Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Is Web3 Bullshit?

maxread.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 383 posts

Re: Is Web3 Bullshit?

#291

Post by SahAssar »

aptidude187 wrote: post #264
paulryanrogers wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ratio of crime to harmless fun does concern me. For example if Monero is 90% ransomware and violent gangs and only 10% innocent gambling then I'd rather not use it.

The number 1 choice of criminals is still and will always be fiat. It doesn't require any sophisticated tools or knowledge and is accepted everywhere. The 'crypto is for criminals' narrative has been debunked so many times, but if you still need convincing just look how crime infested traditional banking is in comparison: https://youtu.be/f8iPIV9cBAs

Do you think that the ratio of legitimate uses to criminal use is higher or lower for crypto vs fiat?

Re: Is Web3 Bullshit?

#292

Post by woodruffw »

lottin wrote: post #287
woodruffw wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay. In what world would any retail consumer accept a Bitcoin-denominated account based on marginal Bitcoin reserves? Exchanges would be forced to purchase on the open market to meet their withdrawals during demand, which would cause another deflationary spiral. It’s a nightmare scenario with no conceivable upside compared to actual currency. And again, this is before we get to the problem of “the government lets yo…

I don't think you're following me. This isn't some hypothetical scenario. It's common for people who own bitcoin to have their bitcoins deposited at some exchange. Since exchange customers are unlikely to withdraw all their bitcoins simultaneously, exchanges don't have to keep 100% reserves. For instance, they can lend out some of the reserves, or they can use them for whatever purposes they want. When this happens t…

I hope that I'm not following, because what you just described is both crazy and illegal.

Cryptocurrencies are currently considered securities under US law. You can't just pop unrealized securities into existence when a prospective investor asks you for them: it's akin to naked shorting. That's why the stock market has "market makers," i.e. firms that provide low-latency settlement of securities in exchange for a small part of the spread.

I can't find any evidence online that any reputable exchange is using its underlying reserves to cover multiple in-kind balances. If you have links to exchanges actually doing this, both I and the SEC would love to see them.

Edit: I'm struggling to even find links to people discussing this hypothetically online. I found this one on a wiki[1], where it's discussed in the abstract. And I found another thought piece from the Atlanta Fed[2]. But no indicator that any current above-board reserve is currently doing this.

[1]: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Fractional_Reserve_Banking_and_Bi...

[2]: https://www.atlantafed.org/cenfis/publications/notesfromthev...

Re: Is Web3 Bullshit?

#293

Post by legutierr »

JohnFen wrote: post #202
legutierr wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because the writer has apparently never heard of a web server. But blockchains do introduce a technical capability that never existed before: shared, “trustless” access to and control over data. Previously, you could run your own webserver, your own email server, etc, and you could trust your own data, but other people collaborating with you would need to trust you to manage that data, and trust that you hadn’t man…

> But blockchains do introduce a technical capability that never existed before: shared, “trustless” access to and control over data. But that's not a new capability. You can do that with existing tech. At most, it seems to me, what blockchains introduce is convenience, but it comes with a pretty heavy cost in terms of computational resources.

Ok, I’ll bite. What existing tool does this?

Re: Is Web3 Bullshit?

#294

Post by woodruffw »

cormacrelf wrote: post #273
woodruffw wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they don’t. The root server owners (who are mostly universities and research groups, last time I checked) have no formal ownership over the DNS network. They cannot seize or stop any participant in the network, including your scummy local ISP. Confusing the TLD situation for ownership is making the same “distributed, authoritative” mistake.

Despite what blockchains have been showing, decentralisation doesn't have to be painfully disruptive, behave erratically, look like a complete failure or be a thinly veiled centralised system in order to be considered successful. It can also work well and smoothly!

Yep, this is the irony: the Internet (and WWW) are still mostly decentralized and distributed in the classical fault-tolerance senses of the words. They're held together with patch cables, anxiety and pager calls, and they still work better than anything the cryptocurrency space has managed to produce in the last decade.

Re: Is Web3 Bullshit?

