Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality • Hacker News Board

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#41

Post by SlowRobotAhead » Thu, Mar 29, 2018, 3:29 PM UTC

pxmpxm wrote: post #14

onion-soup wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sending money without fees and delay? Have you ever tried a normal bank transfer? How long did it take? Have you ever tried, say, nano? It literally takes seconds and 0 fees. Here is some value.

The delay and cost is a function of mandatory compliance and recourse, rather than anything to do with technology.

I’m glad some people get it. Banks do zero delay and zero cost transactions between themselves already. The idea that “if only we coukd figure out where to use blockchain, everything would be FREE” is really naive. You take away a banks ability to charge for X, don’t be surprised when Y gets a new fee.

As to decentralized, there seems to be a wonderful libritarian ideal around cryptocommodities but I’m reality they are much more centralized than anyone wants to admit. There are probably 10 people that if they wanted to could absolutely demolish bitcoin.

Too much hype around all of this. Not even getting into the massive waste of power and potential.

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#42

Post by JoeAltmaier » Thu, Mar 29, 2018, 3:29 PM UTC

drieddust wrote: post #35

Looking at the history of Wall Street, it should be safe to predict that Block chain technology will be the reason for next global meltdown. They can and will do wonders generating derivates after derivates and make huge bonuses. I have never understood why financial instruments like derivates like options etc. exists. I understand what they do but I do not understand what value they add to the economy specifically.

Don't add any value, of course they are entropy. But they do aid in liquidity, which is like a coefficient of money flow.

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#43

Post by dqpb » Thu, Mar 29, 2018, 3:29 PM UTC

If projects we're ever based on the market price of bitcoins, then they were ill-founded.

If projects we're based on the technical features of a block chain architecture then the decline of euphoria is irrelevant.

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#44

Post by namdnay » Thu, Mar 29, 2018, 3:29 PM UTC

arisAlexis wrote: post #30

seanalltogether wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there is a definitive source of trust (ie. the government) then a blockchain is a very inefficient mechanism for distribution.

yes very little corruption in governments worldwide and records are never counterfeited. I agree

But if the government is corrupt they'll just say that the original transaction was invalid for X Y Z reasons and carry on... the truth being obvious has never been a problem for corrupt regimes

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#45

Post by hudon » Thu, Mar 29, 2018, 3:29 PM UTC

nwah1 wrote: post #7

It is interesting that even in an article like this that they still say things like "for all its potential, blockchain is still in its early days." It is sticking with the unfounded assumption that it will be a success in the future, if only it is given more time. In technological terms, it is old. Innumerable efforts have been attempted, yielding almost no fruit. At what point are the fundamental assumptions going t…

I think the fundamental assumption is that "Satoshi invented a useful solution to decentralized consensus".

What people don't realize is that Satoshi's solution only works if two assumptions hold true:

1. Mining is decentralized: If mining is centralized than relying on proof-of-work for consensus is waste since the centralized entity controls the blockchain anyway.

2. Consensus rules don't change: If you see the threat of #1 and so take power away from miners (like Bitcoin has done), then you cannot ever change the consensus ruleset because aside from proof-of-work, Satoshi did not give any solution to the problem of choosing between 2 chains that have slightly different consensus rules. If you change the consensus ruleset (ie. make any changes where 2 nodes disagree on if a block is valid or not), then you need an oracle to tell you which chain to choose. We've seen this when Core developers chose the 0.7 Bitcoin chain in 2013 and when Vitalik chose the forked Ethereum chain in 2016.

At the end of the day, the blockchain's decentralization is a myth because it relies on false assumptions. Satoshi invented a Rube Goldberg machine that is currently using as much electricity as a medium-sized country (and also enabling things like money laundering, drug trafficking, etc.).

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#46

Post by seanmcdirmid » Thu, Mar 29, 2018, 3:30 PM UTC

malvosenior wrote: post #28

nwah1 wrote: post #7

It is interesting that even in an article like this that they still say things like "for all its potential, blockchain is still in its early days." It is sticking with the unfounded assumption that it will be a success in the future, if only it is given more time. In technological terms, it is old. Innumerable efforts have been attempted, yielding almost no fruit. At what point are the fundamental assumptions going t…

> yielding almost no fruit Bitcoin and Ethereum are "almost no fruit"? Combined they're sitting at ~$165 billion dollars in created value.

> Combined they're sitting at ~$165 billion dollars in created value.

Huh? Bitcoin and Ehtereum are purely speculative assets, they have not enabled any new production or efficient distribution, they have not increased economic activity. They aren't even marginally useful in electronics production like gold is.

This is like saying printing dollars creates value (though the dollar is at least useful as an instrument of trade).

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#47

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Mar 29, 2018, 3:30 PM UTC

nwah1 wrote: post #7

It is interesting that even in an article like this that they still say things like "for all its potential, blockchain is still in its early days." It is sticking with the unfounded assumption that it will be a success in the future, if only it is given more time. In technological terms, it is old. Innumerable efforts have been attempted, yielding almost no fruit. At what point are the fundamental assumptions going t…

[deleted]

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#48

Post by SlowRobotAhead » Thu, Mar 29, 2018, 3:30 PM UTC

this_user wrote: post #22

What does "blockchain" even mean in this generalised context? When we are talking about crypto currencies, it is a distributed database with a consensus mechanism that is extremely costly to run. But this is not something you would need or want in most other situations, because there is always some degree of trust with your counterparties (and legal recourse if necessary). If we strip away the consensus mechanism, al…

>What does "blockchain" even mean in this generalised context?

Mathy Database, and yea just buzzwords and hype.

The next big thing, won’t have people standing around looking at it and wondering where it goes.

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#49

Post by adambyrtek » Thu, Mar 29, 2018, 3:30 PM UTC

malvosenior wrote: post #28

nwah1 wrote: post #7

It is interesting that even in an article like this that they still say things like "for all its potential, blockchain is still in its early days." It is sticking with the unfounded assumption that it will be a success in the future, if only it is given more time. In technological terms, it is old. Innumerable efforts have been attempted, yielding almost no fruit. At what point are the fundamental assumptions going t…

> yielding almost no fruit Bitcoin and Ethereum are "almost no fruit"? Combined they're sitting at ~$165 billion dollars in created value.

There is no new value created there, it's just transferred from the buyer to the seller (with some being diverted as transaction costs).

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#50

Post by JumpCrisscross » Thu, Mar 29, 2018, 3:31 PM UTC

barnabee wrote: post #32

nwah1 wrote: post #7

It is interesting that even in an article like this that they still say things like "for all its potential, blockchain is still in its early days." It is sticking with the unfounded assumption that it will be a success in the future, if only it is given more time. In technological terms, it is old. Innumerable efforts have been attempted, yielding almost no fruit. At what point are the fundamental assumptions going t…

It's younger than most technology is when it becomes successful. Much younger when you realise you think about the age of the concepts, designs, algorithms, etc. that eventually become successful rather than a specific attempt at implementation.

Imagine if a bunch of investors walked into the Homebrew Computing Club [1] in 1976 and offered to buy anything and everything its members made for $1 million. With the benefit of hindsight, blockchain is the story of a neat database technology trashing its near-term prospects by marketing itself as a currency.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homebrew_Computer_Club