This article is borderline fear mongering against cryptocurrency.
Not really
The Non-Innovation of Cryptocurrency
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Re: The Non-Innovation of Cryptocurrency
#12Blockchains and crypto tech does seem to provide solutions to many challenging problems: distributed ledgers, immutable and decentralized data, ownerless contracts and program execution, secure and decentralized ownership of a digital asset (eg: owning a domain name), programmable free markets, preventing the double spend problem, etc. These may not be problems the author is interested in, but it does not mean the te…
> Blockchains and crypto tech does seem to provide solutions to many challenging problems: distributed ledgers, immutable and decentralized data, ownerless contracts and program execution, secure and decentralized ownership of a digital asset
None of these are real problems. Each and every one was invented as a problem as a post hoc rationalisation for Blockchain technologies.
Re: The Non-Innovation of Cryptocurrency
#13> Ending this scourge on civilization is one of most important political problems facing the international community these days, and marks a new era of global cooperation on financial regulation that now necessarily transcends borders and nations.
A very neutral, objective viewpoint.
> However bitcoin is a technology which did not arise out of an engineering effort directed towards a specific problem or market inefficiency, but instead out of a anarchist political narrative that views democratic control of the money supply and law enforcement as the problem.
A completely false claim.
> It is an attempted financial coup by the anarcho-capitalist wing of Silicon Valley to set themselves up as central bankers but without any accountability or democratic oversight.
Another completely false claim.
> Any non-zero valuation for bitcoin depends on it either yielding some positive cashflows—which is impossible—or depends on an infinite chain of economically irrational actors who will all continue pour money into the scheme ad infinitum irregardless of fundamentals.
This one is also objectively false.
This article is... not good. There exist some decent criticisms of cryptocurrencies. This article doesn't seem to contain any, and is just the biased ranting of someone who doesn't understand them very well.
I flagged it.
Re: The Non-Innovation of Cryptocurrency
#14Blockchains and crypto tech does seem to provide solutions to many challenging problems: distributed ledgers, immutable and decentralized data, ownerless contracts and program execution, secure and decentralized ownership of a digital asset (eg: owning a domain name), programmable free markets, preventing the double spend problem, etc. These may not be problems the author is interested in, but it does not mean the te…
Can you name an example of a tangible use-case where a blockchain has been used to create real value, and is competitive against conventional technologies in the same space?
There has been a lot of talk about the potential of blockchain, but so far all I have seen it used for is crime and speculation. Would love to be shown I'm wrong on this.
Re: The Non-Innovation of Cryptocurrency
#15Blockchains and crypto tech does seem to provide solutions to many challenging problems: distributed ledgers, immutable and decentralized data, ownerless contracts and program execution, secure and decentralized ownership of a digital asset (eg: owning a domain name), programmable free markets, preventing the double spend problem, etc. These may not be problems the author is interested in, but it does not mean the te…
> Blockchains and crypto tech does seem to provide solutions to many challenging problems: distributed ledgers, immutable and decentralized data, ownerless contracts and program execution, secure and decentralized ownership of a digital asset None of these are real problems. Each and every one was invented as a problem as a post hoc rationalisation for Blockchain technologies.
Many of mans greatest inventions have started like this. Just because we are not aware of a problem today, does not mean it is not there, will not come, or that it can be solved efficiently in other ways.
Re: The Non-Innovation of Cryptocurrency
#16Blockchains and crypto tech does seem to provide solutions to many challenging problems: distributed ledgers, immutable and decentralized data, ownerless contracts and program execution, secure and decentralized ownership of a digital asset (eg: owning a domain name), programmable free markets, preventing the double spend problem, etc. These may not be problems the author is interested in, but it does not mean the te…
> Blockchains and crypto tech does seem to provide solutions to many challenging problems: distributed ledgers, immutable and decentralized data, ownerless contracts and program execution, secure and decentralized ownership of a digital asset (eg: owning a domain name), programmable free markets, preventing the double spend problem, etc.
Emphasis on "seem". These aren't even problems in the practical sense, but rather tools you can use to solve concrete problems. And in many cases, you can use similar tools that don't involve blockchains (merkle trees, FSS+PKI, …).
And it's still not clear whether blockchains can in practice deliver on the promises of decentralization: There's no good solution to problems like 51% attacks, other than rallying behind a central authority like the chain's developers. Why even bother with a blockchain then?
Re: The Non-Innovation of Cryptocurrency
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Blockchains and crypto tech does seem to provide solutions to many challenging problems: distributed ledgers, immutable and decentralized data, ownerless contracts and program execution, secure and decentralized ownership of a digital asset None of these are real problems. Each and every one was invented as a problem as a post hoc rationalisation for Blockchain technologies.
Many of mans greatest inventions have started like this. Just because we are not aware of a problem today, does not mean it is not there, will not come, or that it can be solved efficiently in other ways.
Blockchain is quite old at this point by technology standards, no? In 2017 there was a ton of attention and funding going into the space - it's not as if there hasn't been the opportunity to do something interesting with blockchain.
Re: The Non-Innovation of Cryptocurrency
#18Blockchains and crypto tech does seem to provide solutions to many challenging problems: distributed ledgers, immutable and decentralized data, ownerless contracts and program execution, secure and decentralized ownership of a digital asset (eg: owning a domain name), programmable free markets, preventing the double spend problem, etc. These may not be problems the author is interested in, but it does not mean the te…
> Blockchains and crypto tech does seem to provide solutions to many challenging problems: distributed ledgers, immutable and decentralized data, ownerless contracts and program execution, secure and decentralized ownership of a digital asset None of these are real problems. Each and every one was invented as a problem as a post hoc rationalisation for Blockchain technologies.
The same could be said for many problems in computer science and on the web: these were not problems humans were trying to solve before computers.
Blockchains give us new paradigms (such as ownerless & distributed program execution) that most of us weren’t thinking about before it was achievable.
Re: The Non-Innovation of Cryptocurrency
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you sure about that? How did you arrive at the conclusion that it is undeniably a value-add?
We came up with a way to allow investors to independently verify how much profit a business makes with certainty without having to trust company directors or accountants. Clearly this is a value-add for new/small companies which don't yet have a reputation as it reduces risk for the investor. It's also a value-add for investors of big companies as it prevents them from being mislead about quarterly profits. In our sp…
Can you elaborate? I doubt your claim because "how much profit" a business makes is tied to the legal/financial system(s) the business operates in. To me it looks like we have the "object level vs. meta level" fallacy that is so typical for crypto enthusiasts: in the end, what governs our society is not crypto tech (object level), but meta level institutions. And even if these institutions were to agree that, for example, a smart contract is a legal contract, they could still reverse this decisions and hence move the agreement back to the meta level.
Re: The Non-Innovation of Cryptocurrency
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Blockchains and crypto tech does seem to provide solutions to many challenging problems: distributed ledgers, immutable and decentralized data, ownerless contracts and program execution, secure and decentralized ownership of a digital asset None of these are real problems. Each and every one was invented as a problem as a post hoc rationalisation for Blockchain technologies.
Many of mans greatest inventions have started like this. Just because we are not aware of a problem today, does not mean it is not there, will not come, or that it can be solved efficiently in other ways.
Can you name such a technology that existed for well over a decade before any real use cases were found?