Author fails to mention that people for sure not only don't trust banks but also governments. the whole argument that trust is not needed because institutions fails in all failed states that author happens not to live in. I remind you the "chancellor on bring of second bailout". that's the value proposition. Lastly, author can't spell Ethereum
There's No Good Reason to Trust Blockchain Technology
101–110 of 164 posts
Re: There's No Good Reason to Trust Blockchain Technology
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
You hate it because you missed out on the gold rush. It's called jealousy. Simple as that. I hate it too for the same reason but at least I'm honest about it.
I h#$@ it and I didn't miss out. A month's salary turned into 16 months of freedom and a bit of money to start a non-crypto company. Reason being the ignorant hype, even greater inequality, and the support of criminals, terrorists, and bad actors built into the very nature of public blockchain. Private blockchain is a different story, but I see that more like a choice between SQL and NoSQL. Just need to wait a decade…
As you've identified, a "private blockchain" is just a database. People can't wake up to this soon enough.
Re: There's No Good Reason to Trust Blockchain Technology
#103The author has demonstrated a very amateurish understanding and greatly conflated Bitcoin technology with blockchain technology in general, drawing the reader to make the same poor conclusions as the author. Just a quick example > "The second element is the consensus algorithm, which is a way to ensure all the copies of the ledger are the same. This is generally called mining;" - except that is only applicable for (p…
> except that is only applicable for (proof of work POW) consensus and does not apply to proof of stake (POS) and delegated proof of stack (DPOS) which several of the top blockchain projects are currently using (even Ethereum is moving to POS). For POS, you have to trust the rich people and you have to trust that the disincentives to cheating actually work the way they’re supposed to. Neither of these have very compe…
That is why I'm more of a fan of DPOS and (EOS) where I can take part in a voting mechanism to establish a set of trust worthy nodes who will validate the network.
Re: There's No Good Reason to Trust Blockchain Technology
#104I 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.
I like the tech but can't stand the hype. It's become impossible to follow or engage in any discussions around the topic since the shills have taken over this space. I also like quicksort and fibonacci numbers but would I try to start a business based on this? Probably not. I want to see legit tech being built that uses blockchains but as soon as it ends up being on a business plan or mentioned in marketing material…
Looks like somebody did start a business based on quicksort back in 1971. https://www.syncsort.com/en/About/Syncsort-Overview
Re: There's No Good Reason to Trust Blockchain Technology
#105I 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.
We do not like blockchains because it was something nasty / fraud-y marketers stole from us, and went ahead to make huge sums of money. From something that actually had tech potential, but wasn't ready yet.
It was a quick introduction to 'how the world works' for a lot of us.
Adding insult to injury, some of us joined the marketers for the scraps and gave them undue legitimacy. This was on HN a few weeks ago, explains the whole phenomenon based on three types: Geeks, Mops, Sociopaths. https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths (And we're mostly all 'geeks' here, by his definition.)
And this is not sour grapes — I first heard of Bitcoin in 2010, when it was 3 cents. I didn't make any money out of it, but I've not 'missed out' in any real sense.
Re: There's No Good Reason to Trust Blockchain Technology
#106Maybe with Bitcoin I have to trust the software a little bit, but at least if it turns out to be faulty, I can switch to another app. That's much harder to do with governments controlling fiat money. Or with banks. What is a person supposed to do, who is denied financial transactions by the established financial service providers (paypal, credit cards,...)? There have now been several cases where paypal and others ha…
Isn't that the central problem with something like Bitcoin and currencies that can be (read: have to be) mined, though? You gain units of the currency for underpinning the integrity of the system. The average person will never be able to build up a mining system to compete with the likes of China and India where they're mining Bitcoin in farms that potentially devalue the currency every single second. Edit: For clari…
What do you mean by "farms that potentially devalue the currency every single second"?
Re: There's No Good Reason to Trust Blockchain Technology
#107I 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.
Try focusing on the technology, its merits and its potential (or lack thereof, depending which side you lean). I find that works for me, although sifting through the rancor and the mindless shilling all so prevalent in the crypto communities is rather saddening.
it's happened before that the people / community / culture of a thing had more to do with its success / failure than the technology itself.
VHS/betamax, for instance.
imo, blockchain as we know it today can't survive the wilding of these platforms, the stories around the cretins and thieves involved.
it'll have to evolve to something that doesn't resemble "blockchain" as we talk about it today (cloud versus devops versus sysadmins, etc).
a new keystone of this technology will have to carry it far away and make it kind of different for this to be the thing we're still talking about 10 years from now.
Re: There's No Good Reason to Trust Blockchain Technology
#108YC is very Blockchain friendly, Wozniak likes it,Larry Page is mining Ethereum, Jack will bring Bitcoin micropayments to Twitter, inventor of javascript runs a crypto browser now and Reddit CEO loves it too. I wonder why the top comment here is someone that hates bitcoin with all his power. A psychology study will surely be interesting about why some techies hate it so much really.
Re: There's No Good Reason to Trust Blockchain Technology
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
Does a bank's own blockchain require trusting that bank? If so then you probably don't need a blockchain since you already have assumed a trusted third party. If you are aiming to reduce your institutional trust assumptions to me the question is why not use Bitcoin?
That's sort of my point. I actually don't care about the technology underneath. I care about the monetary system and its adherence (and recourse) to the rules of law that humans have generally agreed upon. Like, if you steal, the societal system will correct the wrong as much as they can. It's an open question as to whether public blockchains can provide for this trust and requirement.
I think that blockchains can provide more trust than the current system because the ledger is publicly visible. The societal system still kicks in to remediate the effects of a mistake but the blockchain is an additional tool used to provide the evidence and support for such a reversal. For me, personally, I think the best solution is a form of blockchain run by a state/federal agency. You're putting trust in an institution, yes, but the underlying technology helps support that trust.
Re: There's No Good Reason to Trust Blockchain Technology
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did you ever go to such a meetup? What exactly annoyed you about the people?
Questions like this. Don't sea lion. http://wondermark.com/1k62/
This is spot on. It's the repeated conversations with evangelists to re-prove something mundane that really sucks all the air out of the room.
The "Just Asking Questions" faux civility is sometimes referred to as JAQing off.