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Ask HN: Why does cryptocurrency subjects on HN lack curious conversations?

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Re: Ask HN: Why does cryptocurrency subjects on HN lack curious conversations?

#121

Post by onion2k »

Ekaros wrote: post #104
gjulianm wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> NFTs could enable people to transfer digital assets between platforms without needing the platforms to talk to one another. I could buy an NFT of a 3D model of some Yeezy sneakers, and then bring that NFT to Fortnite for my avatar to wear there, and to the Metaverse to show off there, and to a sneakers forum to verify my ownership in the community there as well. That could be quite useful. 3D cosmetic assets for ga…

Implementations are really really messy. I'm not expert but I would argue that likely most engines have slightly different ways of doing things like sneakers on character model. So you can't really transfer from one engine to other. Might work between Unreal-engine games, but even there there might be issues. And already seen with NFTs, that are much simpler thing. Where does the data live? If it is not on blockchain…

Wouldn't it be better to try to sell a same kind of object in your own product and then make more money from that? Instead allowing use of objects from other places...

Every business loves a walled garden because they can pretend that all the customers will spend all their money inside it, but it's anti-consumer, anti-choice, and if the business fails then everyone loses all the things they own there.

Plus, if people could bring their own assets to a game then the number and variety of things in the game grows significantly. It's no longer limited by what the producers can build themselves. For a lot of games, especially ones made by smaller companies, that could be a considerable boon.

Re: Ask HN: Why does cryptocurrency subjects on HN lack curious conversations?

#122

Post by Applejinx »

rocqua wrote: post #100
Applejinx wrote: post #33

I would say it's because people on Hacker News are pretty intelligent. Either they are intelligent and manipulative and are looking to maximize their investments whatever the cost to others, the externalities, whatever… or they are intelligent and accurately perceiving the first type of intelligent person. By now, if you're a techie nerd, to be naive about this topic would mean there's something seriously wrong with…

I think that is disingenuous. Because there remain interesting things to discus and consider in the world of 'crypto', even if you acknowledge there are issues and its not perfect yet. There certainly are some loud 'shills' out there. But there are also actual interesting technical developments. It seems to me that between the shills and the people shouting down who they perceive to be shills, the interesting discuss…

If you're a sufficiently intelligent person, you can frame said interesting things in such a way that it establishes your position w.r.t crypto. It's like a sort of chess.

If you're a sufficiently intelligent person, you can recognize arguments like "you oppose X, but you do not acknowledge Y. And Y exists. Therefore, you are disingenuous: you are not candid or sincere, you're pretending that you don't know Y. Therefore nobody should listen to you about X.'

Um… I oppose X. At this stage, not interested in Y. And I keep running into arguments that are trying to shut me up about X… by any means necessary, including flat-out sophistry of every possible description.

And this becomes an intellectual game. How can this NOT be fascinating to Hacker News readers? :)

Re: Ask HN: Why does cryptocurrency subjects on HN lack curious conversations?

#123

Post by gjulianm »

onion2k wrote: post #114
gjulianm wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> NFTs could enable people to transfer digital assets between platforms without needing the platforms to talk to one another. I could buy an NFT of a 3D model of some Yeezy sneakers, and then bring that NFT to Fortnite for my avatar to wear there, and to the Metaverse to show off there, and to a sneakers forum to verify my ownership in the community there as well. That could be quite useful. 3D cosmetic assets for ga…

If right now you cannot upload a 3D model to Fortnite straight away, why do you think it would be easy to do with NFTs? I didn't say it would be. NFTs are about access control and ownership, not 3D models. That was only the example I've used. The (huge, but largely unrelated) issue there is about standardizing assets which would also need to be solved (gltf does go some way to doing that though ... it is "the gif of…

> I didn't say it would be.

You said it would enable it. But the stopper about that implementation is not ownership tracking, it's integration. So it's an use case that's not enabled by NFTs, just an use case where you could use NFTs but also any other ownership tracking technology.

> If it's easier to think about, try applying the same solution to unique avatars or something, where the display mechanism is solved.

I can move my avatar image between games without requiring NFTs. Now, if you want "uniqueness", then again the problem is not solved by NFTs, but by some kind of DRM tech. What stops me from copying the image and using it? Or from minting my own NFT with the same image? Do you think that game platforms going to implement complex DRM solutions to avoid people from using avatars they don't own?

