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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

#191

Post by dreit1 »

bob2001 wrote: post #49
dreit1 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this isn't an answer that you will like....but blockchain allows me to invest in high risk investments that would typically only be allowed for accredited investors. Having the shares/coins in a blockchain provides for transparency and authenticity and makes legit companies act in a way that is generally favorable for the small time investor

Can you explain how having shares/coins in the blockchain increases transparency/authenticity? Easily audit-able records would exist just the same if you bought your shares via wire transfer.

So imagine an ICO company that has a premine. You know the address of all their funds that they raised, and you know all the funds that are held through their premine. You can easily track the money to make sure nothing fishy is going on. This isn't that big of a deal for a tiny company, but imagine this for a huge corporation or government body.

All of them CAN produce auditable records for the consumer, but they don't, blockchains force the issue.

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

#192

Post by dreit1 »

chadcmulligan wrote: post #61
dreit1 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this isn't an answer that you will like....but blockchain allows me to invest in high risk investments that would typically only be allowed for accredited investors. Having the shares/coins in a blockchain provides for transparency and authenticity and makes legit companies act in a way that is generally favorable for the small time investor

but isn't that just taking advantage of a (temporary) loop hole? The real problem there imho is that for some reason the government has decided that oh we need to step in and protect the unwise. Strangely this is by the same people that say government shouldn't be involved in the financial markets. There is no guarantee that having an ICO makes the investment any more bullet proof.

Entire industries can be built on regulatory loopholes, Uber and Lyft come to mind.

Cryptocurrencies are forcing govts to reexamine regulations that I argue are generally favorable to massive institutions/ high net worth individuals and unfavorable to the small timers

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

#193

Post by jstandard »

ThomPete wrote: post #137
deckard1 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cryptokitties is little more than a scam to bring kids into the world of Ethereum speculation. They make part of their money via their marketplace, which of course has zero to do with the blockchain. Most people aren't going to care who "owns" the digital asset, as you can't do much with the asset outside of the software that uses the digital asset. Which is going to be 100% owned by the digital creator. Nintendo isn…

You can buy fake physical Pokemon cards that don't change the fact that someone will pay for the original. You are missing the larger point because you focus on the smaller technical details. Things don't have to be perfect to be successful. Again. Either you understand the larger perspective of cryptocurrencies, blockchain and tokens or you don't.

I think the larger point being made here is how does blockchain add substantial value for all parties in digital trading cards? What motivates the creator of the cards to do so when they give up so much control?

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

#194

Post by brooklyn_ashey »

joe_the_user wrote: post #65
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…

The problem isn't the technology but the problems around legality and implementation and who it disrupts. The immediate problem is that an "automatic" contract circumvents the regular legal system and thus is going to be ... not-legal. The larger problem is that this is how things should be. That the regular system isn't automatic but rather includes considerations of intentions and individuals involves is not a bug…

This is an excellent point. I've been looking into blockchain as used in supply chain integrity. Here is a company currently doing it: https://www.provenance.org/whitepaper I have been wondering about how this will circumvent the diminishing scope of regulations in the US food and textile industries, and how this will present much better provenance data for the principled consumer and how this might disrupt current interests of US corporations. This would be great for the consumer, but bad for the corporations' bottom line. I can see it somehow being legally derailed via what you just outlined since it could direct consumers to better options hurting the profits of corporations who paid hefty lobbying sums. I hope this won't be the case, because I like the use of blockchain to help with supply chain integrity. It is a path toward sustainability in an increasingly hostile-to-sustainability market.

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

#195

Post by dorgo »

tom_mellior wrote: post #134
chipgap98 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The data is stored on a decentralized database (many nodes). I buy my house and am send the rights to that land on a blockchain. Only someone with the private keys to my address/account/whatever could send that house to someone else. The scale of the network should make it impossible for the database to be corrupted. The whole idea here is distributed trust

> Only someone with the private keys to my address/account/whatever could send that house to someone else. And that is exactly the opposite of what a land title database is. The authorities must be able to transfer your house to your heirs if you die. The authorities must be able to take away your deed in certain cases. The authorities must be able to correct entries in the database. They must be able to override thi…

So the logical next step it to move courts and enforcement to the blockchain.

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

#196

Post by Barrin92 »

WhitneyLand wrote: post #139

There are countless examples where a promising innovation, or even a seemingly useless but novel result became important at a much later date than 10 years. Even the Internet was criticized by some after 10 years for failing to live up to “change everything” hype, and it’s true it hadn’t really close to doing so at the time. Some companies like Blockbuster Video weren’t a bit concerned for quite a while. To me the cu…

> There are countless examples where a promising innovation, or even a seemingly useless but novel result became important at a much later date than 10 years.

While that might be true, that doesn't mean that a lack of success actually indicates success. That'd be a useless tautology.

More importantly, earlier innovations that took their time usually at least had a clear proposition of value. When electricity was introduced it took decades before businesses had adjusted their manufacturing and supply lines to the new technology, but everybody could trivially see that powering things remotely and sending information over long distances is pretty darn useful.

There is no such hypothetical justification for blockchain technology, or at least there isn't in many cases were people rabidly keep advocating for it.

As the author points out, in many fields the blockhain technology is less energy efficient, slower, and provides the opposite of what most customers want.

That is

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

#197

Post by dorgo »

root_axis wrote: post #174
scythe wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

atm yes. First computers were huge, slow and impractical too.

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

#198

Post by eli_gottlieb »

ThomPete wrote: post #122
eli_gottlieb wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't describe turning Infinity into One as having "quite a lot of value". I'd describe that as pointing a machine gun at value and spraying it with bullets.

You can describe it any way you want. It doesn't change the fact that "value" is not something which is easily defined which again the art scene is a good example but also stamps, coins, stickers, physical Pokemon cards and so on.

You don't build an economy on Pokemon cards!

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

#199

Post by vickychijwani »

mrhappyunhappy wrote: post #188
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…

"simply a ledger" that for some reason didn't exist until Satoshi nakamoto created Bitcoin.

While your comment is in good faith, I don't think the OP was trying to minimise the complexity of a distributed ledger. Instead they were trying to distinguish their mentioned use-case from the currency use-case.

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

#200

Post by ThomPete »

jstandard wrote: post #193
ThomPete wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can buy fake physical Pokemon cards that don't change the fact that someone will pay for the original. You are missing the larger point because you focus on the smaller technical details. Things don't have to be perfect to be successful. Again. Either you understand the larger perspective of cryptocurrencies, blockchain and tokens or you don't.

I think the larger point being made here is how does blockchain add substantial value for all parties in digital trading cards? What motivates the creator of the cards to do so when they give up so much control?

It creates a secondary market which doesn't need a centralized organization/company to maintain it.

It's like investing in the TCP/IP protocol.

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