats in admin skins*

#25

Hello realmers! For those of you that are unaware, we are now entering a partnership with Evergreen Inc!

For those of you that don’t know, Evergreen is a company that looks to globally maximize enterprise-wide alignments, collaboratively re-engineer linkages through a proprietary process, and most importantly, synergistically implement error-free content using dynamically fused communication techniques and strategies.

#26

It looks like the whole “the only reason we are mentioning this is to prevent possible confusion” backfired.

#27

this is a wrong statement. its fair to say its used by criminals cause it can be used for “anonymous” transactions so alot of criminals use it, but tons of regular people who “dont want their shit being tracked” still use bitcoin for various transactions that are perfectly legal. In a ROTMG sense, this doesnt belong really, its not going to help secure gold transactions that much and its obviously not gonna change gameplay. idk why this is even being implemented(?) im not too sure how theyre gonna even use this.

#28

Which ‘regular people’ use it?

See, in democratic systems like the US, EU there is a strong presumption of privacy. You can do what you want with your money, no-one can find out what you are doing. But there are many things you can do which are recorded. Donating to a political party for example is often recorded (and limited in how much you can donate). Buying a property is recorded in e.g. a registry of who owns what. How much you earn is normally recorded for tax purposes.

So the people who are using bitcoin are generally doing it to break the law. They may not be selling drugs but they are breaking the law in other ways, such as evading taxes, evading legal limits on gifts or on moving money overseas. As these limits are often very high (several months pay) the people trying evade them are not only criminals but rich criminals. Tax evasion in particular is a form of crime only done by the rich.

Also it’s a pretty poor way to hide your identity. You might e.g. recall the recent Twitter hack where the hackers were quickly tracked despite using Bitcoin. Better to use cash or other more traditional means of anonymising your transactions.

#29

enough legitimate businesses accept bitcoin nowadays (https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/bitcoin-stores-spend-where-starbucks-whole-foods-crypto-a8913366.html) another reason i personally have used bitcoin was to not use my card on purchases on websites that i dont necessarily trust like a youtubers merch website for example. Also yeah alot people using it are buying illegal shit, but its not right to say ONLY criminals use it.

#30

That’s from 18 months ago. I tried searching for something more recent and found nothing, so it’s not exactly taken off. Things like this get announced all the time, as they try and spend all the money raised in ICOs on something worthwhile. They never amount to anything though. See also Forte’s many announcements.

And you used it with web sites you did not trust?!? That is precisely the wrong time to use Bitcoin, which once used you can’t get back. At least if you use a credit card and the merchant turns out to be dodgy you can use chargeback. If you pay by Paypal they have their own dispute mechansim. Bitcoin though you’re stuffed.

#31

I think you misunderstand. He uses crypto so he doesn’t give his credit card information to a dodgy site. Rather risk the 40$ on possibly fake site than risk all of my funds in my account. I do agree PayPal would be a far better option.

I disagree with you on the “only criminals” use crypto. Yes a lot of criminals do use it, but for the same reason a normal person uses it as well. P R I V A C Y.

#32

The safeguards when paying with a credit card online are incredibly strong. E.g. my bank whenever I make a purchase online inserts an ID check into the transaction where I have to use a partial password to proceed with the transaction. That never gets sent to the merchant, so they cannot use what they do get to make similar purchases.

(partial password is where they ask for usually three letters of a longer password, to foil e.g. keyloggers)

If a merchant is dodgy in a more traditional way then credit card protections are better than anything else. The general advice for payments is use a credit card for anything risky, such as a holiday that could be cancelled, as if it goes pear shaped you can claim it back from the credit card company.

Finally bitcoin is not anonymous. People have been traced through the transaction record, which is a public record (unlike your bank/credit card payments). E.g. the recent Twitter hack, where they hacked into a number of accounts asking people to send Bitcoins, thinking this would shield them, they were traced through the Bitcoin transactions (as well as in other ways).

#33

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BREEEEEEEEEEE