The overall point is a trend that I wrote in another comment [1]: just because X has not been done and crypto/NFTs can be used for X, that doesn't mean that crypto enables X. You might find that there are other issues that explain why X hasn't been done.

To this day, 99% of the times I see someone propose crypto/NFTs applications they haven't asked themselves the questions of whether you can do that (or a 90% similar thing) without crypto and why hasn't that been done yet. Possibly because when you ask those questions most of crypto use cases are not "use cases enabled by crypto" but "use cases where I can use crypto or other storage technology".

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29295514

Re: Ask HN: Why does cryptocurrency subjects on HN lack curious conversations?

#124

Post by svennek »

vbs_redlof wrote: post #97
svennek wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMHO because it depends on uncloneability of digital assets.. Which I believe is not possible. The whole thing that makes cryptocurrencies work now is the un-cloneability of the amount of work done (which is why the 51% problem exists in the first place). The only good way of doing it would be through a cartel with strict enforcement of hashrates etc.. And welcome to the financial banking system...

You're confusing concepts and blockchain fundamentals. "Uncloneability" is the double-spending problem solved by proof-of-work/hashcash scheme. The 51% attack is not the problem, it's just a requirement for a PoW based blockchain to work. Just like how you have 1/3 honest node requirements in traditional BFT distributed database designs.

So cloneable cryptocoins is a thing? Where do I sign up wink.

IMHO cloneablitiy IS the problem, PoW is just a (very, very unfortunate) solution to that. PoS (stake as in possession, not pledging) is IMHO inherently impossible, so PoW is all we got, now and for ever...

Re: Ask HN: Why does cryptocurrency subjects on HN lack curious conversations?

#125

Post by Ekaros »

svennek wrote: post #64
prohobo wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I'd say your entire approach is antithetical to healthy discussion: insinuating anyone who is interested in crypto is technically inept, and turning the discussion into a 2-sides polarization. There's no use in talking about crypto in a sincere way now because of the way its been politicized. I tried recently to explain to someone that cryptographically codifying law and contracts can be beneficial in a lot of…

Actually I agree with you that a "blockchain of law" would be great.. But that could also be done just by putting all law on somewhere public like github... Or by having a block chain with a hard limit of 10 khashes/second per country (detecting cheaters is easy as far as I understand) and you can have a network of 200 raspberrypi zeros running it for around a single kilowatt..

It seems many of these ideas stem from failures of USA's political system. That is entrenched players fighting against government breaking their hold on their profit models even if that would be net benefit for general population. See taxation and even access to law, which I heard cost something 650$ a month from private provider.

For example Finland already have laws online accessible for free: https://finlex.fi/en/

And Finland probably isn't only country doing this.

Re: Ask HN: Why does cryptocurrency subjects on HN lack curious conversations?

#126

Post by LispShmisp »

glenvdb wrote: post #86
svennek wrote: post #3

I think basically because there is nothing interesting left to discus. One camp (where I am in) basically believes it is an environmental disaster, unsuitable for its stated purpose and most likely as scam by the "whales" manipulating the price, and with a potential 51%-disaster. The other camp believes that it is the future of money, untraceable wealth storage and inflation/"confiscation proof" and that all the envi…

> I think that I see in my network of people that the more technically apt they are, the less they believe in it This is because they just see the blockchain as an inefficient database, rather than really understanding the problems Bitcoin solves and why Satoshi made the choices they did. There are important trade-offs between efficiency, redundancy, decentralisation, and robustness in an adversarial environment. The…

Your post comes off strongly as cultish/MLMish. Sorry I don't know how to phrase it so it doesn't come as a personal attack. Most of the crypto posts sound like it.

> This is because they just see the blockchain as an inefficient database

I think it's crazy that you feel this way, I can only speak for myself and a few others, but we do in fact fully understand it and why it works this way.

Satoshi is not some god that has come to save us. He saw something that fraction of people in society consider to be a problem and attempted to solve it. He did not consider complex ways that his solution would interact with the society. A lot of us think that crypto causes more problems than it solves.

Re: Ask HN: Why does cryptocurrency subjects on HN lack curious conversations?

