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Ask HN: Am I going insane or is there genuinely no value in blockchain tech?

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Re: Ask HN: Am I going insane or is there genuinely no value in blockchain tech?

#491

Post by tmaly »

yebyen wrote: post #431
D13Fd wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is great, unless the “fees” include taxes. In which case the short version of this comment is “you can use it for tax evasion.”

We're not talking about tax evasion. If you don't have hundreds of thousands of dollars in assets, then banks have all sorts of fees that they ding you for just like the phone company when you travel, and they won't waive them as they have no incentive to keep your business. Folks with lots of money who track every penny are often unaware of the landscape for these fees, because banks actually do have an incentive to…

You know I would not actually mind seeing all the gov budget spending get tracked on a blockchain. I often wonder where the trillions in budget spending goes.

Re: Ask HN: Am I going insane or is there genuinely no value in blockchain tech?

#492

Post by forum_ghost »

FabHK wrote: post #219
forum_ghost wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you mean, fully embrace it to front-run the laggards, like El Salvador did?

A journalist that went to El Salvador and tried to use BTC to pay begs to differ: > By Friday the final tally looks grim for crypto fans. Only 10 of almost 50 businesses had taken Bitcoin, amounting to $485 out of $1,700 I’ve spent. And only four crypto transactions—at the pool hall, the peanut vendor, a Starbucks, and a Caterpillar-brand T-shirt store—had been entirely seamless. My experience isn’t a fluke. In a rec…

What percentage of the businesses, in any country, use your software?

15%, in a few months, is an astounding penetration rate for a brand new currency with 50% fluctuations.

Looking forward to the list of your global achievements.

Re: Ask HN: Am I going insane or is there genuinely no value in blockchain tech?

#493

Post by ASalazarMX »

paulsutter wrote: post #19

The 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)

The current Mexican government is trying to take control of elections, banana republic style, from the INE, the independent institution in charge of those. Our president is suggesting blockchain tech to make votes electronic, and defunding the INE since physical votes won't be needed anymore. A blockchain would not guarantee fair elections, is just a buzzword.

Re: Ask HN: Am I going insane or is there genuinely no value in blockchain tech?

#494

Post by blooalien »

tmaly wrote: post #491
yebyen wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're not talking about tax evasion. If you don't have hundreds of thousands of dollars in assets, then banks have all sorts of fees that they ding you for just like the phone company when you travel, and they won't waive them as they have no incentive to keep your business. Folks with lots of money who track every penny are often unaware of the landscape for these fees, because banks actually do have an incentive to…

You know I would not actually mind seeing all the gov budget spending get tracked on a blockchain. I often wonder where the trillions in budget spending goes.

So totally very much this, yes!

*spam-click the parent comment up-vote button …*

Re: Ask HN: Am I going insane or is there genuinely no value in blockchain tech?

#496

Post by lostmsu »

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #130
paulsutter wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The power is used to secure the system, not to perform transactions. The transaction rate has always been the same, the power use has gone up with the value of the contents (to resist a 51% attack) Some people feel strongly this security is worth it. Some feel strongly that it isn’t (but one suspects their objection is really to the lack of central control)

Climate change may be the problem that defines our generation. In that light, and given the ludicrous power estimates that blockchains use, are we not morally obligated to kill all the blockchain projects if these estimates are in the right ballpark?

Only if you believe climate change defines this generation.

Re: Ask HN: Am I going insane or is there genuinely no value in blockchain tech?

#497

Post by zinglersen »

I made the choice to use Firefox because of the monopolistic direction that we're headed, but I think it will become harder and harder to argue for Firefox.

I wonder if there is another way to create an information network that simplifies the user experience by scraping website code and reformatting it into a simple template with defined ux-patterns like navigation, font, text size, colors, buttons, links, media, etc. and excluding unwanted content like ads, filler bg images and such.

So basically creating a design system that you apply to all websites. The scaping/tagging would need to be smart and there would probably be a need for separate templates for some use cases (could twitter work?) but maybe the focus should be on information-driven sites like blogs, wiki, search, media, etc.

Re: Ask HN: Am I going insane or is there genuinely no value in blockchain tech?

#498

Post by nl »

swalsh wrote: post #314
nl wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But unlike open source development, it's not done by "good will". You can pay people for their contributions in a trustless way that allows ANYONE to contribute and earn. You can pay people for open source work now. You can even pay them in crypto. A DAO doesn't make any of the hard work of developing a system (eg, specifying what you need, arguing if it has or hasn't been developed correctly) any easier.

I hear what you're saying, and I agree given your framework of constraints its true. I'd argue the constraints are wrong on chain. If you're engineering a "system" you're thinking like a corporation. The magic of crypto are the various protocols are like legos. I think a DAO should be a simple single capability like a unix process. It should strive to do one thing well.

"money lego" works well when it's specific technical capabilities that need to be stuck together.

That makes no sense at all when it's a complex process with human interactions.

I think DAOs are interesting things. But the completely naive way people talk about them (like what you are saying here) is completely unrealistic and shows the lack of technical experience that so much of crypto suffers from.

Re: Ask HN: Am I going insane or is there genuinely no value in blockchain tech?

#499

Post by baby »

tsimionescu wrote: post #463
baby wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We’re talking about what the technology can do, not what the bottom of the tech is not doing

Sure, but those alternatives are not yet proven technologies. It's unclear for example if PoS is actually trust-worthy at scale, and we can't use Bitcoin or Ethereum's success so far to check that.

What makes you say that? PoS coins have been running without issues for almost as long as PoW coins and as far as I know there’s been no attacks. On the other hand there’s been many 51% attacks on PoW coins.

Re: Ask HN: Am I going insane or is there genuinely no value in blockchain tech?

#500

Post by baby »

laverya wrote: post #472
baby wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s true only if you care about storing historical data

When the balance of every address can only be calculated by executing the total transaction graph, as in Bitcoin, then you need to store the history. If you have a solution for this that does not require trusting anyone, I'm sure that people would love to hear it.

I do. Check out Mina. It uses recursive zero knowledge proofs to give you a proof of all state transitions since genesis.
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