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Introducing A16Z Crypto

a16zcrypto.com

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Re: Introducing A16Z Crypto

#291

Post by oscargrouch »

na85 wrote: post #230
oscargrouch wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The blockchain solves the problem of trust. Without the blockchain, you need to trust some monopolistic middle-man that became monopolistic because he was the winner in the 'race of acquiring trust' from its consumers. With a blockchain to track phisical goods, any third-party can consult or print a new transaction into the blockchain, it we wont need to deposit our faith in a company or a government. We managed to s…

Blockchain solves nothing. How do I indelibly serialize my carrots? What stops me from eating the carrots I said I sent to the juice dude, and then just sending him some carrots I picked up from Loblaws?

In this particular case it doesnt solve this problem.

It solves the problem of the tracker.. Before you needed to trust the middleman by using another authority for trust, like your government given permissions and making inspections.

With the blockchain you can transfer that to the peers participating in the activities themselves.

It's the descentralization of trust. Right now we have to trust several databases from different peers, that no one have access to, and make a big effort if we need for instance know the state of something tracked by those systems.

Blockchain is a hype in a lot of situations, but that doesnt mean it doesnt have some problem domains it can be used to solve..

For me is just a algorithmic tool, like a hash, binary tree or a merkle tree. There are some problem domains where you might consider it as something to be used to solve some particular sort of problems.

Maybe for tracking physical goods it might not even be the best tool, according to the circustances, but it is something to be take into consideration, to solve this particular problem domain.

Re: Introducing A16Z Crypto

#292

Post by Latteland »

chrisco255 wrote: post #34
vorpalhex wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a CRM-focused blockchain might place the business logic for managing customer relations and sales on-chain and enable competing clients to build on the protocol Why.. would you need to put those on a blockchain across a bunch of disparate consumers? In theory isn't my business logic fairly, you know, secret sauce? Blockchain is vaguely "A spreadsheet everyone gets a copy of." There are some cases where that can be…

Traditionally, yes. But in the same way that Windows OS logic is Microsoft's secret sauce and yet thriving companies build products and services around Linux...so too will business-logic be open sourced and compete directly with existing SaaS players. Just because you use blockchain to power the engine and business logic of your application, does not mean you also have to use it to store data. Data can be stored anyw…

you don't need block chain to share and build on each other. just use github, node js, etc. I don't see the point.

Re: Introducing A16Z Crypto

#293

Post by clu3 »

speedplane wrote: post #256
Findeton wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll tell you the problem. The problem is the government. You can't and shouldn't trust the government, but nevertheless the government is forcing everyone to use their government-issued currency. Yes, I know US Gov is not like Venezuela, they are not printing money like there's no tomorrow, but they still do stupid shit and try to control the economy. Crypto at least gives you money that is not issued by the governm…

You have to trust someone, at some point. HTTPS/SSL relies on a distributed trust system. Even with crypto, you have to trust the developers that created the protocol and the consortium of groups that operate it.

At least these things are opensourced

Re: Introducing A16Z Crypto

#294

Post by madeofpalk »

oscargrouch wrote: post #291
na85 wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blockchain solves nothing. How do I indelibly serialize my carrots? What stops me from eating the carrots I said I sent to the juice dude, and then just sending him some carrots I picked up from Loblaws?

In this particular case it doesnt solve this problem. It solves the problem of the tracker.. Before you needed to trust the middleman by using another authority for trust, like your government given permissions and making inspections. With the blockchain you can transfer that to the peers participating in the activities themselves. It's the descentralization of trust. Right now we have to trust several databases from…

> With the blockchain you can transfer that to the peers participating in the activities themselves.

Assuming you can trust them, which kind of defeats the point. If you trust your supply chain, why do you need a computationally expensive trustless system?

Re: Introducing A16Z Crypto

#295

Post by progr4mmatic »

hitekker wrote: post #229
TrevorAustin wrote: post #70

Speaking as a longtime skeptic, A16Z has actually produced the single clearest answer I've seen to that question: blockchains may be good for bootstrapping new network effects by giving early participants in a network (in a Metcalfe's Law sense of network) an incentive to participate. Pure utility tokens can be like call options on the eventual value of the network if it gets off the ground. It's a novel way of solvi…

>Blockchains may be good for bootstrapping new network effects by giving early participants in a network (in a Metcalfe's Law sense of network) an incentive to participate. Unless I'm being extra dense today, this is the un-clearest answer I've read yet. The 'may' qualifier also does not inspire confidence.

If the tokens provide utility, e.g. this token is 500gb of storage and adoption, network activity, or technology productivity increases, the value of these utility tokens will go up in value on the market.

So it’s basically like a new commodity. Ether is compared to gas on the Ethereum network for distributed compute for instance.

