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The Limits to Blockchain Scalability

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Re: The Limits to Blockchain Scalability

#371

Post by puranjay »

mbesto wrote: post #259
puranjay wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Transfer to your bank account via an exchange (KYC applies) 2. Turn it into cold hard cash or a bank transfer via P2P (no KYC ) 3. Withdraw cash directly from a Bitcoin ATM (KYC may apply depending on the exchange issuing the card) 4. Transfer to a crypto debit card and buy from stores directly (KYC may apply depending on the exchange issuing the debit card) 5. Pay directly with your crypto at relevant stores (pro…

1. But I still need a bank in the currency on the other end. So this might eliminate some forex fees, but that's it? 2. Again, still need a bank account on the end. 3. How pervasive are these? Can I find one on the street while traveling Munich for example? How do I get a card? 4/5. No one wants to use crypto because they get FOMO on price fluctuations. Until then it's basically useless. Until crypto becomes pervasiv…

1. P2P exchanges can happen in cold hard cash. No bank account necessary.

2. Bitcoin is barely a decade old. Ethereum was launched in 2015. Most of the DeFi core projects were launched in 2019-2020. This is extremely early stage and comparing it to the ease and convenience of legacy financial systems is a little disingenuous. It might be complicated currently, but it works.

I give up. All I see on HN are people who’ve somehow dismissed an entire new tech sector without even being curious about it. The arguments are trite and shallow.

At the very least, if you are on HN, I expect you to be curious about the technology and make up your mind after satiating that curiosity.

Re: The Limits to Blockchain Scalability

#372

Post by hungryforcodes »

puranjay wrote: post #182
seibelj wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curve did $1 billion in volume over the past 24 hours https://curve.fi That isn’t hypothetical. It’s like you keep getting refuted and then ignore reality because it disagrees with you. “Blockchain is unused.” [a bunch of links with billions of dollars in actual daily usage provided] “Oh, well, I’ve never heard of that before so it doesn’t matter.” What kind of arguing is this?

Much of HN is stuck in 2017 Blockchain era. Most haven't looked it serious since that crash. Many still think of Blockchain and can only think of BTC, LTC, Doge and ETH. DeFi is so new that it even caught HN off guard.

This seems to be one of the problems. The other is just a weird contrarianism -- many on HN want open source software and systems, but in no way do they want an open economy or money system.

Re: The Limits to Blockchain Scalability

#373

Post by n0mad01 »

dmitriid wrote: post #362
n0mad01 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a very limited and short-sighted view on the emergence and development of new technologies. From the first petrol engine (1879) to the Ford Model T (1908), the Arpanet (1969) to the Internet (1990), as also software development (Cyberpunk 2077 was developed over 8 years), these things have one thing in common: they need time. When one day your every breath (and its payment) is recorded on a blockchain then yo…

For some reason bitcoin apologists always use cars, and the internet, and other actual disruptive technologies and inventions. Even though with each passing day it looks more like radioactive health products [1] [1] https://interestingengineering.com/9-interesting-failed-inve...

it is noticeably peculiar to compare one of the most significant technical inventions of our century with a half-baked hair dryer.

such innovations only appear now and then, one should have the intuition to recognize them as such, otherwise he will miss the opportunities of such developments.

Re: The Limits to Blockchain Scalability

#374

Post by miracle2k »

dmitriid wrote: post #358
crazypython wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the blockchain data structure ensures that if you verify the older transactions, the newer transactions on top of it are verified. If the old version was valid, the newer block built on top of it is too.

> Yes, the blockchain data structure ensures that if you verify the older transactions, the newer transactions on top of it are verified. That is not enough. Blockchain is proposed for various things like, for example, land registries. They have to be kept around indefinitely long. In many countries financial institutions are required by law to keep financial transactions around for 4 years. Ans so on. But yeah, sure…

Then participants who are obligated to keep 4 years of history around will run nodes that keep that data around.

Re: The Limits to Blockchain Scalability

#375

Post by sobani »

neither_color wrote: post #62
laurent92 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was trying to summarize, for an employee who got caught in “Elon Musk shouldn’t have manipulated the BTC” (!) (obviously the employee lost 25% of his savings), I was trying to summarize the list of dangers of having savings in BTC. - Laws of any big country could change and trigger the sale for a lot of sellers of a country, - Especially given BTC is used by Iran to bypass petrol restrictions, used by ransomware an…

The first part of point #2 is interesting because it's a blessing or a curse depending on which side of the hegemony you're on. Hypothetically speaking, if the Soviet Union were the current dominant superpower, or if China were the dominant superpower 15 years from now, and the US were under sanctions, wouldn't point 2 be a blessing? Being able to circumvent the wishes of the superpower du jour, for better or worse,…

I think @laurent92 didn't say something like: Bitcoin is bad, because bad countries use it.

