The Blockchain Bubble Will Pop, What Next? • Hacker News Board

Re: The Blockchain Bubble Will Pop, What Next?

#201

Post by dynamoa » Mon, Jul 30, 2018, 6:06 AM UTC

vinni2 wrote: post #193

skewart wrote: post #150

Here's the big reason I've gotten skeptical about blockchain: it seems like very few people are excited about actually using it. Almost everyone talking about it is excited about getting rich from trading currencies or starting a blockchain-based company. And plenty of people are excited about a grand vision for how it might transform society one day, or how it might solve problems they think other people might have.…

I thought the blockchain technology had the potential to help financial sector. Not the virtual currency itself but there are a lot of agreements, transactions and settlements which are done in a untrustworthy environment which makes it slow and resulting in settlements [0]. I thought this is also the reason why it takes so long to transfer money from one bank to another. I thought these processes could benefit from…

The problem is industries such as the financial sector are extremely resistant to change. Banks are still using COBOL! They are so slow to adapt, it could take a decade or more for blockchain technology to be integrate.

Re: The Blockchain Bubble Will Pop, What Next?

#202

Post by munchbunny » Mon, Jul 30, 2018, 6:09 AM UTC

mjevans wrote: post #192

munchbunny wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe a different but related question worth asking is: what does a blockchain accomplish that cryptographically signed audit logs in a centralized database don't? Setting aside the specific technical details, in concept a database of cryptographically signed audit logs and a blockchain aren't so different - blockchain adds decentralization and a trust/truth resolution formula, at the cost of a different set of scala…

The above, but published and witnessed (and signed) by others; I think that's often called a 'sigwit' system as shorthand.

Thanks for the reference! I got curious and looked it up. Turns out the term is 'segwit'.

But more to the point, turns out some cryptocurrency implementations move the transaction database to a segwit system because of the scalability problem.

Huh.

Re: The Blockchain Bubble Will Pop, What Next?

#203

Post by tluyben2 » Mon, Jul 30, 2018, 6:10 AM UTC

paulpauper wrote: post #16

fivedogit wrote: post #9

News flash: it already popped. 70‰ from top. ICOs dried up. Blockchain market cap is about $300 billion now. Should the next major tech wave be worth half a Facebook? IMO, yes, and more. Blockchain has already proven 2 major use cases (e-gold and ICOs) and several minor ones (unstoppable casinos, prediction markets). Doubters are in for a bunch of regret.

yeah, the market already popped as far as ICOs are concerned. many down 75-95% from highs and have no viable products

They deserve that drop. A lot of them were scams and a lot of them were well intentioned but badly executed. That happens with startups in the same way though: many (most?) funded startups go bust. In ICOs this is just far more public record as you can follow their demise publicly. If startups would do that in the same way, no one would be so surprised or shouting scam as much. A lot of startups I did competitor analysis on or who we talked with for acquisition or merger had nothing to do with blockchain but also got millions on vague promises and never delivered while burning through the millions. Some of them actually being obvious scams (easy to point out which ones if you are in my industry). Why would that be different for blockchain projects? Are there statistics to show fiat vc funded startups failures vs ico failures? Kickstarter etc failures vs ico failures? XXX scams vs ico scams?

Re: The Blockchain Bubble Will Pop, What Next?

#204

Post by tluyben2 » Mon, Jul 30, 2018, 6:19 AM UTC

corv wrote: post #139

Yes, there are lots of charlatans in the blockchain space (and startups in general). Figuring this out now, half a year after market participants noted a bear market isn’t worth much however.

Exactly; besides far more public visibility (well with notable exceptions like Theranos lately), how is it different than vc backed startups?

Bubble already popped and will rise and pop again, yes there are scams like there are everywhere; that is no news, nothing to see here.

Re: The Blockchain Bubble Will Pop, What Next?

#205

Post by vkou » Mon, Jul 30, 2018, 6:28 AM UTC

speedplane wrote: post #200

vinni2 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought the blockchain technology had the potential to help financial sector. Not the virtual currency itself but there are a lot of agreements, transactions and settlements which are done in a untrustworthy environment which makes it slow and resulting in settlements [0]. I thought this is also the reason why it takes so long to transfer money from one bank to another. I thought these processes could benefit from…

The simple feature of reducing settlements from days into seconds is by itself a great use-case. However, there is a lot of structural incentives against it. If you're a big bank and make nice transaction fees because your clients trust you to make a secure, legal, and successful transaction, you probably don't want blockchain, because it's a threat to your business model. That's certainly one of the major reasons it…

> The simple feature of reducing settlements from days into seconds is by itself a great use-case.

The reasons for why settlements take days, and not seconds, is procedural, not technical. If the financial world wanted instant settlements, we would have had them decades ago.

The financial world optimizes for intent and compliance, not speed. This is why settlements take days, and why cryptocoins aren't very interesting to it.

Transferring money from one account to another account is as simple as updating two rows in a database. That the database is not a distributed proof-of-work ledger has nothing to do with it taking days.

