I cam to the same conclusion in 2016, and I am not aware of any useful applications that have been developed since.
Ask HN: Am I going insane or is there genuinely no value in blockchain tech?
381–390 of 576 posts
Re: Ask HN: Am I going insane or is there genuinely no value in blockchain tech?
#382Earlier quoted context omitted.
This stuff is all normal when you're dealing with international contracts - it's not like nobody thought of doing international deals before satoshi. Some of the answers do depend on the specifics of course. If the asset being traded is US real estate for example I would expect the smart contract to be set up so it requires a US court decision to correct the register.
My point is that there's an entire subbranch of the law, generally called private international law, that has been created to deal with conflict of laws and jurisdictional issues. You're implying that there are simple deterministic rules to determine those kinds of questions but in fact it's a meta-problem.
It sounds like we agree then. I'm not saying it's simple or deterministic, I'm saying it's not new and it's not made inapplicable just because the systems we're using have changed.
The problems that are raised as if they are uniquely issues to blockchain solutions are not in fact specific to blockchains at all. We can and should apply the same rules to blockchain transactions and smart contracts give us a fantastic way of encoding those rules. For example you can have a token that represents proof that you have been kycd by a particular authority and you can restrict transactions of particular assets to those between addresses holding one of those tokens.
Re: Ask HN: Am I going insane or is there genuinely no value in blockchain tech?
#383Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm blockchain skeptical, but I think you're slightly throwing out the baby with the bathwater here. > the trusted party isn't eliminated by blockchain, because someone has to code the implementation of the software I don't think is relevant in practice, and I think the blockchain does solve this problem regarding double-spending. Yes, there's a centralized set of developers, but that does not seem to be a problem in…
Machine 2 machine payments are a massive problem you can solve with a blockchain. Which can solve a whole lot of other problems, like automation. Which can solve another set of problems.
> Machine 2 machine payments are a massive problem you can solve with a blockchain
Right but you can also solve these with a government regulated exchange and it’s not clear what a blockchain adds
Re: Ask HN: Am I going insane or is there genuinely no value in blockchain tech?
#384Earlier quoted context omitted.
None of these are experiments with the concept of money. You still transact in the exact same fundamental way as with traditional online payments, just 1000x worse. 99.9% of this "experimentation" is simply companies tying ownership of a token to a permission to access a web service. And the remainder of it are clueless tech brained morons finding ways to re-invent financial instruments (like residuals, profit splitt…
Yeah and mp3 didn't fundamentally change the fact that you still listen to music with your ears. Video codecs didn't change the fact you watch moving pictures with your eyes. But they did change an awful lot about existing industries and invented new ones. I personally have never been involved in crypto or bought anything crypto related. I have no incentive either way in its success or failure. I've just lived long e…
For the average person there is no difference between entering credit card info into a web page and using a wallet manager to enter your crypto info into an app, except that the wallet manager is infinitely more insecure and much more cumbersome. Going from a walkman to an ipod/itunes was an actual improvement in storage capacity, usability, accessibility etc.
As for holding out hope something will come out of crypto, using your example of mp3s and digital video, as soon as those were available to the general public they were RAPIDLY and enthusiastically adopted by the entire public. In the last 10+ years the crypto audience has gone from libertarians and fans of illicit drugs to libertarians, gambling addicts, and developers hoping to skill into the "next big thing".
Re: Ask HN: Am I going insane or is there genuinely no value in blockchain tech?
#385Earlier quoted context omitted.
> That is most accurate description of blockchain I have read. It might interest you to know then that the short, digestible 8 page whitepaper on Bitcoin, which originally described the blockchain, specifically used this definition. It's the most accurate because it is what a blockchain was designed for. I recommend giving it a read and ignoring any project which doesn't follow its core tenants. https://bitcoin.org/b…
I have read that whitepaper. That was the first think I read when I started researching about the whole crypto and blockchain space. And this is the culmination of my research https://bit.ly/3OB5G18
I'm sure that that is a wonderful paper, behind a paywall.
