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It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency

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Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency

#791

Post by Sargos »

eloff wrote: post #733
revel wrote: post #633

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No you can't. The protocols for buying and selling or making payments haven't changed in decades. The problem is communication authority and scaling, not the data format. Blockchain enables so-called triple entry accounting. Everyone sees everything everyone else is doing (if you want them to). There is never an argument about who did something or why. Just consider the audit and servicing cost savings.

You can do all that with a centralized db and Merkel trees. The technology has been around for 40 years.

Who's going to run that db? How much are they going to charge? Are they going to let anyone write apps on top of it? Do they have a plan for %99.999999999 uptime? Will people lose their data/businesses/livelihoods if this system stops being operated and what's the assurance for entrepreneurs?

There's a lot of details that go into running something like that and none of those questions are trivial.

Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency

#792

Post by ergot_vacation »

K0balt wrote: post #735
pavlov wrote: post #21

“But it’s like the early Internet!” shouted the Emperor’s coinholders. “The Internet wasn’t yet useful a mere, um, thirteen years after its invention either.” I can see how people in their twenties would fall for this argument because they can’t remember. The reality is that the internet was immediately extremely interesting (either useful or fun) for practically everyone who got access. Email and ftp alone were kill…

Hmm. It’s interesting to note that skeptics seem much more invested in being right about crypto being a scam than proponents are in it being here to stay. The more time passes, the shriller the cries of skeptics become, leading me to believe that skeptics are emotionally invested to the extreme in the failure of crypto. I rarely see any carefully considered, informed opinions just tulips and drugs and money launderin…

They really have cranked up the propaganda against crypto recently haven't they? I've honestly been lukewarm on it for a while: maybe someday it'll be a workable tech, but too many issues at present. But the way these people talk (or are being paid to talk), you'd think Bitcoin breathed fire and had horns. Which begs the question: what are they afraid of? And they ARE afraid of something. You don't launch a propaganda campaign against something you think is a joke.

Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency

#793

Post by ajkdhcb2 »

pavlov wrote: post #21

“But it’s like the early Internet!” shouted the Emperor’s coinholders. “The Internet wasn’t yet useful a mere, um, thirteen years after its invention either.” I can see how people in their twenties would fall for this argument because they can’t remember. The reality is that the internet was immediately extremely interesting (either useful or fun) for practically everyone who got access. Email and ftp alone were kill…

Darknet markets haven't been fascinating since 2012?

Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency

#794

Post by 22c »

srcreigh wrote: post #754
22c wrote: post #617

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>give actual arguments I'd say the reason is that many people have already made their mind up and no amount of "actual arguments" will convince them otherwise, but sure, here are some examples of things enabled by smart contracts. https://www.gemini.com/cryptopedia/amm-what-are-automated-ma... https://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/atomic-swaps.asp https://www.ibm.com/blogs/blockchain/2020/11/blockchain-for-... Arguing…

So I read all 3 of those articles, and it's still smoke and mirrors to me. Each of the articles falls into one of two traps. 1. Inconsequential. Ok, you built a fancy crypto system.. so what? 2. Misattribution (the IBM article). Ok, you improved a traditional finance system, why is crypto necessary for that (other than marketing purposes?)

I guess it really depends on if you think the idea of decentralized finance is inconsequential. If you're happy with the idea of centralized finance, then I guess most of those things would be inconsequential. The argument for decentralized finance is more philosophical, and perhaps that is where most people are at odds with each other.

Regarding your second point, I understand what you're saying. I guess the benefit of doing that specifically in a blockchain/smart contract system instead if is you can take contracts that have been verified by others and deploy them on your blockchain and tweak the numbers and be confident on the output. Instead of blockchain, you could use any sort of "industry standard ledger/schema", but no industry standard ledger/schema exists and blockchains do exist.

ImmuDB was posted here the other day, it's pretty young but could be promising for businesses who want the benefits of blockchain without needing to use a blockchain.

https://github.com/codenotary/immudb

Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency

#795

Post by leifg »

Sargos wrote: post #791
eloff wrote: post #733

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can do all that with a centralized db and Merkel trees. The technology has been around for 40 years.

Who's going to run that db? How much are they going to charge? Are they going to let anyone write apps on top of it? Do they have a plan for %99.999999999 uptime? Will people lose their data/businesses/livelihoods if this system stops being operated and what's the assurance for entrepreneurs? There's a lot of details that go into running something like that and none of those questions are trivial.

