It's programmable and trustless allowing worldwide instant micro-payments with very low fees enabling the automation of machine 2 machine payments, or something like that.
Ask HN: Am I going insane or is there genuinely no value in blockchain tech?
321–330 of 576 posts
Re: Ask HN: Am I going insane or is there genuinely no value in blockchain tech?
#322It’s a Ponzi scheme. The crypto people tried to position it as digital gold, but obviously the market doesn’t see it that way.
Re: Ask HN: Am I going insane or is there genuinely no value in blockchain tech?
#323Blockchains are accounting procedures, not money. The only use I've ever figured out for blockchain is to support a hawala among untrusted partners. But real value (goods/services) must eventually be transferred in the network.
Blockchain "currencies" feature:
- high costs and slow speed of clearing transactions;
- volatility WRT to other stores of value;
- routine abuse and theft (with little chance of being made whole);
- association with criminal enterprise
These are pretty good reasons not to invest in blockchains.
Re: Ask HN: Am I going insane or is there genuinely no value in blockchain tech?
#324I just loved Scott Kurtz' take on NFTs: http://pvponline.com/comic/2022-01-31
Re: Ask HN: Am I going insane or is there genuinely no value in blockchain tech?
#325Blockchain has no use other than to store tokens for speculative gambling. Take a look at this presentation - https://bit.ly/3OB5G18 Proof-of-work - the USP of blockchain makes it slow and expensive and planet destroying at scale. But it's not a bug, it's a feature. You take it out and the blockchain is neither public not permission-less. A private, trusted, permissioned blockchain is pointless. The whole blockchain,…
I moved the whole fortune out of Russia with that "speculative gambling tokens", while both Putin's regime and outside world tried to cut out russians of the possibility to move their money out of dictatorship control (almost any payment systems are now banned for russians). Maybe that's not that obvious from some first-world countries perspective, but money with enforced property right over any governments decisions…
[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: Am I going insane or is there genuinely no value in blockchain tech?
#326The sole purpose of blockchain is to prevent double spending without a trusted party Other proposed applications are mostly dumb / misguided, like immutable storage, social network posts, etc, these can be done with hashing or digital signatures alone If you have a better way to avoid double spending than blockchain folks woukd get very excited. Traditional database can’t do that (requires a trusted party)
That is the main purpose. But check SNARKs and STARKs, they have a great future outside of blockchain too.
Re: Ask HN: Am I going insane or is there genuinely no value in blockchain tech?
#327Earlier quoted context omitted.
When I first heard about Ethereum I figured the value it would bring was incentivising everyone to create a worldwide supercomputer of the sorts we've never even seen before that can do really amazing computational work as opposed to bitcoin which just seems to crunch numbers entirely pointlessly. Any ideas why that never happened?
For one, the computational work for checking everyone's transactions on everyone's computer (i.e. blockchain) is consuming the computing power of the people interested. Until sharding provides a tunable level of security, we will see this waste of computing power. Then, that might enable more payments for cheaper, which might let you pay by the minute and such. But the second main brake in adoption is legal. Many cou…
>For one, the computational work for checking everyone's transactions on everyone's computer (i.e. blockchain) is consuming the computing power of the people interested.
With ZKP there won't be a need to run every transaction on everyone's computer
Re: Ask HN: Am I going insane or is there genuinely no value in blockchain tech?
#328Earlier quoted context omitted.
> code as law is terrible idea I don't know exactly what you mean by 'code as law', and I'm sure there are extremists that think smart contracts make law obsolete, but they are just wrong. Fraud via smart contract is still fraud. Theft via smart contract is still theft. There's nothing about having automatic processing of transactions that means you get to just ignore the legal system in your country. And that's fine…
With smart contracts there is only the code. There is no external trusted documentation that says what the intention of the code is. If the contract allows for an action to occur, then that action is permissible. It's the old quote taken to an extreme, "The good news about computers is that they do what you tell them to do. The bad news is that they do what you tell them to do." If there is a 'bug' that allows anybod…
> There is no external trusted documentation that says what the intention of the code is.
Working out what both parties intended a contract to mean and what it should mean, sometimes in contradiction of what it actually says is exactly what the legal system does.
You can't evade the legal system by writing your contract in a different form. Weirdly I think this idea comes from thinking law is code when it isn't.
Re: Ask HN: Am I going insane or is there genuinely no value in blockchain tech?
#329Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you’ve ever written code, and if you’ve ever written a bug, then you will understand that code as law is terrible idea, especially when it comes to finance.
^ you will understand that code as law is terrible idea, especially when it comes to finance. Why are we relying on code for controlling Safety-critical system? e.g. Nuclear Reactors, Autopilot of aircrafts, docking of two separate free-flying space vehicles, and weapon of mass destruction launch and control machines. All of them use "code", is finance more critcal than systems which are kill capable.
Why are we relying on code for controlling
Safety-critical system? e.g. Nuclear Reactors
Computers work well when there are a finite set of fixed, quantitative inputs and outputs: if x
Many parts of law are a lot more complex and can't be reduced to such formulas. Suppose you're suing an employer for wrongful termination. They say your job performance sucked and that's why you were fired. You say it was a hostile workplace, and when you tried to point that out you were fired in retaliation.
Go write some code to evaluate that. Let us know when you're done. Should be pretty exciting. Hopefully we can retain all of the judges and lawyers now that they're not needed any more.
Re: Ask HN: Am I going insane or is there genuinely no value in blockchain tech?
#330This is not a debate that has to be had in the abstract anymore. It's been more than 10 years. Where's the cool stuff that those supposed technology breakthroughs enabled? I think we all know what the proponents would point to. Are we really impressed by any of that?
If you have 15 minutes to spare: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o73fWsqJDdY