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Do Cryptocurrencies Provide ANY() Real-Economic Value at All?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Do Cryptocurrencies Provide ANY() Real-Economic Value at All?

#91

Post by acdha »

mindcandy wrote: post #66
pgesmm wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suppose we two make a "smart contract": I say I pay 100k, you say you sell me a functional car. Let's say you then deliver a broken car. Now what? How can't we have disputes, we did a "smart contract"?

You and I can agree on an independent 3rd party as a notary. If within a six months of the sale both you and the notary sign off that the deal was not fulfilled (the car is junk), you get the $100k back. That means I can’t spend the $100k directly for six months. But, I can easily take out a six month loan against it. That way it’s liquid for me and still safe for you. The loan agent is taking on the risk in exchange…

What value does the smart contract add in this situation? Every part of that arrangement could has been done for thousands of years. What are you really getting to balance the extra expense and risk required to use a blockchain?

If the answer is “corrupt third world countries” ask yourself why the demand is driven by affluent Americans trying to sell things, and how effective “but it’ll go down on your permanent record! In a different country!” will be when the local capo’s buddy tells the notary the car was fine when you bought it.

Re: Do Cryptocurrencies Provide ANY() Real-Economic Value at All?

#92

Post by lottin »

WnZ39p0Dgydaz1 wrote: post #69
lottin wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that such a contract requires a central authority that must be capable of evicting the tenant. A "smart contract" which is just some code running on a computer certainly can't do that.

Why do you require a central authority? What you require is this: 1. An incentive to evict someone. Money. Someone needs to get paid to actually do the eviction because they are taking on some risk - physical in this case. It doesn't matter how they get paid. A smart contract can do that. 2. "Social/Legal consensus" that performing the physical eviction is the right thing to do. The person performing the eviction sho…

Yeah, that should work very well. Say if the third-party (from your description, apparently a band of mercenaries) in charge of enforcing the contract is motivated by economic incentives, what stops any of the parties from providing a stronger economic incentive to the mercenaries so that they don't enforce the contract?

Re: Do Cryptocurrencies Provide ANY() Real-Economic Value at All?

#93

Post by kodah »

smt88 wrote: post #90
kodah wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Please provide a very specific example of something that happens now that a smart contract would fix. I can't think of anything. They already did, asking again isn't going to get you the answer you want. You described the renting market as having a high threshold for bias in order to be ineffective. I don't really think this is true, it's quite difficult in most states to go to court to seek damages for rental prop…

> They already did, asking again isn't going to get you the answer you want. The person I was responding to gave only generalities. > What smart contracts replace is a lot of the court mechanisms that are low hanging fruit. What court mechanisms? Let me give you a specific example. I'm a landlord with a rental contract. In my state (as in many states), there are hundreds of statutes dictating the boundaries of this c…

> So that's how specific I'm asking you (or anyone) to be: give me a specific scenario where the smart contract enforces something in a reliable, efficient way that is significantly better/safer for either party.

And I'll doubt you'll get that specific of answers because those implementations are fairly new. You'll likely see proof of concepts developed to streamline or back up existing processes first, the underlying technology adjusted to fit the usecases, rinse, and repeat. All that to say, it's not going to holistically solve every problem for you up front, as the commenter pointed out.

What I can see is that it streamlines some of the mediation and court intervention processes. What our notable gains from that would be remain to be seen, but for my parents who are landlords that have had to evict tenants it could mean that simple cases don't require a court. Maybe they get some review by someone who would best be described as an auditor or mediator to check the outcome.

Re: Do Cryptocurrencies Provide ANY() Real-Economic Value at All?

#94

Post by bitcoinmonger »

Bitcoin has no value over the long term.

There are no controls on who is allowed to send and receive money, and funds cannot be confiscated by government if necessary.

A system that permits individuals complete custody over money is not something that should be allowed to exist in a modern society. There is too much room for criminal activity.

The current financial system works better and should not be circumvented.

Re: Do Cryptocurrencies Provide ANY() Real-Economic Value at All?

#95

Post by tigroferoce »

WnZ39p0Dgydaz1 wrote: post #45
realce wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where in this article does it describe how I get tenants out of my rental when they don't pay into the smart contract? That's what enforcement is, not just some rules in a spreadsheet.

Actually, it's some rules in a spreadsheet. You get tenants out of your rental because someone is getting paid to do it - their salary is in some spreadsheet - and then their work is verified by someone else who is also getting paid to do that. These complex systems of incentives are currently managed by humans. You could setup a similar incentive system as smart contracts. If your tenant does not pay, you could get…

You are giving for granted that there is a private someone that is payed to evict people from an house, but that's not how it works in many places in the world.

