I think this article can be summed up in one phrase:
Technology does not solve political problems
You Do Not Need Blockchain: Popular Use Cases and Why They Do Not Work
271–280 of 415 posts
Re: You Do Not Need Blockchain: Popular Use Cases and Why They Do Not Work
#272Earlier quoted context omitted.
What does a republic get you that a dictatorship couldn't do more efficiently? I did it guys. I'm finally enlightened.
> What does a republic get you that a dictatorship couldn't do more efficiently? We're wayyyy off on a tangent here, but the removal of an unpopular leader from office ...
Nah man, a dictatorship is capable of removing an unpopular leader from office more efficiently than any other form of government. Whether it's likely to or not is a different question!
Re: You Do Not Need Blockchain: Popular Use Cases and Why They Do Not Work
#273Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nifty trick! Unfortunately, it doesn't generalize to BTC / USD (or other fiat currency), which is probably the bigger exchange that most people use. ---------- The second issue is that BTC / ETH prices can change dramatically. Set your timer too long: and your opponent can use time to take advantage of the trade... only executing it when the BTC/ETH exchange floats towards their favor. Because BTC / ETH prices vary d…
This is what stablecoins are for, such as USDT, TUSD, etc. I'm sure you'll bring up the point that you still need exchanges for USD -> stablecoin. You can alternatively use crypto ATMs, or trade with someone you know.
Stablecoins rely on the trust of the company to float the value of the USD or whatever currency with the coin that is generated. USDT is owned and operated by a single, foreign company that hasn't had an audit yet and has no insurance protections what-so-ever. I'm not going to trust them with my money or business.
This about the worst of all cases: they pretend to be a blockchain, but they're really just a standard old bank operating without any regulatory behavior what-so-ever.
Re: You Do Not Need Blockchain: Popular Use Cases and Why They Do Not Work
#274Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Guys, this works. It's literally how the world works. How about corporate stock? You know how many third parties are involved with the markets and the added costs of those third parties? Even with a corporation with a stock ledger, stock trusts who own them, banks/brokers who handle all the buying/selling of stock...things don’t work. Take the Dole case where the corporation had almost double the number of stock iss…
The problem with Dole was that there was not one single central ledger of stock transactions that was being kept updated in real time. Would blockchain have solved that? It's centralized in that there is one ledger. But natively resolving and publishing transactions at high speed is not a feature of blockchains yet. A centrally managed ledger without distributed calculations would be way faster. Also worth noting tha…
>A centrally managed ledger without distributed calculations would be way faster.
Right which will never occur in the current system because each middleman needs to justify their place to keep their piece of the pie.
Like I said it’s a system with tons of middlemen (who don’t add value) who could be ripped out and replaced with Blockchain.
Dole was “ultimately resolved” only after complex class action litigation that costs millions of dollars and resulted in the party who took dole private having to pay an extra ~$2.50 x ~36.8M shares. It’s clear from any public company that goes private this is a serious issue...Dole is not an edge case.
Re: You Do Not Need Blockchain: Popular Use Cases and Why They Do Not Work
#275Earlier quoted context omitted.
That I agree with. I've seen some pretty interesting proposals for on-chain games. But it still adds new problems. Electricity use, the irrecoverability of data/auth if you lose a key, the inability to erase problematic data.
I'm not sure I'd necessarily call those problems - it's a weird definition I know, but perhaps tradeoffs? 1. On Electricity - It needs to be expensive to try to cheat or steal from the system. Currently with gold you would need to hire a private army to steal from and break into vaults - that's so expensive and crazy that I don't think most people are willing to undertake that risk. Currently I think electricity is t…
Re 1: So why again are we wasting an entire country worth of electricity to secure some numbers? Because we haven't found a good replacement yet doesn't cut it. It's like saying why am I dumping dioxin in the rain gutters? Oh, well, I haven't figured out a better plan so back off, socialist :P
Re 2-3: Tell that to customers of Quadriga and MtGox and the countless scammed, those who paid ransom to kidnappers. Everyone who lost their keys. It's a problem, let's face some reality here.
Re: You Do Not Need Blockchain: Popular Use Cases and Why They Do Not Work
#276Earlier quoted context omitted.
To be fair, I think most people who have given blockchain an honest 30 minutes of brainstorming aren't arguing for real world assets connected to a chain. I would argue that there is potentially a use case when it comes to things that can be completely represented digitally e.g. money.
