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Decentralized Woo Hoo

stephendiehl.com

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Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#211

Post by miracle2k »

addcninblue wrote: post #163
jw1224 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Since I can't exchange a dollar for a piece of faith and credit, it's not really backed in the traditional sense of being a backed asset.

Neither is it backed by the US military or the ability to pay taxes.

The fact that the dollar is in widespread use in a country that has a track record of stability, a well-managed economy, trusted institutions and a strong military all mean that if you want to put your faith into an arbitrary and made up asset, the US dollar is an excellent choice; but its value is a collective illusion nontheless.

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#212

Post by cslarson »

groby_b wrote: post #198
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.

Cryptocurrency (dumb term) just means token - it is a very broad concept. Tokens can have stable value pegged to a fiat, or represent share of a company, or a non-fungible item like a house, or a fungible share of a house, or claim on profits from a financial protocol, or memecoin, or a way to pay for transactions. Of course traditional valuation models can be assigned - it just depends on the characteristics of the token in question.

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#213

Post by jollybean »

throwawaygh wrote: post #148
jollybean wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"So, like sales tax. Which we have uniform and open laws for. Or income tax. Which we have uniform and open laws for." Laws are not mechanisms, proof of transaction, records etc.. 'Smart Contracts' as something unassailable in courts are ridiculous obviously. But 'smart contracts' that facilitate micro-transactions, every day purchases, and flow through the system without human interaction seem like a good idea. Imag…

> Imagine when you buy that thing on your Business Visa, and the 'smart contract' is signed, sent to head office, sent to your accounting software, balanced, money in your bank account immediately etc.. All with a series of signed elements. This already happens at every company I've ever worked for, modulo the "in your bank account immediately" part. But that's down to how cash flow works, which is fundamental to mos…

'The way it works today' is a bit cludgy and there's actually no reason you couldn't have the reimbursement instantly. The 'non tech' reason would be related to internal approvals, but with the right tech, it would be streamlined.

It's also possible that the government could get some of their taxes right away. Obviously not in call cases due to varying accounting issues, but it could work.

FYI there's no reason for 'all your transactions to be on the blockchain' - that's just the way it works today but that can change.

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#214

Post by Sevii »

CJefferson wrote: post #47
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…

Your last point (everything in smart contracts) I just can't understand. I personally wouldn't want to live in a world where the "computer says no", and even if a court and Jury disagrees, it's impossible to change. Similarly (and it's already happened several times), what happens when someone finds a loophole and drains the entire GDP of a country into their account? Do we say "Oh, well that's what the smart contrac…

A lot of people live in a world where the courts, police and politicians are corrupt. Using smart contracts is a tradeoff for lack of rule of law.

Its essentially people thinking "we're not getting a fair shake here from human law, let's try robot law".

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#215

Post by lottin »

jw1224 wrote: post #199
lottin wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Are you sure? What did they try to stop it that didn't work?

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#216

Post by throwawaygh »

jollybean wrote: post #213
throwawaygh wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Imagine when you buy that thing on your Business Visa, and the 'smart contract' is signed, sent to head office, sent to your accounting software, balanced, money in your bank account immediately etc.. All with a series of signed elements. This already happens at every company I've ever worked for, modulo the "in your bank account immediately" part. But that's down to how cash flow works, which is fundamental to mos…

'The way it works today' is a bit cludgy and there's actually no reason you couldn't have the reimbursement instantly. The 'non tech' reason would be related to internal approvals, but with the right tech, it would be streamlined. It's also possible that the government could get some of their taxes right away. Obviously not in call cases due to varying accounting issues, but it could work. FYI there's no reason for '…

> actually no reason you couldn't have the reimbursement instantly

Out in the Real Economy there's a thing called cash flow. You can't pay your employees before your customers pay you.

> FYI there's no reason for 'all your transactions to be on the blockchain' - that's just the way it works today but that can change.

You're right. There's no reason.

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#217

Post by addcninblue »

jw1224 wrote: post #199
lottin wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You're conflating the ability to do something with actually doing that something. Also, what's your point with regards to inflation and fiat currency? That seems tangential to the parent comment.

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#218

Post by Negitivefrags »

rileyphone wrote: post #186
uncomputation wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am actually a rare breed excited about the potential about cryptocurrency here on HN. That said, when I go through your example, I don’t see much difference from the current system despite the illusion that it’s different. > appropriate taxation of a transaction is built into a smart contract So, like sales tax. Which we have uniform and open laws for. Or income tax. Which we have uniform and open laws for. > every…

> Or direct democracy without senators, which the founding fathers (US-specific) agreed was bad because most people do not understand how taxes and budgeting work. To be fair, people were MUCH dumber back then, and the capability to access information was a modicum of what it is today. Direct democracy was also impossible back then given the slow speed of communication and population distributed across vast territory…

People were NOT dumber in the past.

This is very obviously the case if you take time to read old books.

A lot of the supposedly dumb things that people believed in the past were actually quite well supported and derived theories with the information they could get at the time.

Of course there were a lot of people who believed dumb things on blind faith, but this is just as true today as it was then.

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#219

Post by zkldi »

serverholic wrote: post #191
VHRanger wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Ethereum has been moving to proof of stake for the past 4 years. Everytime these threads come up people bring up that ETH is *just about* to move to PoS, but it never happens.

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#220

Post by alexashka »

To me, crypto is just another miracle diet, except it's not weight loss you're after, but 'fixing the finance industry', or getting rich, or whatever.

It's all the same and it's all rather boring.

I don't know what Stephen's motivation is for harping on this topic for so long. Does he expect people to abandon their love for lottery tickets, or their tendency to want to be part of a cult to give their life meaning?

It's just what humans do, among other stupidities such as open offices and having clueless people managing people who know how to do the work.

It's stupidity all the way down. Maybe it hasn't hit home yet - most things are stupid, including a whole lot of what you do, including spending all this time worrying about crypto-pocalypse :)

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