Ten years in, nobody has come up with a use for blockchain • Hacker News Board

Re: Ten years in, nobody has come up with a use for blockchain

#91

Post by ThomPete » Sat, Dec 23, 2017, 11:16 PM UTC

deckard1 wrote: post #86

ThomPete wrote: post #29

People always overestimate the short term and underestimate the long term. Go to any country perhaps with the exception of Estonia and you will see that digitalization was supposed to change governments for the better. Instead they mostly have created very sporadic successes but a lot of failed implementation sometimes even making it worse. Yet there is no doubt that in the long run things are changing for the better…

> Digital Pokemon cards, 2nd hand ebooks market, 2nd hand digital assets market None of these are realistic examples. Do you think Nintendo won't want a piece of that digital trading market? Or Amazon, for ebooks? Digital assets aren't going to be decentralized. Never. Corporations are going to maintain their walled garden platform, and make sure all transactions are conducted within that platform so they scrape off…

"Digital pokemon cards" is already a thing it of course wasn't meant literally https://www.cryptokitties.co/ some of those got sold for $100K

There are plenty of opensourced games out there and plenty of opensource projects and there will only be more in the future.

Every new generation growing up is a new generation who will be affected by other things than the previous generation.

Everyone also laughed when I in the 90'ies said you would one day be able to score girls from being good at playing computer games.

Either you understand this perspective or you don't. It's cool with me that you don't understand it, but it's already happening while you say it never will.

Re: Ten years in, nobody has come up with a use for blockchain

#92

Post by mooneater » Sat, Dec 23, 2017, 11:16 PM UTC

KirinDave wrote: post #38

Github and the linux git repo are merkle trees with a variety of governance controls. I will die on this hill if I have to.

A blockchain is a Merkle tree that increases you valuation /s

Re: Ten years in, nobody has come up with a use for blockchain

#93

Post by Rapzid » Sat, Dec 23, 2017, 11:16 PM UTC

Animats wrote: post #24

Some big banks are gearing up to use a blockchain to track interbank settlements.[1] But this isn't a coin, nor is there mining. It's simply a shared ledger that can't be altered without cooperation between a majority of the parties. All alterations are clearly visible to all parties, which is good for auditing. Only big banks who have signed up for this have active nodes, and they are not anonymous. This is an alter…

It's interesting too that it will be much easier for them to agree on architectural changes when necessary to compensate for scaling or other issues.

This is a major issue for something like Bitcoin, but a small speed bump for banks utilizing agreed upon blockchain tech.. It's at least interesting to consider the benefits of centralized(exclusive?) guidance coupled with distributed execution.

Re: Ten years in, nobody has come up with a use for blockchain

#94

Post by theoh » Sat, Dec 23, 2017, 11:17 PM UTC

claudiulodro wrote: post #77

ThomPete wrote: post #29

People always overestimate the short term and underestimate the long term. Go to any country perhaps with the exception of Estonia and you will see that digitalization was supposed to change governments for the better. Instead they mostly have created very sporadic successes but a lot of failed implementation sometimes even making it worse. Yet there is no doubt that in the long run things are changing for the better…

> digital art certification Interesting. So you have an original piece of digital art and the owner of the art is verified on the blockchain? How would that work? Can't I just take a screenshot or something of the art and have a copy? What's the advantage of having one "true" piece of digital art and is it feasable? Genuinely curious how this would work. It's a very intriguing idea.

Not certification of digital art, digital certification of art. Some people are excited about this. It is just a DRM thing, transfer of rights, records of provenance etc.

Makes sense if you think of art as an asset, which is kind of a philistine thing to do...

