641–650 of 650 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You still can't provide a single example, and playing games about how you don't need to rebut a vapid argument only makes this more obvious to everyone else.
Bro you already won the HN argument, you don't need to keep replying unless you want to hang out sometime. Just let me know
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Tampering. Bribes, hacking, idiocy, whatever. A proper blockchain is tamper resistant, so everyone trusts it.
I will bribe people to put wrong information on the blockchain then.
You can sign entries but unless you have each subsequent entry build on what came before like in a blockchain, entries can be removed entirely and no one will know. There is a reason companies like DHL are interested in such things.
https://www.dhl.com/au-en/home/insights-and-innovation/insig...
Example: Our product is sourced from a company and this providence is on the blockchain. It comes to light they employ slave labour and we'd rather cover it up. How do we alter these original transactions without the evidence being in plain sight?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Cryptocurrency solves absolutely none of the existing legal reasons that banks can't issue large loans in minutes or seconds to existing (or new, well collateralized) clients. Yes, this is definitely correct in that crypto does nothing to solve the legal requirements of the banks and does not help the banks. But it's worth mentioning that this sort of fully collateralized and anonymous borrowing does not (and would…
Banks don't need to issue fully collateralized loans. That is not a thing people need to do in the real world, because banks will gladly issue partially collateralized loans. As for anonymous loans, those exist solely to service criminal customers, so that is not an advantage of cryptocurrency.
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 idea that profit-motivated exchange and investment is a useless human activity is a layman's understanding of economics.
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…
“What’s Ethereum’s killer app?” we asked ourselves not long ago. Now we know. It’s the world’s best publicly-accessible settlement platform for financial transactions. In a way, that’s exciting. The markets think so too.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cryptocurrencies can take the role of a settlement network between the money dealers. This allows money dealers who either don't fully trust each other, or simply need to settle debt internationally because the transaction flow is asymmetric, to make these transactions. It also allows for a new kind of system where the money dealers act as access points to the network, and customers trust their local money dealer, bu…
FX dealers I have dealt with definitely want to know who they are trading with. The information is extremely useful. It's not better for them not to know. If you lose trust in a counterparty, there is a reason. Exchanges all over the world have membership comprised of people who voluntarily group together to create and enforce trust. Using a different denominator for transactions wont take away the forces that cause…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
We don’t have to wait for Eth2, there are several L2 solutions in the works right now like Optimism and Polygon
They're not supported on any of the popular NFT trading / minting sites. That economy is currently built around ETH.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The haber process feeds 4 billion people, and most don't know it exists. Not everything needs to be sold and popularised to the masses.
Again, that's not the point. The point isn't that something has to be for the masses but that there's nothing in crypto that's appealing for the masses. ASN.1 is used by everyone but that doesn't mean it's appealing to the masses.
In this scenario, the world can execute 100-200,000 transactions per second on Ethereum, and people are able to execute these transactions from any software interface, including a browser wallet extension.
This would make electronic payments cheap - on order of costing $0.01 in fees - and you would be able to send a payment in a stablecoin, like USDC or DAI which track the value of 1 USD.
In this scenario, you could send micro-payments to any party on the internet, without having a pre-existing relationship with or divulging personal information to them, and without both parties relying on the same trusted third party payment system.
Imagine thousands of news sites all around the world offering short-term browsing access, like a 1 day browsing pass for $0.05, and all of these offerings being accessible with just one browser-based wallet.
This can become even more amenable to metered payments when combined with other scalability solutions, like Plasma chains and payment channel networks.
In such scenarios, fees would decline orders magnitude of more, making it possible to send fractions of a cent in value for consuming tiny amounts of goods/services. For instance, you pay 0.25 cents worth of a crypto asset to access one paywalled article. This can be done behind the scenes, with you simply pressing 'okay' on a consent form. No registration, or the divulging of private identification information or credit card details necessary. A single peer-to-peer transfer of electronic cash suffices.
Suddenly content providers have a massive new source of revenue apart from advertising that can sustain them, leading to the production of more quality content, and information consumers can avail themselves of this content with much greater convenience and privacy, and without the financial risk of laying our $20 for a subscription they may not use.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are comparing touchscreen mobile phones with a technology delving into what both gold / hard value stores AND cash do for society. That is not a typical technology adoption cycle. I’m not an extremist to say Bitcoin will eat the world or even replace any existing system entirely, but I still disagree with those that say it has no utility beyond get rich quick scheme. Referencing Wired as the killer app of the ear…
M-Pesa was used by over 90% of Kenyan households in about 2 years after its launch. I could go on. Mobile computing has changed the entire world; it’s not plainly obvious that cryptocurrency would change it even more or is substantially more difficult to execute on.
Mobile computing is obviously important, but its importance says zero about the possibility - and that's all I argued - that cryptocurrency could also be very important.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 2. Yes. This is sadly a non-answer to the question posed. I am asked this question all the time by people I know, and the best I can come up with is illegal activities, super niche tech applications (e.g., DNS name reg), and libertarian fantasies. You have an audience here at HN who is more than willing to advocate for cryptocurrencies if they/we can be shown a compelling use case. “Yes” is not an obvious compellin…
Check out UniSwap and Aave if you haven't before. If those aren't compelling use cases, tell your friends to stay away.
I will offer some criticisms:
Aave - Earning interest on a speculative asset with counter party risk seems a bit silly. Most of the risk is bundled in the asset itself. If you invested $1,000 in a token as a small percentage of your retirement portfolio you're probably hoping the return is 20x. In this incredibly logical scenario 2% is meaningless.
Uniswap - It's cool if you trade tokens because it skips the extra step of sending the asset to a centralized exchange, trading it, and withdrawing it. The centralized scenario might actually be cheaper. Either way it's only impressive if trading tokens is impressive. And at this point it's not.