#127

Post by prohobo »

gjulianm wrote: post #118
prohobo wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're wrong about "lacking initiative and the detailed procedures" - that's exactly what blockchains were created for: As a response to opaque and unreliable systems. This is the solution to a systematic problem in governance. Blockchains simply add verifiability of claims. Yes, you could create a central system which flags "bad actions" or something, but it'd be difficult to prove someone scammed you without the co…

> You're wrong about "lacking initiative and the detailed procedures" - that's exactly what blockchains were created for: A response to opaque and unreliable systems. This is the solution to a systematic problem in governance. You can't solve non-tech problems with technical solutions. If the government doesn't bother to have accessible documentation about how to do X thing, why would they bother to make a blockchain…

I don't think you quite grasp that people are already building blockchains for government use. You keep saying "why haven't they done it yet then?" while they are actively working on it. I don't know why it took so long, but it's happening now.

Once you have verifiable "truth" in a system, it becomes a lot harder for it to become corrupt. "The emperor has no clothes" modality stops being profitable because there's a constant red blinking light re-assuring people that, in fact, he doesn't have any clothes on. If a central authority clearly goes against the protocols of the system, for a more realistic example: the police decide not to arrest someone who is proven to have stolen $10 million from someone, the system disintegrates due to it clearly and verifiably not being respected.

Re: Ask HN: Why does cryptocurrency subjects on HN lack curious conversations?

#128

Post by anonymoushn »

jacknews wrote: post #120
anonymoushn wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sure. so uber shouldn't exist and we should all be paying more to local taxi monopolies who don't have mobile apps, and so on.

uber is perfectly legal the last time I checked? And let's see how that story pans out actually. I don't agree with the taxi mafia, but uber are not exactly knights in shining armor either, and are only really viable because of a Venture Capital subsidized attempt to create a monopoly. Is your argument that bitcoin circumvents established institutions, particularly the unjust ones? I see the appeal, but those should…

uber was not perfectly legal in all jurisdictions at all times. I would guess they were operating illegally in almost every jurisdiction when they began operating there. They in fact had teams dedicated to illegal activities in specific regions. There's an article about that here by Mike Isaac who also wrote a pretty good book about Uber: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/03/technology/uber-greyball-...

It seems like if we ought to be waiting for the state to fix payment processors, we should also be waiting for them to fix taxis, instead of operating illegal "ride share" apps.

My argument isn't about Bitcoin because Bitcoin isn't a technology that provides cheap settlement of dollars. Other technologies do though, and they additionally avoid the need to pay e.g. 3.6% (!!) to Stripe, which seems like it makes them worthwhile on its own.

Re: Ask HN: Why does cryptocurrency subjects on HN lack curious conversations?

#129

Post by dandanua »

jkhsdfkjgh wrote: post #112
anonymoushn wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The community generally doesn't have a problem when the source of richness is harvesting the personal information of a few million victims and getting bought out by Google.

Everyone in HN is not the same. It's likely that the people that question the source of bitcoin's wealth are also questioning google's ethics, and that the bitcoin get rich quick people are happy working for google too. Taking a community to be homogeneous is a common fallacy.

Twitter founder is the best example right now. Those people are omnivorous.

Re: Ask HN: Why does cryptocurrency subjects on HN lack curious conversations?

#130

Post by spapas82 »

mrweasel wrote: post #70
spapas82 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually no it is not useless in the real world! Using crypto makes it very easy to send and receive money very quickly, without the need to rely to the "system" of banks, governments etc. I can't think of a more useful application, for me it's more of a revolution!

Given the very limited scale of cryto currency, and limited usability in the real world isn’t it pretty much a failed revolution? Bitcoin is still the biggest crypto currency, and compared to Euro, dollars and other currencies, it’s practically useless. The network can’t compete on scale, compared to VISA, MasterCard or AMEX. The crypto currencies try to solve problems much of the western simply don’t have. The tech…

I disagree. Of course you can't just give (or receive) crypto to anybody. However, moving crypto between two crypto-aware parties is simple and fast. Definitely easier than using the "system" (especially if your are not part of it; consider how difficult is to open a bank account).

So I will be more specific and say that it is a revolution for the people that use crypto. I don't know if it will be a revolution for the general population but my belief is that it won't be. The "system" will find ways to crush crypto then it starts to become more popular. Right now it doesn't care that much ...

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