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

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

#171

Post by magpi3 »

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?

If you're a capitalist, this is an amazing reason for valuing the blockchain. It looks just like a decentralized DRM mechanism.

I have a lot more reading to do, but that is what I understand from what I have read so far. Cryptokitties is blowing my mind.

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

#172

Post by Eridrus »

DenisM wrote: post #106
Cyberdog wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about a blockchain/distributed ledger improves supply chains in ways that a standard centralized database could not? Explain like I'm five.

I don't necessarily believe this myself, but here goes: A database under control of any one entity is prone to undue influence by hacking or bribing or other leverage. An append-only database that is controlled by consensus of all club members is safe from malfeasance on the part of a minority. There is value in that. Of course this has nothing to do with mining coins and stuff. Now you can argue the society already…

One issue with cryptocoins is that the security demands are far higher because there is little recourse when hacks happen. Of course, you could put them in an exchange, but this is basically just reinventing banks.

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

#173

Post by wallacoloo »

mrep wrote: post #150
wallacoloo wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but there are plenty of dissenters that manage to escape being in the physical custody of their government. One might reasonably decide to leave the country before dissenting, in some scenarios. You can bet that Edward Snowden had all his US assets seized, for example. But if he had any cryptocurrency, he may have been able to take those with him.

So, for Illegal activity? The article has already consented that illegal markets are 1 of the 2 current use cases. Got any others?

> So, for Illegal activity

Say I'm someone like Ed Snowden (again). I own a house, a car, the clothes on my back, and Bitcoin. I up and leave one day to share government secrets with the press and hide in a different country.

Did the car aid in the crime? Probably, to some degree - it let me physically make my way to the airport, and on to journalists to whom I shared secrets. Did the house aid the crime? Did the clothes on my back aid the crime? Both of those allowed me to live a safe and comfortable life. I wouldn't have made it past airport security without my clothes, after all.

Did the Bitcoin aid the crime? Only in the same sense that a treadmill and a good diet aids a bank robber by making it easier for him to leave the scene in a hurry.

So I think the claim that having bitcoin in your possession when committing a crime necessarily enables that crime (to a greater deal than any other everyday thing) is a bit nebulous. It didn't facilitate the crime, it just lessened the punishment. Possession of $USD cash provides a similar thing in the form of being used to pay bail.

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

#174

Post by root_axis »

scythe wrote: post #148
root_axis wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bottom line is that blockchain token technology is not a fit for the problem of 3rd world banking and hyperinflation, it is stunningly out of touch to suggest that crpyo-tokens are having any significant impact on the ground in these places.

You don't know anything about the bottom line. I made claims about the potential for use, not that it was actually used. You seem to be operating on the assumption that third world = mud huts and subsistence farming, which is very untrue.

> You don't know anything about the bottom line.

I'm unsure what you mean by this. "The bottom line" is just a manner of expression.

> I made claims about the potential for use, not that it was actually used

And I stated why I believe this to be a dubious claim; crypto-tokens are totally impractical. Your allusion to advancements in medicine and internet connectivity is a red herring argument that hand waves away the reality of using crypo-tokens in the real world.

> You seem to be operating on the assumption that third world = mud huts and subsistence farming, which is very untrue.

Wow. I illustrated concerns surrounding limited accessibility to internet in the developing world and you disingenuously twisted it into an insult to the citizens of the developing world. You don't even have to venture into a 3rd world country to see the impracticality of crypo-tokens in the real world, they're barley usable even in the developed world, and at the first sign of trouble they are useless, e.g. see how far crypo-tokens take you on the ground in Puerto Rico. Jumbling around private keys, trying to coordinate meet-ups to trade crypto for money, managing all the technical issues surrounding wallet management, insane volatility, transaction fees, the concept of confirmations, client versioning, security best practices, staying abreast of blockchain politics surrounding forks and protocol changes that impact security, price, usability... it's a quagmire of impracticality.

