Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Beyond the Bitcoin bubble

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 244 posts

Re: Beyond the Bitcoin bubble

#211

Post by v64 »

CryptoPunk wrote: post #209
v64 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cryptocurrency isn't blockchains anymore than AOL is the Internet. Bitcoin may be getting less useful, showing that a proof of work system that incentivizes miners the way it does may be broken, but this doesn't fundamentally cease to justify the use of blockchains as a data structure. It just means we need to figure out a way to keep blockchain security while improving/replacing proof of work.

That's a totally inappropriate analogy. AOL was a company, not a class of technology like cryptocurrency. You could compare a specific instance of cryptocurrency, like Bitcoin, to AOL, but not the category as a whole. Cryptocurrency is a vital component of the distributed blockchain architecture. It provides the decentralized economic layer, without which blockchains would be centralized by virtue of their dependence…

> AOL was a company, not a class of technology like cryptocurrency.

You know this, but many users of AOL didn't. To them, AOL was equal to the internet, like many people believe that cryptocurrency is the only application of blockchains as a data structure.

> Cryptocurrency is a vital component of the distributed blockchain architecture.

It is now, but that doesn't necessarily have to be the case. Cryptocurrency is one of many applications that can be built on top of a distributed ledger. There are many applications that have nothing to do with payment processing.

Re: Beyond the Bitcoin bubble

#212

Post by CryptoPunk »

v64 wrote: post #211
CryptoPunk wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a totally inappropriate analogy. AOL was a company, not a class of technology like cryptocurrency. You could compare a specific instance of cryptocurrency, like Bitcoin, to AOL, but not the category as a whole. Cryptocurrency is a vital component of the distributed blockchain architecture. It provides the decentralized economic layer, without which blockchains would be centralized by virtue of their dependence…

> AOL was a company, not a class of technology like cryptocurrency. You know this, but many users of AOL didn't. To them, AOL was equal to the internet, like many people believe that cryptocurrency is the only application of blockchains as a data structure. > Cryptocurrency is a vital component of the distributed blockchain architecture. It is now, but that doesn't necessarily have to be the case. Cryptocurrency is o…

You didn't respond to the fact that cryptocurrency is a technology class or my reasoning for my cryptocurrency is vital for blockchains to have the property of being distributed.

Re: Beyond the Bitcoin bubble

#213

Post by krrrh »

v64 wrote: post #139
starlust2 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point isn't that existing technology can already do what new technology provides. There has to be some increased value from using the new technology. E-commerce took over because it's more convenient and offers a wider selection of products. The end user doesn't care what database you're using. They care about utility.

> The end user doesn't care what database you're using. They care about utility. I agree, but this isn't just about the end user. Many businesses incur costs to third parties that could be reduced or eliminated by trustless systems whose validity of data can be verified mathematically without an auditing team. The blockchain of today can't do that yet, just like the internet of 1985 didn't allow you to buy books, but…

> Many businesses incur costs to third parties that could be reduced or eliminated by trustless systems

The way you phrase this it sounds like a marginal reduction of costs, and maybe a marginal reduction in the auditor workforce. That’s great, and it will bring about some efficiency in the businesses it applies to, but it doesn’t sound like a story of transformational change and an unlocking of new value. Even in the worst case scenario, how big are auditing costs to a business?

Re: Beyond the Bitcoin bubble

#214

Post by DSMan195276 »

vec wrote: post #124
DSMan195276 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with the 'blockchain without a coin' idea is the incentive. Why would people spend money to mine a blockchain which provides nothing to pay them back for it? Without the incentive, why would you care who is mining the blocks, and why would care about mining blocks faster then other people? You wouldn't. But at the same time, without having that race to have the most mining power, the argument that it is c…

It's true miners have to have some incentive, and Bitcoin chooses to make that incentive a financial reward, but it's not the only possible incentive structure. For example, imagine banks wanted to replace their clunky old ACH system with a blockchain. They could design their protocol such that it refuses to process transactions from or to an address that hasn't contributed a block to the chain in, say, the last 24 h…

> For example, imagine banks wanted to replace their clunky old ACH system with a blockchain. They could design their protocol such that it refuses to process transactions from or to an address that hasn't contributed a block to the chain in, say, the last 24 hours.. That requires each bank to contribute some minimum amount of computing power to maintaining the chain, even though it doesn't directly reward them for it.

But that is pretty much exactly my point. All that does is encourage people to mine just enough to keep the chain going, which does not ensure the security of the chain. There is no incentive to mine more blocks then anybody else.

With that said, I think the exercise is a bit futile to begin with - if banks have a serious dispute between them, they're going to handle it in the courts, so at the end of the day the existence of the blockchain only serves the purpose of holding the transactions and hopefully allowing then to be done faster and more efficiently. Which, a regular database could do just the same - you could even use Merkle tree to hold the data to ensure you could verify that older data has not been changed (By having banks keep their own synced copy of the database). Basically a blockchain without the mining. It requires a certain amount of centralization, but since the only parties are banks it wouldn't be extremely hard to handle that part. Which, you could technically still call this a blockchain, but without the mining and a decentralized way of deciding which chain is correct I think that's a stretch for what most people think when they're talking about blockchain. Specifically, per your definition, the blockchain requires some type of PoW/proof-of-whatever and a decentralized consensus, which this doesn't have.