Re: Ten years in, nobody has come up with a use for blockchain

#95

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Dec 23, 2017, 11:21 PM UTC

pedalpete wrote: post #19

This reminds me of the naysayers from the early internet, and I think we can look at each stage of the internet's growth with these same glasses. 1) email: it will never replace the post-office. You can only send text. Oh, ok, they've added images now, well, its' too slow for most people to download them, and now I've got all this spam. We use it in our company, but it isn't really for consumers. Oh, then hotmail...…

[deleted]

Re: Ten years in, nobody has come up with a use for blockchain

#96

Post by dozzie » Sat, Dec 23, 2017, 11:22 PM UTC

tom_mellior wrote: post #83

eksemplar wrote: post #69

Maersk is using blockchain to validate container ownership claims. Revolutionary tech in a world where crime meant the confirmation papers cost more than the container to ship. Several countries outside the west are moving to do registration of land ownership on blockchain tech because their bureaucratic system is corrupt. Banks have moved to cryptocurrencies for transfers. Sure it's not the unregulated ones, but it'…

> Several countries outside the west are moving to do registration of land ownership on blockchain tech because their bureaucratic system is corrupt. Do you have a source for this? I can't imagine how it might work.

Why not? Blockchain is a document timestamping system, which means its whole purpose is to tell which of the two connected documents was issued earlier. As such, it doesn't care if the document was subtracting a number from one account and adding the same number to another account or if it was some text telling who gets the ownership of a described plot.

In fact, this particular use is one of the few that blockchain is actually good for (because it was designed as document timestamping), unlike stuff like voting or databases.

Re: Ten years in, nobody has come up with a use for blockchain

#97

Post by eli_gottlieb » Sat, Dec 23, 2017, 11:30 PM UTC

ThomPete wrote: post #29

People always overestimate the short term and underestimate the long term. Go to any country perhaps with the exception of Estonia and you will see that digitalization was supposed to change governments for the better. Instead they mostly have created very sporadic successes but a lot of failed implementation sometimes even making it worse. Yet there is no doubt that in the long run things are changing for the better…

>Digital Pokemon cards, 2nd hand ebooks market, 2nd hand digital assets market

Are you kidding? So the big use of the blockchain is to take things that have zero marginal cost of production, and enforce a completely artificial cost of production, to make non-scarce goods scarce?

Re: Ten years in, nobody has come up with a use for blockchain

#98

Post by ThomPete » Sat, Dec 23, 2017, 11:37 PM UTC

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #97

ThomPete wrote: post #29

People always overestimate the short term and underestimate the long term. Go to any country perhaps with the exception of Estonia and you will see that digitalization was supposed to change governments for the better. Instead they mostly have created very sporadic successes but a lot of failed implementation sometimes even making it worse. Yet there is no doubt that in the long run things are changing for the better…

>Digital Pokemon cards, 2nd hand ebooks market, 2nd hand digital assets market Are you kidding ? So the big use of the blockchain is to take things that have zero marginal cost of production, and enforce a completely artificial cost of production, to make non-scarce goods scarce?

Those are just some of the examples and yes it has quite a lot of value. Many things in the physical world is also built on these simple principles.

Re: Ten years in, nobody has come up with a use for blockchain

#99

Post by Agebor » Sat, Dec 23, 2017, 11:37 PM UTC

hanselot wrote: post #25

pedalpete wrote: post #19

This reminds me of the naysayers from the early internet, and I think we can look at each stage of the internet's growth with these same glasses. 1) email: it will never replace the post-office. You can only send text. Oh, ok, they've added images now, well, its' too slow for most people to download them, and now I've got all this spam. We use it in our company, but it isn't really for consumers. Oh, then hotmail...…

This whole crypto thing is a bubble. You will see it fall and never recover. No, not like the other 7000 times it crashed by more than 40%, no this time it will be impossible to recover, because people can't inherently value something that doesn't exist. Here use this paper I got from a place I pay to keep my money for me instead.

People value proxies, like cash.

It goes like this: proxy (cash/cryptocurrency) -> belief -> result/other resource

Re: Ten years in, nobody has come up with a use for blockchain

#100

Post by cm2187 » Sat, Dec 23, 2017, 11:42 PM UTC

Animats wrote: post #24

Some big banks are gearing up to use a blockchain to track interbank settlements.[1] But this isn't a coin, nor is there mining. It's simply a shared ledger that can't be altered without cooperation between a majority of the parties. All alterations are clearly visible to all parties, which is good for auditing. Only big banks who have signed up for this have active nodes, and they are not anonymous. This is an alter…

I don't understand how they go around the confidentiality. If you are a trader at big bank A, the last thing you want is traders at big bank B and C to know everything you have in your book.