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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

#141

Post by bduerst »

DINKDINK wrote: post #87
namdnay wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Chargebacks are a feature for settling disputes, not a bug. Payment is still instant unless there is a dispute.

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#142

Post by jcoffland »

hudon wrote: post #121
jcoffland wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you change the consensus ruleset...then you need an oracle to tell you which chain to choose. What are you talking about? The rule to choose the correct chain is well defined and simple. The longest chain, i.e. the one with the most work done, is the correct chain.

I'm not sure if you've spoken to any Bitcoin developers recently, but they'll tell you you're wrong and that it is the valid chain with the most work, not the chain with the most work. They'll then tell you what valid means. Some developers would agree with you though, like Gavin Andresen [0]. Either way, you end up with either centralized miners deciding the fate of the chain, or centralized developers deciding the…

That's the beauty of it. It does not matter what Blockstream says. The longest chain is Bitcoin.

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#143

Post by School-Cotton »

malvosenior wrote: post #70
vinniejames wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Market cap in no way equates to "created value"

Sure it does. It's created a ton of value for myself and anyone else who didn't buy during a peak.

Playing roulette can create value too, if you're lucky enough.

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#144

Post by kerng »

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…

BTC alone has a market cap of more then 100 billion USD, hence your statement and premisse is inaccurate. Wall Street firms just attempt to use it in places where it's not useful and where there are simple alternatives.

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#145

Post by Mtinie »

mulmen wrote: post #81
Mtinie wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I’m not sure I follow. I did not mean to imply I’m studiously watching every permutation of the blockchain hype cycle, simply, when it comes to new technologies which are billed as successors to long-lived incumbencies, I tend to take the middle ground.

I try to keep a measured view of the optimisic hype and the pessimistic nay-saying, and don’t expect clarity for a few more years regarding blockchains’ potential.

In general this philosophy towards technology has served me well enough. I miss out on the bleeding edge, but don’t fall into the trap of being “all in” before realizing a concept’s promise was oversold.

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#146

Post by [deleted] »

tacogordito wrote: post #93
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…

This is my question as well. Blockchain is perfect for a digital currency, yes. But where else in the real world is it even applicable?

[deleted]

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#147

Post by throwawaylolx »

icebraining wrote: post #119
bringtheaction wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can have a blockchain without miners. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof-of-stake Now I agree that a lot of ideas for how blockchain will be used are just unnecessary and stupid, but there are some good ones as well. You mentioned file storage but actually I think blockchain could be useful for this. Allow me to elaborate. I don’t want to rely on Dropbox or Google or any other single company for the long-term st…

There are already open file storage protocols, and open source clients that supports many storage providers. I use git-annex, which supports about a dozen commercial services, plus any machine that supports SFTP, SMB, Webdav or rsync, among others. And of course, it encrypts everything locally before uploading. What's the point of the blockchain?

Not sure how git-annex works, but with blockchain your files are automatically distributed among geographically diverse nodes, and there's an embedded payment method to reward others for hosting your content--all while not having to communicate with a corporation or any other third party and providing pretty good built-in security.

Dropbox got a similar response, no? That it can be replaced by rsync.

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#148

Post by School-Cotton »

chiph wrote: post #135
tacogordito wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is my question as well. Blockchain is perfect for a digital currency, yes. But where else in the real world is it even applicable?

Anything where you need to track serial ownership of something. One example of which might be car titles.

In the real world, ownership is more complicated than that, which is why the law is interpreted by judges and not computers.

E.g., courts can transfer ownership of your car from you to someone else for a variety of reasons, without your consent. How does this work in a blockchain world?

Your answer might be that the State (or the judicial system, I suppose) should have some special private key that lets them sign transactions transferring anything to anyone, even if the previous owner doesn't consent.

If so, why is that better than just having a plain old centrally controlled, publicly accessible database that the State signs with their private key? What does blockchain technology give you over that?

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#149

Post by bringtheaction »

icebraining wrote: post #119
bringtheaction wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can have a blockchain without miners. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof-of-stake Now I agree that a lot of ideas for how blockchain will be used are just unnecessary and stupid, but there are some good ones as well. You mentioned file storage but actually I think blockchain could be useful for this. Allow me to elaborate. I don’t want to rely on Dropbox or Google or any other single company for the long-term st…

There are already open file storage protocols, and open source clients that supports many storage providers. I use git-annex, which supports about a dozen commercial services, plus any machine that supports SFTP, SMB, Webdav or rsync, among others. And of course, it encrypts everything locally before uploading. What's the point of the blockchain?

Sure but I don’t want to own the storage drives myself. Also I want it to be simple as Dropbox. I have other things to do than to dick around with storage and syncing and all that — believe me I did spend a lot of time on it already.

The point of the blockchain is to allow me to rent storage space on other people’s computers.

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#150

Post by chrisco255 »

brightball wrote: post #133
hudon wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 thr…

But one of the biggest selling points of Bitcoin itself was mathematically limited supply. A new cryptocurrency appearing every day fundamentally undermines the value proposition. Blockchain may have value as a decentralized ledger in other areas, but “lots of blockchain based currencies” aren’t really one of them since it’s self-sabotaging.

Not really. Network effects matter. Otherwise we would see social networks and other free services replaced on the regular.
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