#296

Post by booleandilemma »

monkeydust wrote: post #4
matesz wrote: post #3

Web3 is not bullshit, nobody actually defined it properly, just like nobody defined properly what is Web0, Web1 and Web2. Web versioning methodology is bs, not the general concept of pinpointing what makes a big leap. Does anybody here have a link to proper methodology for versioning the Web? ps. Web is simply referring to a web of connected “pages” through links. Pretty much anybody who claims to work on Web3 says n…

This. As soon as I first heard about web3 I thought did I miss web2?

You’re commenting on a website, so no, you did not :)

Re: Is Web3 Bullshit?

#297

Post by madsbuch »

gjulianm wrote: post #101
hbbio wrote: post #58

I have the impression that most comments here are either biased against cryptocurrencies or trying to push for them blindly. That's a bit sad considering we should at least be discussing the technology here. web3 is a marketing brand that defines a future version of web apps where the frontend is a compiled SPA possibly hosted on decentralised platforms (IPFS) and where the backend is a decentralised blockchain (and…

There's a question that isn't answered and that's why would users care about those details of the backend. In the end, a solution can be as technologically elegant as you want, but the thing it really needs to do is improve from the users' point of view. And I don't think it does. For most people, a decentralized platform will usually be worse (speed, latency), and only very rarely better, than a centralized server.…

Crypto is not binary.

The vast majority Og people will likely use a custodian for their crypto. For them it will feel like banking feels now.

Just like coinbase provide a visa card with collateral i your crypto.

So essentially these questions really are answered -- it is not an all or nothing. We will keep, eg. Visa to facilitate retailer transactions with collateral in, eg., bitcoin. Bow you can dispute and everything and you pay in crypto.

Re: Is Web3 Bullshit?

#298

Post by lottin »

woodruffw wrote: post #292
lottin wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you're following me. This isn't some hypothetical scenario. It's common for people who own bitcoin to have their bitcoins deposited at some exchange. Since exchange customers are unlikely to withdraw all their bitcoins simultaneously, exchanges don't have to keep 100% reserves. For instance, they can lend out some of the reserves, or they can use them for whatever purposes they want. When this happens t…

I hope that I'm not following, because what you just described is both crazy and illegal. Cryptocurrencies are currently considered securities under US law. You can't just pop unrealized securities into existence when a prospective investor asks you for them: it's akin to naked shorting. That's why the stock market has "market makers," i.e. firms that provide low-latency settlement of securities in exchange for a sma…

It can be crazy, in your opinion, but the fact is fractional reserve banking has been a standard practice in banking since the invention of banking. I don't know of any country where it's illegal. Whether it would be legal for crypto-exchanges, which typically don't have a banking license, to engage in fractional reserve banking I don't know. Even if it was illegal in the US, it could be legal in Cayman Islands, or elsewhere, and the result would be the same—an inflated supply of bitcoins circulating around the world. Also a lot of exchanges don't seem to be regulated at all. The ones that are regulated could just get a banking license.

Re: Is Web3 Bullshit?

#299

Post by legutierr »

speedgoose wrote: post #279
legutierr wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regardless as to whether Eth is currently overpriced, real people pay gas fees to the Ethereum network to use the services it provides. And regardless as to how you feel about value of those services, to those people who are paying those fees, those services do have value. In other words, the price of Eth is derived in part from real demand for the use of the services of the Ethereum network. If speculative interest…

You can find have various definitions of what is a pyramid scheme. I agree that etherium is not a classic pyramid scheme, but for me it fits many criteria so I feel like it's a fair simple description accessible to anyone. I don't think etherium is necessarily a bad investment if you have no moral or are not well informed. Many scams can be profitable.

> I agree that etherium is not a classic pyramid scheme, but for me it fits many criteria so I feel like it's a fair simple description accessible to anyone

I think you can only say this if you believe that the services provided by the Ethereum network are only valuable to individuals perusing illegitimate activities. Do you really think that there is not any legitimate use for Ethereum?

> I don't think etherium is necessarily a bad investment if you have no moral or are not well informed

Is it immoral to invest in Ethereum if you truly believe in the promise of the technology? Are you saying that anyone who believes in the promise of the technology is ill informed?

Post reply on HN