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Personally, I don't think Crypto is dead, since their are many applications for blockchain in our world going forward. Nevertheless, I feel the initial hype of

Personally, I don't think Crypto is dead, since their are many applications for blockchain in our world going forward. Nevertheless, I feel the initial hype of making quick money from Crypto has definitely died, because many lost money in the Crypto bull market.

hawthornio 4y ago
What applications of blockchain do you envision? I have not yet encountered a use that is better served by blockchain than, for example, an append-only DB.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- anonymouskimmer 4y ago
  When consortia of industries are trying to convince third parties that the information on their append-only DB is reliable. So basically marketing.
- Karunamon 4y ago
  Name any append only DB with uptime equivalent to any crypto blockchain network.
  - xcvbjbhvfgx 4y ago
    for the same out of pocket price? every single one of them! heck even paying 5 lawyers to work in shifts around the clock taking calls and updating a local excell sheet is cheaper with better uptime
    - lrvick 4y ago
      They can handle 5 transactions a second while constantly providing proof to millions of users that the data has not and can not be tampered with, even if you bribe or threaten all 5 lawyers? Those are some superhuman lawyers.
      - anonymouskimmer 4y ago
        > while constantly providing proof to millions of users that the data has not and can not be tampered with The BNB Beacon Chain doesn't sync: https://datafinnovation.medium.com/bnb-beacon-chain-not-a-blockchain-3230dda7172c https://datafinnovation.medium.com/bnb-beacon-chain-not-a-bl...
- bdcravens 4y ago
  It's preferable where there's a reason to distrust a custodian of the data. Of course, most of the use cases dreamed up don't fit that description, and much of the hype may have eroded confidence in the term.
- pelasaco 4y ago
  There are lot of documents to proof document identity, for instance, notaries in Brazil: https://finbold.com/brazil-authenticates-156k-documents-via-blockchain-in-last-four-months/ https://finbold.com/brazil-authenticates-156k-documents-via-...
  - Oxidation 4y ago
    What does a blockchain bring to that process that signing a document with a normal public-private key pair does not?
    - latchkey 4y ago
      Who holds the private key, the end user or a centralized entity?
      - Oxidation 4y ago
        Presumably the equivalent to the Brazilian notary blockchain would be a centralised entity (in this case, probably Growth Tech[1], or perhaps the central government or a key sharing scheme between the both of them), since that's a private permissioned blockchain. [1]: https://growthtech.com.br https://growthtech.com.br
        latchkey 4y ago
        IMHO, the whole private permission based blockchain thing is just a poor attempt at a very slow database. This concept really hasn't caught on, primarily because of the centralized aspects. While we are very far way from this concept in the real world, I'd prefer my proof of identity documents to live on something that isn't controlled by any single entity other than myself. Sure makes them a lot more difficult to revoke or modify without my consent.
        Oxidation 4y ago
        Even with a hypothetical maximally decentralised system, there's always a centralised chokepoint where a specific organisation (including and perhaps especially, a state) that you wish to prove your identity to chooses to unconditionally accept records from the system.
- lrvick 4y ago
  Remittance, anonymous payments, proof of authorship, decentralized DNS, international financial contract enforcement, provably fair gambling, immutable digital asset ownership, publicly accountable donations... just off the top of my head. It takes little imagination to see many use cases for a computing system that no single party can control. It is the difference in a dictatorship vs a democracy.
  - hesdeadjim 4y ago
    How do you reconcile these statements against a 51% attack that is already possible with Bitcoin? Decentralized? Hardly.
    - reedjosh 4y ago
      Possible does not mean likely or easy. Bitcoin is by far the most secure and decentralized crypto to date. If you have ideas on how to build an even more decentralized or secure money, then please do so. Regardless, there is definitely need for money outside of the control of centralized actors.
      - hesdeadjim 4y ago
        I want crypto to die in a fire. It is 100% a Ponzi scheme with no real world use case. If there was a use, we would have seen something useful come out of the Etherium project by now — other than a demonstration that majority group consensus can rewrite an “immutable” ledger.
    - lrvick 4y ago
