Systems built on trust, norms, and institutions function better than blockchain

Post by bwoodring » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 5:57 PM UTC

slededit wrote: post #60

cortesoft wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a clear example of survivor bias; there have been plenty of things that people thought were the future that turned out to be false, and the people who ‘hung on to the past’ and didn’t adopt those things won out in the end. Betamax, 3D TVs, laserdiscs, segways, new coke, etc.

Cryptocoins appear to have drastically more adoption than any of those.

Post by bwoodring » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 5:57 PM UTC

Florin_Andrei wrote: post #75

kaolti wrote: post #6

One thing is sure, if you're hanging on to the past you'll always lose in the end. That's not to say blockchain is the be all and end all, but constantly hunting for arguments why something will never work , is not only terribly boring, but IMO the most counterproductive way to look at anything.

Money will continue on the path of virtualization and unversalization. It was cows and jugs of honey at first. Then it was seashells. Then it was gold. Then it was printed paper. Then it was records in a database, but living isolated as local records. It will become even more abstract and even more open, eventually. Whether that's the blockchain or something else, remains to be seen.

Post by manbart » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 6:00 PM UTC

zodiac wrote: post #85

localhost3000 wrote: post #34

"Instead of relying on trust or regulation, in the blockchain world, individuals are on-purpose responsible for their own security precautions. And if the software they use is malicious or buggy, they should have read the software more carefully." This is also one of the aspects of "the blockchain" that I struggle with. I don't think normal people want this or should be expected to do this effectively. And once you o…

> And once you outsource the security you're no longer in a "trustless" state. The "trustless" pipe-dream (in the consumer use case) all sort of unravels from there for me. I think the conclusion doesn't follow. An analogous solution is that traditional public-key cryptography (e.g. as implemented in TLS) is supposed to be trustless, but I haven't personally audited or even read any of the relevant code (e.g. TLS), s…

Post by nwah1 » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 6:01 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #111

gshulegaard wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

* 3% fee for processing credit cards * Platform play where the first stage is to amass users and then use that audience to sell to businesses ( https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/07/venmo-m... ) And I always assumed that the short delay for transferring money out of Venmo allowed them to eek a small margin against the time value of money somewhat similar to Robinhood ( https://www.investopedia.com/arti…

It is a lot easier to avoid paying a fee on Venmo than it is to use a cryptocurrency to send money to someone: just don't use a credit card.

Post by EGreg » Fri, Apr 06, 2018, 6:02 PM UTC

nmeofthestate wrote: post #37

EGreg wrote: post #26

I actually like the way this author deconstructs what a blockchain technically is and how it’s sold. And I agree on many points. However, this is where they go awry: Instead of relying on trust or regulation, in the blockchain world, individuals are on-purpose responsible for their own security precautions. THIS is the revolution. And the revolution will not be centralized :) Blockchains are just one example of it. K…

>This guy doesn’t live in a country where the institutions people rely on have routinely screwed people. True, but his argument is that the actual fix (that would work) is to fix such dysfunctional countries so they are functional, rather than downgrading everywhere to a Somalia level of trust with blockchain as the techno solution.