Re: The Blockchain Bubble Will Pop, What Next?

#206

Post by robjan » Mon, Jul 30, 2018, 6:29 AM UTC

albertgoeswoof wrote: post #31

The bit I would like to know, is how the CEO of this company is making lots of money? I mean who is seriously paying for “AI on the blockchain”? Sure if it’s possible to run some of the most computationally intensive processing we know of on the one of the slowest platform architectures available, I would certainly pay for that. Denying the laws of thermodynamics would be one hell of a breakthrough though.

The usual way is to release a white paper about your hypothetical product and then create a token and launch an ICO.

Re: The Blockchain Bubble Will Pop, What Next?

#207

Post by akudha » Mon, Jul 30, 2018, 6:32 AM UTC

pembrook wrote: post #44

tCfD wrote: post #6

The problem with blockchain is actually rooted in hazy, unexamined assumptions about the viability of 'decentralization' that are are used as if they are conclusions rather than premises for justifying the technology's utility. I think ultimately the conversation will turn to discuss the cost premium entailed by a decentralized coordination problem solving system of any kind, and whether it centralization is really a…

People have an abstract distaste for "trusted intermediaries" because they think the intermediary just sits in between you and somebody else while collecting fees for adding no value. In many cases the fees absolutely need to be reduced through market competition. However the root of this thinking is wrong. Intermediaries do add value. Humans are inherently un-trustworthy animals, and you pay your fees to buy the val…

Yes, intermediaries add value but in many cases they get paid disproportionately, define rules and regulations that range from one sided at best and truly evil at worst. And this has been going on for a long time and people are understandably irritated and looking for alternatives.

If the system wasn't so unfair, we probably wouldn't need to look for alternatives. Fixing the current systems is impossible at this point as the intermediaries have grown too big and too strong, so people are looking for alternatives.

Re: The Blockchain Bubble Will Pop, What Next?

#208

Post by madshiva » Mon, Jul 30, 2018, 6:44 AM UTC

coralreef wrote: post #136

bepotts wrote: post #17

In all seriousness, what are the advantages Blockchain has over a public SQL database with limited reads and writes that also maintains a public transaction history? Cause when I hear people talk about the problems Blockchains solves (outside of cryptocurrency which is a whole other topic), I don't see what advantages Blockchain has over that. A public SQL database isn't the most "clean" solution, but it'll save ever…

If you lived in Greece or Venezeuala, you may have a different opinion about your government's fiscal policies and trustworthiness.

You will not fix the whole government will blockchain. If there's no food but you have bitcoin or blockchain will it help? no. technology won't save the world magically.

If you see silicion valley, poor people can't buy house, live in a car, it's the magic of the internet of the world, where the canyon goes always larger.

Re: The Blockchain Bubble Will Pop, What Next?

#209

Post by beguiledfoil » Mon, Jul 30, 2018, 6:46 AM UTC

dynamoa wrote: post #201

vinni2 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought the blockchain technology had the potential to help financial sector. Not the virtual currency itself but there are a lot of agreements, transactions and settlements which are done in a untrustworthy environment which makes it slow and resulting in settlements [0]. I thought this is also the reason why it takes so long to transfer money from one bank to another. I thought these processes could benefit from…

The problem is industries such as the financial sector are extremely resistant to change. Banks are still using COBOL! They are so slow to adapt, it could take a decade or more for blockchain technology to be integrate.

This is a stronger endorsement of COBOL than it is of blockchain...

Re: The Blockchain Bubble Will Pop, What Next?

#210

Post by drewmol » Mon, Jul 30, 2018, 6:56 AM UTC

craigc wrote: post #148

nradov wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not how economics or the banking system actually work. The Federal Reserve can issue effectively unlimited credit to solvent banks in case of runs. The government has no way to directly "increase inflation". Generally when bank runs occur it's because the bank has a lot of bad loans; when loans go bad it effectively removes money from circulation thus decreasing monetary inflation. There is no single central "…

Those were three separate ideas. A bank run would most likely be a result of deflation, yes, but it is not guaranteed that if that were to occur that the bank would be able to stay solvent. The inflation example can already be seen in Venezuela, where the people there have been using cryptocurrencies as a way to survive . > Ultimately the US dollar (and other fiat currencies) are backed by something: a government wit…

>Are you suggesting that the US military will use force to ensure that people use the dollar and that is its backing?

Not the OP, but the governments' 'monopoly on violence' usually refers to the fact that they hold position as the sole enforcement authority. Dollar is 'backed' by a reputation/record of US government fulfilling it's debt obligations. As the enforcement authority, they can/will use force to secure an operating revenue via tax collection. The specifics of what people use to transact, is more flexible. So the dollar is backed by US Government's ability to fulfill it's future debts. The method it uses to extract (something of value, payment is currently required in $ format) from it's citizenry to pay them is less important, but a 'monopoly on violence' sure helps with collection efforts ;-)