And the above isn't actually all that theoretical. Ripple is a blockchain without a coin, but they fix the mining problem by not having any mining at all and instead having a central blockchain that they control. It's basically just an immutable database. So again, per your definition, they aren't really using a blockchain at all. And I'm not saying I disagree with your definition, but currently there are no examples of a decentralized blockchain using PoW that doesn't use a coin, even though there's basically everything else in-between.

I'm honestly not convinced that that there are really any situations that don't involve a coin where the blockchain with mining is a viable option, and where there aren't any better alternatives that would make more sense.

Re: Beyond the Bitcoin bubble

#215

Post by krrrh »

mhb wrote: post #187
frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but not accepting currency[0] or coins is different from not accepting USD. In the United States a creditor may choose to only accept certain forms of USD (ie. no $100 bills at some stores) but they still must accept USD in some form. [0] It is obvious from your link that the Treasury intends "currency" to be interpreted as paper money, see this: There is, however, no Federal statute mandating that a private busi…

I'd be interested in your reference. I think it's obvious that businesses aren't required to accept credit cards, checks, ACH transfers, whatever else. If they also aren't required to accept bills or coins, it would seem as though they don't need to accept payment in USD in any form. This creates a problem for them, but why do you think they must accept USD in some form?

The policy is stated on every bill: “this note is legal tender for all debts, public and private"

You can put your question in a search engine and find many references. Businesses in the US must accept dollars, but can choose what form they come in.

Re: Beyond the Bitcoin bubble

#216

Post by koonsolo »

bigdubs wrote: post #115
v64 wrote: post #108

It's strange to me how there are many among the Hacker News crowd who can read an article like this and have doubts about its thesis. You lived through the 80s and 90s right? I can't count how many times in my life I was told no one would ever need a computer in their house, we've gotten along for decades just fine without them. No one will ever buy books online, that's ridiculous, you can go to the store and have on…

Not sure the parallels are as strong as you're making them out to be; there are deep, deep flaws with proof of work as a concept because of the energy consumed. There will probably be a better end state for distributed trust, but we're legitimately not there yet.

> because of the energy consumed.

> but we're legitimately not there yet.

Maybe Directed Acyclic Graph technology (instead of blockchain), such as iota and raiblocks? Iota seemed to make its enterence into the top 10 of cryptocurrency, so I guess we're there.

Re: Beyond the Bitcoin bubble

#217

Post by koonsolo »

benashford wrote: post #173
v64 wrote: post #108

It's strange to me how there are many among the Hacker News crowd who can read an article like this and have doubts about its thesis. You lived through the 80s and 90s right? I can't count how many times in my life I was told no one would ever need a computer in their house, we've gotten along for decades just fine without them. No one will ever buy books online, that's ridiculous, you can go to the store and have on…

Pretty much everything successful now was ridiculed or dismissed in the past, but that doesn't mean everything that was ridiculed or dismissed became successful. And even those things that became successful did so in a form that the contemporaneous positive predictions did not expect. The 1990's predictions of the Internet was of decentralised power and freedom of information, what actually happened? There was a land…

Which central bank will create the world currency that everyone in the world can easily use?

Re: Beyond the Bitcoin bubble

#218

Post by krrrh »

acdha wrote: post #183
alphydan wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bitcoin is turning 10. It all depends on where you start counting. In 2008 it was just Satoshi and a few cypherpunks. I would argue it looked a lot like Arpanet [0]. So Fast forward 10 years from 1973 ... and was the internet really useful in 1983? On January 1st 1983, "every machine connected to ARPANET had to use TCP/IP. TCP/IP became the core Internet protocol and replaced NCP entirely." [1] ... hardly a huge co…

I don't think that comparison holds so tightly, but if it did it seems to make it worse: ARPANET had significant dependency delays in availability since computers cost a fortune, modems were slow, and you had to pay by the minute for phone calls. In contrast, despite Bitcoin being available to everyone on the first day most people have never had a reason to use it other than speculation. That said, there were still p…

> and that's assuming that VISA, et al. wouldn't just lower their rates

They easily could, their current rates contribute a lot toward cashback and points rewards and other marketing programs. Australia regulated a cap on rates at 0.4% iirc, and Visa still covered its costs.

Re: Beyond the Bitcoin bubble

#219

Post by johnx123-up »

nabla9 wrote: post #5

I hope the technology matures beyond 'blockchain' and marketing drops the 'coin' moniker and the gold rush dies down. Cryptographically verified distributed log files should have negligible hype value and be hidden part of the infrastructure. I predict that 10 years from now normal relational databases have infrastructure for shared, authenticated and verified rows and columns and we laugh at the ICO era.

I just came here after reading this http://rajeshanbiah.blogspot.com/2018/01/technology-predicti... article. It suggests PGP for immutable database.

Re: Beyond the Bitcoin bubble

#220

Post by thanatropism »

iamwil wrote: post #204
sangnoir wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's another quote: "The CueCat isn't worth installing and using, even though it's available free of charge" —Walt Mossberg[1], WSJ Tech Reviewer, 2001 I think he nailed it. 1. https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB971305166620370724

What's the point you're trying to make? Cuecat is a product. It's not an industry, medium, or platform, like TV and radio is. Your quote is a false equivalence.

> platform

But it is.

It's not a product that's useful on its own like a toaster or CorelDRAW. Instead it sits at the middle of a two-sided market -- on the one hand publishers, on the other hand readers. If it had caught on it would have caught on.

Post reply on HN