Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Decentralized Woo Hoo

stephendiehl.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 295 posts

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#121

Post by tinalumfoil »

> Or similarly they suggest misguided equivalences, like that that quantum mechanics and consciousness are both weird and therefore equivelent [sic] without a reference to a mechanism.

Similarly this article connects bad article about quantum mechanics to bad articles about cryptocurrencies without reference to a mechanism that might explain why these would be the same effect.

> it's simply a proxy meme of the more dangerous idea that technology can fix social problems

Technology literally has fixed social problems. Look at the printing press, for instance in its effects on the protestant reformation. Printing, and printing "dangerous ideas" no less, has been an essential part of social change.

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#122

Post by Yizahi »

martin_drapeau wrote: post #97

History replays itself every new invention or enlightment humans have. Over the past centuries many have been persecuted for studying chemistry, astronomy, physics and even biology. Think of Galileo who was persecuted for advaing the theory that the Earth was round. Crypto embodies a new paradigm whereby rules can be programmed and enforced by computers. Instead of relying on centralized human authorities to measure,…

> I really wish people would stop bashing the industry and instead join in the experiment.

... so that steady supply of greater fools would never end? No, thanks.

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#123

Post by mattwilsonn888 »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #44
21eleven wrote: post #37

I think this is a fair criticism to a limited extent, the crypto world is full of useless memecoins that don't have value beyond serving as gambling games. However some people interested in and working on blockchain and related technologies are pursuing ambitious goals that could reshape the economy and politics in ways that makes them more open to participation and "strongly typed"/formalized. Achieving these goals…

> However some people interested in and working on blockchain and related technologies are pursuing ambitious goals that could reshape the economy and politics in ways that makes them more open to participation I hear this all of the time, but the people and projects “reshaping the economy and politics” are rarely ever named. When it comes to blockchain and cryptocurrency, we’re supposed to believe the “good ones” ar…

> I hear this all of the time, but the people and projects “reshaping the economy and politics” are rarely ever named.

There are two good reasons for that:

1) The culture around careful discussion of crypto currencies does well to keep seperated financial advice and claims about economics, incentives and technology (or in the crypto space you call of these 'the protocol' or something else to refer to the complete package a distributed ledger technology aims to achieve) - these claims can quickly get mixed up with lies to make money using buzzwords. You don't want this discussion to turn into people shilling what they personally own, trust me, and refraining from naming good projects when off the metaphorical sale's floor is simply good manners.

2) Crypto is still very nascent. Smart contract platforms that are fast and cheap are only starting to be rolled out and stress tested - without that most of the auxiliary functions people envision are only aspirations. If that's where basic smart contracts are right now, then more advanced protocols you can easily tell are much less far along. Because of the lack of industry proven protocols to do what believers pretty much know will happen someday, recommending any means imparting risk on people like you who expect others to tell you "what's up." Its not that fun giving someone risky investment advice when they refuse to look into it themselves and shoulder that risk.

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#124

Post by api »

shoto_io wrote: post #118
cslarson wrote: post #103

> Yet if we value these assets in terms of traditional valuation models we find they should be worth absolutely nothing. This is the core tenet that these skeptics get lost with - the premise that there is no real central value to blockchain technology. It is a lost and shallow view made by people who have chosen not to engage or understand what they espouse on. Maybe this person just has too much to lose from change…

I've been a huge skeptic myself until a friend almost forced me into going down the rabbit hole. I have since been wondering why we tech people are so unbelievably critical. "There is no use-case." and "It's a technology looking for a problem" are common phrases. I have no answer. Just a thought: for someone living in the 90s, wouldn't something like Facebook have been also very difficult to conceive? "What's the val…

Not everyone got the web, chat, or social networks, but loads of people did and people from all backgrounds. Things like Geocities, AIM, MySpace, early Facebook, early search engines, etc. had millions of users very rapidly. They penetrated beyond the tech-savvy early adopters within years. Cryptocurrency is more than 10 years old and hasn't seen anything like this.

The vast majority of what I see in cryptocurrency is just speculation. It all seems like a giant very complex over-engineered online casino app.

