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It’s not still the early days of blockchain

blog.mollywhite.net

421–430 of 1001 posts

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

#421

It's truly incredible that people still confidently proclaim that there is "no use case" today. Because of the technical nature of the underlying tech, it's hard for the average individual to recognise how and why it's different. However, it's not possible to explain away the particular applications and their properties. Here are 2 use cases which are live and working today: -Taking a collaterised USD loan without pe…

Presumably you’re talking about a loan against an NFT or other crypto asset. But taking a loan against a financial asset is already really easy. Does loaning against a house, car or stock portfolio get any easier with crypto? I don’t see how.

The digital object in your second example is just a hyperlink or a hash, because the digital object itself won’t fit on the blockchain. And there is no link between digital and meat space identity, which means it’s exchangeable but not between people.

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

#422

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…

Bitcoin had a problem to solve, it had a use case, from day dot... Satoshi set out to replace central banks that can inflate the money supply.

It was supposed to be relatively boring tech solving a niche problem (from the guy on the streets point of view)

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

#423
post #276
post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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.

Part of the transaction I described (which was personal) involved a bank transfer between two EU states, and it's simply not true. It's not instantly, doesn't work 24/7 (a transaction made on Friday arrived on Tuesday), and you have to find plenty of tricks to avoid high fees and super bad exchange rates (EU has more than one currency, you know).

Uh, oh, will … no.

Its Not true in that Description, also dont forget: SEPA!=Euro!=EU!=EER

Source: Im running a bank. In the EU.

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

#424
post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A few years ago I was earning a fair chunk of loyalty points (and hence air miles) by buying gift cards in supermarkets, then immediately depositing the full value of the gift cards into a savings account of mine.

This was entirely legal, and I was Making My Own Financial Decisions™, but the route got shut down pretty quickly anyway.

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

#425
post #358

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?

There are all kinds of limitations in how exactly you are allowed to use your money. And settlement of such a large amount of funds between two parties is not simple and fraught with danger if you "do it alone".

Bitcoin or your blockchain of choice has no such issues though! You can prove to your seller that you have the funds, as well as even pre-commit the money in a smart contract, or a multi-sig transaction. Doing so would completely remove the need to wait on the slow and inefficient banks to do their thing.

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

#426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

This. Building a webshop with crypto is the most trivial thing. Complying with all the legal regulation that buyer and seller are bound to is the actual complex part. Insanely complex.

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

#427
post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Use cases like storing the history of a car on-chain, transparent supply chains, public voting... this all sounds interesting but never made it to product-market fit. Anything that does not exist natively on the blockchain doesn't need a blockchain at all. If a token on the blockchain would represent you as the owner of a car and one day someone steals your private key which represents your car ownership, that pers…

Couldn’t you say the same thing about the deed for a house?

Deeds aren't a thing anymore in many countries.

In the UK ownership is determined by a centralised land registry, and it must be registered if ownership is to change hands.

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

#428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And literally none of it, not a single step that you mentioned requires blockchain.

> And literally none of it, not a single step that you mentioned requires blockchain. Then tell me, where is this wonderful centralized database that tells me who owns which car? Blockchains are not just about decentralization, it's also about publishing the actual databases in the wild for everyone to see, because you have the guarantee that no-one can fake it. Sure, a lot of the use cases could be done with central…

I'm don't know where you live, but I have purchased cars in both Australia and the UK and both involved verifying via a centralised database that the car was not stolen or financially encumbered.

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

#429

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.

In person paper voting specifically. And that also really have many other things involved...

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

#430
post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally think that all those things won’t be solved by technology but by social measures like regulation.

Then we're all doomed. Regulation has proven they have neither the interest nor capability to do anything about it, GDPR being the perfect example which have achieved nothing more than make Web2 more annoying to use.

Probably an overly bleak view (and unfair to GDPR which extends way beyond that) but yes I agree at least in the short term.
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