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Decentralized Woo Hoo

stephendiehl.com

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Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#191

Post by serverholic »

VHRanger wrote: post #72
serverholic wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I support crypto. I view it as a laboratory where we can experiment with ideas around finance and governance. Many of the currently accepted ideas around these topics came from a pre-internet world. However, myself and others think that certain technologies have changed the game. Maybe we need government or maybe we don't. Maybe we need a centralized currency, maybe we don't. The thing is we won't really…

Your laboratory has run for 12 years and is currently consuming 0.5% of the world energy output and 20% of new GPUs. All of that without a popular usecase yet. Except for financial speculation, finance-of-last-resort, and crime. I would say that laboratory is not using the research grants well.

Ethereum is moving to a new algorithm that will reduce energy consumption by 99.95%. This is happening in a matter of months.

Asking about use-cases for crypto is like asking for use-cases for the internet in the 90s. It's so general purpose that there isn't a specific use-case to sell you on but instead a set of smaller use-cases that add up to a large use-case.

For example, I would love for charities to be built on crypto. Many of the larger charities only use a small percentage of their funds on the problem they're trying to solve. I'd love to see exactly what my charitable donation is being used for. Luckily crypto is public and therefore publicly auditable.

I could list off similar use-cases and each one doesn't seem to be a big deal. But put together it's a huge change in how we view the world.

And as for your other arguments like crime, these don't match up with actual data. Crypto being public is a large turn-off for criminals so they tend to prefer cash instead.

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#192

Post by lottin »

karaterobot wrote: post #179
addcninblue wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

When currency inflation gets out of control, there is often not much the issuing country can do to stop it.

Central banks can always stop inflation. How do you suggest they wouldn't be able to stop it?

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#193

Post by koonsolo »

> We have systems like BitTorrent and Tor which are decentralized networks and whose responsibility is to blindly distribute data according to a set of prescribed rules and algorithms.

Imagine you could sell and buy things on these distributed networks, that would be a game changer! Only problem is that you need some kind of central payment processor :(.

...oh wait...

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#194

Post by throwawaygh »

Kalium wrote: post #145
newacc9 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One idea is that whatever you build on top of a platform like Ethereum will persist; if you build on top of Facebook or IOS your app can be removed without recourse. Bankless | 90 - 5 Mental Models for Web3 | Chris Dixon https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jezH_7qEk50

The idea of non-deletion seems to keep coming up again and again in technology. From Usenet spam to abusive Facebook apps, I find myself wondering if being forever saddled with every abusive smart contract someone ever wrote is really a desirable trait in a long-term planetary-scale system.

Remember the 1990s and early 2000s when there were tons of easily discoverable forums? Moderation was less of an issue -- each forum was someone's fiefdom, but there was an abundance of choices and communities available at each choice.

The solution to censorship definitely isn't non-deletion. Usenet died for a reason and 4chan is fringe for a reason. The solution to censorship is a healthy choice of venues, good discoverability, and low/no switching costs. Basically, modern phpbb forums or discord but searchable.

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#195

Post by [deleted] »

cableshaft wrote: post #184
hhmc wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yeah no, the Turkish Lira is no longer useful. Yeah, no, it actually is. The USDTRY rate doesn't matter nearly as much if you actually live in Turkey, for hopefully obviously reasons. And if your argument is that realized volatility makes a currency useless, then I'm afraid I have some very bad news about cryptocurrency.

I was being a bit facetious. Obviously people still use it. But it's not in a great place right now. Volatility based on speculation, price discovery, and early adoption is different than volatility because of high inflation. The former just means you might lose your investments. The latter means your government could collapse.

[deleted]

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#196

Post by megameter »

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…

I think the analogy of cryptocurrency's position to the 90's internet is the wrong one to pick, because it describes an environment with some maturity and acceptance in its base technologies, primed for waves of consumer commerce to take hold. The proper example to pick is personal computing circa 1982. When you look at the envisioned uses of personal computing, the advertisements really reach: it helps your child learn. You can store recipes on it. Balance your checkbook. Write documents. And (whispers) play games.

As well, one can occasionally find reassurances in the literature that the computer is your friend, not the back-office monster that billed you incorrectly last month. Would you feel convinced? Many people saw no use for computers in their lives. And the reality of personal computing at that point was that it was mostly a nerd hobby, with a few niches where it could have immediate, direct impact(white collar information work). Professional graphic design functions, audio and video were all still years away, far out of reach on the consumer platforms. It all cost too much - the computers, accessories, the networking options.

But it's also a representative inflection point: microprocessors as a product category had only been available for a little over a decade, and it only took about a decade from there for the embrace of all things digital to kick into high gear with the onset of commodity PC clones, the Wintel monopoly, and then the Internet. Cryptocurrency is seeing a trajectory like that - we're nearing 12 years in and, like early personal computing, it's understood by few, often advertised deceptively, and seeing massive amounts of growth and capital investment. The applications are gradually appearing, and industry incumbents are hopping onto the bandwagon, but it's sneered at by experienced code jockeys: they work with much bigger and fancier hardware than these toys. Nobody is sure of the business model to use. Prices are all over the map.

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#197

Post by serverholic »

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…

Wow this is exactly the example I use. Explaining crypto use-cases is like explaining the use-cases for the internet in the 90s.

"But I can just write a check or hand someone cash, why would I need to send money over the internet?"

"Amazon? But I can go buy what I need down the street. Seems like a lot of work just to save a few minutes."

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#198

Post by groby_b »

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…

So your answer to the statement that most blockchain technology is exploitation of verbal ambiguity and appeal to emotion is... verbal ambiguity and appeal to emotion?

The claim is that there is no traditional valuation model that assigns any value to cryptocurrencies. The only way to refute it is to show that yes, such a valuation model exists.

Until then, it's Goop but for tech.

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#199

Post by jw1224 »

lottin wrote: post #192
karaterobot wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When currency inflation gets out of control, there is often not much the issuing country can do to stop it.

Central banks can always stop inflation. How do you suggest they wouldn't be able to stop it?

> Central banks can always stop inflation

The central banks of Austria, Bolivia, Brazil, China, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Peru, Poland, Venezuela, and Zimbabwe have all failed to stop hyperinflation.

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#200

Post by quantified »

Value is in whatever two parties agree is valuable, in lots of cases requiring the expectation of being valuable to someone else too. A tulip was enormously valuable at one place and time. Who’s to say where it goes, people are funny.
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