Yes there are use cases outside of that but they seem much more niche. The people saying "there is no use case" are over-arguing their position, but I think the actual non-gambling use case is small.

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#126

Post by simias »

shoto_io wrote: post #118
cslarson wrote: post #103

> Yet if we value these assets in terms of traditional valuation models we find they should be worth absolutely nothing. This is the core tenet that these skeptics get lost with - the premise that there is no real central value to blockchain technology. It is a lost and shallow view made by people who have chosen not to engage or understand what they espouse on. Maybe this person just has too much to lose from change…

I've been a huge skeptic myself until a friend almost forced me into going down the rabbit hole. I have since been wondering why we tech people are so unbelievably critical. "There is no use-case." and "It's a technology looking for a problem" are common phrases. I have no answer. Just a thought: for someone living in the 90s, wouldn't something like Facebook have been also very difficult to conceive? "What's the val…

>What's the value of having friends I see daily online?

None. The value is in having people want to watch ads in order to see what their friends are up to.

The only monetization scheme for the blockchain so far seems to build pyramid schemes or making fees from running off-chain, centralized exchanges.

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#127

Post by crypto_is_king »

Zababa wrote: post #80
serverholic wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing I've realized is that it's best to think about crypto and smart contracts as a foundation to build upon. They're tools in our toolbox. What we build is up to us. In the future, I don't think we'll see many monolithic contracts like you're describing (no USA smart contract). Instead I think we'll have a bunch of small, simple, and battle tested smart contracts that we can fit together like lego bricks.

This is what people said about objects in the context of object-oriented programming and it never really happened. Currently software doesn't really feel like lego bricks, it feels more like the mix of legos, mega blocks, duplos, kaplas and playmobiles that I played with when I was younger. You can build lots of stuff with it, and they can kind of go together, but not as easily as things from the same brand.

Have you checked your npm_modules folder lately?

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#128

Post by deweller »

shoto_io wrote: post #118
cslarson wrote: post #103

> Yet if we value these assets in terms of traditional valuation models we find they should be worth absolutely nothing. This is the core tenet that these skeptics get lost with - the premise that there is no real central value to blockchain technology. It is a lost and shallow view made by people who have chosen not to engage or understand what they espouse on. Maybe this person just has too much to lose from change…

I've been a huge skeptic myself until a friend almost forced me into going down the rabbit hole. I have since been wondering why we tech people are so unbelievably critical. "There is no use-case." and "It's a technology looking for a problem" are common phrases. I have no answer. Just a thought: for someone living in the 90s, wouldn't something like Facebook have been also very difficult to conceive? "What's the val…

So true. Every technology revolution seems like a toy at first. Consider the personal computer, the spreadsheet, the internet, the smart phone.

Only time will tell if cryptocurrencies will join this list.

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#129

Post by crypto_is_king »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #84
21eleven wrote: post #37

I think this is a fair criticism to a limited extent, the crypto world is full of useless memecoins that don't have value beyond serving as gambling games. However some people interested in and working on blockchain and related technologies are pursuing ambitious goals that could reshape the economy and politics in ways that makes them more open to participation and "strongly typed"/formalized. Achieving these goals…

Mark my words, Tech people believing they can solve political problems with technology will doom us all.

This is true. But your statement applies to Big Tech more so than independent builders who are working out how to redistribute their power.

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#130

Post by rmah »

petesergeant wrote: post #34
whitepaint wrote: post #3

OP seems to have no idea about DeFI. You can lend and borrow on compound.finance, aave. You can play no-loss lotteries like PoolTogether. You can bet on your beliefs and hedge your investments on markets platforms like Polymarket. You can gamble. More on: https://ethereum.org/en/dapps/ . All of this without any arbitrary restrictions imposed by governments or companies, you just need an internet connection. How can y…

> All of this without any arbitrary restrictions imposed by governments or companies Is that true? Is gambling now legal in jurisdictions where it wasn't before because it's being facilitated by unlicensed entities? Can I do an end-run against money-lending regulations in my country because I'm doing it online? To me it simply seems that enforcement hasn't (yet) caught up.

It's only true if you don't get caught.
Post reply on HN