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Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

reuters.com

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Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#81

Post by mulmen »

Mtinie wrote: post #10
jerf wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"My question is if this is your conclusion is that it's a solution in search of a problem, what was all that effort being spent on (not just in finance, but everywhere blockchain is being considered)?" That strikes me as a very rich question that would be interesting to investigate. Yes, we know people can get involved in hype cycles, but what was it about this technology that made it the thing that got hyped exactly…

I look at it differently: Brick-and-mortar plus mail-order was a viable business model for decades. Building the network infrastructure and software interconnections to move from that state to today’s online commerce and delivery model took years to accomplish and was (is) filled with hyped innovations. Blockchains may never reach their hyped potential, or we may simply be attempting to evaluate at very early stages…

Do you look at every single new technology this way? If so how do you find time for anything else? If not what makes blockchain different?

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#82

Post by aje403 »

ryandrake wrote: post #60
debt wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“governmemts are thinking of putting assets and laws on Blockchain” Two things: this statement is so vague it borders on meaningless. What assets? Who will put it in there? The president? Why would a government do that? Is it free to do or is there budget? Etc. Secondly, even if we could surmount the vagueness that plagues not just this idea but all blockchain ideas, the Herculean effort required to move governments…

The vagueness of Blockchain reminds me of the same “Cloud” vagueness. CEOs and CIOs read these articles about how great “Cloud” is and how everything is moving to “Cloud” and they turn around and declare things like “I want Cloud” and “We need to work on Cloud!” and “Invest in Cloud”. Just parroting what they read in HBR or what some IBM consultant told them. Then a whole bunch of money is spent on “Cloud” with often…

Yes, businesses try out different things and some things stick and some don't. This doesn't even have anything to do with technology. Businesses use computers because some idiot in a suit read an article.

Many companies are making a lot of money from implementing or integrating "Cloud", "Big Data" and "ML". They're not fad technologies. Blockchain hasn't done anything yet so should not be lumped in with them.

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#83

Post by asimpletune »

darawk wrote: post #73
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Blockchain is a shit database concept. It's use as a currency is one of its best uses. This idea that blockchains are a good database is an absurd myth. Blockchains are useful specifically for doing distributed consensus, and almost nothing else. Currencies are one of the best applications of distributed adversarial consensus. There are others, but currency is pretty near the top of the list.

Can you elaborate why you think it’s a terrible DB?

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#84

Post by the_new_guy_29 »

discoMAN wrote: post #64
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…

Crypto does not equal blockchain. Blockchain has a huge number of potential industry uses other than cryptocurrency. IBM has done a lot of work with companies making blockchain products that don't involve cryptocurrencies. When multiple companies are in a shared relationship they can benefit greatly from the tech. There are government regulation opportunities keeping track of sales and trades on regulated public mark…

Examples ? Blockchain is a technology in need of a problem to solve..

I dont know any commercial usage outside of cryptocurrencies.

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#85

Post by kerkeslager »

collyw wrote: post #34
tudorconstantin wrote: post #15

Of course banks can do it better with the traditional technologies. They operate in a centralized, trusted and regulated environment. Their consensus algorithm is "settling disputes in courts". And still, it takes up to 5 days to receive a payment from USA in the EU and the sender pays 40$ for the wire transfer. The blockchain technologies will disrupt the banks themselves, because they are the intermediaries in this…

Whats to stop a new bank springing up and allowing transfers a lot faster and cheaper using traditional methods?

What's stopping them is a simple question: who are you transferring the money to?

A lot of banks allow customers to do instant transfers between customers of that bank, but for this to be a killer feature, you have to have enough customers that this is significant. In NYC, Chase is almost there--they have enough of a share of NYC that it's worth asking if the person you're transferring to has Chase so you can use their instant transfer system.

But the vast majority of transactions are still between customers of different banks, and there's not much reason for a bank to process a competitor's payment quickly--it doesn't give you a competitive advantage, while processing slowly allows you to collect interest on the money while it's in transit.

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#86

Post by scrooched_moose »

saganus wrote: post #63
scrooched_moose wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GPU acceleration in scientific computing. My god in 2011 it was the only thing anyone talked about. Every COTS solver package cobbled together support in less than a year and were promising order of magnitude speedups. In 2018 it's still hanging around but realizing a 20% speedup on certain classes of problems. Maybe.

Didn't that tech shifted to AI/ML? Isn't that considered scientific computing by some measure? I'm definitely not an expert so I'm maybe missing something here.

"Scientific Computing" was probably too general of a term to use. I focus more on FEA/CFD type problems where it's effectively been a bust. Most of our benchmarks show 8 cpu cores + 1 GPU is roughly equivalent to 10 cpu cores, and a second GPU has little additional benefit.

I'm sure there are other disciplines that have seen a larger benefit.

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#87

Post by DINKDINK »

namdnay wrote: post #37
tudorconstantin wrote: post #15

Of course banks can do it better with the traditional technologies. They operate in a centralized, trusted and regulated environment. Their consensus algorithm is "settling disputes in courts". And still, it takes up to 5 days to receive a payment from USA in the EU and the sender pays 40$ for the wire transfer. The blockchain technologies will disrupt the banks themselves, because they are the intermediaries in this…

> it takes up to 5 days to receive a payment from USA in the EU and the sender pays 40$ for the wire transfer Only if you use a wire transfer. Payment by credit card is instant and costs about 1% for the merchant and maybe another 1% in change fees if there is a currency conversion needed.

>Payment by credit card is instant

Hardly. Chargebacks on credit cards can occur up to 3 months after payment. Good for customers who need that dispute feature but bad for others because those costs are socialized onto merchants and other consumers.

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#88

Post by pgwhalen »

discoMAN wrote: post #64
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…

Crypto does not equal blockchain. Blockchain has a huge number of potential industry uses other than cryptocurrency. IBM has done a lot of work with companies making blockchain products that don't involve cryptocurrencies. When multiple companies are in a shared relationship they can benefit greatly from the tech. There are government regulation opportunities keeping track of sales and trades on regulated public mark…

What does blockchain provide for those use cases over a simpler distributed database?

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#89

Post by mr_spothawk »

SirLJ wrote: post #56
arisAlexis wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

assets like everything from real estate records to money to corporate stocks to car ownership to birth certificates. What you call vagueness I call short sightedness and failing to see the big picture. It has been done before with all major breakthroughs since the applications are not immediately obvious to everyone.

What government? I hope mine do not do that, this information should remine private...

Several states in the US are accepting tax payments in bitcoin. Additionally ever out of counties in the US which are putting real estate transactions on a block chain

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#90

Post by Joeboy »

darawk wrote: post #73
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Blockchain is a shit database concept. It's use as a currency is one of its best uses. This idea that blockchains are a good database is an absurd myth. Blockchains are useful specifically for doing distributed consensus, and almost nothing else. Currencies are one of the best applications of distributed adversarial consensus. There are others, but currency is pretty near the top of the list.

But irrespective of its conceptual quality, why should anybody care, outside of compsci? Why doesn't the doubly linked list get to be a household name or a hotly tipped investment buzzword?
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