6 ms·

Tbf, blockchain is the dark matter of technology. People are never allowed to criticize it without the same, repeated feedback “If that’s what you think blockch

by 16012022 5y ago

Tbf, blockchain is the dark matter of technology. People are never allowed to criticize it without the same, repeated feedback “If that’s what you think blockchain is, then you don’t understand it.” Why doesn’t someone, then, who actually understands their almighty blockchain god, illuminate us, mere mortals, on the wonders of blockchain and how it can be good for society in the foreseeable future. You know what’s really tiresome? Having the promises of blockchain sold to us for years now without a single, useful purpose for it in sight other than, well, cryptobros.

bko 5y ago
Criticisms are okay, but this isn't a good criticism. From the article: > Let’s start with this: Venmo is a free service to transfer dollars, and bitcoin transfers are not free. Yet after I wrote an article last December saying bitcoin had no use, someone responded that Venmo and Paypal are raking in consumers’ money and people should switch to bitcoin. Not everyone has access to Venmo or PayPal. For instance, sex workers are routinely booted off the platform in the US with their funds being frozen. People in developing countries also may not have access. > In fact, I would assert that there is no single person in existence who had a problem they wanted to solve, discovered that an available blockchain solution was the best way to solve it, and therefore became a blockchain enthusiast. How about people that want to hold western stable coins and they are legally prevented from holding dollars or similarly stable currency?
- Feeble 5y ago
  My company operates in a highly international business area. The whole industry is moving towards using crypto for B2B payments. Every provider and partner offers payment by crypto - because international bank payments are slow, expensive and complicated (gets stuck, countries blocked, unclear KYC etc, opaque AML blockers etc).
  - __alexs 5y ago
    > My company operates in a highly international business area. Is it drug trafficking?
  - rjmunro 5y ago
    Which industry do you work in?
  - mellavora 5y ago
    except those KYC and AML laws still apply to the companies making the transfers. And some of the regulators are extremely aggressive in their enforcement. so your company either has to set up its own KYC/AML compliance department (noting that this is often a regulated profession) or it is probably breaking the law. International bank payments are slow, but they are also reversible and compliance is not your problem.
- rjmunro 5y ago
  Do this actual person really exist? They were looking for a way to hold some dollars they had lying around, did some research, found blockchain and have now put the dollars into USDT or whatever?
  - martinko 5y ago
    tldr: Yes https://www.wsj.com/articles/turks-pile-into-bitcoin-and-tether-to-escape-plunging-lira-11641982077?mod=hp_lead_pos6 https://www.wsj.com/articles/turks-pile-into-bitcoin-and-tet...
  - bko 5y ago
    There are people legally prevented from holding USD. Take a look at Argentina [0]. They're legally banned from holding USD and if they have an account with USD it'll get taken by the state and converted to quickly depreciating bonds. Of course there is a black market for USD but holding substantial amounts of USD under your mattress in order to preserve your wealth is impractical and dangerous. [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/09/06/argentina-just-reinstated-foreign-currency-restrictions-heres-what-you-need-know/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/09/06/argentina...
    - goesnowhere 5y ago
      This is the exception not the rule. Also making this as your main argument for why crypto is a net positive is telling because you understand that there are 0 uses for crypto in a functional democratic society.
      - bko 5y ago
        You have a very limited view of the history of capital controls. In the history of the world, capital controls are very common. It's a cycle. The state controls the money supply, they debase it through printing (dilution during gold standard), the value depreciates and everyone panics. One of the first things they do is restrict the ability of people to transfer money out of their currency. When everything is stable, you don't see this happen. But when its not (i.e. what its most advantageous) capital controls are applied. You see this happening in Turkey right now: > Turkey had an 80% foreign currency surrender requirement in place from September 2018 to late 2019 during a previous iteration of a currency crisis and has also used other “soft” capital controls including changing fees charged on currency conversions and adjusting the requirements for currency hedging. There are financial assets I cannot hold due to the accident of geography. For instance, I can't hold Chinese stocks. I cannot easily and safely send money to family in Cuba, Iran or North Korea. There are a lot of places I cannot hold real estate. Capital controls and monetary debasement are very much the rule on a long enough timespan. [0] https://worldview.stratfor.com/article/turkey-takes-first-step-toward-capital-controls https://worldview.stratfor.com/article/turkey-takes-first-st...
