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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

#401

Post by glitch003 »

filleokus wrote: post #278
ballenf wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you've described is provenance I believe. And that is the only, imho, use case for blockchain that makes any sense. It's the only one where the substantial additional overhead and complexity of blockchain is actually still less than the alternative, as your example clearly illustrates. To attempt to answer a question from sibling comments: these systems are private or closed blockchains, not public. You have a t…

If we imagine the best-case scenario, where all actors are handling their keys with care, and a system works to somehow produce an immutable, always consistent log of all actions, I still don't see how this will be usable for most products. You basically also need an immutable link between the physical product and some kind of cryptographically provable ID in this magic log. When receiving an item you want to check t…

A simple SIM card or smart card is a suitable TPM for this, and can be obtained for pennies on the dollar.

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#402

Post by bduerst »

nrhk wrote: post #376
bduerst wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The payment happens and confirms instantly. Withdrawal of funds from the payment processor is not the payment, because payments are not limited by 'time to cash liquidity'.

Right and is there a problem with making our world more liquid?

Nobody said there was.

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#404

Post by astrange »

fbonetti wrote: post #316
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).

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.

Bitcoin is inflationary until the mining period ends, which it hasn’t. You could then still increase the virtual money supply through fractional reserve banking; also “investing” is a lot more like hoarding than it is spending…

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#405

Post by kerkeslager »

sangnoir wrote: post #294
kerkeslager wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, not really. Anything where decentralized trust is useful: money, anonymous messaging, voting, etc. Cheaper/better isn't really relevant, because these things can't be done by a centralized method without trusting a central authority, period.

> Anything where decentralized trust is useful: money, anonymous messaging, voting, etc. I completely disagree with your examples: trust in money is centralized because I trust a central government will ensure it is legal tender, and that a central bank will act in the best interest of stability. If there's no centralized trusted party in messaging - how can I trust the messages? Trust has to be rooted somewhere - wh…

If you trust a central authority such as the government, then blockchain doesn't solve a problem you have.

That doesn't change the fact that many people don't trust the central authorities, often because their situation differs from yours such that it is not rational for them to trust the central authorities. In some cases blockchain solves their problems.

Blockchain solves real problems. They just aren't problems you (or most people on HN) have.

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#406

Post by tim333 »

not_kurt_godel wrote: post #397
freedomben wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Ask someone in Venezuela how useful a Bitcoin is when you have no way to get food.

I'd imagine very useful - just sell it for a few thousand and then "Including Venezuela's equivalent of food stamps, the total pay package now rises to 250,531 bolivars, or $32.19 a month" so it should cover that for a while. Or a flight out.

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#407

Post by tim333 »

drak0n1c wrote: post #398
SkyMarshal wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there other means of distributed trustless consensus as secure as PoW? Secure being the operative word here. Lots of attempts, but none yet convincingly as or more secure.

Hedera Hashgraph recently revealed that it supports more than a million transactions per second based on current usage by developers, that's enough to support decentralized servers and open source MMO environments. It uses gossip protocol and a form of voting protocol. 1) Non-technical friendly overview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzWiiOLv96I 2) https://www.hederahashgraph.com

I'm invested a bit in Credits which claims it'll do a million transactions per sec but it's kind of bs - they can do nearly half a million in very limited conditions but in the real world the numbers will probably be far less and I'm a bit skeptical of such claims. I'm not sure that fast is necessary though - credit cards do a few thousand transactions a sec globally so if you can handle that you could potentially at last use crypto to pay for your coffee etc https://medium.com/@viruseslovers45/credits-the-best-blockch...

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#408

Post by DINKDINK »

bduerst wrote: post #340
DINKDINK wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Payment is still instant unless there is a dispute If that was the case a merchant could withdraw cash immediately after someone paid them with a credit card. Which patently isn't the case. So no, Payment cards are not instant.

The payment happens and confirms instantly. Withdrawal of funds from the payment processor is not the payment, because payments are not limited by 'time to cash liquidity'.

>The payment happens and confirms instantly.

Let's say that merchant accepts payment via Visa on Day 1. On Day 2, Visa goes out of business. The merchant will never receive the payment. So no the payment is not instantaneous. The merchant receives an IOU from Visa that settles in a few days. IOUs != settled payments.

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#409

Post by zjaffee »

kerkeslager wrote: post #85
collyw wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whats to stop a new bank springing up and allowing transfers a lot faster and cheaper using traditional methods?

What's stopping them is a simple question: who are you transferring the money to? A lot of banks allow customers to do instant transfers between customers of that bank, but for this to be a killer feature, you have to have enough customers that this is significant. In NYC, Chase is almost there--they have enough of a share of NYC that it's worth asking if the person you're transferring to has Chase so you can use the…

well, to transfer money between banks requires the use of the ACH system (or a wire transfer), but looking at how ACH works https://www.nacha.org/ach-network it essentially requires that your money get processed by what is essentially the federal reserve's mainframe computers. Given that these machines only process transactions during government business hours, such a delay is reasonable.

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#410

Post by abbieseide »

At the end of the day there are tons of practical applications for blockchain. There is a lot that is staked on bitcoin and other cryptos and that will probably decline until the blockchain's true value is hit. That being said institutional investors will still want to play this market. JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley are still planning to build clearing houses for crypto this summer.

https://altcoinreport.co/morgan-stanley-clear-bitcoin-future...

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