      If 51% of US politicians all decided the value of the US dollar should become 0, then it would be so... and yet it is still a representative democracy which is a decentralized form of governance. This is unlikely to happen, because it would be to no ones advantage. Even if they did most of the public would likely just ignore the decision. https://www.crypto51.app/ https://www.crypto51.app/ covers this question in regards to cryptoassets. It will cost something like $1m/hour to attack Bitcoin, but to even do that you would already need to actually convince 51% of miners to light their profits on fire for no reason. Even under a very expensive and sustained attack the users of Bitcoin that wish it to have value would simply distribute a blocklist for the compromised nodes and carry on with the 49% that wish for the network to continue as well.
- philippz 4y ago
  Without giving you a monologue, I'll give you some food for thought in a very few statements. 1. The internet you know today allowed people to connect and share information globally. 2. Over the years, we've found value in digital things and may, thus, call them assets: e.g., data, media, and information/knowledge. 3. We have no way to deal with digital assets, which has implications and inefficiencies. DRM was a symptom & soft way to deal with this problem. 4. While the internet connects globally, it is not made to reflect ownership on a global level. Real ownership either doesn't exist or is not transparent. And while privacy is important, ownership should at least be cryptographically provable. 5. Blockchains do not aim to replace the internet or your database; they are a layer on top of the internet, giving us a new foundation to rethink and rebuild how we deal with digital value creation. In some way, it will bring humanity closer on a global level. On top of that, there are many philosophic, societal, and idealistic ideas. A lot of them require or trigger a systemic change—many of them we might never see happening, at least not in our lifetime. If you want to learn more, you need to dig in.
  - phpnode 4y ago
    You wrote a lot of words but did not answer the question
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - philippz 4y ago
      Because the question needs to be revised. It is not about what you can do with an append only database vs. blockchain. That's not reflecting its purpose.
      - phpnode 4y ago
        Ok, please could you list some tangible, practical and cost effective use cases for blockchain that are not better solved with other technologies?
- elijahmoses 4y ago
  [dead]
- RestlessMind 4y ago
  > What applications of blockchain do you envision? "digital store of value" which is: not controlled by any centralized entity and thus immune to corruption of the said entity, easily transferable, fungible, easy to divide into sub-units. I have compiled various usage examples of such a technology here[1], but primarily it boils down to "shitty governments", which covers a vast portion of humanity. Traditionally, this was Gold but BTC is better at transfers than Gold. Maintenance burden is lighter for BTC on the one hand because you just have to memorize 12 words, but it is also susceptible to hacks on the other hand compared to Gold. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32406095 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32406095
  - D13Fd 4y ago
    Except gold has intrinsic value, and cryptocurrency has none.
    - RestlessMind 4y ago
      > gold has intrinsic value Gold market cap is >12T$, which is nowhere close to its actual intrinsic value. A lot of that market cap is due to the collective myth we have bought into that Gold is a store of value. If you don't see that, then probably you also won't be able to see the usecase of BTC. Moreover, if you do not see a need for a store of value in general (which is totally based on collective myths and less so on actual intrinsic values), then you are probably in a cute bubble somewhere.
bdcravens 4y ago
For better or worse, the period of hype tends to come back (typically in the months after Bitcoin's 4 year halving cycle)
yokoprime 4y ago
I have yet to see an application of crypto where it’s not just solving a solved problem in a more convoluted manner. We have had digital certificates for decades which works efficiently to establish validation through digital signatures. Most use cases presented by blockchain enthusiasts competes with solutions based off of simple digital signatures.
- latchkey 4y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26238410 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26238410
- RestlessMind 4y ago
  I have compiled a list of BTC usecases here[1]. Can you please provide me an already available alternative for those examples, which is clearly superior to BTC? [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32406095 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32406095
himinlomax 4y ago
By "going forward," do you mean that no one has come up with one just yet?
Yoric 4y ago
So maybe we're going to see actually useful applications? Until now, it's unclear if there were any because anything that wasn't a ponzi scheme was drowned under the lure of free money.