In Italy (and I bet in many other European countries) this is the public force that is in charge of doing this and there are a lots of exceptions (for instance, here, you cannot easily evict a family where there are children or sick people).

And if you involve the pubic force, then you are inherently accepting the concept of a central trusted authority, hence the decentralisation fails as a requirement.

Re: Do Cryptocurrencies Provide ANY() Real-Economic Value at All?

#96

Post by [deleted] »

bitcoinmonger wrote: post #94

Bitcoin has no value over the long term. There are no controls on who is allowed to send and receive money, and funds cannot be confiscated by government if necessary. A system that permits individuals complete custody over money is not something that should be allowed to exist in a modern society. There is too much room for criminal activity. The current financial system works better and should not be circumvented.

[deleted]

Re: Do Cryptocurrencies Provide ANY() Real-Economic Value at All?

#97

Post by [deleted] »

bitcoinmonger wrote: post #94

Bitcoin has no value over the long term. There are no controls on who is allowed to send and receive money, and funds cannot be confiscated by government if necessary. A system that permits individuals complete custody over money is not something that should be allowed to exist in a modern society. There is too much room for criminal activity. The current financial system works better and should not be circumvented.

[deleted]

Re: Do Cryptocurrencies Provide ANY() Real-Economic Value at All?

#98

Post by tigroferoce »

anonymoushn wrote: post #20

Q1. I don't live in Europe. Wire transfers from my US bank can only be sent domestically, cost me $20, and require me to fill out a form and then stay up until 2AM so that a person can call me on the phone during business hours in the US and I can confirm that I did in fact fill out that form. Wire transfers from my Japanese bank are more reasonable but cost 10000x as much money to send and (under ideal conditions -…

You conclusion is a very limited case and IMO is better met by allowing sex works to be a first class work and not by inventing a huge environmentally unfriendly solution.

Beside this, like the OP, I also fail to see clear cases where the cryptocurrencies provide significative advantage, let alone blockchains outside the cryptocurrencies.

Re: Do Cryptocurrencies Provide ANY() Real-Economic Value at All?

#99

Post by leereeves »

mindcandy wrote: post #74
smt88 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This smart contract has no way of knowing if/what the damages are, whether the rent was paid in cash, or whether a million other legal issues are happening. For example, in most places, tenants may stop paying rent if their heat breaks in the winter and the landlord won't fix it promptly. The central authority will always be human courts. Smart contracts can't observe or record anything except crypto, which makes the…

Smart contracts are not going to instantly replace government with a techno-libertarian utopia. They are going to make government, lawyer and bank services a lot less necessary. And, they are going to provide a lot of alternative services to people without access to effective government/financial services. Smart contracts can’t observe anything but time, crypto and signaling from users/automated services. For dispute…

> “If the tenant and the notary both vote that there is bullshittery going on with the property, rent is suspended.”

First, I think the word you're looking for is arbitrator. Notaries don't resolve disputes.

Second, you've simply replaced a judge with a "notary", and left many questions unanswered. Who is this trusted 3rd party? How are they accountable? Can you appeal their judgements? Do they have an ongoing business relationship with one of the parties? And so on.

I suspect that by the time you've answered all those questions, and dealt with all the issues that arise that require human judgement, you'll have reinvented government. Or worse, digitized mandatory arbitration.

Re: Do Cryptocurrencies Provide ANY() Real-Economic Value at All?

#100

Post by anonymoushn »

tigroferoce wrote: post #98
anonymoushn wrote: post #20

Q1. I don't live in Europe. Wire transfers from my US bank can only be sent domestically, cost me $20, and require me to fill out a form and then stay up until 2AM so that a person can call me on the phone during business hours in the US and I can confirm that I did in fact fill out that form. Wire transfers from my Japanese bank are more reasonable but cost 10000x as much money to send and (under ideal conditions -…

You conclusion is a very limited case and IMO is better met by allowing sex works to be a first class work and not by inventing a huge environmentally unfriendly solution. Beside this, like the OP, I also fail to see clear cases where the cryptocurrencies provide significative advantage, let alone blockchains outside the cryptocurrencies.

The consensus network I prefer to use is more environmentally friendly than banks.

All other merchant accounts also charge more money in fees than the consensus network I prefer to use. It's just an extreme example to probably not even have a merchant account.

"why not just fix every government policy everywhere" doesn't sound very practical to me. it has my support though!

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