I think it was more like: There's a risk _for Bitcoin_ if the US brings out the ban hammer, because bad countries use it.

Nowadays a lot of people are not libertarians that would see the US opposing it as a proof it's valuable, but more speculators whom would have nothing left if Coinbase and co. were to shut down.

Re: The Limits to Blockchain Scalability

#376

Post by dmitriid »

puranjay wrote: post #165
idlewords wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The insoluble problem is that any system of the kind you describe where the final tokens are ultimately spendable will be swamped by criminal use. If you make an end run around the existing regulatory system through code, the people who are inhibited from transfering money by the current regulatory regime will all use your new system. And that traffic will be overwhelmingly criminal. The amount of illicit money needi…

I think money transfer was Blockhain Era 1.0 use case. The use case has advanced - very rapidly - to money automation. This is all really new stuff, much of it barely a year old, and it has come so fast that even I've been surprised. A smart contract can currently take your tokenized USD (we'll use USDC since its backed by Coinbase), use that as collateral to borrow ETH on AAVE.com (a lending protocol), use 50% of th…

> A smart contract can currently take your tokenized USD (we'll use USDC since its backed by Coinbase), use that as collateral to borrow ETH on AAVE.com (a lending protocol), use 50% of that ETH to buy up USDC again, use this USDC + ETH to create a liquidity pair on Uniswap, and earning 0.3% fees on any swaps made between USDC and ETH.

And... What does this accomplish, exactly? Besides "get rich, quick, in virtual money that, for now, some folks will convert to real money, maybe"

Re: The Limits to Blockchain Scalability

#377

Post by MomoXenosaga »

laurent92 wrote: post #3
maxrev17 wrote: post #2

This is a really good read. More of this and less of Elon's chatter needed!

I was trying to summarize, for an employee who got caught in “Elon Musk shouldn’t have manipulated the BTC” (!) (obviously the employee lost 25% of his savings), I was trying to summarize the list of dangers of having savings in BTC. - Laws of any big country could change and trigger the sale for a lot of sellers of a country, - Especially given BTC is used by Iran to bypass petrol restrictions, used by ransomware an…

Crypto weak point is that nobody uses it to buy groceries or a Lamborghini. You have to exchange it for €$¥ and that's where the government comes in.

Re: The Limits to Blockchain Scalability

#378

Post by MomoXenosaga »

comex wrote: post #196
dehrmann wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The price is manipulated Clearly. Watch the price after Musk's announcements. > fleece unsophisticated investors Someone speculating in an unregulated asset that's seen massive growth in the past year should have no expectation of not being on the bad side of a trade.

> Someone speculating in an unregulated asset that's seen massive growth in the past year should have no expectation of not being on the bad side of a trade. And yet some people dump their life savings into it.

Crypto adherents generally don't study history. I remember when in the late 90s everyone was investing in the stock market bubble. Some people made big but most were left holding the bag. None of this is new.

Re: The Limits to Blockchain Scalability

#379

Post by littlestymaar »

meowface wrote: post #360
dannyw wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. If bitcoin or ethereum gets completely killed today, I'm confident you'll still be able to download the chain in four decades (assuming civilisation still exists) out of pure history and data hoarding.

Right. The "value" / perceived value won't be permanent (and may be very subjective and disputed from the start), but in terms of long-term data integrity and availability, blockchains can be useful. An NFT ownership transfer that occurred in 2020 on some blockchain may not be considered too valuable in a hypothetical 2040 world where almost no one is using that (or perhaps any) blockchain anymore, but you can likely…

> but you can likely at least retrieve that record and be pretty sure the data is accurate and wasn't tampered with.

You will have no way to tell if this data came from the legitimate Ethereum blockchain that was in use in 2021, a forked chain, or even a completely fake one which has zero blocks in common with the real one.

The authenticity guarantee in blockchains doesn't come from cryptographic schemes, it comes from the network agreeing on some shared truth. If the network is no more, you have no way to tell the truth.

Re: The Limits to Blockchain Scalability

#380

Post by DSingularity »

mosdl wrote: post #292
DSingularity wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a very different discussion altogether.

Its a major problem to all the hype around crypto - it relies on a centralized internet infrastructure.

If needed TOR is always available. Besides, internet may be vulnerable to ISP censorship for something like DNS but I would love to hear your approach for censoring something like the BTC network.
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