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Fake Tesla, Apple stocks have started trading on blockchains

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Re: Fake Tesla, Apple stocks have started trading on blockchains

#321

Post by saalweachter »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #287
pishpash wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do stocks that never pay a dividend settle?

> How do stocks that never pay a dividend settle? The textbook answer to stock value is dividends. Many companies, most, I would argue, never reach that point. In practice, the chief defender of fundamental value is M&A. Whole-company buyers can tap free cash flow in a way minority investors can’t. That is the arbitrage that sets a lower bound on the value of a company’s shares relative to its cash flow. (There is no…

Eh, once you start averaging across market caps and counting stock buy-backs as the back-door dividend they are, it becomes far less common. Amazon is the one big outlier there; IIGC, they've only performed a buyback once.

The S&P 500 disburses ~half a trillion USD in dividends each year, and performs another ~half a trillion USD in stock buybacks. You shouldn't discount that second half.

Re: Fake Tesla, Apple stocks have started trading on blockchains

#322

Post by cinquemb »

MathYouF wrote: post #320
cinquemb wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Belief is the only thing holding together a lot of the things that we rely on to keep society functioning the way it does. Which is why alot of people feel threatened by the ever shifting sands in the global financial landscape

Indeed, never seen so many people on HN be so reactionary and emotional about a simple technology. The demographics of the crowd: wealthy, living in the most stable country in history, with access to digital forms of banking worldwide, ability to emigrate wherever they'd like, able to transfer money as they see fit, and holding their savings in the global reserve currency for a country which they're a citizen of. Doe…

> It's best to just build cryotocurrency and not bother explaining to Americans who aren't willing to listen why it's necessary.

> It's like explaining public transportation to people at a country club.

That's a good way to put it, and that's me saying that as some one who left the US 6 years ago, worked in finance as a dev (consumer and derivatives markets, emerging/developing and developed) and actively helping to build defi protocols and blockchain research/development.

Re: Fake Tesla, Apple stocks have started trading on blockchains

#323

Post by mrkramer »

dkshdkjshdk wrote: post #219
arcticbull wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been almost 14 years, so where are the "real cryptographers" and "real computer scientists?" I suspect they've been searching and realized there's no "there" there.

Maybe you can find some here: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?&q=zksnark

For example in Cryptology Eprint Archive for current year[0] majority of research papers are unrelated to blockchain and cryptocurrencies although you can find couple of dozens of such papers.

P.S. By quickly searching through the list there are around 900 papers of which around 30 are blockchain, cryptocurrency and electronic/digital cash related.

[0] https://eprint.iacr.org/curr/

Re: Fake Tesla, Apple stocks have started trading on blockchains

#324

Post by mypastself »

thebean11 wrote: post #314
KirillPanov wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did, and it doesn't. The mechanism behind Maker DAO simply doesn't work. That's why it lost the peg so badly, and for so long. There simply wasn't any working mechanism to deal with the situation where the price rises above one dollar. When people create ETH-collateralized DAI and sell them they are basically doing so in order to go leveraged-long on the ETH/USD pair. So when you use ETH to buy DAI from one of thes…

> There simply wasn't any working mechanism to deal with the situation where the price rises above one dollar. ..inflation?

Not sure if you’re joking or not, but the entire purpose of this type of token is to be pegged to the price of dollar or some other real-life asset. It stops fulfulling that role if the price expressed in its peg currency varies (hence the name “stablecoin”). Any type of inflation or deflation separate from the dollar breaks the token’s utility.

Re: Fake Tesla, Apple stocks have started trading on blockchains

#325

Post by dkshdkjshdk »

mrkramer wrote: post #323
dkshdkjshdk wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you can find some here: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?&q=zksnark

For example in Cryptology Eprint Archive for current year[0] majority of research papers are unrelated to blockchain and cryptocurrencies although you can find couple of dozens of such papers. P.S. By quickly searching through the list there are around 900 papers of which around 30 are blockchain, cryptocurrency and electronic/digital cash related. [0] https://eprint.iacr.org/curr/

Just because the majority of a field of research is not working on a certain subfield, doesn't mean that there aren't capable people working in such subfield. As far as I can tell, you seem to be confirming that there are "real" computer scientists and cryptographers currently working on such things.

> P.S. By quickly searching through the list there are around 900 papers of which around 30 are blockchain, cryptocurrency and electronic/digital cash related.

If you just Ctrl+F'd for those terms, it is likely that you are leaving out some (many?) papers. For example: did you count these two...

"VCProof: Constructing Shorter and Faster-to-Verify zkSNARKs with Vector Oracles", by Yuncong Zhang and Ren Zhang and Geng Wang and Dawu Gu

"On Simulation-Extractability of Universal zkSNARKs", by Markulf Kohlweiss and Michał Zając

?

My point: it might not be 100% obvious whether a certain cryptographic primitive (or line of research) is "blockchain-related" or not.

As far as I can tell, whether you like the subfield or not, it does seem like there is some fundamental cryptographical research being done as a consequence of the "blockchain" craze (e.g. zero-knowledge proof systems, robust consensus mechanisms in adversarial settings, ring confidential transactions).

EDIT: if you Ctrl+F for "smart contract", for example, you'll get half a dozen more; if you Ctrl+F for "byzantine", you'll get some more; if you Ctrl+F for "zero-knowledge", you'll get 21 more; "cross-chain", "mining", etc.

Re: Fake Tesla, Apple stocks have started trading on blockchains

#326

Post by sneak »

as_i_fall wrote: post #307
sneak wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are some possible enforcement mechanisms against Ethereum DeFi smart contracts?

