Decentralized Woo Hoo • Hacker News Board

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#161

Post by tata71 » Tue, Nov 16, 2021, 4:58 PM UTC

Xorlev wrote: post #27

capableweb wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That centralized exchanges exists doesn't somehow make decentralized cryptocurrencies less decentralized. Just like how centralized social media doesn't make decentralized social media less decentralized.

Crytocurrencies are effectively useless without centralized exchanges. Change my mind. Social media doesn't need to interop between centralized and decentralized, but currencies do if they want to be useable. At the end of the day, someone will want to actually _buy_ something, and unfortunately I can't go to Petco and use my Dogecoin to buy dogfood.

Yes, you can.

https://www.bitrefill.com/buy/petco-usa/?hl=en

They don't have it at the payment terminal directly yet, because of the stigma you and others still have against cryptocurrency.

But after this cycle, the news will have normalized it enough that you WILL pay for your dog food and Taco Bell with Dogecoin — I'd bet 10 DOGE on it.

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#162

Post by fsflover » Tue, Nov 16, 2021, 5:00 PM UTC

hhmc wrote: post #151

cslarson wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in the last 24hrs i, - funded an Afghan refugee friend in Turkey with ETH. they have no bank account. - joined a dao to bid on the last privately held copy of the US Constitution. - claimed an airdrop representing some control of a protocol i had used - borrowed stables against volatile collateral - repaid loans, shored up collateral (market went down) - many token swaps (stable stable, volatile stable) the hn crowd…

- funded an Afghan refugee friend in Turkey with ETH. they have no bank account. If they have no bank account, how do they convert ETH into something actually useful to them (presumably Turkish Lira)?

Sell it to a neighbor for cash?

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#163

Post by addcninblue » Tue, Nov 16, 2021, 5:01 PM UTC

jw1224 wrote: post #144

billjings wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 to the status quo, or they choose not to educate themselves (try it) - neither is really valid response if you want to…

Fiat currency, in essence, is equally valueless. It only has inherent value because enough people agree that it does. Bitcoin is no different (and in fact has several advantages over fiat, giving it further value).

Well, not quite. It has inherent value since fiat is guaranteed to be backed by the full faith and credit of the backing nation. That is, by holding fiat, you trust that the country issuing that fiat doesn't default (and will hence guarantee that value). I don't see a similar parallel with crypto, though I'd love to be corrected.

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#164

Post by cableshaft » Tue, Nov 16, 2021, 5:02 PM UTC

kcabdelta wrote: post #116

delaaxe wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The projects reshaping the economy are named. The good ones are Ethereum and L2s. Their goal is to become planetary infrastructure for the global economy. There's such an abundance of VC money that funding isn't scarce. Developer talent is however.

@delaaxe: "Their goal is to become planetary infrastructure for the global economy." Seeing as this "planetary infrastructure" will consume more energy than it produces. A better description would be "planetary snakeoil". The economic equivalent of a perpetual motion machine.

I don't know what point you're trying to make here. Tons of things consume more energy than they produce. Humans for one. I don't even know what 'energy' you're thinking crypto produces here, or that dollars produce in comparison (The only electricity I've seen dollars generate is static electricity). I'm guessing you're being metaphoric here, but your comment is too vague to be useful.

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#165

Post by somenewaccount1 » Tue, Nov 16, 2021, 5:04 PM UTC

With El Salvadors requirement that businesses accept Bitcoin, I have come to believe that just about every 3rd world nation without significant military will eventually do the same. Why? Because having your countries currency pegged to the bitcoin is better than being pegged to the dollar. Pegged to the dollar allows the US and allies to devalue your currency to nothing almost immediately. Bitcoin is more risilient than this.

Disclaimer: I hate bitcoin and own none of it, having "missed the boat". But once I have visited a developing nation who's currency is constantly beat up by the dollar, and witnessing the people work 4x harder for 1/10 the standard of living, it really does make sense.

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#166

Post by cslarson » Tue, Nov 16, 2021, 5:07 PM UTC

jamespitts wrote: post #48

I have been participating in the Ethereum community for many years and I agree that there is a widespread belief that decentralized tech and economies run on smart contracts can substantively address social problems. Additionally, in the wider crypto community there is a widespread belief that these networks are a way to restore fair money. In most cases I don't think that these beliefs are post-hoc rationalization.…

> but IMO widespread adoption of platforms like Bitcoin and Ethereum will also lead to many new and terrible social problems

So glad you said this - I've also been in the Ethereum community for a while and have significant trepidation about the impact of this technology. But also I see it as unstoppable so we have a duty to participate and try to ensure the positive outweighs the negative.

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#167

Post by manbart » Tue, Nov 16, 2021, 5:07 PM UTC

throwaway6977 wrote: post #152

api wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

I strongly suggest doing a comparison of O(log n)-style adoption curves between Bitcoin, and say- cell phones, computer networking, or really any innovation that became ubiquitous and for which we have the data... I think you'd be surprised at the similarities.

Have any such graphs to share?

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#168

Post by foobarbecue » Tue, Nov 16, 2021, 5:07 PM UTC

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…

> wouldn't something like Facebook have been also very difficult to conceive?

Nah. It was obvious to me from my first encounter with text-based internet that this was going to be a social phenomenon that would link the world together. BBS, forums, myspace were all incremental improvements. Facebook just caught the wave with the right timing and did friend recommendations effectively.

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#169

Post by scyclow » Tue, Nov 16, 2021, 5:09 PM UTC

timdaub wrote: post #57

scyclow wrote: post #29

I think the best examples of Decentralized Woo Hoo is the phrase "ownership over your data". When most people hear this they think of facebook selling their data to third parties, using it for targeted advertising, etc. But in the context of blockchains, owning data only means that you own writes to the data. From a read standpoint, all data is essentially open source. I have sole discretion to send you an NFT, but f…

> But in the context of blockchains, owning data only means that you own writes to the data. I disagree in parts. In e.g. an app on Ethereum you own your and the app's data more than e.g. you do on Facebook. It's because there are no gatekeepers that'd stop you from creating an interoperable app using the original data or straight up downloading the data. There's sufficient historical precedence of FAANG platform ris…

I think we're on the same page. That's kind of what I was saying about how you're essentially open sourcing the "read" on data.

Also, I'm not trying to sell the write side short! Owning writes is the major value proposition of a blockchain. I just feel like people conflate the two when talking about on chain ownership

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#170

Post by dqpb » Tue, Nov 16, 2021, 5:10 PM UTC

Kalium wrote: post #147

dqpb wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look up Turing award winner Silvio Micali.

Can you point me to something more specific? It looks like he was part of some major cryptographic advances before sailing off into snowballscheme land.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NykZ-ZSKkxM