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Decentralized Woo Hoo

stephendiehl.com

231–240 of 295 posts

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#231
post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

Presumably those corrupt people will be the ones in charge of writing smart contracts as well if you're living somewhere so deeply corrupt.

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#232
In the 90s I was part of the cypherpunks movement and a total devotee of the idea that decentralized currency, unbreakable cryptography, mix-nets, etc was going to make it impossible for state power to govern cyberspace, and John Perry Barlow's Declaration of Independence for Cyberspace would be made real.

But this turned out to be the high naïveté of a young person. First of all, the physical world is the ultimate gatekeeper, and so unless you are uploaded into the matrix, you're going to need access to stuff in the real world, and those off ramps and real world requirements can still easily come under the control of governments.

Secondly, a lot of "decentralized" stuff becomes centralized rapidly because it turns out there are still efficiency gains from centralization, and a lot of people don't want to include costs to upkeep these systems. As you saw with miners, eventually the folks who had cheap access to energy, and capital resources to buy large farms of equipment, could tend to monopolize a significant amount of hashing power. And when you look at technologies like IPFS, again, people are much more interesting in consuming files than letting their computer resources be used to provide part of the network. I suppose BitTorrent is a counter example since enough people seem to be seeders, but I'm not convinced it'll scale to replace the entire Web.

Look at SMTP/IMAP. Decentralized and federated, one of the oldest protocols on the net. Yet, almost all of humanity gets their email from a few big providers handling billions of addresses. Hardly anyone runs an SMTP server at home.

A decentralized protocol today becomes a centralized protocol tomorrow if there is any net economic/efficiency benefit to centralizing. That means eventually there will be a power asymmetry and all of the vaunt claims of a flat, non-hierarchal, or democratic system go out the window. Eventually, a few entities will end up in control in a way that gives them significant power that individuals do not.

But unlike the real world systems we have today, where governments can intervene when the distortions become too onerous, the current crop of defi stuff has no regulatory system to restore a kind of homeostasis when it becomes unbalanced. There is also nothing to be done if a critical security flaw is found (e.g. SHA found to be 'broken').

Thus the idea of basing a significant part of the world finance and information systems on top of blockchain to me seems both hideously wasteful and potentially catastrophic for society.

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#233
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.

Also, you can pay taxes with fiat currency.

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

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

But today, I can just use my credit card to pay for anything instantly, anywhere in the world... who the fuck still uses checks??

Why would I want to use crypto and lose all the protections I have from my card company, while having to wait minutes for transactions to be confirmed instead of milli-seconds?? And with the risk of my "wallet" being hacked in an instant and losing everything, without a chance for appealing to anyone for the funds to be returned?? Do you seriously consider that an attractive option to anyone, in the way that the Internet or Amazon (actually, online shops in general!) were?? Seems completely delusional to me.

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#235
post #93

The big two, India and China account for 3B people would never need Crypto at all. Their own mobile payment systems are thriving. India's system which was launched in 2016 clocks in 4B+ transcations per month, grows 100% YOY. A lot of developing countries have their mobile systems which are far better than Crypto.

Another half billion or more in Africa have been happily using mobile payment systems such as M-Pesa for years now as well, sending more money than the Bitcoin "market cap" each year.

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#236
post #233

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.

Also, you can pay taxes with fiat currency.

And use it to participate in the economy to obtain little things such as housing and food. Not to mention a computer and an internet connection.

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#237
post #215
post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

What could the central bank of zimbabwe have done to stop inflation? I agree that central banks can almost always stop inflation...as long as they are controlling a reserve currency that actually has international value. Otherwise there is actually very little a central bank can do when your currency isn't used for imports, exports, international trade etc and foreign dollars/euros/RNB are needed to do almost any economical meaningful transaction.

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#238
post #233

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.

Also, you can pay taxes with fiat currency.

You must pay taxes with fiat currency.

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#239
post #199
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.

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

Which of those were central banks of nations where debts including both private and public debt were denominated principally in fiat whose monetary policy was controlled by the central bank?

Some of them were pre-fiat (gold standard), and some were dealing with situations were obligations were largely in externally-controlled fiat (e.g., USD.)

Re: Decentralized Woo Hoo

#240
post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are huge regulatory and societal roadblocks for crypto to be used as envisioned not as present during those other cases of wide technological adoption. For crypto to be valuable, merchants need to use it. Transactions need to be cheaper. A stable decentralized financial system needs to emerge. The use case is a world without central banks and central currency manipulation. People who don’t see the use case don’…

> The use case is a world without central banks and central currency manipulation. > People who don’t see the use case don’t understand the scope of what direct exchange of currency without central management entails. People who see that as a feature don't understand how credit works nor its importance in modern financial capitalism.

Credit and hard crypto currencies are not incompatible. The main difference is crypto sets hard limits on underlying denominator of value and distinguishes it from credit.

There are potential liquidity problems and endless debates about whether having everything backed by crypto like bitcoin would be a net positive. I don’t have the background to get into all the economic implications and I’m not entirely sold on this alternative crypto based future I’m presenting being a good thing, even if possible. Rather than dismiss these types of arguments, though, I’d like to see more central bank advocates explain why creditors which accumulate bitcoin would not be able to act similarly to current issuers of credit, but more checked and decentralized because none would have control over the production of the underlying value representation that’s borrowed against.

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