Re: Ask HN: Am I going insane or is there genuinely no value in blockchain tech?
#386Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’ve read several technical, non-fluff books on the topic, and I’ve developed smart contracts on Ethereum for decent hourly wage (paid out in fiat). And I’ve still come to roughly the same conclusion as you. Either my reading comprehension is poor, or there is little actual value in the vast majority of blockchain applications. Digital cash, as defined in the Bitcoin whitepaper, still seems like the only real use cas…
But even 'digital cash' doesn't need this, for most definitions and use cases. Even if we're talking about smuggling money out of authoritarian regimes, or buying soft drugs, or hiring hitmen online, I'm not sure it makes any actual sense compared with alternatives. Feels like a way for people who've been convinced that government doesn't work to feel like they're re-inventing government with extra steps, mixed with…
The latest trillion $peso$ spending "package" has less of a direct impact on $globalrupee$. Hurricane $Chucky$ in $greentown$ does not as directly impact the $globalrupee$. If that is starting to sound more like an insurance policy, and less like a bunch of tin-foil hat wearing conspiracy theorists talking about "muh freedoms", well maybe that's because it is.
Re: Ask HN: Am I going insane or is there genuinely no value in blockchain tech?
#387Earlier quoted context omitted.
But even 'digital cash' doesn't need this, for most definitions and use cases. Even if we're talking about smuggling money out of authoritarian regimes, or buying soft drugs, or hiring hitmen online, I'm not sure it makes any actual sense compared with alternatives. Feels like a way for people who've been convinced that government doesn't work to feel like they're re-inventing government with extra steps, mixed with…
You can also use it to buy goods from oversea retailers without paying exorbitant fees, bad conversion rate. If you live outside of America and Europe, banks charge a hefty amount of fees for international transactions. The world is volatile. Syria, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Russia, and in the future who know if China and Taiwan won't become a crappy place to be. The needs to store your wealth and get out of the country…
> without paying exorbitant fees, bad conversion rate
What the hell would you call gas fees, then? And if you don't already have assets in the crypto coin of your vendor's choice, you're going to pay conversion fees, too.
Re: Ask HN: Am I going insane or is there genuinely no value in blockchain tech?
#388You didn't try hard. Blockchain is clearly different from a centralized database.
1) Noone can arbitrarily change the contents of the blockchain, the concensus is needed to even append to it.
2) Blockchain solves the Byzantine generals problem.
3) Blockchain doesn't have one central authority (only the code that governs it, but the code must be first accepted by the participants). So if you build a payment system on top of a blockchain, there's no single entity that can freeze or seize your money.
Re: Ask HN: Am I going insane or is there genuinely no value in blockchain tech?
#389Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you've developed smart contracts, I'm surprised you don't consider the capability of trustless financial instruments (peer-to-peer lending and pooled lending, for example) to be pretty useful as well
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.
Also, if you've ever been let off with a warning for some minor infraction, or had a generous client who ignored a late-by-a-few-hours delivery, or...
Re: Ask HN: Am I going insane or is there genuinely no value in blockchain tech?
#390Earlier quoted context omitted.
>The sole purpose of blockchain is to prevent double spending without a trusted party That is most accurate description of blockchain I have read. Unfortunately, the mechanism for that (Proof-of-work) is slow, expensive and planet destroying at scale. And while we may remove a trust provider third party, we aren't getting rid of centralization with blockchain anyway.
It's supposed to be slow. That's what secures it. The production speed comes from layer 2 solutions built on top of it (analogous to how a secure VM can go faster with a JIT while still maintaining security). It's not expensive. Transaction fees are just fine and getting cheaper over time. It doesn't destroy the planet. You're thinking of the fossil-fuel industry.
Previously retired coal power plants are being brought back into service just to power bitcoin. https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/ameren-deploys-bi...