- carlivar 5y ago
  How is legally preventing people from owning dollars different from banning Bitcoin (or gold)? Isn't the latter one of the main risks to Bitcoin?
  - bko 5y ago
    It's not but its a lot easier and safer to hold digital currency than wads of cash in your floorboards. Easier to acquire, receive from abroad and verify as well. It allows for a form of civil disobedience against unjust laws
    - caspper69 5y ago
      Seems to me that an immutable transaction record going back to day 0 would be a very dangerous way to practice civil disobedience under many regimes. All it takes is to turn one participant, and the threads can be followed to trace the money.
    - vintermann 5y ago
      Is it though? If I hold wads of cash in my floorboards, you need to actually break in and take it. If I hold something in a digital wallet, I can never be sure I've eliminated all the ways to take it remotely and anonymously.
      - bko 5y ago
        You can print out a seed phrase and hold it under your floorboards as well, or better yet, memorize it. It takes up less space. You can split the phrase up and give it to a few trusted parties. You can do multi-sig. It's easier to transport, etc etc etc
    - carlivar 5y ago
      Various weights of gold or silver are the better comparison versus wads of cash, but your point is taken since I guess the completely digital acquisition is the difference.
Stevvo 5y ago
https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/05/25/voting2.html https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/05/25/voting2.html Amongst the complicated math and crypto posts that nobody can understand, Vitalik has covered several use cases on his blog.
- SAI_Peregrinus 5y ago
  In that article he conflates theoretical trustworthiness (software verifiability) with practical trustworthiness (system comprehensibility to a supermajority of voters). Blockchains might be made to work in a verifiable way, but they won't work for enough of the voting base to trust that they do in fact operate correctly. The entire point of voting is to provide a way to pick something that virtually everyone can agree was fair. Blockchains are too complex for virtually everyone to understand, and so most people can't agree that they're a fair way to decide on things. They require trust in the programmers and cryptographers, *and most people don't have that trust*. And with good reason, programmers are notorious for making buggy, unreliable, confusing software. Vitalik entirely ignores this argument against blockchains for voting, and pretends that the most important objections are the technical ones.
  - Stevvo 5y ago
    "Blockchains are too complex for virtually everyone to understand, and so most people can't agree that they're a fair way to decide on things" Almost nobody understands any of the complex systems in their life (e.g. banking, software) but it doesn't stop people trusting them. People have trust in these systems because they reliably produce the desired output not because they understand how they work.
    - captn3m0 5y ago
      The trust and transparency requirements for voting are much higher than banking.
ricochet11 5y ago
> Having the promises of blockchain sold to us for years now without a single, useful purpose for it in sight other than, well, cryptobros. the issue is that we show the things being made and hn calls them all scams and ponzis and fraud. we show the rates adoption, and the growth in use and hn says its all speculation and fraud and needs to be made illegal. we point out that crypto is in many ways doing better than other industries to represent marginalized communities and we all get labelled cryptobros and any of us who arent that get erased from the picture. if we post anything positive linking to a twitter account that account starts getting endless abuse. there are very few people who bother coming to hn anymore, pretty much everyone working in the space has given up on it. We have automated stable currencies, permission-less loans and lending, streaming payments, UBI