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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

#311

Post by m00n »

donmatito wrote: post #188
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…

Coming from a logistics background, coordinating tracability data is painful within a company , even with help of ERP like SAP. But when you need tracability across an industry , it becomes almost impossible. I had professional experience in an industry where we had to go to the plants to ensure rolls of paper certified from suppliers using responsibly-managed forests were physically separated from the non-certified…

I never quite got my head around the value proposition for distributed ledgers in logistics ('smart warehouses / supply chains') and manufacturing ('industry 4.0').

Say you want to trace eco paper rolls around the globe. What could the blockchain do for you? Who are the nodes/miners/coins in this application?

When you suspect some intermediate in the paper chain to exchange eco paper for cheaper ordinary paper, how does distributing the information that he has X rolls on store prevent this scenario.

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#312

Post by nickbauman »

hudon wrote: post #45
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 thr…

Aside from the fact that proof-of-work on a world scale utterly defies the CAP theorem, there has never been an economic system that can scale to the level of, say, one order of magnitude close to ubiquity where there are no trusted intermediaries. Human civilizations just won't organize this way.

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#313

Post by nosuchthing »

cachvico wrote: post #306
simias wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that so far it remains to be seen if that can work at scale. Bitcoin is moving towards the lightning network which changes things quite a bit, in particular potentially adding some centralization and giving some nodes advantages over others (well connected nodes with large open channels will have an advantage over a newcomer without connections for instance). Bitcoin cash is trying an other route with bigger b…

> nobody wants to spend something that's by design supposed to become scarcer and scarcer. Except that Bitcoin is (with consensual upgrade) infinitely divisible. (E.g. the network can [vote to] move to 16 decimal places, and so on).

Except that Bitcoin was mostly minted by a small group of users who simply horde it, hoping to sell it to other users who due to the software will not be able to generate it for as low cost as the early users.

It's zero sum (minus the cost wasted in maintaining the network), and the game theory Satoshi designed will inevitably disincentive new users from adopting it as the barrier to entry increases and alternative options will likely obsolete BTC.

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#314

Post by rellui »

donmatito wrote: post #218
Cookingboy wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might want to look into VeChain then, which is a blockchain platform aimed at solving that exact problem, and is already being used by large customers such as DVG NL and China Tobacco. Jim Breyer and DFJ are both strong backers. https://medium.com/@jimbreyer/announcing-our-vechain-advisor... https://www.vechain.org/

no need to shill here. I don't know which projects will end up successful, I am however convinced that some of them will be

I feel like shilling contains a lot of negative connotation. Most people still don't know that there are existing coins aiming to solve this exact issue. Some other coins are Ambrosus and WaltonChain. There are a few others that I can't recall on top of my head. So it seems like there are people out there that have recognized this specific use case and started capitalizing it.

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#315

Post by saosebastiao »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #40
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 U.S. dollar Fedwires are “immediate, final, and irrevocable“ [1] regardless of from where they are initiated. If your EU bank takes 5 business days to swap between the world’s two most liquid currencies, you have a uniquely shitty bank. [1] https://www.federalreserve.gov/paymentsystems/fedfunds_about...

Fedwire is only usable by banks that have a working relationship with the Federal Reserve, which will only be large international banks with a US presence. With most international transfers you're stuck with SWIFT, which is complete garbage. Hopefully replaced by Ripple entirely ASAP.

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#316

Post by fbonetti »

cachvico wrote: post #306
simias wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that so far it remains to be seen if that can work at scale. Bitcoin is moving towards the lightning network which changes things quite a bit, in particular potentially adding some centralization and giving some nodes advantages over others (well connected nodes with large open channels will have an advantage over a newcomer without connections for instance). Bitcoin cash is trying an other route with bigger b…

> nobody wants to spend something that's by design supposed to become scarcer and scarcer. Except that Bitcoin is (with consensual upgrade) infinitely divisible. (E.g. the network can [vote to] move to 16 decimal places, and so on).

Bitcoin is still deflationary, which makes it unusable as money. Inflationary currencies like USD incentivize people to spend and invest. Deflationary currencies incentivize people to hoard.

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#317

Post by simias »

cachvico wrote: post #306
simias wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that so far it remains to be seen if that can work at scale. Bitcoin is moving towards the lightning network which changes things quite a bit, in particular potentially adding some centralization and giving some nodes advantages over others (well connected nodes with large open channels will have an advantage over a newcomer without connections for instance). Bitcoin cash is trying an other route with bigger b…

> nobody wants to spend something that's by design supposed to become scarcer and scarcer. Except that Bitcoin is (with consensual upgrade) infinitely divisible. (E.g. the network can [vote to] move to 16 decimal places, and so on).

That's not the argument. The idea is that if a given amount of bitcoins is set to increase in value as time passes (as is supposed to happen if the currency is successful) you don't have a lot of incentive to invest or spend your money.

If you have $100 on your bank account today then you've got incentives to spend or invest it soon because it's slowly losing value because of inflation, your $100 will probably buy you fewer goods and services in the future that it does now.

Now if you have BTC100 on your wallet and you believe that Bitcoin will succeed as a currency then you know for a fact that these bitcoins will be more valuable in the future than they are now (because the demand will grow but the supply is capped). Ergo you have strong incentives to hoard your bitcoins and not spend or invest them. Your savings gain value without actually being invested in anything. They don't contribute to the economy, they don't fund anything.

I don't understand why most cryptocurrency enthusiasts don't see a huge problem in this. How will you get a loan to start your company in the bitcoin world? Who would want to take such a risk when they'll keep getting richer by not doing anything at all? You'd have to promise them ridiculously high returns (higher than bitcoin's deflation at least). The rich gets richer by virtue of being rich, the poor needs to buy food and basic utilities so they can't save their coins to become rich. Basically what we have today, only worse.

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#318

Post by darpa_escapee »

majewsky wrote: post #184
dilyevsky wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

or simply "git"

When meeting my company's Head of Blockchain (not sure if the pun is intended) a while ago, I asked him if git would qualify as blockchain technology. He replied that "blockchain is not a technology, It's a paradigm shift". Literally. That statement was so absurd I didn't even know what to say, so it worked out well for him.

Please start a blog and write more about what goes on in this company.

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#319

Post by toomuchtodo »

throwawaylolx wrote: post #174
RyanShook wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question that no one bothers to ask is, "What problem is this technology solving that can't be solved cheaper and just as effectively with 'traditional' technology?" When you look at it this way I think the realistic use cases go way down.

People have been asking and answering these questions for almost ten years. Brief list off the top of my head: - Seamless global payments - Store of value - File storage - Decentralized exchanges - DNS lookup - Prediction markets - International contracts - Untraceable payments - e-Voting - Copyright or proof of ownership - Distributed computing It simply gets tiring for people to argue ad infinitum about this with e…

Distributed ledgers are overengineering for most of these use cases.

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#320

Post by nosuchthing »

stale2002 wrote: post #295
saas_co_de wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you compare the thousands of years where deflationary currencies were working well to the modern Era I think most would prefer an inflationary currency.

Many would, sure. It has advantages and disadvantages. But the point is to give people choices. Some people do indeed prefer deflationary currencies, and that's OK.

Oligarchs and old money would love to maintain ownership of capital economies and deflationary currency exaggerates and encourages that.

The point of a small limited inflation is to encourage a healthy flow of capital into services, workers, and development of activities.

http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/bcaplan/whyaust.htm

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