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

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#361

Post by makomk » Thu, Mar 29, 2018, 10:08 PM UTC

jcoffland wrote: post #142

hudon wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A sufficiently large miner could, right now, create a block which created a million bitcoins from nowhere and gave those to them and it would - for a while at least - be the longest chain. No other clients would accept it, of course, but by your definition the chain where someone just made themselves a billionaire would be Bitcoin.

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#362

Post by kosievdmerwe » Thu, Mar 29, 2018, 10:09 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.

Yup being able to undo transactions is a feature not a bug of the modern financial system.

EDIT: it also protects you in cases where someone holds a gun to your head and forces you to make a transaction.

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#363

Post by hammock » Thu, Mar 29, 2018, 10:13 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…

Is blockchain old, or is this a classic case of the trough of disillusionment?

https://www.google.com/search?q=trough+of+disillusionment&sa...

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#364

Post by hammock » Thu, Mar 29, 2018, 10:20 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #110

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…

> Mining is decentralized Cryptocurrency mining is as close as one can get to a theoretical free market in the real world. Free markets have known modes of failure [1]. One of these is where first-mover advantage and economies of scale combine to produce a barrier to entry; the result is oligopoly or monopoly. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_failure

Monopoly has never occurred in a free market.

https://mises.org/library/myth-natural-monopoly

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#365

Post by TheSpiceIsLife » Thu, Mar 29, 2018, 10:21 PM UTC

stale2002 wrote: post #346

nosuchthing wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tho…

It would appear the choice between deflationary and inflationary monetary systems was, at some point along the way, democratised.

And the majority chose inflationary monetary systems.

Each of us is free to offer to pay for goods and services with, say, for example, gold, and each of us is free to ask you trade your gold for legal tender and give us that instead - yeah, the one the tax agency accepts.

The only thing stopping deflationary currency from being used by most people is that most people are too busy surfing / skiing / rock climbing / recovering from a hang over / what have you to care much about how monetary value is exchanged. People, on the whole, only seem to really care about convenience. And more specifically, the more convenient it is to spend money, your own or credit, the better.

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#366

Post by joering2 » Thu, Mar 29, 2018, 10:23 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.

At this point, I don't worry about those; criminals would operate with or without Bitcoin and we have government agencies dealing with those; I'm more concern about suicide rate that will spike due to BTC/altcoins losing 80% of value.

I have too many acquaintances on my Twitter that last summer were showing me "this cool blue app that helps make 15% a day" and now they remain silent. I tried to contact two of them via cell and it goes nowhere.

Looking at BTC/ETH/altcoins charts, I can only image brain-halt it caused so many people that we putting second/third mortage on their house just to "invest in a blue iphone app" and many cashing out their 401k just to be lest with 5% of their money not even year later.

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#367

Post by throwawaylolx » Thu, Mar 29, 2018, 10:34 PM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #359

throwawaylolx wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Credit cards Not anonymous nor decentralized > p2p payments in various countries Such as? >cash Not digital. >All digital currencies in one form or another are inferior to existing financial instruments. Then please explain to me how do I make an anonymous payment online without a third party using existing financial instruments.

Explain to me where this is a valid use case. I think that’s where we disagree. I don’t see the need for anonymous electronic payments.

>Explain to me where this is a valid use case

Random examples:

- Brendan Eich was purged for being found to have donated to anti-gay marriage campaigns. Therefore, donating anonymously is obviously desirable for many people as your current beliefs may affect your career when the general rhetoric changes. Similarly, anonymous donations, which are very common, may be your preferred choice simply because you don't want the receiver or anyone else to know

- You were diagnosed with a mental disorder in your home country, and you move to a different country. In the new country, the medication you were prescribed is not available for pharmacies to sell. All the alternative medications you tried do not work, and it's illegal to buy your medication that was legal in the other country. With non-anonymous payments, buying the medication through financial services would put you at a high risk, so you would be forced to sacrifice your wellbeing/mental health.

- Your government is aggressively hyperinflating your national currency or capital controls limit the amount that you can cash out daily to $X. Use of credit or debit to pay out of the country is banned. You want to use a decentralized currency that need not be approved by the government or any other third party that you need to trust. Anonymity is optional, but perhaps you don't want to risk having your digital wealth traced back to your real ID.

- You value your privacy. Maybe because you don't want companies to sell your data for machine learning algorithms to track your payment behavior and apply "price discrimination" algorithms to you. Maybe you believe that it is only your business who you pay and what you pay for, and you don't trust that any of these will not be used against you in the future if used via a centralized entity.

All based on real events.

>I think that's where we disagree

We disagree that situations that are not relevant to you may be relevant to others?

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#368

Post by nrhk » Thu, Mar 29, 2018, 10:38 PM UTC

s73v3r_ wrote: post #309

donmatito wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that EXACTLY the problem solved by cryptography, ie I can reliably know that only supplier X could have signed the message with the public key of supplier X ?

And how do I know that person actually exists? How would I track them down if they lied?

Why does this need to be a public blockchain? Just make it a permissioned industry chain with access from each of its members. Someone lied, well they signed it, go talk to them, you have immutable proof now. Or smart contract style, someone lied? Send the items back and escrow won't release your money as proof of return it could be signed by the courier and the original sender.

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#369

Post by nrhk » Thu, Mar 29, 2018, 10:40 PM UTC

simias wrote: post #279

DSingularity wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hehe. Thats actually a nice artifact, thanks bitcoin. Now individuals can consider the potential of ideas to pan out and participate in funding them. Sure, sounds good -- I'll throw in 1,000$. Suddenly 1,000 like-minded individuals can satisfy the need of projects. Of course thats not always so popular here ;-). I should just mind my own business and focus on the coding right? Anyhow. I do think you are right. The in…

Immutability is easy to achieve. Anything distributed widely enough is effectively immutable. Anything published on the cover of Time magazine is immutable. Anything commited to the linux kernel is immutable. Anything distributed on thepiratebay is immutable. Anything put in the Ubuntu package repository is immutable. You can amend it and publish new versions but you can be sure that somebody somewhere will have a co…

Man trusting paper more at this point is the most backward thing I've heard. You really want us to keep using paper for all contracts, needing to be on site to sign documents, sending documents through fax, making physical backups... when all of it can be done digitally?

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#370

Post by dahdum » Thu, Mar 29, 2018, 10:40 PM UTC

amitbr wrote: post #331

QML wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nakamoto consensus isn't the only protocol that exists; there's also things like Raft and Paxos with different tradeoffs.

What you mentioned does not cover byzantine faults... pow is the only known solution

There is a large amount of r&d being put into BFT-style proof of stake for Ethereum, it’s always been part of the roadmap. Much work still needs to be done beyond the test net, but so far no fundamental showstoppers have been found. There is also constant collaboration between the researchers and developers of major projects to move the entire field forward.

It’s still early days, unfortunately the hype got far ahead of the tech but progress is being made everyday. I think the same of VR/AR.

https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/Proof-of-Stake-FAQ