experiments, co-ops governing land use, automated taxation and public goods funding experiments, sybil resistance mechanisms for 1p1v governance, resilient p2p infrastructure that people are using every day to pay each other and run their businesses. Composability for all of these things to quickly build your own business logic on top of it. Standards for tokenising royalties/payments/tickets... All running on p2p infrastructure anyone can participate in. Thats pretty amazing imo. At what point will what we've been building be considered useful? If you took any of these things and wrap it in a saas startup connected to stripe hn would eat it up and claim its the greatest startup of the decade. but because its built on crypto it can only ever be world destroying disaster capitalist alt-right incubating cartoon villain fraudulent vc led scammers right? its just so tiring.
- ctvo 5y ago
  > At what point will what we've been building be considered useful? Can you share some of the numbers you're citing? Who is using what to run their businesses daily? What's the number of transactions relative to current financial systems? How many actual users do you have for these things? The problem is anyone digging deeper sees it's all marketing and bullshit. It starts being useful when it's not motivated by VCs and others with a financial stake trying to get higher exists hyping up products with no utility and no users.
- aww_dang 5y ago
  >... hn says its all speculation and fraud and needs to be made illegal. This is the part that confuses me. What is the theory of value here? If you don't like it don't buy it. If you're not interested, don't buy it. If you don't see the benefits, don't develop cryptocurrency applications. Nobody is compelling developers or users to use this technology. Meanwhile state run currencies are forced upon us. Walled gardens and browsers force tech choices on developers. Isn't it enough to dislike something and avoid it entirely? Why advocate for limiting the choices of others? How is this not authoritarian paternalism?
BunsanSpace 5y ago
Blockchain is being used in supply chains (IBM tradelens) for immutable record keeping, NFT's (outside of selling URLs to jpgs...) are a good application for certificates of authenticity (some artists are selling their NFTs WITH a physical copy and using the NFT as the certificate of authenticity). Any application where you need an immutable ledger is a good application for blockchain. Just because crypto enthuisiasts are trying to shoe horn this technology into anything and everything doesn't mean the above isn't true.
- ctvo 5y ago
  > Any application where you need an immutable ledger is a good application for blockchain. What's your definition of good? An immutable ledger is a good idea and useful. An immutable ledger where every write costs 50-200 USD isn't as useful, for example.
- goesnowhere 5y ago
  Why is there any use for blockchain in supply chains? Wouldn't it be more efficient and cheaper to run a append only database?
- vintermann 5y ago
  Any application where you need an immutable ledger, and 1. You can't trust any single known party, or group of parties, to attest the integrity of the ledger (otherwise, you could just use plain old digital signatures) 2. You need infinite pseudonymous accounts in this ledger. 3. You need it so badly that you're willing to forgo a significant share of whatever value having this ledger creates, regularly, forever (mining fees). There have been attempts to rebrand blockchain as anything containing a chain of digital signatures, no mining needed. In which case it's old technology - but in that case I also agree that it has a use. Artists are by their nature known parties, as are factors in a supply chain. They may have a use for digital signatures, but they have no use for a scheme including mining.
- zaphar 5y ago
  A merkle tree is an excellent way to represent an immutable record. Adding a cryptocurrency does nothing to the system that makes it more immutable. You only need the currency bit if you want to create a financial incentive for the strangers to store your immutable record for you. Which you only really need if you need to send said currency via strangers as a sort of courier. However that comes with it's own set of very real problems. 1. That currency is going to be heavily speculated because it's unregulated by design. 2. That currency is going to be used to bypass regulations that do in fact protect people. 3. That currency will be used to bypass an international system that is designed to allow nations to punish other bad national actors without resorting to war. If you want to foster anarchy and to create an expectation that any individual is on their own and are actually prevented from getting assistance when they lose everything then a cryptocurrency is an ideal ideological fit. If you want something more balanced then merkle trees might be a useful tool but leave the currency aspect out of it.
