Blockchain, the Solution for Almost Nothing • Hacker News Board

Re: Blockchain, the Solution for Almost Nothing

#221

Post by ric2b » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 1:12 PM UTC

zelly wrote: post #77

kordlessagain wrote: post #10

The 402 response code in HTTP might be a useful thing to "hook up" to Lightning, which itself is useful because of the Bitcoin blockchain. Having fast micropayments payments running on data requests is useful for a wide variety of cloud applications, including but not limited to data transfer costs and queries to machine learning models, all without the need for "users" on the systems being accessed. The way I'd put…

For a regular user to use Lightning, they would have to run an always-online instance of lnd--a very memory-intensive Go program that also requires a Bitcoin fullnode (300GB) or the experimental Neutrino light node either of which also has to be always-online. The average internet user has never typed a bash command so this is a pipe dream. Or you could have the alternative which is to push people onto centralized Li…

I use Lightning with an app on my phone (Eclair) and I don't need an always online node, that's just not how LN is designed. As long as the app can sync once every 2-weeks I'm completely safe.

Re: Blockchain, the Solution for Almost Nothing

#222

Post by ric2b » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 1:15 PM UTC

tomcam wrote: post #164

ajcodez wrote: post #134

Saifedean Ammous writes pretty convincingly how a fixed money supply would be a good thing. I don’t know of any other unique benefit. It will be interesting to see how it plays out with nation states and diminishing block rewards. I’m holding a little bit just in case.

We had a solution to that problem for thousands of years: gold.

Sort of, new gold mines keep showing up and if asteroid mining takes off it's really going to push gold value down by a lot.

Re: Blockchain, the Solution for Almost Nothing

#223

Post by nojster » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 1:15 PM UTC

romanoderoma wrote: post #220

ric2b wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your point is that the lack of adoption makes it an incomplete solution, right? It's a valid point, but it's like saying e-mail in the 90's was not a good replacement for mail because if you want to forward it to your aunt you still need to print it out and mail it. If adoption improves those problems go away.

> If adoption improves those problems go away My point is also that adoption won't improve because the benefits are limited and most of the times there is no benefit at all e-mail solved a problem: communicating rapidly sending letters was slow, costly and error prone sending an e-mail was immediate, free and if it got lost re-sending a copy was effortless

Have you tried international money transfers?

Bank to bank this can take 3-5 business days (agreed, western union can be faster, but less convenient) and, depending on your payment processor, can easily cost 15% on the transferred value.

So I argue that, similarly like with the mail to email example, money to emoney is faster, cheaper and safer.

Re: Blockchain, the Solution for Almost Nothing

#224

Post by paul_f » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 1:20 PM UTC

dylan604 wrote: post #44

fouc wrote: post #7

> But isn’t it strange that you won all those awards, even though you aren’t actually using the blockchain? Kinda like all those AI startups that aren't actually using AI.

Artificial Artificial Intelligence?

AI in 2020 is large numbers of if-the-else statements, unless you have fancy developers, who use switch statements

Re: Blockchain, the Solution for Almost Nothing

#225

Post by djhaskin987 » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 1:37 PM UTC

Acrobatic_Road wrote: post #133

Here's a problem that blockchain solves - financial censorship. If you want to buy a 4chan pass, you'll find there is no option to pay in EUR or USD. Cryptocurrency only. Is this because 4chan is operating an illegal business? No. It's because they cannot process payments using the traditional means. Controversial websites get financially censored all the time. Here are a few that come to mind: Kiwi Farms, Wikileaks,…

I'll tell you something else monero does, is hide the miners. You can't tell who mined the coin. This sounds like a good thing until your AWS access key gets stolen and a thug steals hundreds of thousands of dollars of compute time on your account in hopes of mining a tenth of that in monero coin.

Re: Blockchain, the Solution for Almost Nothing

#226

Post by xg15 » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 1:41 PM UTC

Acrobatic_Road wrote: post #133

Here's a problem that blockchain solves - financial censorship. If you want to buy a 4chan pass, you'll find there is no option to pay in EUR or USD. Cryptocurrency only. Is this because 4chan is operating an illegal business? No. It's because they cannot process payments using the traditional means. Controversial websites get financially censored all the time. Here are a few that come to mind: Kiwi Farms, Wikileaks,…

> Kiwi Farms, Wikileaks, Backpage, 8chan, Bitchute, American Renaissance

Kiwi Farms:

"Kiwi Farms, formerly known as CWCki Forums, is an American Internet forum dedicated to the discussion of online figures and communities it deems "lolcows". The targets of threads are often subject to doxing and other forms of organized group trolling such as ongoing harassment and stalking, including real-life harassment by users."[1]

Backpage:

"Backpage was a classified advertising website that had become the largest marketplace for buying and selling sex by the time that federal law enforcement agencies seized it in April 2018. [...]

Backpage's adult services sections became the subject of an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, [...and other agencies] over accusations that the website knowingly allowed and encouraged users to post ads related to prostitution and human trafficking, particularly involving minors, and took steps to intentionally obfuscate the activities."[2]

Bitchute:

"BitChute is a video hosting service known for accommodating far-right individuals and conspiracy theorists."[3]

American Renaissance:

"American Renaissance (AR or AmRen) is a monthly white supremacist online publication founded and edited by Jared Taylor. It is published by the New Century Foundation, which describes itself as a "race-realist, white advocacy organization"."[4]

That's all a little more than "controversial" - most of this stuff is plainly illegal and has led to real-life harm. There were good reasons why those sites were "censored".

