Live data from Hacker News

Ethereum Isn't Fun Anymore

timdaub.github.io

361–370 of 650 posts

Re: Ethereum Isn't Fun Anymore

#361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Full supply chain documentation takes a long time to put together. If the application could generate the full supply chain documentation for an item with a certain serial number, that would be very useful. It is also very common for suppliers and various intermediaries to have bad document management practices that get further muddled by digital file issues (e.g. people just generating documents from their software t…

Dumb this down for me, because it's unclear how blockchain would solve the issues you bring up.

Blockchain is just a ledger. So "the Blockchain" does not make anything significantly better. Its in fact ridiculously expensive.

The idea is that everytime sweat shop X finishes sewing sequins on a dress, they can scan the RFID tag on the dress with their smartphone, and the ledger gets updated, and then Walmart can prepare for that dress, the shipping company can print out labels etc.

Its a good idea.

Industries are supposed to work this out, create their own cheaper blockchains that just need some sort of simple KYC to get started, then its as cheap as email to add your little bit to the supply chain.

I dont know of any successful implementations

Edit: no blockchain will solve the grey market problems. Everything will have to be made genuninely on the chain. Which starts to lead to probelsm with if you cannot get permission to write to the chain ... etc etc

Re: Ethereum Isn't Fun Anymore

#362

Building something useful on something that is primarily used as highly volatile financial speculation instrument always rubbed me the wrong way. The whole crypto scene is just about making quick dough with a technology, that for some reason remains hyped through and wrapped in mysticism. Face it, there is no sexy killer app for the masses. Wait. There is one: Crypto trading to... make quick dough. And the cryptonerd…

The crypto killer app is using the money to buy illegal drugs. It always has been. Most of the people I knew who were into crypto early used it to buy weed online, not as an investment.

> The crypto killer app is using the money to buy illegal drugs.

Meeh! Not even that, anymore.

In Brazil there was a brief moment in 2014 when you could buy marijuana and cocaine with bitcoins. But now, with all this volatility, transfer costs and low liquidity, not even drug dealers want crypto currency.

Re: Ethereum Isn't Fun Anymore

#363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After all those years, there's still not a single useful blockchain application around. These days I see lots companies telling me, they put their "supply chain on blockchain" and while I understand what they probably want to tell me ("you can't tamper with where our stuff comes from") I don't see the point in that. If you've got trust issues with your subcontractors you should fix those and not "seal" the willingly…

I think it's being declared "failed technology" at least once a month since inception, no?

I mean it "works", but so do steam powered cars. The problem is most people don't actually use it, just trade it. The space used to mostly involve people who actually wanted to decentralize currencies, now it's almost exclusively "hodl $$$$$ to the moon etc". This article is articulating what's been clear to many people who really believed in the promise of decentralized currency: crypto in its current iteration has essentially failed. Time to try something else.

Re: Ethereum Isn't Fun Anymore

#364
post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "that is primarily used as highly volatile financial speculation instrument " How is that different from any other asset; stocks, land, property. It's all speculation nowadays. From what I've read there are pretty much three use cases: 1. store of value akin to gold (bitcoin) 2. decentralised privacy money (monero etc, to avoid taxes?) 3. a platform on which to build decentralised technologies (ethereum, ada, thorc…

> At the end of the day, crypto is mountain you can't ignore anymore Is it really? Is there anyone that can say that a company has suffered because it didn't adopt crypto? It seems like it's perfectly safe to ignore crypto completely. You could gain a bit of advantage. You can use it as a marketing tool, or to attract certain kinds of investors, by cashing in on the blockchain hype. But I haven't seen that there's an…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYOpxzpNQJE&t=70

Re: Ethereum Isn't Fun Anymore

#365
Yeah, that was my feeling about Bitcoin a few years ago after dabbling in it and then getting out (to the tune of 1.25 million... which of course would be much greater now, had I held any... sigh)

I originally got into it for the technical aspects of mining being interesting. Then all the speculators came in, then I realized that (perhaps due to my Psych major) I was pretty good at predicting local price maxima, but then after a time that felt too much like stealing from the dumber, which is not a vibe that brings happiness to me, so I got out of it. I'd rather use my intelligence to produce value by coding.

Re: Ethereum Isn't Fun Anymore

#366
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes, its been 4 years now and cardano doesnt even have smart contracting capabilities yet

4 years of doing it right and academically proven

Cardano project looks pretty much like Hardon Collider in the making

Re: Ethereum Isn't Fun Anymore

#367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The best part? They didn't even had to provide their name. The mafia probably doesn't need your name for a loan, too. They'll find you anyway. But maybe I'm all alone in finding this somewhat shady.

> The mafia probably doesn't need your name for a loan, too. What? They'll know your name, address and your whole family history usually. It's just a smart contract execution on the global computer that is Ethereum, how is that shady?

There's a big cultural gap here, because your description sounds obviously shady to me. If my car financing agreement said "the terms of the loan are whatever happens when you run this program we wrote", I would never in a million years have signed it.

Re: Ethereum Isn't Fun Anymore

#368

Building something useful on something that is primarily used as highly volatile financial speculation instrument always rubbed me the wrong way. The whole crypto scene is just about making quick dough with a technology, that for some reason remains hyped through and wrapped in mysticism. Face it, there is no sexy killer app for the masses. Wait. There is one: Crypto trading to... make quick dough. And the cryptonerd…

This same comment appears on every single crypto post. if it was actually true do you think people would have stopped posting about crypto in the past six years or so?

they stopped for the past 2 years until it went up again. similiar to people who won’t stop selling their herbalife shakes

Re: Ethereum Isn't Fun Anymore

#369
post #64

I really, really don't understand where cryptocurrencies are going. Billions have been poured in this technology for almost no actual return technologically wise. And I understand, because interest are not aligned. It really seems like nobody actually care about advancing the state of art, except actual researcher who work in universities and not in crypto startups... Cryptocurrencies had a goal and a usefulness when…

IOHK who is behind Cardano does quite a lot of scentific research and formalized and developed innovative concepts: https://iohk.io/en/research/library/ . It's still very experimental and yes, there are no clear applications yet, but there is some genuine research being made.

The same can be said about Lisk with 35 blockchain technology research papers already published and another 19 blockchain interoperability research papers to be published in spring.

https://github.com/LiskHQ/lips

Re: Ethereum Isn't Fun Anymore

#370
post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also avoid capital gains tax which would be pretty significant. They can use the money to hedge their bets against crypto by buying traditional markets if they wanted. For house mortgages, there are companies that are "tokenizing" houses on the blockchain, so putting it up collateral would be as simple as depositing that token. That said, I think this is far from becoming reality anytime soon, just because there…

I believe that technically, any conversion between crypto assets is still a taxable event. If you want to follow the (silly) rules, you have to pay taxes on your gains once you purchase something using your borrowed stablecoin.

AFAIK, this isn't how MakerDAO loans are being treated right now.
Post reply on HN