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Andreessen on Crypto

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Re: Andreessen on Crypto

#81

Post by mypastself »

lowkey wrote: post #79
mypastself wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds to me like the technology doesn’t really replace lawyers with code, then. The one use case presented so far is a contract that relies on publicly available data arbitered by a majority of external sources, each of which is presumably inducted into the system by a trusted third party.

Give it a chance. It may not replace every contract in every case but Ethereum in conjunction with Chainlink does address an increasing number of legacy contract use cases. This is a nascent technology and per the article, major structural transformations such as this may play out over 30 or more years. If you are genuinely curious I would suggest reading up on the details of how Chainlink works [1]. As you can see t…

I actually am curious about the entire crypto space, and I’ve been trying to get a good theoretical grounding. I find the tech fascinating and potentially valuable.

But the majority of potential use cases so far, particularly those relating to applications beyond the strictly financial, seem to rely on flawed premises. The idea of oracles seems to go against the whole point of even using the blockchain.

Perhaps Chainlink or any number of competitors will eventually resolve some of these issues, but I don’t think they’ve presented a convincing case yet. Or I just don’t quite understand it.

Re: Andreessen on Crypto

#82

Post by bathtub365 »

tim333 wrote: post #64
jyu wrote: post #42

The world and society at large has seen an erosion of trust. For the naysayers, ask yourself: - do you trust your government more or less than your parents - do you trust the mainstream media more or less than your parents - do you trust big companies to do the right thing more or less than your parents As we culturally become less trusting, we need different tools to organize and determine value. Protocols that enab…

Rating services seem to help. If my hotel gets 9/10 on the site it's usually good. Crypto on the other hand seems mostly ponzi scam.

I’m frequently suspicious of the veracity of ratings online.

Re: Andreessen on Crypto

#83

Post by lowkey »

mypastself wrote: post #81
lowkey wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Give it a chance. It may not replace every contract in every case but Ethereum in conjunction with Chainlink does address an increasing number of legacy contract use cases. This is a nascent technology and per the article, major structural transformations such as this may play out over 30 or more years. If you are genuinely curious I would suggest reading up on the details of how Chainlink works [1]. As you can see t…

I actually am curious about the entire crypto space, and I’ve been trying to get a good theoretical grounding. I find the tech fascinating and potentially valuable. But the majority of potential use cases so far, particularly those relating to applications beyond the strictly financial, seem to rely on flawed premises. The idea of oracles seems to go against the whole point of even using the blockchain. Perhaps Chain…

Fair enough. Chainlink’s solution to the consensus problem is to have a large number of independent sources of real-world data for any variable. This redundancy makes it difficult for a single or a few bad actors to collude to mis-quote.

To your point though most of Chainlink’s current activity is tied to crypto-asset prices, not the broader use cases mentioned (such as weather oracles). I suspect this is due to the more lucrative short-term returns available from speculation vs other use cases.

I love the potential of crypto but would like to see more real-world use-cases. I suspect they will come in time and that short-term speculation is the use case to drive adoption.

Re: Andreessen on Crypto

#84

Post by [deleted] »

CyberDildonics wrote: post #44
arcturus17 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The internet took like a year to take off since it became commercially available. It took the world by storm once people could connect to it, and viable and useful ideas and applications (browsers, search engines, eCommerce, filesharing, etc) proliferated at breakneck speed.

It might feel like this but it is anything but true. Prodigy was available in the early 90s and the age of 286 computers. AOL and compuserve were available very early too and for years their uses were email, online encyclopedias, looking up jpegs and eventually chat rooms. Lots of people saw no need for it in the dialup days. It took a decade for the first cable connections to become available. Right now cryptocurren…

[deleted]

Re: Andreessen on Crypto

#85

Post by captn3m0 »

arcturus17 wrote: post #20
darkerside wrote: post #18

For everybody saying cryptocurrency has no use, you must not remember how much trouble society had envisioning the uses for the very internet upon which we are now posting. Here's an example of a use case recently gaining ground. https://mobile.twitter.com/BrantlyMillegan/status/1402388133... I don't have a crystal ball, but it seems foolish and short-sighted to imagine we are certain that there are no legitimate use…

The internet took like a year to take off since it became commercially available. It took the world by storm once people could connect to it, and viable and useful ideas and applications (browsers, search engines, eCommerce, filesharing, etc) proliferated at breakneck speed.