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

#175

Post by Animats »

bottled_poe wrote: post #128
ezoe wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since only the trustworthy bodies can join the party, they can do the job more efficiently by not using any of the trendy blockchain which may technically prevent the fraud but otherwise inefficient. And since there are only banks can join the network, I doubt it can technically prevent the fraud among banks because unlike public cryptocurrencies, it does not give incentives to the banks to spend a lot of computation…

This seems easy to solve though. Couldn’t they just modify the transaction acceptance logic to require 100% agreement across the network?

A blockchain system will still work if a minority of the players are down or disconnected. When they come back, they resync to the majority view. That's a useful robustness feature.

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

#176

Post by josu »

mrep wrote: post #150
wallacoloo wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but there are plenty of dissenters that manage to escape being in the physical custody of their government. One might reasonably decide to leave the country before dissenting, in some scenarios. You can bet that Edward Snowden had all his US assets seized, for example. But if he had any cryptocurrency, he may have been able to take those with him.

So, for Illegal activity? The article has already consented that illegal markets are 1 of the 2 current use cases. Got any others?

Jews escaping from Nazi Germany, Syrian refugees, Venezuela, Argentina, or every other Latin American country...

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

#177

Post by josu »

root_axis wrote: post #34
kemonocode wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you expect someone in a third-world country to keep money away from a hyperinflating currency, without access to international banking? And no, we-will-suspend-your-account-if-you-look-at-us-funny PayPal is not an option. Cash in foreign currencies is extremely risky.

The people who are so poor that they don't have reliable access to banking services very often are lacking reliable access to internet connected computing devices and sometimes even electricity. Additionally, trading cryptocurrency for spendable money is time consuming and expensive. The idea that cryptocurrency is a viable option for the participants of third-world economies is absurd. I'm not saying that nobody in…

His comment doesn't mention poor people "someone in a third-world country to keep money away from a hyperinflating currency". Not that many people living in third world countries are considered poor anymore. It is not a middle-class (European style) but they certainly are able to save some money. Banks are not interested in that low-middle-class which make up most of the population in cities like Mexico City, Sao Paolo, Kolkata or Beijing, so the only store of value they have access to are state-sponsored/controlled pension funds (which they may never get back) or real estate in areas where property rights are not that well defined. So crypto is a very real answer to these people that are connected to the internet 24/7 through their smartphones.

Your comment mostly applies to rural areas in 3rd countries.

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

#178

Post by PatchMonkey »

What a crock. This is why Medium, as a news source sucks. Literally anyone can say literally anything.

Im no bitcoin fanboy either. Bail out, leave the bankers with the bill as revenge for 2008.

It was the wrong application of a brilliant idea - a democratically-distributed, obifuscated DNS replacement for secured communications like TOR seems more applicable than the whims of an unregulated currency.

But this author doesnt see food-sourcing happening. This author doesn't see banks adapting the blockchain for their own internal uses to protect sensitive info. Or anything else you might find in google.

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

#179

Post by dragonwriter »

PatchMonkey wrote: post #178

What a crock. This is why Medium, as a news source sucks . Literally anyone can say literally anything. Im no bitcoin fanboy either. Bail out, leave the bankers with the bill as revenge for 2008. It was the wrong application of a brilliant idea - a democratically-distributed, obifuscated DNS replacement for secured communications like TOR seems more applicable than the whims of an unregulated currency. But this autho…

> This is why Medium, as a news source sucks.

Medium isn't a news source, any more than, say, blogspot or LiveJournal is.

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

#180

Post by ThomPete »

Vendan wrote: post #157
ThomPete wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's both an upside and a downside depending on perspective. From a value perspective, it's an upside just ask the art-scene.

That's not an upside. That's a downside that got parlayed into an upside.

Again it depends on the perspective. To those who stand to benefit it's an upside. Just like those who benefit from stock or owning art which has increased in value.
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