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It’s not still the early days of blockchain

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

#521

Post by cinquemb »

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #432
yashg wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How will they convert it into something they can use to pay rent and buy groceries? Exactly my question. Exchanges where you can sell the crypto for real money are still regulated and require KYC. > My biggest concern about cryptocurrency is fees. High fees are required to pay for the insane electricity bills and specialized hardware. PoW cryptos are expensive and inefficient by design so there will always be more…

Black market p2p exchanges will rise inevitably.

p2p exchanges were the first exchanges, only did the regulated KYC ones came later.

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

#522

Post by saalweachter »

poof131 wrote: post #98

A few months ago I agreed with her entirely. Tether is an unbacked fraud and NFTs are being front-run [1, 2]. The mid-level marketing Ponzi vibe is crazy. The latency of applications on the blockchain is atrocious. But more recently after learning from and interacting with people building in the space my assessment changed. There is an interesting intersection between tech, communities, and economics. There exists a…

I'm sorry, I'm not trying to call you out personally, but this is itching my brain something fierce so I have to blurt it out, and hey, it's the internet. A little derailing never hurt anyone.

It's amazing to me how universal the "I used to be a non-believer" line is in evangelism. From the classic "I used to be an atheist but I've been born again" to all the members of political party A claiming to have been a member of party B before seeing the light to technological evangelism.

It just jumps out at you after awhile.

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

#523

Post by SanJacobs »

> How long can it possibly be “early days”?

70-ish years. I'd say we just recently came out of the early days of computing around the 1990s or 2010s.

>How long do we need to wait before someone comes up with an actual application of blockchain technologies that isn’t a transparent attempt to retroactively justify a technology that is inefficient in every sense of the word?

Currency is inefficient? It's sure better than trading cows.

Smart contracts? Writing things using english and then every side involved hiring lawyers to be used as bad just-in-time compilers for what was written is way more inefficient.

"Bitcoin was the beginning of the end for the state" – geohot. And I can't imagine much more of an inefficient system than the state and central banking.

> How much pollution must we justify pumping into our atmosphere while we wait to get out of the “early days” of proof-of-work blockchains?

Energy production problem, not a blockchain problem.

> How many people must be scammed for all they’re worth while technologists talk about just beginning to think about building safeguards into their platforms?

God, devs, please don't put restrictions on your platforms under the guise of "safety". Same goes for governments. Stay out. If you have no clue how something works, it's partly on you if you gamble all your savings on it. But also, who is excusing scams? We all think scams are bad. Nobody is seeing someone who fell for BitConnect and saying "Well, it's the early days, so it's fine that you got scammed."

It seems to me that this lady really wants to dislike. In general. She enjoys disliking things.

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

#524

Post by Atropos »

neiman wrote: post #276
eterm wrote: 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).

You are correct, the technology for 24/7 SEPA instant transfers is there, but they are just ~ 10% of all SEPA transfers right now and - crucially - are not free yet: https://www.europeanpaymentscouncil.eu/what-we-do/sepa-insta...

Free instant transfers are the direction of travel, but in the EU, that is a question of regulation, not technology. Maybe in 2030 we will be there :)

But for many transactions, I see that instant would be nicer, but I don't see the crucial need. My employer pays all Eurozone salaries from a bank account in Luxembourg, I imagine it is just a script checking "Initiate transfers on 10 AM, 1 day before last working day of month". Being able to do "Initiate transfers on 23.59 PM of last working day of month" would be slightly nicer, but I don't think it really solves a huge pain point?

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

#525

Post by wayoutthere »

chucke wrote: post #506
wayoutthere wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’d have to get those countries to agree on a common set of governance rules, and inevitably some bloc of countries would eventually fork and go it on their own because they want a different set of rules (e.g. mandatory biometric data, inability to update passport data like gender, etc). I’m not sure it solves any problems that the diplomatic system doesn’t already solve. This also ignores that the costs and delays…

> you can’t have a corrupt official ask for a cash payment to “expedite” your passport / visa application if it’s fast to begin with And yet this happens. Theoretically the blockchain reduces the entry barrier more, while not compromising on compliance and security guarantees. You're spot on that countries would have to agree, and different blocks could form. It's no different than trade and visa agreements. The bloc…

I’m not convinced that blockchains would actually reduce the cost or provide any benefit over a federated system where each nation (or group of nations like the EU) controls the data of its own citizens. I run into this problem with nearly every potential blockchain application I hear: it’s usually faster / cheaper / less disruptive to use a centralized or federated system governed by legal agreements that are hashed out in negotiations.

Politics underpins all of it — a lot of blockchain advocates look at blockchain as a way to sidestep political squabbles, when really the politics exist at a lower level of the stack upon which blockchain governance rules are built. A nation could unilaterally cease participation in any blockchain at any time, and use political pressure in other areas (trade, defense, etc) to get other nations to join them.

