It’s not still the early days of blockchain • Hacker News Board

Re: It’s not still the early days of blockchain

#361

Post by democracy » Sat, Jan 15, 2022, 9:13 AM UTC

ique wrote: post #199

hubraumhugo wrote: post #33

I'm still very opposed to the idea of taking a technology and then searching a problem for it. Why? Back in 2017 during the first hype cycle, blockchain companies raised hundreds of millions with ICOs. I became very interested in the technology too, and some friends still work in this space. 4 years later in the web3 era, there is not a single product aside from trading/finance that got traction. Use cases like stori…

The idea that blockchain tech is somehow invented out of nothing and then we search for a problem to match couldn't be further from the truth. Talk to anyone who works in the industry and they're trying to solve a problem. I used to work in blockchain tech and the main problem I was focused on was "How do we prevent internet monopolies like Facebook and Google?". If you don't see those monopolies as a problem, then y…

I am trying to solve world's hunger with my OpenGL game using 8080 assembler. I think I am getting somewhere...

Re: It’s not still the early days of blockchain

#362

Post by vanviegen » Sat, Jan 15, 2022, 9:14 AM UTC

staticassertion wrote: post #348

rileyphone wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blockchain is proving a more than capable solution in the ransomware payments space, enabling a whole new class of malware.

The thing is it's not really particularly good at that. No moreso at least because of any attributes of the blockchain. It's really because of external reasons: 1. Lack of tooling and cooperation for investigating fraud 2. Lack of regulation 3. Programmatic interfaces 4. There are markets like the NFT space that are amazing for laundering But no part of why it's good for crime has to do with blockchain.

Reason 2) does seem to be due to an attribute of the Blockchain, as there is no central organization that the government can force to establish the real-world identity of all participants. (Although this is now happening at the point of conversion to/from fiat currency.)

Re: It’s not still the early days of blockchain

#363

Post by yashg » Sat, Jan 15, 2022, 9:15 AM UTC

cinntaile wrote: post #178

galaxyLogic wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buying real estate with bit-coin, isn't that close to money laundering?

Why would that be the case?

You have cash (like a ton of cash in bank notes). The cash has unsavory origins. You go to a shady local dealer who will take your cash and give you crypto in an offshore exchange. That is cross border money laundering. You then use that crypto to buy property or NFT "art". Some months later you sell the asset, either for money in bank or crypto which you convert to money on a KYC exchange like Coinbase. Voila, you have washed your dirty money into perfectly clean money in bank. Best, you do it in a jurisdiction which doesn't have personal income tax. Like Dubai.

Re: It’s not still the early days of blockchain

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Post by shrimpx » Sat, Jan 15, 2022, 9:16 AM UTC

tsimionescu wrote: post #190

galaxyLogic wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'Public voting' is not a technological problem but political one. There's a lot of opposition to making voting more accessible to everyone. Voting should be easy, and you don't need blockchain for that but maybe it could help. The question is who wants "voting rights".

Unfortunately, trust in voting can only be achieved with paper voting, there is no technological solution to improve it that doesn't completely remove trust as well.

Trust as in the public trusting the vote? I'm afraid you can put political spin on and create distrust in pretty much anything.

Re: It’s not still the early days of blockchain

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Post by traceddd » Sat, Jan 15, 2022, 9:16 AM UTC

3825 wrote: post #304

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also enables people to finance themselves despite tyrannical restrictions imposed by bad governments. Using bitcoin I can send money to someone in Chi no a who's social rating was degraded by the CCP and who is forbidden from using banks. This alone trumps any arguments against bitcoin. Crime will exist forever and criminals will find ways to finance themselves anyway, so the use of cryptocurrencies for their oper…

> Using bitcoin I can send money to someone in Chi no a who's social rating was degraded by the CCP and who is forbidden from using banks How will they convert it into something they can use to pay rent and buy groceries? > Crime will exist forever and criminals will find ways to finance themselves anyway, so the use of cryptocurrencies for their operations is not really a factor. Does this make it easier for the wea…

Fees are based on resource usage. In Bitcoin this is usually the total data size of inputs and outputs that are used to make the sum. This is where the issue of dust arises, when an address holds a mass quantity of low value inputs, but combing them yields a very large and therefore costly transaction.

