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The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

stephendiehl.com

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Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#81

Post by coralreef »

jrd259 wrote: post #20
coralreef wrote: post #5

This entire post seems to avoid or lack the understanding of the basic reasons blockchain were created; that is, to offer a decentralized, permissionless, censorship-resistant network. This was Satoshi's vision, and those values are a blockchain's express priority over scale and efficiency. Centralization is great for speed and efficiency, not so great for protection against authoritarian actors (governments or centr…

We have one already: cash. As for protection against authoritarian actors. If your state has already gone full panopticon, crypto won't save you, indeed the state will mandate exclusive use of their chosen crypto, gaining even more visibility into your life. If your state has not yet done so, you should fight to preserve liberty and the rule of law. If your country turns into a full-out surveillance state, you are no…

> We have one already: cash.

Cash is awful if you live in Turkey, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Lebanon, etc. The USD has lost 90% of its purchasing power since the 1950's, meaning cash is toxic over longer time horizons. You cannot have a society where everyone seeks to get rid of the reserve asset over time.

> If your country turns into a full-out surveillance state, you are not going to overthrow it by buying things with Bitcoin.

You're going to have much better chances anonymizing yourself, compared to say a bank account.

> I would like to see some data on what actually valuable applications or businesses have been enabled (or simply improved) by crypto currency.

Bitcoin is a savings account in a world where Bank of America's Savings account yields you 0.01% APY, or up to 0.04% if you have more money. We are increasingly forced to take on more risk simply to maintain the purchasing power of our wealth.

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#82

Post by kmmlng »

rawtxapp wrote: post #56
Scarblac wrote: post #38

I wonder how much of the Crypto hype is because the US banking system still lives in the 1980s or thereabouts. If everybody in the US had access to bank accounts with easy electronic transfers within 5 seconds for no charge, no chargebacks and so on, as people are used to in the EU, would people still be excited about Bitcoin?

Then you would expect people in the EU to not be interested in crypto, yet it's the opposite. You can pull up search volume for "Bitcoin" across the world (using Google Trends), many European nations are at the top. As a matter of fact, their search volume is higher than US.

> easy electronic transfers within 5 seconds for no charge

This is certainly not the case everywhere in the EU. In Germany for example it usually takes days. Not sure about other countries.

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#83

Post by rawtxapp »

JackFr wrote: post #76
Scarblac wrote: post #38

I wonder how much of the Crypto hype is because the US banking system still lives in the 1980s or thereabouts. If everybody in the US had access to bank accounts with easy electronic transfers within 5 seconds for no charge, no chargebacks and so on, as people are used to in the EU, would people still be excited about Bitcoin?

So the US has an antiquated payments system vis-a-vis Europe, but crypto solves none of those problems. I don't see it. I see FOMO, groupthink and greed.

You fail to see people who lost trust in their governments and organizations? You don't see how people are unhappy with getting their savings diluted by unlimited money printing?

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#84

Post by voldacar »

horsawlarway wrote: post #59
padobson wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this is what I don't understand from the naysayers. Anyone who says blockchain-driven assets don't have intrinsic value seems to ignore the value of trust - the ability to trust that the ledger is accurate seems extremely valuable. The author of the article skips over the question entirely, maybe he's addressed it elsewhere, but if the crypto skeptics continue to ignore one of its primary value propositions, I…

But that ledger isn't accurate. It's just distributed and difficult to change. I technically am the owner of (quite a few) bitcoin that were being processed by MtGox when they imploded. The wallet they were in at the time was emptied and no longer exists. I still receive the relevant court documents as the case continues still. As far as the ledger is concerned - they are no longer mine. --- So question to you: How d…

>Now it turns out I have to turn around and trust a central authority anyways! That authority being the government that is handling the prosecution of MtGox for fraud and theft.

In theory, DeFi can solve this. In practice it is hampered by poor UX and high transaction/gas fees. I think in the far future, the idea of ever having "your" assets in a wallet whose key you don't control will be seen as a ludicrous archaism. Sorry for your loss btw, that really sucks

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#85

Post by JackFr »

horsawlarway wrote: post #59
padobson wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this is what I don't understand from the naysayers. Anyone who says blockchain-driven assets don't have intrinsic value seems to ignore the value of trust - the ability to trust that the ledger is accurate seems extremely valuable. The author of the article skips over the question entirely, maybe he's addressed it elsewhere, but if the crypto skeptics continue to ignore one of its primary value propositions, I…

But that ledger isn't accurate. It's just distributed and difficult to change. I technically am the owner of (quite a few) bitcoin that were being processed by MtGox when they imploded. The wallet they were in at the time was emptied and no longer exists. I still receive the relevant court documents as the case continues still. As far as the ledger is concerned - they are no longer mine. --- So question to you: How d…

This exactly.

Turns out there is some utility to a central authority.

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#86

Post by grlass »

bhouston wrote: post #71

Stephen is mostly likely right that the decentralized nature of Crypto is not really a benefit. That said digital cash and tokens and NFTs do have value and I expect them to get even more popular. I am reminded of the P2P/decentralized nature of Napster and how it was going to be a revolution. Napter's P2P infrastructure (and later Gnutelle and Bittorrent) allowed it to operate in a legal gray zone or at least have d…

Most of these systems are designed around pseudonymity, not anonymity. Only things like Zcash, and Monero set out with that explicit goal.

I suppose much like with BitTorrent, the criminal needs will be both good and bad; allows routing around unjust laws (of which there are many), as well as routing around just laws (of which there are many).

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#87

Post by HelloNurse »

padobson wrote: post #17
IronIvan wrote: post #8

> Any application that could be done on a blockchain could be better done on a centralized database. Except crime. After all as we all know: If you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear. And look at how inefficient all these permissionless, trustless protocols are! What a waste! Let's just all trust a central authority and think of the savings and the children.

Yeah, this is what I don't understand from the naysayers. Anyone who says blockchain-driven assets don't have intrinsic value seems to ignore the value of trust - the ability to trust that the ledger is accurate seems extremely valuable. The author of the article skips over the question entirely, maybe he's addressed it elsewhere, but if the crypto skeptics continue to ignore one of its primary value propositions, I…

The article discusses pseudo-money, not generic decentralized databases. The main point is that even if a blockchain distributed database technically "works" it is highly inadequate for many practical money-like applications, particularly because trust has to include the real world.

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#88

Post by bildung »

rawtxapp wrote: post #56
Scarblac wrote: post #38

I wonder how much of the Crypto hype is because the US banking system still lives in the 1980s or thereabouts. If everybody in the US had access to bank accounts with easy electronic transfers within 5 seconds for no charge, no chargebacks and so on, as people are used to in the EU, would people still be excited about Bitcoin?

Then you would expect people in the EU to not be interested in crypto, yet it's the opposite. You can pull up search volume for "Bitcoin" across the world (using Google Trends), many European nations are at the top. As a matter of fact, their search volume is higher than US.

The difference is that those people can honestly see and use crypto as speculative assets, which is fine (if we ignore externalities for a second), not making up use cases.

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#90

Post by c7DJTLrn »

I wish I could have discussions about cryptocurrency as a technology rather than a "get rich quick" scheme. Back in 2017 I was really excited about Ethereum and the promises of scalability not just from Vitalik B. but from other developers too. I still think that cryptocurrency could do good for the world if the issues can be resolved but for now everybody's got their eyes on the price, not the technology's horizon.
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