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

#526

Post by logifail »

jimmydorry wrote: post #519
yashg wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are all kinds of limitations in how exactly you are allowed to use your money. Where are you getting that from? If the money has been earned in a legit manner and you want to spend it on a legitimate thing, who's stopping you from spending it? Yes if your source of money isn't legal or you want to spend on something illegal, that's a different story.

My money is completely legal, but it was a protracted process to: A.) Transfer a part of it (for this particular bank, anything more than $5000) to pay a deposit for a house; B.) Make a final settlement on a house, again with money I had available in my account. There are limitations on how much you can transfer easily at once, and different kinds of approval and parties have to be involved to pay for something large…

> it was a protracted process

When we bought this property, the least drawn-out bit of the overall process was the actual transferring of the funds. That was the easy part :)

It was the same with vehicles we've bought, the fastest part of the process was transferring the funds from buyer to seller, by far(!)

Are there (m)any significant transactions where the moving of money from buyer to seller is the bottleneck in terms of time and/or effort?

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

#527

Post by cuteboy19 »

clairity wrote: post #214
tinco wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boston Dynamics is and always has been on a trajectory to build useful products based on technology that is promising. Whether they're going to be successful or not is dependent on financing and time and luck of technology. Blockchain was awesome technology in 2008, and Ethereum brought very interesting developments. But in the end there's only one thing it can do, and that's be an irrefutable ledger, and for most pu…

boston dynamics has never even been close to being on a trajectory to build useful products. they’re a grant-harvesting company first and foremost. they simply do not know how to build efficient and useful locomotors despite at least 3 decades of practice and millions of years of evolutionary precedents literally living right outside its doors. in that way, the analogy to blockchain is apt: technology focused efforts…

the difference is that boston dynamics does not advertise get rich quick schemes to poor people. for example, 70% of the ads on the london tube are blockchain related. if blockchain was just something industry and academia poured money into, no one would have cared so much about it

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

#528

Post by MoSattler »

SanJacobs wrote: post #523

> How long can it possibly be “early days”? 70-ish years. I'd say we just recently came out of the early days of computing around the 1990s or 2010s. >How long do we need to wait before someone comes up with an actual application of blockchain technologies that isn’t a transparent attempt to retroactively justify a technology that is inefficient in every sense of the word? Currency is inefficient? It's sure better th…

> Currency is inefficient? It's sure better than trading cows.

> Smart contracts? Writing things using english and then every side involved hiring lawyers to be used as bad just-in-time compilers for what was written is way more inefficient.

If crypto is doing these things really more efficiently than current solutions, then why neither use case has any significant adoption of blockchain solutions?

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

#529

Post by gambiting »

vasco wrote: post #477
gambiting wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That hasn't answered my question though. Name one advantage of using a blockchain for insurance policy management over the systems that we have now.

Not having to speak to anyone to do it. I don't know if blockchain is going to go anywhere but I think there's inherent advantages in not talking to anyone (and being able to do it programatically) to do banking-like things. What you get in exchange is lack of security, no recourse when things go wrong, and possibly being in the same space as criminals. But there's a palpable advantage to not having to interact with…

But like.....what kind of things can you do without interacting with people when using a blockchain? Name anything. My insurance policy I bought online and I can manage entirely online, change the address, the car, the add-ons, add and remove drivers as well as cars......what exactly is blockchain allowing me to do here that I can't do already?

Same with the bank. I don't think I ever had to speak to my bank in the 8 years I've been with them, or even been to their branch for that matter. You do everything online or in the app.

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

#530

Post by Nextgrid »

SanJacobs wrote: post #523

> How long can it possibly be “early days”? 70-ish years. I'd say we just recently came out of the early days of computing around the 1990s or 2010s. >How long do we need to wait before someone comes up with an actual application of blockchain technologies that isn’t a transparent attempt to retroactively justify a technology that is inefficient in every sense of the word? Currency is inefficient? It's sure better th…

> Currency is inefficient? It's sure better than trading cows.

Currency is a problem that's already solved much more efficiently in a lot of countries.

> Smart contracts? Writing things using english and then every side involved hiring lawyers to be used as bad just-in-time compilers for what was written is way more inefficient.

Writing a bulletproof smart contract is difficult, as demonstrated by endless exploits despite the contracts being written & reviewed by specialists paid lots of money.

The advantage of the legal system is that when shit hits the fan, humans (in court) can step in and determine what the intent of the contract was despite potential loopholes, whereas in code, there is no difference between "loophole" and "intended behavior". Now you can of course have an authority that has power over smart contracts and can step in and rollback exploits, but that's just the current legal system with extra steps, at which point you may as well not use a smart contract at all.

> And I can't imagine much more of an inefficient system than the state and central banking.

There are obviously edge-cases and cryptocurrency is valuable in those, but in the vast majority of the world banking is a solved problem and much more efficient than cryptocurrencies. Compare the total cost (fee + environmental impact due to energy use, etc) of a card transaction or bank transfer with a cryptocurrency transfer.

I'm not saying that cryptocurrencies are useless - there are use-cases for them including in countries where the established monetary system is broken. But outside of those edge-cases, cryptocurrency would be a very wasteful downgrade from the status-quo.

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