5350-uiop-1130 5y ago
with money everyone has an agenda. the biggest thing i've seen from blockchain is the emergence of stablecoins. we will definitely see digital currencies being normalised globally. but since bitcoin doesn't have any central authority it's not really fair to conflate the purpose/value of btc, blockchain tech with idea of cryptobros/scams/ponzis.
achenatx 5y ago
blockchain allows essentially instantaneous completion of transactions between unrelated parties with no clearing house. Today there are many transactions that take days to clear. For example if you buy stock, it appears instantaneous to you, but the scenes your brokerage, the other brokerage, and the clearing house have to make sure all the money is there, the stock is there, etc Clearinghouses make a lot of money just guaranteeing transactions. That is friction in the system. Wire transfers, ACH, cashiers checks, etc all have the same issues. Even things like title insurance, transfer of title, deeds of trust etc have those issues. Instead of NFT for a gorilla picture, think of NFT for your house that essentially represents your deed. Transferring your deed is a very complicated process. Think about how social media or app stores are essentially controlled by the choices of a few CEOs. Imagine a distributed social media will allow everyone to ignore you, but no party can censor you. You own your data instead of an entity like facebook.
- josefx 5y ago
  > blockchain allows essentially instantaneous completion of transactions between unrelated parties with no clearing house. Wait, aren't blockchain transactions hilariously slow and depend on an internet connection? > Clearinghouses make a lot of money just guaranteeing transactions. That is friction in the system. Aren't popular blockchains using transaction fees to pay for validation? > Wire transfers, ACH, cashiers checks, etc all have the same issues. Seems to also apply to bitcoin.
- hiq 5y ago
  > Transferring your deed is a very complicated process. For regulatory reasons, not for technical ones. You're using the word "transaction", but you should distinguish between legal transactions and what is essentially a database transaction.
analog31 5y ago
Having a well articulated purpose, and being "centralized" are two sides of the same coin. We can agree on a purpose for government money because it has been deliberately molded to specific purposes: A medium of exchange, short term store of value, and instrument of economic policy. We can measure its performance against those purposes, and in fact, that measurement process is part of the technology of our money system. Not knowing the purpose of cryptocurrency is its purpose. There's nothing wrong with having a general purpose technology, like computer programming, that is adaptable to specific purposes on demand.
Quindecillion 5y ago
As I said, it's just all so tiresome. > People are never allowed to criticize it without the same, repeated feedback “If that’s what you think blockchain is, then you don’t understand it.” That's because the criticisms are always the same talking points, all of which have been addressed multiple times ad nauseam. If Bitcoin advocates appear dismissive or opaque it may be that they're exhausted of debunking the same criticisms over and over again, particularly when there's a wealth of information out there to find. Though you have to be willing to leave the anti-Bitcoin media bubble. Perhaps all us Bitcoiners are sufferring from delusions reinforced by confirmation bias, but perhaps you are too? > Why doesn’t someone, then, who actually understands their almighty blockchain god, illuminate us, mere mortals, on the wonders of blockchain and how it can be good for society in the foreseeable future. This kind of snark also doesn't help with the above. But if you're actually curious I thought this did a decent job of explaining Bitcoin's blockchain, decentralisation, and trustlessness: https://dergigi.com/2021/01/14/bitcoin-is-time/ https://dergigi.com/2021/01/14/bitcoin-is-time/ > You know what’s really tiresome? Having the promises of blockchain sold to us for years now without a single, useful purpose for it in sight other than, well, cryptobros. Perhaps you should stop listening to the promises of "blockchain" and "crypto" and instead focus your learning efforts on Bitcoin only... cryptobros be damned. Bitcoiners probably dislike them more than regular folk.

