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The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

stephendiehl.com

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Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#191

Post by moolcool »

joshmarlow wrote: post #157

I think a lot of discussions around the utility of blockchains misses (or just ignores) a really subtle but important point: smart contract networks (like Ethereum) could be thought of like public utilities that are implemented via markets. And I think that perspective can unlock a lot of innovation. If I want to launch a startup, I have to cover hosting costs, manage infrastructure (terraform, AWS/DigitalOcean, Dock…

> But if I can build my app using smart contracts, then they are always available to execute when needed - just pay to write/execute. I don't need to cover hosting costs or much infrastructure beyond some web interface (which I could just put on Netlify).

So you're already using Netlify, why not take the extra step and make your entire app open source and serverless? That solves the "If my startup fails" case, and the hosting costs issue which you'd be incurring either way.

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#192

Post by davidw »

BoysenberryPi wrote: post #155

When it comes to crypto I am completely uninformed. In my uninformed opinion, I think there is probably something of value in crypto and the blockchain but I can't see it under the intense amount of bullshit the crypto community comes up with and I am not willing to dig through that mountain.

I'm in a similar boat. I could see ... something of value coming out of all this, perhaps something unexpected. But I certainly don't want to get involved with all the grifters, scammers, hucksters, confidence men, cryptobros and their various and sundry schemes. Knowing that I don't know much about the details of it... I think of "if you're playing a poker game and you look around the table and and can't tell who the sucker is, it's you" and know that I'd be the sucker, so the winning move is not to play.

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#193

Post by shawnz »

faeyanpiraat wrote: post #129
tommek4077 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if you do your transaction on the blockchain. Most are done internally. It's like your bank is not sending someone with a suitcase full of money just because you pay your phone bill.

So it's just a different institution doing transactions internally with extra steps.

Not exactly, the "extra steps" are necessary to create separability so that the user can have their choice of institution to deal with.

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#194

Post by cinntaile »

bildung wrote: post #142
mandmandam wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or Algorand, etc. I get that this is all 'new' and confusing, but the know-it-all condescension really rubs me the wrong way - do they clone these people or what? Where do they all come from?

All of Stellar, Hedera and Algorand have a big centralization problem, they have solved nothing. Stellar and Ripple aren't even proper cryptocurrencies unless you allow for a very lenient definition. > the know-it-all condescension really rubs me the wrong way - do they clone these people or what? Where do they all come from? In my experience the people being very optimistic about crypto real world use cases usually…

> In my experience...

That's probably true but it's also true for the author of the blog. He's a programmer and not an economist.

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#195

Post by WanderPanda »

rchowe wrote: post #41
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?

Most Bitcoin transactions have a quite high transaction cost, and I would argue that chargebacks are an important consumer protection.

Tx cost on BTC main layer has been ~7ct for months, what are you talking about?

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#196

Post by yashg »

bhouston wrote: post #78
__alexs wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That said digital cash and tokens and NFTs do have value and I expect them to get even more popular. Literally all my cash is already digital.

You are referring to Google Pay/Apple Pay/VISA. This is correct and it is mostly what people use these days. But it isn't on a block chain and it isn't extensible. With our current digital cash I can not create NFTs and trade then around. It also doesn't allow for arbitrarily large transfers. It doesn't replace ACH or Interac. There are no public ledgers. I think that digital cash with the features I described above…

Why does digital cash need to be on a blockchain?

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#197

Post by bmcahren »

ethbr0 wrote: post #172
JuliusBranson wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stablecoins are dangerous because they have the potential to change the current selection effects on the elite. For one thing, stablecoins subvert the ability of the Federal Reserve to print money and give it to their friends at Goldman Sachs et al --- normally this is supposed to result in their friends have a larger fraction of money than they previously had. You start with 1 dollar, David at Goldman Sachs starts w…

It seems like there's another side to this story you're not mentioning... I think I read about it in history of the 19th and 20th centuries?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_Reserve_Act#:~:text=A%20y....

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#198

Post by toomuchtodo »

mountainb wrote: post #180
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?

The technology doesn't really matter that much. If the US banking system wants to compete, it could try paying yield on savings. That's one weird trick that has made banking attractive for well over 1,000 years. A banking system that does not pay yields to savers is just a glorified collection of ledgers.

A crypto system that pays yields on monopoly money is just a glorified collection of ledgers moving fake money around, no?

What are yields a product of with crypto? If not productivity of underlying assets, it must be speculation, which isn't sustainable. You eventually run out of greater fools.

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#199

Post by mikestew »

mechanical_bear wrote: post #120
ninjanomnom wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Voting is intentionally designed for it to be impossible to verify what your final vote is so that it's impossible for someone to use that to hold you to a particular vote. A classic example being a household all being forced to vote one way by the head of that household. With no verification possible you can freely vote without influence from others who would use that verification for their own ends. This is also wh…

> This is also why taking a picture of your ballot will nullify it In what jurisdiction is this the case? I have never heard of it.

You can do a search, but a minority of states in the U. S. outlaw it.

Re: The Handwavy Technobabble Nothingburger of Crypto

#200

Post by JuliusBranson »

paulgb wrote: post #186
JuliusBranson wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stablecoins are dangerous because they have the potential to change the current selection effects on the elite. For one thing, stablecoins subvert the ability of the Federal Reserve to print money and give it to their friends at Goldman Sachs et al --- normally this is supposed to result in their friends have a larger fraction of money than they previously had. You start with 1 dollar, David at Goldman Sachs starts w…

Leaving aside the dubious idea that the Federal Reserve can give their friends the ability to print money, stablecoins don't subvert any party's ability to print money if they are pegged to that money. If you can print USD, and I have a stablecoin pegged to $1 USD, you can just print $1 USD and buy my stablecoin on the open market.

>Leaving aside the dubious idea that the Federal Reserve can give their friends the ability to print money

You didn't read my comment correctly.

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