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

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#381

Post by neuromantik8086 » Thu, Mar 29, 2018, 11:08 PM UTC

scrooched_moose wrote: post #11

johnchristopher wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An example from the top of your head ?

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.

At the same time, I really wish that GPUs would take off in neuroimaging, where 90% of the steps performed in an analysis pipeline are not modeling-related, but rather basic image manipulations / pre-processing (i.e., scaling, smoothing; stuff that GPUs are actually good at).

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#382

Post by arisAlexis » Thu, Mar 29, 2018, 11:10 PM UTC

spookthesunset wrote: post #257

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.

> assets like everything from real estate records to money to corporate stocks to car ownership to birth certificates. How the hell does blockchain solve any problem in these spaces?

what do you mean? you are too focused on SV "solve a problem mantra" you keep repeating it.you can think of tamperproof, speed, transparent, public keywords.

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#383

Post by arisAlexis » Thu, Mar 29, 2018, 11:12 PM UTC

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...

you want private land ownership records? private tax records? private stock ownership records? you hate it so much your reasoning becomes blurry man. think a bit

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#384

Post by School-Cotton » Thu, Mar 29, 2018, 11:13 PM UTC

kosievdmerwe wrote: post #362

atomicUpdate wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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

Best takedown of cryptocurrencies that I've seen. Explains, as succinctly as possible, the fatal flaw in the idea. I'm gonna steal this line for the future.

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#385

Post by freedomben » Thu, Mar 29, 2018, 11:16 PM UTC

simias wrote: post #317

cachvico wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 yo…

I am a big supporter of crypto currencies, and I do see a problem in that. However, the current volatility will level off significantly once there is wider adoption. That will help reduce incentive to hold. I would never recommend somebody give/accept loans in crypto currencies right now. The time will come though (unless governments squash crypto through regulation or outright banning).

That said, there's no guarantee that BTC or any crypto will appreciate indefinitely; in fact quite the opposite. It can (and does) lose value.

This also overlooks the benefits of a non-fiat currency, such as protection against things like hyper-inflation (most of us don't think about this right now, but if you have any friends in Venezuela ask them how important this protection is).

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#386

Post by croon » Thu, Mar 29, 2018, 11:32 PM UTC

hammock wrote: post #364

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

There has never been a "free market" to begin with.

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#387

Post by sadgit » Thu, Mar 29, 2018, 11:33 PM UTC

dozzie wrote: post #300

mirekrusin wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PoW is just one of available consensus algorithms. Blockchain doesn’t imply decentralised consensus, you can run it on paxos, raft, authority round or something else, especially for internal, private or semi-private networks. What you get is trail log with proofs that’s immutable and strongly protected against temper.

> PoW is just one of available consensus algorithms. No, because blockchain is not a consensus protocol .

Blockchain does imply a consensus protocol, though. Thats what the block is for.

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#388

Post by eropple » Thu, Mar 29, 2018, 11:41 PM UTC

freedomben wrote: post #385

simias wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 yo…

I am a big supporter of crypto currencies, and I do see a problem in that. However, the current volatility will level off significantly once there is wider adoption. That will help reduce incentive to hold. I would never recommend somebody give/accept loans in crypto currencies right now. The time will come though (unless governments squash crypto through regulation or outright banning). That said, there's no guarant…

> However, the current volatility will level off significantly once there is wider adoption.

Begging the question.

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#389

Post by s73v3r_ » Thu, Mar 29, 2018, 11:49 PM UTC

throwawaylolx wrote: post #367

toomuchtodo wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"Brendan Eich was purged for being found to have donated to anti-gay marriage campaigns. "

I love how the takeaway from this is always, "We need more private ways to exchange money!" rather than, "You know, maybe you should have opinions that respect the human rights of others."

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#390

Post by s73v3r_ » Thu, Mar 29, 2018, 11:51 PM UTC

nrhk wrote: post #368

s73v3r_ wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And how is any of that different than the way things work now?