Looking at all the comments here I have a single response to most of them: I'll call it a solution when it is implemented. You can talk all you want about solutions to some of the (minor) problems addressed here (ignoring the rest of the problems) but unless it is in use then the article's commentary still stands. Unless it has a ton of users, the article's commentary still stands. If you really do believe in block chain, prove us all wrong and implement the changes.
Blockchain, the Solution for Almost Nothing
61–70 of 296 posts
Re: Blockchain, the Solution for Almost Nothing
#62Bitcoin has lots of uses: - Getting money out of China. Buy into a mining consortium with yuan, get a fraction of the bitcoins, sell outside China for dollars or euros. You're manufacturing and exporting, which the government of China likes. - Extortion. The ransomware extortion business depends on Bitcoin. - Drugs. Delivered to your door in a plain wrapper.
>- Drugs. Delivered to your door in a plain wrapper. What are the transaction costs like on BTC these days? I'm surprised many people still bother with BTC given the enormous costs I've seen.
Looks like it's US$4.614/transaction.
https://ycharts.com/indicators/bitcoin_average_transaction_f....
Re: Blockchain, the Solution for Almost Nothing
#63Re: Blockchain, the Solution for Almost Nothing
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
I looked through a few of those, and I struggle to see how those are superior to traditional solutions to the same problems. Care to enlighten me?
They're permissionless, open source, censorship-resistant, borderless, near instant compared to legacy finance, auditable, composeable (can build protocols on top of other protocols to extend various financial services), and they enable new capabilities that current system can't do.
These technologies try to solve for a lack of trust and avoiding regulation. This use case combination is exceptionally rare (as Animats enumerates, drugs, ransoms, and money laundering). As long as you have a functioning legal framework, financial distributed ledgers and smart contracts have very little value (what happens when a judge overrides your smart contract’s evaluation and result? A fork each time? The law supersedes the chain).
Instant payments don’t need a blockchain [1]. Avoiding financial regulation sends you to jail [2].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant_payment
[2] https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/9/18302053/bitcoin-dealer-pr...
Re: Blockchain, the Solution for Almost Nothing
#65It's been a good solution for authentic digital arts! Check out https://knownorigin.io/ https://superrare.co/
There are also virtual worlds to see the art in https://www.cryptovoxels.com/
Re: Blockchain, the Solution for Almost Nothing
#66Recent and related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24181586
Re: Blockchain, the Solution for Almost Nothing
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
Slide side track but I never get the complaints about power usage. It’d be great if crypto used less energy obviously but doesn’t fiat also use a ridiculously high amount of energy?
Fiat also uses crazy amount of energy in absolute terms. But per-transaction costs are much lower for fiat.
Can you give some examples of ubititous systems in the real world which don't use crazy amount of energy in absolute terms? It would be helpful if you could provide an estimate for your notion of "crazy amount of energy" in terms of powers of ten kWh.
Re: Blockchain, the Solution for Almost Nothing
#68Bitcoin has lots of uses: - Getting money out of China. Buy into a mining consortium with yuan, get a fraction of the bitcoins, sell outside China for dollars or euros. You're manufacturing and exporting, which the government of China likes. - Extortion. The ransomware extortion business depends on Bitcoin. - Drugs. Delivered to your door in a plain wrapper.
>- Drugs. Delivered to your door in a plain wrapper. What are the transaction costs like on BTC these days? I'm surprised many people still bother with BTC given the enormous costs I've seen.
You don't pay in BTC for drugs though. Montero is usually preferred and transactions are much cheaper and private.
Re: Blockchain, the Solution for Almost Nothing
#69Funny how this post went from #1 on the homepage to #22 in a couple of minutes...
Re: Blockchain, the Solution for Almost Nothing
#70Blockchain is easy to criticize. Hell, I've done it plenty and I worked in the space full time for a good year and a half. But the problems that they're trying to solve, decentralization, censorship resistance, sound money, true democratic governance, etc. are hard ones to solve. Maybe it turns out that they are inherently unsolvable for the foreseeable future. I think the promise that a solution to some of these pro…
> But the problems that they're trying to solve, decentralization, censorship resistance, sound money, true democratic governance, etc.
Noble goals. Still, blockchains are inherently limited to the digital world. No amount of digital freedom or security stops you from being oppressed by an unjust government, or robbed at gunpoint.
Taking Bitcoin as an example, there have been many cases of bitcoins being seized or stolen. The reasons behind these losses were much the same as the reasons people lose fiat currency. Someone with authority came and took it.
Frankly, I don't really understand what there is to "get". You can create a perfect system, but people have to operate within it. That means laws, and it means ceding authority to regulation.
None of this is to say that I am not interested in blockchain tech, and am not open to it as a solution. I just haven't seen a problem solved by it yet. I would be happy to be proven wrong.