bko 5y ago

Criticisms are okay, but this isn't a good criticism. From the article: > Let’s start with this: Venmo is a free service to transfer dollars, and bitcoin transfers are not free. Yet after I wrote an article last December saying bitcoin had no use, someone responded that Venmo and Paypal are raking in consumers’ money and people should switch to bitcoin. Not everyone has access to Venmo or PayPal. For instance, sex workers are routinely booted off the platform in the US with their funds being frozen. People in developing countries also may not have access. > In fact, I would assert that there is no single person in existence who had a problem they wanted to solve, discovered that an available blockchain solution was the best way to solve it, and therefore became a blockchain enthusiast. How about people that want to hold western stable coins and they are legally prevented from holding dollars or similarly stable currency?

Feeble 5y ago
My company operates in a highly international business area. The whole industry is moving towards using crypto for B2B payments. Every provider and partner offers payment by crypto - because international bank payments are slow, expensive and complicated (gets stuck, countries blocked, unclear KYC etc, opaque AML blockers etc).
- __alexs 5y ago
  > My company operates in a highly international business area. Is it drug trafficking?
- rjmunro 5y ago
  Which industry do you work in?
- mellavora 5y ago
  except those KYC and AML laws still apply to the companies making the transfers. And some of the regulators are extremely aggressive in their enforcement. so your company either has to set up its own KYC/AML compliance department (noting that this is often a regulated profession) or it is probably breaking the law. International bank payments are slow, but they are also reversible and compliance is not your problem.
rjmunro 5y ago
Do this actual person really exist? They were looking for a way to hold some dollars they had lying around, did some research, found blockchain and have now put the dollars into USDT or whatever?
- martinko 5y ago
  tldr: Yes https://www.wsj.com/articles/turks-pile-into-bitcoin-and-tether-to-escape-plunging-lira-11641982077?mod=hp_lead_pos6 https://www.wsj.com/articles/turks-pile-into-bitcoin-and-tet...
- bko 5y ago
  There are people legally prevented from holding USD. Take a look at Argentina [0]. They're legally banned from holding USD and if they have an account with USD it'll get taken by the state and converted to quickly depreciating bonds. Of course there is a black market for USD but holding substantial amounts of USD under your mattress in order to preserve your wealth is impractical and dangerous. [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/09/06/argentina-just-reinstated-foreign-currency-restrictions-heres-what-you-need-know/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/09/06/argentina...
  - goesnowhere 5y ago
    This is the exception not the rule. Also making this as your main argument for why crypto is a net positive is telling because you understand that there are 0 uses for crypto in a functional democratic society.
    - bko 5y ago
      You have a very limited view of the history of capital controls. In the history of the world, capital controls are very common. It's a cycle. The state controls the money supply, they debase it through printing (dilution during gold standard), the value depreciates and everyone panics. One of the first things they do is restrict the ability of people to transfer money out of their currency. When everything is stable, you don't see this happen. But when its not (i.e. what its most advantageous) capital controls are applied. You see this happening in Turkey right now: > Turkey had an 80% foreign currency surrender requirement in place from September 2018 to late 2019 during a previous iteration of a currency crisis and has also used other “soft” capital controls including changing fees charged on currency conversions and adjusting the requirements for currency hedging. There are financial assets I cannot hold due to the accident of geography. For instance, I can't hold Chinese stocks. I cannot easily and safely send money to family in Cuba, Iran or North Korea. There are a lot of places I cannot hold real estate. Capital controls and monetary debasement are very much the rule on a long enough timespan. [0] https://worldview.stratfor.com/article/turkey-takes-first-step-toward-capital-controls https://worldview.stratfor.com/article/turkey-takes-first-st...
carlivar 5y ago
How is legally preventing people from owning dollars different from banning Bitcoin (or gold)? Isn't the latter one of the main risks to Bitcoin?
- bko 5y ago
  It's not but its a lot easier and safer to hold digital currency than wads of cash in your floorboards. Easier to acquire, receive from abroad and verify as well. It allows for a form of civil disobedience against unjust laws
  - caspper69 5y ago
    Seems to me that an immutable transaction record going back to day 0 would be a very dangerous way to practice civil disobedience under many regimes. All it takes is to turn one participant, and the threads can be followed to trace the money.
  - vintermann 5y ago
    Is it though? If I hold wads of cash in my floorboards, you need to actually break in and take it. If I hold something in a digital wallet, I can never be sure I've eliminated all the ways to take it remotely and anonymously.
    - bko 5y ago
      You can print out a seed phrase and hold it under your floorboards as well, or better yet, memorize it. It takes up less space. You can split the phrase up and give it to a few trusted parties. You can do multi-sig. It's easier to transport, etc etc etc
  - carlivar 5y ago
    Various weights of gold or silver are the better comparison versus wads of cash, but your point is taken since I guess the completely digital acquisition is the difference.

Stevvo 5y ago

https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/05/25/voting2.html https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/05/25/voting2.html Amongst the complicated math and crypto posts that nobody can understand, Vitalik has covered several use cases on his blog.

SAI_Peregrinus 5y ago
In that article he conflates theoretical trustworthiness (software verifiability) with practical trustworthiness (system comprehensibility to a supermajority of voters). Blockchains might be made to work in a verifiable way, but they won't work for enough of the voting base to trust that they do in fact operate correctly. The entire point of voting is to provide a way to pick something that virtually everyone can agree was fair. Blockchains are too complex for virtually everyone to understand, and so most people can't agree that they're a fair way to decide on things. They require trust in the programmers and cryptographers, *and most people don't have that trust*. And with good reason, programmers are notorious for making buggy, unreliable, confusing software. Vitalik entirely ignores this argument against blockchains for voting, and pretends that the most important objections are the technical ones.
- Stevvo 5y ago
  "Blockchains are too complex for virtually everyone to understand, and so most people can't agree that they're a fair way to decide on things" Almost nobody understands any of the complex systems in their life (e.g. banking, software) but it doesn't stop people trusting them. People have trust in these systems because they reliably produce the desired output not because they understand how they work.
  - captn3m0 5y ago
    The trust and transparency requirements for voting are much higher than banking.

