The Non-Innovation of Cryptocurrency • Hacker News Board

Re: The Non-Innovation of Cryptocurrency

#41

Post by skohan » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 8:54 AM UTC

bhawks wrote: post #33

skohan wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The fine article and your comment both say crypto is 'old' tech. TFA points to iPhone's 2007 release date as if no one (even apple themselves had tried to crack the personal digital assistant before). Which is a laughable omission of history. The first PDA landed in the 80s. Apple started development in 87 on the newton and didn't have a product til 93. The iphone stands on the ashes of 2 decades of product and engin…

I don't think you should conflate my comment with the TFA article. I didn't write it, and I have no interest in defending it's points.

But I don't totally understand your comparison of early PDA's to the current state of cryptocurrency. Palm pilots were a successful product in their day. Blackberries were hugely successful. It's not as if the iPhone was the first example of value being created in this space.

As far as blockchain, from what I can tell, the only value its creating so far is for drug dealers, those executing ransomware attacks, and people running cryptocurrency exchanges.

I'm not ruling out the idea that someone will find an interesting use-case for cryptocurrency in the future. But what seems a bit strange to me is that cryptocurrency advocates seem to want us all to give a ton of attention and investment towards this space which so far has produced nothing of value. It seems to me that the rational standpoint will be to ignore it until someone can actually demonstrate the "potential" which has been promised for so many years now.

Re: The Non-Innovation of Cryptocurrency

#42

Post by jiriknesl » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 8:58 AM UTC

> The notion that these technologies can transform financial services in any way is laughable, because there is no mechanism or specific problem they aim to address that is not currently better done with a simpler solution.

Well, he hasn't obviously tried to send money from Europe to Latin America.

On $2000 transaction. $25-40 bank transfer (takes up to 5 days). $80 Payoneer (can be fast, but can also take 2 days) $1 Bitcoin (4 hours)

Re: The Non-Innovation of Cryptocurrency

#43

Post by lottin » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 8:59 AM UTC

neilwilson wrote: post #21

"There are indeed a lot of fools in this world, but to presume an infinite chain of them as the core of an investment thesis is beyond absurd." It's worked for gold and diamonds for generations. Not to mention pretty much every artwork or other concoction human beings create and then collect. There's not a lot of cash flow from first edition Marvel comics, but there are an awful lot of them stored in plastic bags. Hu…

The real trick is getting people to buy a virtual asset with real money.

Intuitively it seems strange to pay for something virtual with real money, and in fact it is, but apparently many people don't feel the same way.

Re: The Non-Innovation of Cryptocurrency

#44

Post by mypastself » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 9:00 AM UTC

> Ending this scourge on civilization is one of most important political problems facing the international community these days

What is it about this topic that always brings out the most extreme voices on either side? It seems like both proponents and detractors wildly overestimate the technology’s importance.

This particular blog post drops the above quoted bomb right at the start, and then goes on to argue the comparatively irrelevant question of innovation instead. I’d love to read a well argued post about how exactly blockchain destroys civilization (or saves it, for that matter).

Re: The Non-Innovation of Cryptocurrency

#45

Post by Gatsky » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 9:01 AM UTC

> These days I spend a great deal of my time writing about and helping inform public policy on the global cryptocurrency crackdown. 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. The fight against cryptocurrency and ransomware is now a fight for the cause of democratic norms and the continuation of the rules-based international order.

I have never met this person, but I am certain I would not enjoy a conversation with them.

Re: The Non-Innovation of Cryptocurrency

#46

Post by lmm » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 9:03 AM UTC

mattdesl wrote: post #9

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. These may not be problems the author is interested in, but it does not mean the te…

Append-only, log-structured datastores are useful; Merkle trees are useful; bitcoin did not invent these things though it has helped popularise them.

PoW is the one unique innovation that makes bitcoin bitcoin, and I think the last 12 years have shown that its legitimate use cases are niche at best.

Re: The Non-Innovation of Cryptocurrency

#47

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 9:06 AM UTC

mdoms wrote: post #22

mattdesl wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And what has that given us, tangibly?

[deleted]

Re: The Non-Innovation of Cryptocurrency

#48

Post by lottin » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 9:06 AM UTC

redpiller wrote: post #8

faeyanpiraat wrote: post #4

Earlier 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…

Nothing of what you say suggests that you have "come up with a way to allow investors to independently verify how much profit a business makes with absolute certainty without having to trust company directors or accountants".

Re: The Non-Innovation of Cryptocurrency

#49

Post by mattdesl » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 9:07 AM UTC

skohan wrote: post #14

mattdesl wrote: post #9

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. 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.

I would point to Hicetnunc as one example[1], which provides real value for many artists on the platform.

I’m sure it’s possible to build a similar platform with a central database handling transactions and Stripe payouts, but I’m not sure it would be met with the same enthusiasm (and, despite the possibility of this with past tech, no pre-blockchain digital art marketplace has come close to meeting it in sales).

Due to the decentralization of the art tokens (via the blockchain), the community has been able to grow and evolve in a way that a centralized platform could not. For example: while the site’s contract was paused to repair a bug, artists continued to trade tokens directly peer-to-peer (no platform needed), and even build new sites and platforms that enabled trading & auctioning on the same Hicetnunc-minted tokens.

[1] https://restofworld.org/2021/inside-brazils-diy-nft-art-mark...

Re: The Non-Innovation of Cryptocurrency

#50

Post by weikju » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 9:08 AM UTC

jiriknesl wrote: post #42

> The notion that these technologies can transform financial services in any way is laughable, because there is no mechanism or specific problem they aim to address that is not currently better done with a simpler solution. Well, he hasn't obviously tried to send money from Europe to Latin America. On $2000 transaction. $25-40 bank transfer (takes up to 5 days). $80 Payoneer (can be fast, but can also take 2 days) $1…

How much to get your $2000 in and out of a bitcoin wallet/exchange?