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

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#341

Post by elmar » Thu, Mar 29, 2018, 9:33 PM UTC

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…

>(and also enabling things like money laundering, drug trafficking, etc.)

"Darknet markets are no longer a major use of Bitcoin, accounting for less than 1% of Bitcoin transactions in 2017"

https://blog.chainalysis.com/crypto-crime/

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#342

Post by acdha » Thu, Mar 29, 2018, 9:38 PM UTC

throwawaylolx wrote: post #337

acdha wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are commonly copy-pasted claims but the reason why it keeps coming up is that the question of what makes it better is either unanswered or, in cases like voting or storage, known to be worse. Your language is inadvertently quite revealing: “non-believer” isn’t how you talk about technical issues with well understood tradeoffs. It’s how you talk about something which you’d like to be true but isn’t.

>voting https://eprint.iacr.org/2017/1043.pdf Also, https://eprint.iacr.org/2017/375.pdf Section 4.4.2 >storage https://filecoin.io/filecoin.pdf https://storj.io/storj.pdf ^ Detailed analyses that explain why blockchain is an appropriate solution But please do elaborate how they are "known to be worse." By whom and can you cite the analysis that proved so? Certainly not known by Google if they invested in a blockchai…

Your second link discusses the problems with voting and correctly votes that they are unsolved, which was the entire point. Every solution proposed so far is a huge regression for privacy or coercion, so it’s dishonest to claim that as anything other than an area which could become not-worse if future fundamental breakthroughs occur.

File storage is similar: lots of people want you to buy their pet project but if you want reliable, secure, and cost effective it’s all “maybe sometime in the future when we have something different”. Talk about it as an advantage when it’s competitive for most people.

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#343

Post by throwawaylolx » Thu, Mar 29, 2018, 9:40 PM UTC

spookthesunset wrote: post #336

throwawaylolx wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> It simply gets tiring for people to argue ad infinitum about this with every non-believer. And the true believers are the ones who will be lambo rich as long as they keep buying and holding, right? Just keep hyping up all these empty promises... some rube out there will buy into it.

>empty promises

Can you please support your position? Bitcoin promised a digital decentralized payment solution, and it delivered the first solution in history.

Monero promised anonymized payments, and they delivered the most private solution for untraceable digital currency.

Can you point me to the superior non-blockchain alternatives?

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#344

Post by nosuchthing » Thu, Mar 29, 2018, 9:40 PM UTC

xapata wrote: post #328

nosuchthing wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Work needs to be approximately the same difficulty for everyone Unfortunately the main design and math of of Satoshi's PoW means that users who ran the BTC software app 2009-2014 worked far far far less and spent much less CAPEX and OPEX to generate the majority of BTC that will ever exist.

Sorry, more clarification -- same difficulty at roughly the same time, not same difficulty across time. Edit: It seems this thread has gone off on a tangent. I was adding to the discussion of flawed assumptions, not ethics.

Why not the same difficulty across time to give all users equal fair access?

Perhaps it would diminish the ability for early users to extract wealth and capital from later users?

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#345

Post by toomuchtodo » Thu, Mar 29, 2018, 9:42 PM UTC

throwawaylolx wrote: post #343

spookthesunset wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It simply gets tiring for people to argue ad infinitum about this with every non-believer. And the true believers are the ones who will be lambo rich as long as they keep buying and holding, right? Just keep hyping up all these empty promises... some rube out there will buy into it.

>empty promises Can you please support your position? Bitcoin promised a digital decentralized payment solution, and it delivered the first solution in history. Monero promised anonymized payments, and they delivered the most private solution for untraceable digital currency. Can you point me to the superior non-blockchain alternatives?

> Can you point me to the superior non-blockchain alternatives?

Credit cards, p2p payments in various countries, and cash.

All digital currencies in one form or another are inferior to existing financial instruments.

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#346

Post by stale2002 » Thu, Mar 29, 2018, 9:43 PM UTC

nosuchthing wrote: post #320

stale2002 wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

OK, but the point is that the people who want to use inflationary currencies already have lots of options. Good for them. They are free to use those.

And those of us who prefer deflationary ones should be free to use those as well.

I don't get why the mere existence of alternatives pisses off economists and the like so much.

If inflationary currencies are so great, then that's fine, feel free to go use those, and those of us that disagree will choose something else.

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#347

Post by wpietri » Thu, Mar 29, 2018, 9:44 PM UTC

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…

> "Satoshi invented a useful solution to decentralized consensus".

I think that even if decentralized consensus is workable, it's irrelevant for Wall Street projects because these organizations already have experience creating strong trust relationships and useful governance for collaboration (e.g., traditional contracts).

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#348

Post by chrisco255 » Thu, Mar 29, 2018, 9:47 PM UTC

k_sh wrote: post #266

chrisco255 wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how many of those have the market cap of Facebook?

From 2007: "Will MySpace Ever Lose Its Monopoly?"[1] Past performance does not beget future success. [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2007/feb/08/business....

That doesn't mean that creating a new social network automatically besets the network effects of the most dominant platforms. I realize that platforms sometimes get replaced. It is early days for crypto, to be sure. It certainly hasn't reached maturity yet. However, there are examples of other monopolies (AT&T, Microsoft, GE, etc) that have lasted for many decades.

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#349

Post by lazaroclapp » Thu, Mar 29, 2018, 9:47 PM UTC

staticassertion wrote: post #249

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…

> In technological terms, it is old. Really? This doesn't seem true at all. I feel like it takes decades for many good ideas in tech to get traction, usually going through many, many failed iterations.

As We May Think[1], anyone? Or self-driving cars, which go back to at least 1984 in CMU, and yet are still "[near] future tech" now. Neural Nets were a half-century old idea[2] before they became actually useful...

I mean, the question is not "Is Bitcoin as implemented by following the original whitepaper going to be the future of mankind?" It is whether or not there is something big in that whole area (blockchains, decentralized tokens of exchange, PoW/PoS/etc) and, if so, how big?

Of course, for a lot of people, the question is "By, say 2025, is my BTC going to make me rich or is it is not even going to be worth the bits it is encoded in?" Equally hard question to answer, but much less interesting.

The current cycle of blockchain furor could all end up badly (I hope it doesn't, but who knows), and yet that won't mean the tech has no future. Now, it could be like VR/AR/AGI, which are always the future, of course ;)

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-m...

[2] McCulloch, Warren; Walter Pitts (1943). "A Logical Calculus of Ideas Immanent in Nervous Activity". Bulletin of Mathematical Biophysics

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#350

Post by mywittyname » Thu, Mar 29, 2018, 9:48 PM UTC

atomicUpdate wrote: post #267

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?

> Blockchain is perfect for a digital currency It's not perfect for that either. There have already been cases where tokens were stolen and blockchains were forked to recover them. The very last thing I want for my money is for errors and/or malicious acts to be permanent and uncorrectable.

Or end up being the loser in one of those forks.