I imagine very few people would be interested in smart contracts if it became a defacto legal standard in the US and Europe that these contracts are unenforceable. Of course this doesn't address contracts being written out of Russia or traditional financial havens, but how valuable is a vehicle which can't be used to move assets into or within the US or Europe? I think the question of enforcement is the wrong one.

Smart contracts are already unenforceable via the existing legal system. It's the blockchain that enforces them, and it will continue to do that regardless of their legal status.

Re: Fake Tesla, Apple stocks have started trading on blockchains

#327

Post by mrkramer »

dkshdkjshdk wrote: post #325
mrkramer wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For example in Cryptology Eprint Archive for current year[0] majority of research papers are unrelated to blockchain and cryptocurrencies although you can find couple of dozens of such papers. P.S. By quickly searching through the list there are around 900 papers of which around 30 are blockchain, cryptocurrency and electronic/digital cash related. [0] https://eprint.iacr.org/curr/

Just because the majority of a field of research is not working on a certain subfield, doesn't mean that there aren't capable people working in such subfield. As far as I can tell, you seem to be confirming that there are "real" computer scientists and cryptographers currently working on such things. > P.S. By quickly searching through the list there are around 900 papers of which around 30 are blockchain, cryptocurr…

zkSNARKs are not only meant and used for cryptocurrencies. They are decades old technology but ofc they can be used for all sorts of solutions including cryptocurrencies.

Maybe there are real people working on crypto problems or maybe there is some sort of Crypto winter akin to AI winter[1].

Let's take Satoshi for example a top notch computer scientist and a top notch C++ programmer. Who is even close to him? Vitalik? Kid who dropped out of college and rediscovered Satoshi's smart contract scripting language that Bitcoin had way back in 2008. Is Gavin Andresen[2] still involved? A 3D computer graphics programmer who worked in the Silicon Valley back in the 90s. These are the kind of people I am talking about.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_winter

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gavin_Andresen

Re: Fake Tesla, Apple stocks have started trading on blockchains

#328

Post by thebean11 »

mypastself wrote: post #324
thebean11 wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There simply wasn't any working mechanism to deal with the situation where the price rises above one dollar. ..inflation?

Not sure if you’re joking or not, but the entire purpose of this type of token is to be pegged to the price of dollar or some other real-life asset. It stops fulfulling that role if the price expressed in its peg currency varies (hence the name “stablecoin”). Any type of inflation or deflation separate from the dollar breaks the token’s utility.

The price is pegged to the dollar, not the quantity in circulation. My point is that if the price is over a dollar, you mint more of them to pull the price down.

To me, DAI going over USD just indicates supply not meeting demand.

Re: Fake Tesla, Apple stocks have started trading on blockchains

#329

Post by dkshdkjshdk »

mrkramer wrote: post #327
dkshdkjshdk wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because the majority of a field of research is not working on a certain subfield, doesn't mean that there aren't capable people working in such subfield. As far as I can tell, you seem to be confirming that there are "real" computer scientists and cryptographers currently working on such things. > P.S. By quickly searching through the list there are around 900 papers of which around 30 are blockchain, cryptocurr…

zkSNARKs are not only meant and used for cryptocurrencies. They are decades old technology but ofc they can be used for all sorts of solutions including cryptocurrencies. Maybe there are real people working on crypto problems or maybe there is some sort of Crypto winter akin to AI winter[1]. Let's take Satoshi for example a top notch computer scientist and a top notch C++ programmer. Who is even close to him? Vitalik…

> zkSNARKs are not only meant and used for cryptocurrencies. They are decades old technology but ofc they can be used for all sorts of solutions including cryptocurrencies.

Yes, but their current popularity (and the reason why so much effort is put into this subfield of cryptological research these days) is most likely due to their use in the context of cryptocurrencies, as far as I can tell. If I'm wrong, please let me know.

> Maybe there are real people working on crypto problems or maybe there is some sort of Crypto winter akin to AI winter[1].

Most likely, both. Once the low-hanging fruit is picked, things tend to slow down a bit (at least for a while). As you pointed out, this is common in many research fields, and not something specific to "blockchain tech".

> Let's take Satoshi for example a top notch computer scientist and a top notch C++ programmer. Who is even close to him? Vitalik? Kid who dropped out of college and rediscovered Satoshi's smart contract scripting language that Bitcoin had way back in 2008.

Just because Satoshi is a better programmer than Vitalik (I don't know if it's the case, but I'll assume it to be true), and he decided to leave the field (allegedly), it still doesn't mean that there aren't capable people out there working in the field.

> Is Gavin Andresen[2] still involved?

From what I can tell, yes: http://gavinandresen.ninja/

> These are the kind of people I am talking about.

Fair enough. But then the argument should be that "most big-shots are not working in the field" rather than "there aren't any real computer scientists and cryptographers working in the field", as the person I replied to was saying.

I just responded because it sounded a bit like a "no true scotsman" fallacy (i.e. "a real computer scientist or cryptographer would be working on more serious things"). It's almost as if, if you are working in something blockchain-related, you must be a bad professional somehow (or, worse, a scammer).

Re: Fake Tesla, Apple stocks have started trading on blockchains

#330

Post by DennisP »

rank0 wrote: post #309
DennisP wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like a lot of blockchain critiques involve some variant of "you can already do that if you jump through all the hoops," without recognizing that it's worthwhile to remove the hoops.

It certainly might be worthwhile to remove the hoops! The original discussion was whether or not defi protocols enable new financial services. I argue they do not, but instead attempt to automate/decentralize those services.

That seems like a quibble over definitions. I'm not aware of traditional finance offering exchanges without order books, I think Uniswap is new in doing that. But it is still an exchange.

Speaking broadly, finance involves trades and loans and bets on future prices, and pretty much anything defi does will fit into those categories, even if it does it in a different way; anything that doesn't fit in those categories won't be called "finance."

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