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There's No Good Reason to Trust Blockchain Technology

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Re: There's No Good Reason to Trust Blockchain Technology

#41

Post by XMPPwocky »

jondubois wrote: post #21

If you're a technical person, you don't need to trust Blockchain technology; you can verify that it works on your own. If you're not a technical person, you can find independent technical experts to verify it for you. Much of the value of a cryptocurrency can be attributed to the fact that it's difficult to coordinate a large number of people to agree on changes. Also, because most blockchains are public ledgers; it'…

> When anyone will be able to launch their own cryptocurrency, we will have a chance to free ourselves from the coercive influences of debt, venture capital and corporations.

You can borrow cryptocurrency.

You can invest cryptocurrency with terms that are bad for the business you invest in.

Corporations can use cryptocurrency.

What, exactly, have you changed?

Re: There's No Good Reason to Trust Blockchain Technology

#42

Post by jondubois »

baxtr wrote: post #8

I hate blockchain so much and I can’t even exactly say why. Not because of the technology itself. I care about it as much as any other technology. I think it’s because of the sleazy non-tech people that suddenly turned into “experts” raising money for their BC startup, people organizing meetups, becoming “consultants” and of course the whole crypto craze... I really wish it will die soon.

Nobody deserves anything. You get whatever life gives you and it's all about luck. I have as much respect for a lottery winner as a self-made business person.

As a human being, I would prefer the lottery winner though because they don't have as many false ideas about what kind of person they are and what kind of world we live in.

Re: There's No Good Reason to Trust Blockchain Technology

#43

Post by jayd16 »

jondubois wrote: post #21

If you're a technical person, you don't need to trust Blockchain technology; you can verify that it works on your own. If you're not a technical person, you can find independent technical experts to verify it for you. Much of the value of a cryptocurrency can be attributed to the fact that it's difficult to coordinate a large number of people to agree on changes. Also, because most blockchains are public ledgers; it'…

>On the other hand, fiat money is constantly being secretly manipulated.

Crypto can be secretly manipulated in the exact same way fiat can. The only thing different about crypto is that there's no central bank that can literally print money. Instead we get defacto authority with no legal framework in place.

Re: There's No Good Reason to Trust Blockchain Technology

#44

Post by legionof7 »

XMPPwocky wrote: post #41
jondubois wrote: post #21

If you're a technical person, you don't need to trust Blockchain technology; you can verify that it works on your own. If you're not a technical person, you can find independent technical experts to verify it for you. Much of the value of a cryptocurrency can be attributed to the fact that it's difficult to coordinate a large number of people to agree on changes. Also, because most blockchains are public ledgers; it'…

> When anyone will be able to launch their own cryptocurrency, we will have a chance to free ourselves from the coercive influences of debt, venture capital and corporations. You can borrow cryptocurrency. You can invest cryptocurrency with terms that are bad for the business you invest in. Corporations can use cryptocurrency. What, exactly, have you changed?

You are correct with borrowing, I'm not sure what that's about, happy to be enlightened by OP though.

Not sure about investments, haven't done too much research into the benefits of ICOs and letting more people invest.

I think corporations are a good point though. If more companies became DAOs, we'd have much better checks and balances and transparency for corporations.

Re: There's No Good Reason to Trust Blockchain Technology

#45

Post by jameslevy »

cphoover wrote: post #26
jondubois wrote: post #21

If you're a technical person, you don't need to trust Blockchain technology; you can verify that it works on your own. If you're not a technical person, you can find independent technical experts to verify it for you. Much of the value of a cryptocurrency can be attributed to the fact that it's difficult to coordinate a large number of people to agree on changes. Also, because most blockchains are public ledgers; it'…

"If you're a technical person, you don't need to trust Blockchain technology; you can verify that it works on your own. If you're not a technical person, you can find independent technical experts to verify it for you." That holds for Proof-of-work based currencies... It seems like it's trickier than that for proof-of-stake, as these have to be trustful systems.

Because exit scams are a thing, it may be difficult to prove that a proof of stake blockchain will always be trustworthy, but it should be possible to verify that historic proof of stake records are accurate. I'd expect we will see some independent auditing tools of this type for monitoring PoS blockchains.