Re: Introducing A16Z Crypto

#296

Post by koonsolo »

wernsey wrote: post #282
samat wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should note that email got all that nice features long after it was invented.

Well, email was immediately useful, being like normal mail, only better.

Everyone had an address, almost everyone had a phone, almost nobody had an email address. Not very useful.

How did you send pictures over email? I know what you are thinking, but no, you didn't take digital pictures. If you wanted to send one of your pictures over email, you needed to have an expensive scanner. And if you did, the pixel quality would be terrible. Not very useful.

Technologies like email need things around it to evolve, both technical and social. And the same is true for blockchain and cryptocurrencies.

I'm not claiming that either of them are guaranteed to be successful, but I'm claiming that a lot of arguments against it don't make much sense. Because those same arguments could just as easily be applied to email.

Re: Introducing A16Z Crypto

#297

Post by koonsolo »

marklgr wrote: post #246
koonsolo wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What problem did email solve? 1. I can send a letter to anyone, because anyone has an address. Not everyone has an email address. Plus I can add small physical things, and it's more personal with handwriting and a little perfume ;). 2. If I need quick communication, I just call them. A lot of arguments that are anti-blockchain and anti-cryptocurrency (based on other tech besides blockchain) can be used in the same wa…

Emails are cheap, quick and asynchronous (contrary to phone), there's a log of the conversation which can be forwarded if need be, and you can attach data to it (document, video etc.). You can sort your mailbox according to your needs, which gains time and save space compared to, say, hanging folders.

Back in the 90's I tried to attach my VHS tape and Polaroid pictures to email, before sending it over the 2400 baud modem. Didn't work. Also mainly because the other end didn't have any computer or internet.

Re: Introducing A16Z Crypto

#298

Post by dmix »

Jommi wrote: post #266
madeofpalk wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have the cash to buy a house without a bank? Go ahead. You don't need blockchain for that. Online transactions without fees? Bitcoin still has fees. I send money overseas cheaply, easily and instantly all the time. Without Blockchain.

Which service do you use? What are the fees? Between what countries?

It doesn't exist apparently. No reply to 3 people. He probably Venmo'd $5 to someone and thought it was a solved problem. Not a real solution to real significant cross-border money transfers.

Re: Introducing A16Z Crypto

#299

Post by darkmighty »

wpietri wrote: post #219
sjeohp wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I would like to pay/donate to an organization even though no major credit card will let me."

Thanks. That's a plausible hypothetical. Could you name an organization like that? One that you are eager to donate to? How many people would like to donate to it? What's the total payment volume per year? The only organization I can think of that might be in that category is Wikileaks. But they take both credit cards and Paypal, so they don't qualify. Maybe Hamas or Al Qaeda? Except that those are illegal to donate…

Library Genesis/SciHub[1], and its various access portals[2].

Honestly LibGen+SciHub is doing more for humanity than almost any organization I know of. It's the next generation complement (not replacement) of Wikipedia -- truly opening the entirety of Man's knowledge to anyone.

I don't oppose paying content creators, but I suspect the vast majority of people accessing this knowledge wouldn't do so under traditional publishing. This shows copyright is largely outdated, not serving society optimally as it should.

As for Bitcoin and blockchains... my opinion is that they are extremely useful for efforts like those (and other niches like totalitarian states), if not much else. Perhaps paradoxically I also (controversially) think they should be outlawed and/or heavily regulated (outlawed but as a lightweight non-criminal offense). The potential for theft and money laundering is too large otherwise.

In the limit where everyone used perfect secrecy coins, paying taxes would need to be largely voluntary. And I suppose we all know how well that would turn out.

So I think cryptocurrencies are meant to be underground. It will always be possible to acquire some under the censorship conditions they are really useful for. So restricting their usage mainly curbs trivialized laundering.

[1] https://sci-hub.nu/

[2] e.g. http://booksc.org/howtodonate.php, it does support amazon gift cards too but I find that inconvenient

Re: Introducing A16Z Crypto

#300

Post by sacado2 »

B1FF_PSUVM wrote: post #273
nostrademons wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Other people have money and I don't, so I'm going to redefine money as that which I have, and then I will have money and other people won't." I thought it was ridiculous too when I first heard about it, and then I realized that "other people have money and I don't" is perhaps the strongest motivation in history. The American, French, Russian, and Chinese revolutions all stemmed from that, as did WW2 and the Holocaus…

That's mostly wrong, if you take another look at it. The American revolution was rich aristocrats shaking off the power that the British ones had over them. The Russian revolution (October 1917) was a military coup that the Bolsheviks pulled off by subverting enough of an army tired of war - the democratic February revolution hadn't taken Russia out of WWI. The French revolution was a religious one - the encyclopedis…

French Revolution was also a way for the "bourgeoisie" (the riches, basically) to get the power that was still held by the aristocracy. So, actually people that had lots of money and thought they deserved to have more power.
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