hawthornio 4y ago

What applications of blockchain do you envision? I have not yet encountered a use that is better served by blockchain than, for example, an append-only DB.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
anonymouskimmer 4y ago
When consortia of industries are trying to convince third parties that the information on their append-only DB is reliable. So basically marketing.
Karunamon 4y ago
Name any append only DB with uptime equivalent to any crypto blockchain network.
- xcvbjbhvfgx 4y ago
  for the same out of pocket price? every single one of them! heck even paying 5 lawyers to work in shifts around the clock taking calls and updating a local excell sheet is cheaper with better uptime
  - lrvick 4y ago
    They can handle 5 transactions a second while constantly providing proof to millions of users that the data has not and can not be tampered with, even if you bribe or threaten all 5 lawyers? Those are some superhuman lawyers.
    - anonymouskimmer 4y ago
      > while constantly providing proof to millions of users that the data has not and can not be tampered with The BNB Beacon Chain doesn't sync: https://datafinnovation.medium.com/bnb-beacon-chain-not-a-blockchain-3230dda7172c https://datafinnovation.medium.com/bnb-beacon-chain-not-a-bl...
bdcravens 4y ago
It's preferable where there's a reason to distrust a custodian of the data. Of course, most of the use cases dreamed up don't fit that description, and much of the hype may have eroded confidence in the term.
pelasaco 4y ago
There are lot of documents to proof document identity, for instance, notaries in Brazil: https://finbold.com/brazil-authenticates-156k-documents-via-blockchain-in-last-four-months/ https://finbold.com/brazil-authenticates-156k-documents-via-...
- Oxidation 4y ago
  What does a blockchain bring to that process that signing a document with a normal public-private key pair does not?
  - latchkey 4y ago
    Who holds the private key, the end user or a centralized entity?
    - Oxidation 4y ago
      Presumably the equivalent to the Brazilian notary blockchain would be a centralised entity (in this case, probably Growth Tech[1], or perhaps the central government or a key sharing scheme between the both of them), since that's a private permissioned blockchain. [1]: https://growthtech.com.br https://growthtech.com.br
      - latchkey 4y ago
        IMHO, the whole private permission based blockchain thing is just a poor attempt at a very slow database. This concept really hasn't caught on, primarily because of the centralized aspects. While we are very far way from this concept in the real world, I'd prefer my proof of identity documents to live on something that isn't controlled by any single entity other than myself. Sure makes them a lot more difficult to revoke or modify without my consent.
        Oxidation 4y ago
        Even with a hypothetical maximally decentralised system, there's always a centralised chokepoint where a specific organisation (including and perhaps especially, a state) that you wish to prove your identity to chooses to unconditionally accept records from the system.
lrvick 4y ago
Remittance, anonymous payments, proof of authorship, decentralized DNS, international financial contract enforcement, provably fair gambling, immutable digital asset ownership, publicly accountable donations... just off the top of my head. It takes little imagination to see many use cases for a computing system that no single party can control. It is the difference in a dictatorship vs a democracy.
- hesdeadjim 4y ago
  How do you reconcile these statements against a 51% attack that is already possible with Bitcoin? Decentralized? Hardly.
  - reedjosh 4y ago
    Possible does not mean likely or easy. Bitcoin is by far the most secure and decentralized crypto to date. If you have ideas on how to build an even more decentralized or secure money, then please do so. Regardless, there is definitely need for money outside of the control of centralized actors.
    - hesdeadjim 4y ago
      I want crypto to die in a fire. It is 100% a Ponzi scheme with no real world use case. If there was a use, we would have seen something useful come out of the Etherium project by now — other than a demonstration that majority group consensus can rewrite an “immutable” ledger.
  - lrvick 4y ago
    If 51% of US politicians all decided the value of the US dollar should become 0, then it would be so... and yet it is still a representative democracy which is a decentralized form of governance. This is unlikely to happen, because it would be to no ones advantage. Even if they did most of the public would likely just ignore the decision. https://www.crypto51.app/ https://www.crypto51.app/ covers this question in regards to cryptoassets. It will cost something like $1m/hour to attack Bitcoin, but to even do that you would already need to actually convince 51% of miners to light their profits on fire for no reason. Even under a very expensive and sustained attack the users of Bitcoin that wish it to have value would simply distribute a blocklist for the compromised nodes and carry on with the 49% that wish for the network to continue as well.