Re: There's No Good Reason to Trust Blockchain Technology

#46

Post by legionof7 »

baby wrote: post #30
DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I quite like technologies / ideas / concepts like Merkle-Trees, DHT's, P2P and have them on my CV. Those companies that know what they're doing engage me on these topics. When somebody talks about blockchain I usually leave the room though. When I was still on LinkedIn I made the mistake to have blockchain in addition to those mentioned above in my profile and got bombarded with ICO scams and people adding me with "b…

I think it's a big but easy mistake to make. There is a lot of noise and scams do represent a huge majority of the market right now. But if you look underneath, you will see that the academic community has been at work and a lot of research about byzantine agreements is coming out. It's quite the exciting field actually if you can segregate the noise from the actual good stuff.

Completely agree with this. I was also getting slightly disillusioned with the ecosystem until I attended Grincon and met a bunch of people who were actually interested in building, researching, and exploring new tech.

Re: There's No Good Reason to Trust Blockchain Technology

#47

Post by dragontamer »

jayd16 wrote: post #43
jondubois wrote: post #21

If you're a technical person, you don't need to trust Blockchain technology; you can verify that it works on your own. If you're not a technical person, you can find independent technical experts to verify it for you. Much of the value of a cryptocurrency can be attributed to the fact that it's difficult to coordinate a large number of people to agree on changes. Also, because most blockchains are public ledgers; it'…

>On the other hand, fiat money is constantly being secretly manipulated. Crypto can be secretly manipulated in the exact same way fiat can. The only thing different about crypto is that there's no central bank that can literally print money. Instead we get defacto authority with no legal framework in place.

> The only thing different about crypto is that there's no central bank that can literally print money

Satoshi's pile of ~1 Million bitcoins disagrees with you.

The entire BTC economy innately trusts Satoshi to not ruin the fun for them. If Satoshi decides to liquidate his holdings of BTC, it would crash the market harder than the next 10-years worth of mining.

Satoshi's pile of 1-million bitcoins acts as a centralized bank, whether he likes it or not. Satoshi realizes this fact, and that's why Satoshi has ensured that his BTC has never moved.

Re: There's No Good Reason to Trust Blockchain Technology

#48

Post by joe_the_user »

jondubois wrote: post #21

If you're a technical person, you don't need to trust Blockchain technology; you can verify that it works on your own. If you're not a technical person, you can find independent technical experts to verify it for you. Much of the value of a cryptocurrency can be attributed to the fact that it's difficult to coordinate a large number of people to agree on changes. Also, because most blockchains are public ledgers; it'…

If you're a technical person, you don't need to trust Blockchain technology; you can verify that it works on your own. If you're not a technical person, you can find independent technical experts to verify it for you.

Not really. Just as an example, the only people who expect to verify encryption algorithms all on their own are those incompetent at it. The competent take the "best of breed", note what other experts say, keep an eye on bulletins and so-forth. If you think you can verify the functioning of bitcoin personally, you probably shouldn't be trusted for other things either.

On the other hand, fiat money is constantly being secretly manipulated.

The supply of fiat money can be increased. Markets can be manipulated too - but fiat money markets are many times more transparent than bitcoin markets.

When anyone will be able to launch their own cryptocurrency, we will have a chance to free ourselves from the coercive influences of debt, venture capital and corporations.

This claim makes no sense.

Re: There's No Good Reason to Trust Blockchain Technology

#49

Post by fdggdfsvscvsd »

baxtr wrote: post #8

I hate blockchain so much and I can’t even exactly say why. Not because of the technology itself. I care about it as much as any other technology. I think it’s because of the sleazy non-tech people that suddenly turned into “experts” raising money for their BC startup, people organizing meetups, becoming “consultants” and of course the whole crypto craze... I really wish it will die soon.

Did you ever go to such a meetup? What exactly annoyed you about the people?

Re: There's No Good Reason to Trust Blockchain Technology

#50

Post by verdverm »

legionof7 wrote: post #44
XMPPwocky wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When anyone will be able to launch their own cryptocurrency, we will have a chance to free ourselves from the coercive influences of debt, venture capital and corporations. You can borrow cryptocurrency. You can invest cryptocurrency with terms that are bad for the business you invest in. Corporations can use cryptocurrency. What, exactly, have you changed?

You are correct with borrowing, I'm not sure what that's about, happy to be enlightened by OP though. Not sure about investments, haven't done too much research into the benefits of ICOs and letting more people invest. I think corporations are a good point though. If more companies became DAOs, we'd have much better checks and balances and transparency for corporations.

Or do DOAs become more like our current political conundrum, where it's a popularity contest full of opinionated misinformation with people who don't have the expertise or time to become sufficiently informed.

With a DAG based voting proxy, there may be interesting applications within a business. Like putting support behind higher ups or something like support for RFCs. I'd expect anything applied to the wide population to be manipulated.

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