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Blockchain, the Solution for Almost Nothing

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Re: Blockchain, the Solution for Almost Nothing

#121

Post by gonehome »

TylerE wrote: post #108
gonehome wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm somewhat of a cautiously optimistic skeptic that finds the blockchain stuff really interesting and potentially important (I've been playing with it since 2010), but not super useful at the moment. I think these are some of things people think about it: - Your country's financial system is unreliable or run by tyrants and the currency is bad. It might be hard to get a stable currency. Moving income into bitcoin co…

> - Your country's financial system is unreliable or run by tyrants and the currency is bad. It might be hard to get a stable currency. Moving income into bitcoin could help you (people were doing this in Venezuela). You know what unstable governments in the middle of a revolution don't have? Reliable power and internet. > Your country was invaded and crossing the border requires you to interact with corrupt guards t…

> You know what unstable governments in the middle of a revolution don't have? Reliable power and internet.

It's reliable enough actually (people are currently doing this). You also don't need it up all the time to move value into BTC.

> Sounds like a great way to get rubber hosed to death.

There isn't a way for them to tell that you've done this, and in the case in the Ukraine it allowed him to get out with his wealth intact: https://www.forbes.com/sites/tatianakoffman/2020/06/13/why-b...

> Deflationary, for consumers, is bad. I am also not convinced bitcoin in nearly divisible enough to actually be world currency. (And that's ignoring the fact that it would need something like 7 orders of magnitude improvement in throughput)

I don't think it'll be used for frequent transactions unless they actually can fix the time/throughput issues, but that doesn't mean it's useless. There could potentially be a future where you move BTC to some other currency with faster transaction times in smaller amounts for immediate or frequent use.

Just because a lot of blockchain tech is filled with people running ICO pump and dump scams, speculators, and an enormous amount of bullshit in general doesn't mean there isn't also some cool stuff going on too. There's a lot of nonsense, but there are also some real current applications, and I think, some real future potential.

Re: Blockchain, the Solution for Almost Nothing

#122

Post by ASlave2Gravity »

Skunkleton wrote: post #70
jjordan wrote: post #40

Blockchain 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 st…

That's why we need to educate people on digital etiquette. The script kiddies stealing stuff are just that, bored shitless kids.

Universities are failing and we've got bored, super smart kids running around 'hacking' and scaring the shit out of everyone.

The recent twitter hack wasn't impressive, it was stupid.

Re: Blockchain, the Solution for Almost Nothing

#123

Post by Acrobatic_Road »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #64
chrisco255 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

How is a judge going to override a blockchain state update? He may as well rule the planet to stop spinning.

Re: Blockchain, the Solution for Almost Nothing

#124

Post by ASlave2Gravity »

luhn wrote: post #118

This article really hits the nail on the head: All these problems blockchain are supposed to solve are problems of coordination. And you don't need blockchain for that, you need buy-in.

Very true. We need to show the world how to do that! Got any ideas!?

Re: Blockchain, the Solution for Almost Nothing

#125

Post by mgraczyk »

vmception wrote: post #86
chrisco255 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if you've seen the stock market lately... clearly the largest casino in the world is on Wall Street. But anyways, DeFi has tons of use cases including automated crop insurance based on weather events, decentralized money markets for car loans, tokenized rental real estate, synthetic derivatives, standard savings and loans utilizing stablecoins, etc etc. The notion that blockchain hasn't found product mar…

If you notice, the primary arguments against blockchain and crypto require holding it to a standard higher than any asset class in existence. Its a mixture of “I don't respect this market and thats the only actual distinction” along with “I have no idea these criticisms are present in actual currencies as well as the stock market and commodities spot markets and credit market and derivatives market and collectibles m…

Not everyone is an uninformed cynic. I founded a crypto gambling startup and advised and managed ICOs for dozens of companies and syndicates.

Most economic activity in Defi is unregulated gambling, but I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing.

Re: Blockchain, the Solution for Almost Nothing

#126

Post by sohamsankaran »

andreskytt wrote: post #112
godelski wrote: post #61

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 c…

Number mobility between Indian telecoms runs on private blockchain. AFAIK it is live and actively used. BC solves a problem there because operating a database for that scale would be very complicated. So every telco has their own copy that get synced via a consensus mechanism and signed transactions

Reference? AFAIK this was proposed by Wipro in a white paper but was never implemented.

Re: Blockchain, the Solution for Almost Nothing

#127

Post by pgo »

andreskytt wrote: post #112
godelski wrote: post #61

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 c…

Number mobility between Indian telecoms runs on private blockchain. AFAIK it is live and actively used. BC solves a problem there because operating a database for that scale would be very complicated. So every telco has their own copy that get synced via a consensus mechanism and signed transactions

Source for this ? I can only see mentions of plans implementing this, not of it being actually deployed

Re: Blockchain, the Solution for Almost Nothing

#128

Post by joosters »

andreskytt wrote: post #112
godelski wrote: post #61

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 c…

Number mobility between Indian telecoms runs on private blockchain. AFAIK it is live and actively used. BC solves a problem there because operating a database for that scale would be very complicated. So every telco has their own copy that get synced via a consensus mechanism and signed transactions

You know that a private, or permissioned, blockchain is pointless, right? If some entity controls the blockchain, you might as well just use a standard database.

Re: Blockchain, the Solution for Almost Nothing

#129

Post by aaron695 »

Blockchain is good for LARPing.

And if you think LARPing is pathetic then that's on you. While you go to your billion dollar church or watch your billion dollar sport or analyse your String theory or do your medieval sword fights in dress-up at castles.

Re: Blockchain, the Solution for Almost Nothing

#130

Post by smsm42 »

andreskytt wrote: post #112
godelski wrote: post #61

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 c…

Number mobility between Indian telecoms runs on private blockchain. AFAIK it is live and actively used. BC solves a problem there because operating a database for that scale would be very complicated. So every telco has their own copy that get synced via a consensus mechanism and signed transactions

This looks like just a replicated append-only database. One can call it "blockchain" but it's not exactly anything new.
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