ricochet11 5y ago

> Having the promises of blockchain sold to us for years now without a single, useful purpose for it in sight other than, well, cryptobros. the issue is that we show the things being made and hn calls them all scams and ponzis and fraud. we show the rates adoption, and the growth in use and hn says its all speculation and fraud and needs to be made illegal. we point out that crypto is in many ways doing better than other industries to represent marginalized communities and we all get labelled cryptobros and any of us who arent that get erased from the picture. if we post anything positive linking to a twitter account that account starts getting endless abuse. there are very few people who bother coming to hn anymore, pretty much everyone working in the space has given up on it. We have automated stable currencies, permission-less loans and lending, streaming payments, UBI experiments, co-ops governing land use, automated taxation and public goods funding experiments, sybil resistance mechanisms for 1p1v governance, resilient p2p infrastructure that people are using every day to pay each other and run their businesses. Composability for all of these things to quickly build your own business logic on top of it. Standards for tokenising royalties/payments/tickets... All running on p2p infrastructure anyone can participate in. Thats pretty amazing imo. At what point will what we've been building be considered useful? If you took any of these things and wrap it in a saas startup connected to stripe hn would eat it up and claim its the greatest startup of the decade. but because its built on crypto it can only ever be world destroying disaster capitalist alt-right incubating cartoon villain fraudulent vc led scammers right? its just so tiring.

ctvo 5y ago
> At what point will what we've been building be considered useful? Can you share some of the numbers you're citing? Who is using what to run their businesses daily? What's the number of transactions relative to current financial systems? How many actual users do you have for these things? The problem is anyone digging deeper sees it's all marketing and bullshit. It starts being useful when it's not motivated by VCs and others with a financial stake trying to get higher exists hyping up products with no utility and no users.
aww_dang 5y ago
>... hn says its all speculation and fraud and needs to be made illegal. This is the part that confuses me. What is the theory of value here? If you don't like it don't buy it. If you're not interested, don't buy it. If you don't see the benefits, don't develop cryptocurrency applications. Nobody is compelling developers or users to use this technology. Meanwhile state run currencies are forced upon us. Walled gardens and browsers force tech choices on developers. Isn't it enough to dislike something and avoid it entirely? Why advocate for limiting the choices of others? How is this not authoritarian paternalism?

BunsanSpace 5y ago

Blockchain is being used in supply chains (IBM tradelens) for immutable record keeping, NFT's (outside of selling URLs to jpgs...) are a good application for certificates of authenticity (some artists are selling their NFTs WITH a physical copy and using the NFT as the certificate of authenticity). Any application where you need an immutable ledger is a good application for blockchain. Just because crypto enthuisiasts are trying to shoe horn this technology into anything and everything doesn't mean the above isn't true.

ctvo 5y ago
> Any application where you need an immutable ledger is a good application for blockchain. What's your definition of good? An immutable ledger is a good idea and useful. An immutable ledger where every write costs 50-200 USD isn't as useful, for example.
goesnowhere 5y ago
Why is there any use for blockchain in supply chains? Wouldn't it be more efficient and cheaper to run a append only database?
vintermann 5y ago
Any application where you need an immutable ledger, and 1. You can't trust any single known party, or group of parties, to attest the integrity of the ledger (otherwise, you could just use plain old digital signatures) 2. You need infinite pseudonymous accounts in this ledger. 3. You need it so badly that you're willing to forgo a significant share of whatever value having this ledger creates, regularly, forever (mining fees). There have been attempts to rebrand blockchain as anything containing a chain of digital signatures, no mining needed. In which case it's old technology - but in that case I also agree that it has a use. Artists are by their nature known parties, as are factors in a supply chain. They may have a use for digital signatures, but they have no use for a scheme including mining.
zaphar 5y ago
A merkle tree is an excellent way to represent an immutable record. Adding a cryptocurrency does nothing to the system that makes it more immutable. You only need the currency bit if you want to create a financial incentive for the strangers to store your immutable record for you. Which you only really need if you need to send said currency via strangers as a sort of courier. However that comes with it's own set of very real problems. 1. That currency is going to be heavily speculated because it's unregulated by design. 2. That currency is going to be used to bypass regulations that do in fact protect people. 3. That currency will be used to bypass an international system that is designed to allow nations to punish other bad national actors without resorting to war. If you want to foster anarchy and to create an expectation that any individual is on their own and are actually prevented from getting assistance when they lose everything then a cryptocurrency is an ideal ideological fit. If you want something more balanced then merkle trees might be a useful tool but leave the currency aspect out of it.