There's also the fact that product-lifecycles have become incredibly short these days. Airlines took 68 years to get to 50M users, Mobile Phones 12 years, the Internet took 7 years, and Pokemon Go got there in 19 days[0].

We're at 12 years of Crypto and "a tech of the future" is now an increasingly difficult proposition to make as we're nowhere near real usecases.

[0]: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/how-long-does-it-take-to-hi...

Re: Andreessen on Crypto

#86

Post by lowkey »

lottin wrote: post #78
lowkey wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My comment provided the first example (currency supply and debasement rate) but you then go on to claim that nobody wants those things. I want those things as do others so objectively your claim is false. Also your claim that inflation rate is only predictable when you have a central bank is just plain silly. It makes no sense.

You said there are a "whole host of problems associated with centralized middlemen" but the only "problem" you mention is the unpredictability of the money supply in fiat currencies, which, leaving aside whether it's even a problem, it certainly isn't representative of a set of problems "associated with centralized middlemen". And the claim that the inflation rate is unpredictable in the absence of an adaptive moneta…

I’ll stick to the problems that Bitcoin solves as I know that space better than Ethereum.

Bitcoin solves a whole host of problems:

- hard currency with fixed supply that cannot be inflated by any individual no matter how powerful

- fixed emission (debasement) rate that can be calculated for the next 100 years and beyond

- the ability to self-custody a digital store of value (no KYC required) the owner of the private key is the owner, no questions asked

- censorship-resistant payments that know no borders and are not subject to political whims of a particular country

- runs on proof-of-work rather than proof-of-violence such as the US dollar which requires the backing of the most powerful military-industrial complex known to man to protect it’s value. By contrast Bitcoin currently consumes less than half the electricity of YouTube to secure and protect over half a trillion dollars.

- it works 24/7 and never takes a bank holiday

- it is designed from the ground up to withstand direct attacks from nation-states without a standing army ready to go to war to protect it.

- It allows us to achieve Distribute Consensus without a central party (Rules without Rulers)

I could go on but I trust I’ve made my point.

Re: Andreessen on Crypto

#87

Post by captn3m0 »

phpsuks wrote: post #69
arcturus17 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The internet took like a year to take off since it became commercially available. It took the world by storm once people could connect to it, and viable and useful ideas and applications (browsers, search engines, eCommerce, filesharing, etc) proliferated at breakneck speed.

I think the way Crypto bulls sell this analogy is flawed. Internet had no competition from any other industry. It was nothing like anything that ever existed. In terms of Internet's development itself, we went from dial up to optical fibers. People in 21st century who use internet have no idea about pains of dial up connection. Crypto is replacing something that has existed for centuries - the financial system. The f…

The mobile phone industry was also deeply entrenched back in 2007, it still got disrupted wildly within a few years with the iPhone.

If Crypto is so revolutionary, it should have resulted in radical changes within the entrenched financial industry. All we've seen is regression (Stripe supported bitcoins from 2014[0]-2018[1] for eg).

[0]: https://stripe.com/blog/bitcoin-the-stripe-perspective

[1]: https://stripe.com/blog/ending-bitcoin-support

Re: Andreessen on Crypto

#88

Post by mkr-hn »

jyu wrote: post #42

The world and society at large has seen an erosion of trust. For the naysayers, ask yourself: - do you trust your government more or less than your parents - do you trust the mainstream media more or less than your parents - do you trust big companies to do the right thing more or less than your parents As we culturally become less trusting, we need different tools to organize and determine value. Protocols that enab…

My parents' generation was far too trusting of the government. The government is just as trustworthy as it was then, but we're aware of some of what it's up to now. I still trust the FDIC and CFPB to protect my interests more than cryptocurrency pushers.

Re: Andreessen on Crypto

#89

Post by [deleted] »

lowkey wrote: post #55
mypastself wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does real-life information enter a smart contract, and how do you make sure all sides make good on their dues?

One option today is Chainlink which uses a host of oracles to achieve distributed consensus on real-world prices, weather or other signals.

[deleted]
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