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiwi_Farms

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backpage

[3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitChute

[4] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Renaissance_(magazi...

Re: Blockchain, the Solution for Almost Nothing

#227

Post by kls » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 1:52 PM UTC

ric2b wrote: post #217

joosters wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's not pointless, it's just yet another way "noSQL" database. It certainly doesn't give you the same benefits of a public blockchain. But if the code is already written, meets the project requirements and is easy to deploy, why not?

Because it is a really inefficient way to store what amounts to an immutable ledger in a traditional database. While I don't agree with a lot of the consensus that blockchain is completely useless. I pretty much agree that it is useless if it is owned by a private entity. That was one of the main points of the blockchain, how can we create a public datastore that is not owned by anyone and it tamperproof. I see public blockchain as valuable to freedoms in a libertarian sense but see no value in companies adopting the core blockchain techs. Tooling around public blockchains sure or API's available on things like D'APPS make sense, but private ledgers make absolutely no sense to me. Just use a traditional database and implement all the data storage as a ledger pattern and you get the same effect with out all the energy consumption.

Re: Blockchain, the Solution for Almost Nothing

#228

Post by xg15 » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 2:03 PM UTC

My personal theory is that most of the hype around "Blockchain technology" is simply an aftereffect of the valuation spike Bitcoin went though in 2017/2018. That was the point were Bitcoin reached the public consciousness and people realized you could make money with it.

To do so you have to convince others to sink their money into the sector, hence all the grandiose proposals, opaque jargon and solutions is search of problems...

Re: Blockchain, the Solution for Almost Nothing

#229

Post by romanoderoma » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 2:23 PM UTC

nojster wrote: post #223

romanoderoma wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If adoption improves those problems go away My point is also that adoption won't improve because the benefits are limited and most of the times there is no benefit at all e-mail solved a problem: communicating rapidly sending letters was slow, costly and error prone sending an e-mail was immediate, free and if it got lost re-sending a copy was effortless

Have you tried international money transfers? Bank to bank this can take 3-5 business days (agreed, western union can be faster, but less convenient) and, depending on your payment processor, can easily cost 15% on the transferred value. So I argue that, similarly like with the mail to email example, money to emoney is faster, cheaper and safer.

> Have you tried international money transfers?

They transfer real money, immediately available upon receiving them.

International money transfer follow international regulations, you can make them speedier by breaking rules, which is usually not what you want if you receive or send money abroad legally (imagine a mom receiving money from her son having to explain why she received it from unofficial crypto channels)

International money transfer is insured, lost crypto are lost forever.

International money transfer it's a highly regulated market users have the rights to be informed of the cost of the operation before starting it, costs also include exchange rates (the operator does the operation for you, you send X and the receiver receive dollars or pound or euros directly, crypto don't include that), taxes collected upfront (crypto skips that) and of course service fees.

International money transfer also pass through IRS (or the equivalent agency there is in other countries) for amount higher than a certain threshold, to avoid money laundering.

Crypto skips that.

etc. etc. etc.

That's why it costs more.

But it is also more secure and less suspicious for the authorities.

E-mail had no such downsides.

Re: Blockchain, the Solution for Almost Nothing

#230

Post by BTCOG » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 2:42 PM UTC

This is very straight forward in that the blockchain was invented by Satoshi Nakamoto to solve the Byzantine General's Problem, double-spending, and a decentralized ledger. We can go much deeper into what Bitcoin can do, but all other chains wishing to do other things this guy mentions always were a cheap piggy back on Bitcoin.

I'm here to tell you Bitcoin works, and does not need anything else. Bitcoin is not slow like many folks will tell you all day long, either. Bitcoin does not have high fees, either. Bitcoin is very sound "money," and not a great currency. If someone wishes to transfer money to someone else anywhere in the world, they simply tailor their fee to be low, and they send it for 40-60 cents and understand that it will confirm over the next day. (Yes, the mempool surges during times of heavy use, and yes it may take a little while longer, but just the same, millions of dollars can be sent with no third party for under $1 fee) The time itself for this does not really matter, as this could never be done prior to Bitcoin. Ask those sending money home to the Philippines or folks who are unbanked how many days a wire transfer takes, and how many third parties take a massive chunk in fees. Nobody controls your money in Bitcoin, and nobody takes a fee. (Nobody is taking your money from a BTC fee, the paltry amount is paying into the system to keep the miners mining)

It's nothing else beyond this, and nothing else is needed. Anyone can argue about this endlessly but Bitcoin solved it's problem it was designed for, and all else is just garbage tacked on by other people trying to strike it rich.

I have used Bitcoin regularly since 2011. I have purchased real, legal goods from folks in other countries over forums in escrow that could not be done otherwise without incurring very large fees. I've paid 30 people simultaneously with one multisend transaction, and one fee.

Everything else is irrelevant. Bitcoin is revolutionary. Just Bitcoin. It works and it works very well. You can continue to beat around the bush and apply fetishism all day, and Bitcoin still works the way it was intended.