Companies (and especially banks) have been running large scale databases for decades. The cost of IT infrastructure is absolutely negligible compared to salaries.

And yes they have been given assurances to entrepreneurs. I have been on this planet for 30+ years and my bank accounts have never gone to 0 because of a “database problem”

I really don’t understand what your point is.

Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency

#796

Post by bussierem »

baby wrote: post #713
djmashko2 wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be interested in seeing this exam!

What is the maximum throughput (tx/s) that some systems can achieve? Do you really need to go through all the history of the system in order to be convinced of the latest state? What are the different ways to decide who should be the next person that gets to choose the next block of transactions? Can you hide the amount you’re sending? What about the recipient? Or your own identity? Can you transfer bitcoin into ethe…

- Literally a google search for that + bitcoin gave me the answer

- No

- Another google search for "bitcoin + "

- "Yes" for literally the rest of the questions.

This wasn't an exam, this was basically an advertisement for "look what cool things you can do with this"

If I got any wrong, whatever. I have literally never researched bitcoin or blockchain. If I got them right, well... nice try on the exam I guess.

Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency

#797

Post by Vanclief »

acjohnson55 wrote: post #781
Vanclief wrote: post #772

I really don't understand the mindless bashing of cryptocurrency by Hacker News. Normally discussion here is quite rational and level headed, but there is something regarding crypto that makes people get very polarized. First of all, I am not a Bitcoin maximalist, nor I am "brainwashed by a multi-level marketing sale pitch". Bitcoin is just a prototype for a P2P consensus algorithm that has stood the test of time. It…

I'm not at all sure blockchain tech will change how we do finance. Literally every finance or finance-adjacent company has been trying to figure this out for the better part of the decade, and it just doesn't add up. Ethereum is very cool. Aave and Compound are very cool. But today, the whole ecosystem is super insular. Crypto loans and derivatives have to be overcollateralized with cryptoassets, and so the only use…

Thanks for the thoughtful comment. I agree with you that we are not there yet, but that disconnect will eventually be bridged.

What we are lacking is a bridge between traditional finance and crypto that goes beyond what crypto exchanges offer.

I think it will take time before we get there because we need for institutions and businesses to start adopting it, but this has not been happening for a decade.

Ethereum is just 7 years old, and its in its infancy. I think we will need a couple of more speculative cycles before we end up with something useful.

Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency

#798

Post by Keeeeeeeks »

pavlov wrote: post #21

“But it’s like the early Internet!” shouted the Emperor’s coinholders. “The Internet wasn’t yet useful a mere, um, thirteen years after its invention either.” I can see how people in their twenties would fall for this argument because they can’t remember. The reality is that the internet was immediately extremely interesting (either useful or fun) for practically everyone who got access. Email and ftp alone were kill…

selection bias is so strong, that even if I walked you through exceptions to the things you don't like, you'd still fixate on those undesirable things, as if to say that the good-faith actors should stop acting in good faith and spend their time wagging their fingers at the things you don't like.

But complaining about something without taking the underlying behaviors in good faith and synthesizing alternatives doesn't really offer much for the people who are looking for the good things. That's why you won't get many good faith actors interacting with this, because it's better for them (and implicitly, the negation of your premise that it's all scams) for them to negate your arg by building more and more new things with crypto.

Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency

#799

Post by still_grokking »

Why does some (pseudonymous, or even anonymous?) Twitter account claim to speak for some "silent majority"? Even using the term "we".

Who is "we"? And why they think they are a majority? Was there a poll or so? Did I miss out something?

Such kind of framing makes me angry — no matter I agree or not on the actual point! Who the fuck thinks they can speak on my behalf without even trying to ask me about my opinions?

Re: It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency

#800

Post by alecbz »

pessimizer wrote: post #375
alecbz wrote: post #118

Isn't all currency more or less a "pyramid scheme" in the sense that Bitcoin is? I wish we had more subtlety in our discourse. It feels like it's all either blind admiration or blind condemnation. Bitcoin is trying to be a new currency. Currencies more or less operate on "collective delusion". I think many people scratching their heads at why Bitcoin is worth anything _are_ missing something, which is why any currenc…

No. Currency is guaranteed to be accepted for the payment of taxes in a particular jurisdiction, and that jurisdiction's courts will enforce judgments in that currency. These are material differences.

That's true but I'm very skeptical that a notable portion of the worth of a currency rests on that. Like I said in another comment, I think there have been plenty of "commodity currencies" (salt, shells, gold) that have attained value as currencies in spite of lacking these things.
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