I frequently see commercials that must have cost millions of dollars to create and place that make the opposite argument. If what you're saying is true, the whole industry is just selling snake-oil, and (I think?) people are buying it. The more likely scenario, it seems to me, is that lots of these people actually believe in good faith that this is actually useful technology. If you assume that's the case, it makes s…
Just because a lot of people do something doesn't make it a good idea.
Re: You Do Not Need Blockchain: Popular Use Cases and Why They Do Not Work
#277Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nifty trick! Unfortunately, it doesn't generalize to BTC / USD (or other fiat currency), which is probably the bigger exchange that most people use. ---------- The second issue is that BTC / ETH prices can change dramatically. Set your timer too long: and your opponent can use time to take advantage of the trade... only executing it when the BTC/ETH exchange floats towards their favor. Because BTC / ETH prices vary d…
This is what stablecoins are for, such as USDT, TUSD, etc. I'm sure you'll bring up the point that you still need exchanges for USD -> stablecoin. You can alternatively use crypto ATMs, or trade with someone you know.
Trading with someone you know ruins the point of a trustless system.
If that person ends up duping you, then you need to sue them (litigation)
Re: You Do Not Need Blockchain: Popular Use Cases and Why They Do Not Work
#278Earlier quoted context omitted.
From the comment you're replying to: > there's a multi-layered system in place to resolve disputes, starting from the customer support call center, reviews, bad publicity, and going all the way to the courts. So no, I don't think the plan is to go to court over every contractual dispute.
Did you see how that part was marked as an edit? It was added after my reply. Furthermore, it reinforced my original point that it's really not all that reassuring that the (slow-moving) legal system will enforce contracts, because it's an expensive process, and you need other protocols on top of that in order for trade with untrusted parties to work. As of the edit, the parent seems to agree. So maybe my comment was…
The threat of the legal system is a useful spur for resolving contractual disputes, but most disputes are resolved without engaging the legal system.
One of my frustrations with discussions of blockchain is how quickly it diverges from reality. Most financial disputes today are resolved without a lawsuit or a prosecution, which I think you know. And transacting $5 via blockchain today will involve 3rd parties with whom you could develop a dispute, and then you'd be right back where you would be for any other $5 transaction.
Re: You Do Not Need Blockchain: Popular Use Cases and Why They Do Not Work
#279Earlier quoted context omitted.
1. Regarding the fees: $0.46 is (I presume) only the transaction fees. To make an accurate comparison, you'd have to include the exchange fees to convert from USD to BTC and then from BTC to JPY. Right now Coinbase is charging me $59 to buy 1 BTC, and I don't know how much more it would be to sell exchange that back to JPY. You can send $4000 (about 1 BTC) to someone in Japan for $30.14 with TransferWise. And guess w…
1. First these are totally different points. a. If you do not currently own Bitcoin and want to own it there are many ways you can get it. They range from fast (generally more expensive) to slow (generally less expensive). Sure, if you want to buy Bitcoin on Coinbase you can do that and you will pay them a fee for that service - which I've done. You can also mine it - which I've done, be paid it in - also done, etc.…
1a. Mining is absolutely inefficient as an individual and barely economical if you're Bitmain. That's a complete red-herring.
1b. Effectively nobody accepts bitcoin. It's something like 3 major merchants and around a couple thousand total, world-wide. So yes, you will be buying BTC for real money and exchanging it for real money on the other side. Pretending we live in a land of hyperbitcoinization isn't helpful.
Further, you incur huge forex risk in between the time it takes to buy, transfer and re-sell. Do it at the wrong time and you could lose tens of percentage points. The parent post understates the cost as a result.
2. Drugs.
Re: You Do Not Need Blockchain: Popular Use Cases and Why They Do Not Work
#280I hate the blockchain hype. I think most uses can be solved by a simple database hosted by a trusted authority. Yet, just reading the first two samples, I already disagree with them. Re the 1st one: it's true only if the transporter doesn't risk anything if the sensor is tampered with. As soon as you introduce strong fines and/or consequences if a validating authority randomly checks your goods and discover some tamp…
>As soon as you introduce strong fines and/or consequences
If strong fines were sufficient to prevent tampering then the proposed blockchain solution wouldn't even be necessary; just fine dishonest actors, period.
> if every luxury Louis Vuitton handbag is tracked and you know precisely whether it's been sold
There is no way to accomplish this though. You cannot reliably track a physical object because there is no way that a computer can automatically verify the authenticity of an object.