5350-uiop-1130 5y ago

with money everyone has an agenda. the biggest thing i've seen from blockchain is the emergence of stablecoins. we will definitely see digital currencies being normalised globally. but since bitcoin doesn't have any central authority it's not really fair to conflate the purpose/value of btc, blockchain tech with idea of cryptobros/scams/ponzis.

achenatx 5y ago

blockchain allows essentially instantaneous completion of transactions between unrelated parties with no clearing house. Today there are many transactions that take days to clear. For example if you buy stock, it appears instantaneous to you, but the scenes your brokerage, the other brokerage, and the clearing house have to make sure all the money is there, the stock is there, etc Clearinghouses make a lot of money just guaranteeing transactions. That is friction in the system. Wire transfers, ACH, cashiers checks, etc all have the same issues. Even things like title insurance, transfer of title, deeds of trust etc have those issues. Instead of NFT for a gorilla picture, think of NFT for your house that essentially represents your deed. Transferring your deed is a very complicated process. Think about how social media or app stores are essentially controlled by the choices of a few CEOs. Imagine a distributed social media will allow everyone to ignore you, but no party can censor you. You own your data instead of an entity like facebook.

josefx 5y ago
> blockchain allows essentially instantaneous completion of transactions between unrelated parties with no clearing house. Wait, aren't blockchain transactions hilariously slow and depend on an internet connection? > Clearinghouses make a lot of money just guaranteeing transactions. That is friction in the system. Aren't popular blockchains using transaction fees to pay for validation? > Wire transfers, ACH, cashiers checks, etc all have the same issues. Seems to also apply to bitcoin.
hiq 5y ago
> Transferring your deed is a very complicated process. For regulatory reasons, not for technical ones. You're using the word "transaction", but you should distinguish between legal transactions and what is essentially a database transaction.

analog31 5y ago

Having a well articulated purpose, and being "centralized" are two sides of the same coin. We can agree on a purpose for government money because it has been deliberately molded to specific purposes: A medium of exchange, short term store of value, and instrument of economic policy. We can measure its performance against those purposes, and in fact, that measurement process is part of the technology of our money system. Not knowing the purpose of cryptocurrency is its purpose. There's nothing wrong with having a general purpose technology, like computer programming, that is adaptable to specific purposes on demand.

Quindecillion 5y ago

As I said, it's just all so tiresome. > People are never allowed to criticize it without the same, repeated feedback “If that’s what you think blockchain is, then you don’t understand it.” That's because the criticisms are always the same talking points, all of which have been addressed multiple times ad nauseam. If Bitcoin advocates appear dismissive or opaque it may be that they're exhausted of debunking the same criticisms over and over again, particularly when there's a wealth of information out there to find. Though you have to be willing to leave the anti-Bitcoin media bubble. Perhaps all us Bitcoiners are sufferring from delusions reinforced by confirmation bias, but perhaps you are too? > Why doesn’t someone, then, who actually understands their almighty blockchain god, illuminate us, mere mortals, on the wonders of blockchain and how it can be good for society in the foreseeable future. This kind of snark also doesn't help with the above. But if you're actually curious I thought this did a decent job of explaining Bitcoin's blockchain, decentralisation, and trustlessness: https://dergigi.com/2021/01/14/bitcoin-is-time/ https://dergigi.com/2021/01/14/bitcoin-is-time/ > You know what’s really tiresome? Having the promises of blockchain sold to us for years now without a single, useful purpose for it in sight other than, well, cryptobros. Perhaps you should stop listening to the promises of "blockchain" and "crypto" and instead focus your learning efforts on Bitcoin only... cryptobros be damned. Bitcoiners probably dislike them more than regular folk.