In some other chains, like Ethereum, the accounting is ledger based. With these systems theres is no variety in input count, but it similarly scales by transaction computation so more complex contracts are more expensive.

Both networks have a fluctuating transaction cost due to congestion competition, but the “base cost” in either is totally unaffected by the value/total amount of currency.

Re: It’s not still the early days of blockchain

#366

Post by trenchgun » Sat, Jan 15, 2022, 9:17 AM UTC

eterm wrote: post #255

neiman wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. "Remotely send money" is a super hard thing to do. I literally just struggled for a month with a transfer that included 3 countries, none of them is English speaking. It required letters from banks, accountants, plenty of forms of different countries, translations, stuff which is lost in translation (the bank was unhappy with the word selection of a non-English speaker accountant, for example), different format…

> "Remotely send money" is a super hard thing to do. Technologically it is not. Which is why anyone in the EU can instantly send money to anywhere else in the EU, for free, despite being a collection of 27 countries with dozens of different languages and legacy banking systems. The hurdles are legal and regulatory, not technical. Blockchain and new technology does not solve the underlying problem at all.

That is not correct.

Source: recently received money sent by a friend from another EU country.

Re: It’s not still the early days of blockchain

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Post by meheleventyone » Sat, Jan 15, 2022, 9:18 AM UTC

galaxyLogic wrote: post #324

tsimionescu wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you inagine "giving you bitcoins" will work without you doing something equivalent to sending bills or charging credit cards? Sure, you can publish your wallet address and tell them to send you money. How do you give them access to your content after they have sent their money? How is Bitcoin helping compared to you publishing your IBAN account number and asking for money to be sent directly there?

I'm not very far on my project at all but I assume that a public ledger could tell me that somebody transferred money to the wallet associated with my application. I wouldn't need to "send bills" because I wouldn't know who my users are. Except that when they login with their crypto-id my application will do work for them, because they have crypto-paid for it. I wouldn't need to charge credit-cards since they transfe…

How would you deal with things like VAT?

Re: It’s not still the early days of blockchain

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Post by notahacker » Sat, Jan 15, 2022, 9:18 AM UTC

hectormalot wrote: post #316

andreskytt wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That said, blockchain-like technologies (ksi, more specifically) can be used to assure the integrity of databases storing the relationship between you and your car.

Yes, but is it a problem worth solving beyond what we have today? What’s the last time we saw an database integrity failure at the DMV/… leading to cars being owned by people that shouldn’t?

I'm pretty sure it wasn't more recently than the last time people lost control of assets on a blockchain!

Replacing databases which afaik have never been manipulated anywhere in the world (despite representing legal ownership of high value assets) with tokens similar to those people lose access to or are duped out of on a daily basis is very Web3

Re: It’s not still the early days of blockchain

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Post by shrimpx » Sat, Jan 15, 2022, 9:19 AM UTC

yashg wrote: post #358

shrimpx wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you bought your bitcoin with legit money, and then you exchanged the bicoin for a house, and you're doing your taxes correctly, how could that be money laundering?

Why shouldn't I buy the house directly with legit money then? Why add one more layer and pay some amount in commission and also deal with volatility in BTC prices?

That's a fair question but in if it's legal, why does it matter? People make their own financial decisions.

Re: It’s not still the early days of blockchain

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Post by democracy » Sat, Jan 15, 2022, 9:24 AM UTC

ryandamm wrote: post #119

The central problem in this entire debate is two groups talking past each other. The skeptics say "what is it for?" expecting a detailed answer, and the response from crypto enthusiasts is vague and high level; most of what I hear is heavy on words like "revolutionize" and "decentralize" but very, very short on specifics. Or I get argument by analogy to other technologies. If I heard a single use case where blockchai…

I also find funny how all the fighters for the bright future, peace and rainbows are planning to become filthy rich in the process of making the world a better place. People like Vitalik and Charlie Lee (Litecoin) happily cashed out their coins into dirty filthy USD in 2018 and became millionaires. You remove the chance to become crazy rich and who really gonna stay there?