philippz 4y ago
Without giving you a monologue, I'll give you some food for thought in a very few statements. 1. The internet you know today allowed people to connect and share information globally. 2. Over the years, we've found value in digital things and may, thus, call them assets: e.g., data, media, and information/knowledge. 3. We have no way to deal with digital assets, which has implications and inefficiencies. DRM was a symptom & soft way to deal with this problem. 4. While the internet connects globally, it is not made to reflect ownership on a global level. Real ownership either doesn't exist or is not transparent. And while privacy is important, ownership should at least be cryptographically provable. 5. Blockchains do not aim to replace the internet or your database; they are a layer on top of the internet, giving us a new foundation to rethink and rebuild how we deal with digital value creation. In some way, it will bring humanity closer on a global level. On top of that, there are many philosophic, societal, and idealistic ideas. A lot of them require or trigger a systemic change—many of them we might never see happening, at least not in our lifetime. If you want to learn more, you need to dig in.
- phpnode 4y ago
  You wrote a lot of words but did not answer the question
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - philippz 4y ago
    Because the question needs to be revised. It is not about what you can do with an append only database vs. blockchain. That's not reflecting its purpose.
    - phpnode 4y ago
      Ok, please could you list some tangible, practical and cost effective use cases for blockchain that are not better solved with other technologies?
elijahmoses 4y ago
[dead]
RestlessMind 4y ago
> What applications of blockchain do you envision? "digital store of value" which is: not controlled by any centralized entity and thus immune to corruption of the said entity, easily transferable, fungible, easy to divide into sub-units. I have compiled various usage examples of such a technology here[1], but primarily it boils down to "shitty governments", which covers a vast portion of humanity. Traditionally, this was Gold but BTC is better at transfers than Gold. Maintenance burden is lighter for BTC on the one hand because you just have to memorize 12 words, but it is also susceptible to hacks on the other hand compared to Gold. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32406095 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32406095
- D13Fd 4y ago
  Except gold has intrinsic value, and cryptocurrency has none.
  - RestlessMind 4y ago
    > gold has intrinsic value Gold market cap is >12T$, which is nowhere close to its actual intrinsic value. A lot of that market cap is due to the collective myth we have bought into that Gold is a store of value. If you don't see that, then probably you also won't be able to see the usecase of BTC. Moreover, if you do not see a need for a store of value in general (which is totally based on collective myths and less so on actual intrinsic values), then you are probably in a cute bubble somewhere.

bdcravens 4y ago

For better or worse, the period of hype tends to come back (typically in the months after Bitcoin's 4 year halving cycle)

yokoprime 4y ago

I have yet to see an application of crypto where it’s not just solving a solved problem in a more convoluted manner. We have had digital certificates for decades which works efficiently to establish validation through digital signatures. Most use cases presented by blockchain enthusiasts competes with solutions based off of simple digital signatures.

latchkey 4y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26238410 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26238410
RestlessMind 4y ago
I have compiled a list of BTC usecases here[1]. Can you please provide me an already available alternative for those examples, which is clearly superior to BTC? [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32406095 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32406095

himinlomax 4y ago

By "going forward," do you mean that no one has come up with one just yet?

Yoric 4y ago

So maybe we're going to see actually useful applications? Until now, it's unclear if there were any because anything that wasn't a ponzi scheme was drowned under the lure of free money.