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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

#461

Post by xtracto »

wpietri wrote: post #352
xtracto wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think about 70% of blockchain related stuff is hype. However, there have been blockchain related projects that have been useful: In Mexico for example: http://iireporter.com/amis-and-ibm-collaborate-on-blockchain... I saw a very good presentation regarding this HyperLedger project, and IMO this kind of projects are the ones that will form the future of blockchain technology.

This is an announcement of a future prototype. It is literally not useful. It is hype. I'm all for people trying things out; prototypes are how we learn. So good for them for trying it and seeing what happens; maybe one day it will be useful. But it's maddening that people keep confusing marketing-driven press releases for actual delivered utility.

The reason I put that link was to provide some context. I know one person in IBM (here in Mexico) related to this project in Mexico and the project is already working in production.

Don't be dense.

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#463

Post by shanghaiaway »

JamesLeonis wrote: post #453
m00n wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 d…

Logistics are a great place for this technology, but first you must purge your mind of Cryptotokens and their economics. They aren't applicable for a logistics use case. To understand this, first you have to understand why we structure mining. In the case of Bitcoin or Ethereum, you need a method that allows any arbitrary computational device to verify and add to a given blockchain. In lieu of trusting that device, t…

You also did not answer the question.

How do you verify that the physical objects the digital certificate is attached to, is actually attached to the things it is meant to certify, and not replacement counterfeit?

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#464

Post by shanghaiaway »

speedplane wrote: post #439
School-Cotton wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the real world, ownership is more complicated than that, which is why the law is interpreted by judges and not computers. E.g., courts can transfer ownership of your car from you to someone else for a variety of reasons, without your consent. How does this work in a blockchain world? Your answer might be that the State (or the judicial system, I suppose) should have some special private key that lets them sign tra…

Agree there is much hype over blockchain, but there is some advantage in the context you raised. Currently, if you want to buy or sell real-estate, you have to record that transaction on a central government database. These "databases" used to be paper documents, but are now slowly moving to electronic systems. But they are still centrally controlled, and often even new systems are horribly out-of-date and require sp…

Just a transaction record from one account to another of $2M isn't proof that ownership of that property was transferred.

You need to connect that transaction to a contract and the contract in turn needs to be verified by some third-party and some process. In a develop country, that process is going to be tied to government.

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#465

Post by DINKDINK »

bduerst wrote: post #419
DINKDINK wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Yes, in your carefully crafted hypothetical where a billion dollar company goes out of business tomorrow, it means that company can't make payments tomorrow. What about nuclear winter? Dissolution of the U.S.? Alien invasions? We need account for these hypotheticals too when discussing the validity of payments.

The delay event(bankruptcy, Visa’s servers go down for an hour) is meaningless. The point of debate is “Is the payment settled?”. To which the answer is a simple “no”.

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#466

Post by wpietri »

xtracto wrote: post #461
wpietri wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an announcement of a future prototype. It is literally not useful. It is hype. I'm all for people trying things out; prototypes are how we learn. So good for them for trying it and seeing what happens; maybe one day it will be useful. But it's maddening that people keep confusing marketing-driven press releases for actual delivered utility.

The reason I put that link was to provide some context. I know one person in IBM (here in Mexico) related to this project in Mexico and the project is already working in production. Don't be dense.

I'm not "being dense". Every time I ask for examples of a blockchain project actually delivering value in a way that a simple database or checksummed transaction log wouldn't, I get pointed at proposed projects by people who have seen exciting presentations. Every time.

You were responding in a contradictory fashion to somebody saying, "Innumerable efforts have been attempted, yielding almost no fruit." The only thing that could usefully contradict that is proof of something yielding fruit. A press release isn't. Neither is the fact that they've managed to get the prototype running. There are a lot of blockchain prototypes running. Many of them are proposed and built by consulting companies that get paid by the hour, whether or not any actual business value is delivered. IBM has such an enormous conflict of interest here that they're just not a reliable source.

I'm sure you're friend's sincere, but there are plenty of sincere blockchain proponents. There were plenty of smart, sincere people who believed in 3D TV, Google Glass, and the Zune as well.

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#467

Post by JamesLeonis »

shanghaiaway wrote: post #463
JamesLeonis wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Logistics are a great place for this technology, but first you must purge your mind of Cryptotokens and their economics. They aren't applicable for a logistics use case. To understand this, first you have to understand why we structure mining. In the case of Bitcoin or Ethereum, you need a method that allows any arbitrary computational device to verify and add to a given blockchain. In lieu of trusting that device, t…

You also did not answer the question. How do you verify that the physical objects the digital certificate is attached to, is actually attached to the things it is meant to certify, and not replacement counterfeit?

The same way you verify it now. The technology does not change the process of physically inspecting the product. It makes it far easier to coordinate the paperwork of certifying and verifying.

At it's heart logistics is a global concurrency problem. The "locks" we use now are large sprawling bureaucracies that manually coordinate the transfer of information among many independently moving agents. Getting information into and out of this organization is a tedious, labor-intensive, and time consuming process. The technology that empowers cryptotokens is an alternate computerized concurrency management for this kind of information transfer and lookup that doesn't rely on a central organization or system.

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#468

Post by [deleted] »

DINKDINK wrote: post #465
bduerst wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, in your carefully crafted hypothetical where a billion dollar company goes out of business tomorrow, it means that company can't make payments tomorrow. What about nuclear winter? Dissolution of the U.S.? Alien invasions? We need account for these hypotheticals too when discussing the validity of payments.

The delay event(bankruptcy, Visa’s servers go down for an hour) is meaningless. The point of debate is “Is the payment settled?”. To which the answer is a simple “no”.

[deleted]

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#469

Post by speedplane »

lucozade wrote: post #445
speedplane wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When each bank keeps their own version(s) of the truth, the cost of reconciling, resolving disputes etc is huge I'm not a banker, but I'm not sure I entirely believe this. There is undoubtedly a cost of reconciliation, but is it "huge"? Seems low on the totem poll.

10s of millions per year per bank. More for the really big banks. Thay have large totem poles. Edit. That’s not including the op risk of screwing up. That has costs too and can easily reach millions

A handful of millions for the largest banks, yet most crypto currency companies are valued far out of proportion of that.

Re: Wall Street rethinks blockchain projects as euphoria meets reality

#470

Post by speedplane »

shanghaiaway wrote: post #464
speedplane wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree there is much hype over blockchain, but there is some advantage in the context you raised. Currently, if you want to buy or sell real-estate, you have to record that transaction on a central government database. These "databases" used to be paper documents, but are now slowly moving to electronic systems. But they are still centrally controlled, and often even new systems are horribly out-of-date and require sp…

Just a transaction record from one account to another of $2M isn't proof that ownership of that property was transferred. You need to connect that transaction to a contract and the contract in turn needs to be verified by some third-party and some process. In a develop country, that process is going to be tied to government.

"Proof" is a legal definition, and legal definitions are defined by the government. Accordingly, I entirely agree that any real property transaction must be tied in some way to the government.

That said, you should take a look at the current system. In many counties, it's still a large ledger of transactions in pencil and paper. In "modernized" counties, but with with extremely restricted access, made intentionally hard-to-access to keep title insurance companies in business.

Title insurance companies charge thousands of dollars on every sale to insure legal claims to property. Any trustworthy publicly accessible database, crypto-based or not, would be a huge improvement over the current system.

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