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

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

#711

Post by UncleMeat » Sat, Jan 15, 2022, 5:06 PM UTC

throw0101a wrote: post #641

UncleMeat wrote: post #629

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Title Insurance is indeed a racket at this point. Their payouts are a tiny percentage of their overall premiums. As you mention, this seems like a good option but in fact isn't a good one. In order to replace title insurance and make it so anybody can verify the state of a property you need to first make all liens ever live on the blockchain. That's the hard part here. If it is possible to have a lien on a home witho…

The average price of a house in Ontario, Canada is $922K: * https://wowa.ca/ontario-housing-market When purchase through a lawyer, title insurance in Ontario is around $250: * https://www.getwhatyouwant.ca/what-the-heck-is-title-insuran... 250 / 922000 = 0.000271 or 0.03%. I've had bar tabs larger that $250.

It is true that the price of title insurance is very small compared to the price of the house. But their expected payouts are still a smaller percentage of their premiums than other insurance.

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

#712

Post by mw888 » Sat, Jan 15, 2022, 5:08 PM UTC

saalweachter wrote: post #522

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 membe…

That’s a nice little Kafka trap you’ve constructed to disregard the people who change their minds away from what you think. So every time someone changes their mind and uses their previous opinion as informative you are going to non-committally imply it’s “evangelism?”

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

#713

Post by jallen_dot_dev » Sat, Jan 15, 2022, 5:15 PM UTC

chucke wrote: post #474

tomputer wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see why something like insurance needs a token on a decentralized blockchain. The Bitcoin blockchain needs a token because the token itself represents the value (BTC) inside the network. The token is also needed because it adds an incentive for nodes (miners) to support the network. Note: this is my current view of it. If someday it turns out it is useful, I am happy to admit that I was wrong.

You're missing the forest for the trees. Bitcoin is broken and will never be more than a speculative asset with no intrinsic value. Blockchains can solve problems. Decentralisation can quickly become federation. Example: a global id system where the "miners" are countries. It removes the need of physical passports and their associated costs and delays.

> a global id system where the "miners" are countries.

Can I mine on this blockchain? If not, what stops me? If it's some permission I need, then what's the point of using a blockchain? Why not just have countries issue digital certificates for passports?

It sounds like you're in the "Blockchain not Bitcoin" phase that was all the rage around 2017 or so ("we're going to put cows on the blockchain!"). Most of us either moved on from that to purely on-chain financial chicanery (defi, nft) or became disillusioned with it.

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

#714

Post by mw888 » Sat, Jan 15, 2022, 5:16 PM UTC

chx wrote: post #547

barnabee wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because technical minutiae are completely irrelevant if they don't eventually convert into useful features for products with at least some level of mass-market appeal. Why? You might care about building businesses, mass-market appeal, blah blah, but many (most?) technologies were created because people thought they were cool or interesting or just because they could. Nobody knew what LASERs were for when they inven…

> to create decentralised, permissionless value Since when do we call a Ponzi value?

Right when it wasn’t subject to centralized control which could actually, easily, and covertly scam people. Just because you say something doesn’t mean it’s true or smart. Being short in the delusion of being clever is a sin of rationality and you should repent to Hitchens as soon as you can.

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

#715

Post by ahtihn » Sat, Jan 15, 2022, 5:17 PM UTC

tim333 wrote: post #624

crehn wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There exists a transparency in the open-source code of smart contracts that will disrupt the current gatekeepers like the internet did. Could you elaborate which gatekeepers it will disrupt?

It is somewhat disruptive to banks. You can invest stable coins and get interest for example which is higher than bank interest. And the operator doesn't need to spend a fortune applying for banking licenses for each country they operate in.

Try looking into why these investments have higher returns than a bank account. The risk profile isn't the same at all.

If you want returns in traditional finance, you don't stick money in a bank account. You buy bonds and/or stocks.

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

#716

Post by mw888 » Sat, Jan 15, 2022, 5:19 PM UTC

ryandamm wrote: post #148

rednerrus wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crypto was good for blackmarket transactions.

Still probably is!

People this uninformed are somehow the vocal majority of blockchain talk on HackerNews. What a seriously embarrassing misconception which demonstrates ignorance on a fundamental level.

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

#717

Post by DennisP » Sat, Jan 15, 2022, 5:21 PM UTC

nly wrote: post #443

olalonde wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I feel like a lot of the cryptocurrency critics commit the "fallacy fallacy". That is, they…

Everyone doing P2P transfer and bypassing traditional banking institutions is a powerful idea... but ultimately everyone needs to agree on a single medium of exchange, otherwise efficient market pricing is too hard. And it's debatable whether fiat will ever whither and die. The Government will ultimately have to endorse a currency for tax purposes, and they'll always seek to control the inflationary environment so th…

> otherwise efficient market pricing is too hard

Oh I don't know, everybody's carrying around an internet-connected computer in their pocket, it can't be that hard to show current prices in a variety of currencies. But if it is too hard, then stablecoins backed by on-chain assets are another option.

Fwiw, Ohio accepts tax payments in Bitcoin: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyphillipserb/2018/11/26/ohi...

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

#718

Post by doomrobo » Sat, Jan 15, 2022, 5:22 PM UTC

tim333 wrote: post #624

crehn wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There exists a transparency in the open-source code of smart contracts that will disrupt the current gatekeepers like the internet did. Could you elaborate which gatekeepers it will disrupt?

It is somewhat disruptive to banks. You can invest stable coins and get interest for example which is higher than bank interest. And the operator doesn't need to spend a fortune applying for banking licenses for each country they operate in.

Absolutely not. The reason bank interest is lower is because the FDIC ensures that you get your money if the bank stops existing. If the company backing your stablecoin stops existing, what are you left with? Nothing, of course

This not disruptive. This is just normal investing with all the risks attached

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

#719

Post by acdha » Sat, Jan 15, 2022, 5:22 PM UTC

cdiddy2 wrote: post #704

acdha wrote: post #660

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is disproving the claim: once you introduce oracles, you are acknowledging that the trust of the system comes from outside the chain.

that will always be the case for anything off chain. the question is do oracles and well constructed systems provide better data than what we have access to today

And the answer is no, because anything which can be done to improve the trusted third-parties can be done more efficiently without the extra overhead of a blockchain. Blockchains require expensive always-on networks whereas many operations can run with much lower data requirements and even work entirely offline.

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

#720

Post by cinquemb » Sat, Jan 15, 2022, 5:23 PM UTC

betterunix2 wrote: post #613

cinquemb wrote: post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A blockchain (or the contracts that run upon any particular one) could also incentivize a distributed group of participants to take it upon themselves to temporarily and physically enforce some ones else's real world claims (a signed tx from the same addr with the on chain claim putting their owner ship up as collateral to be liquidated at a discount conditional if the buyer can secure the premises by any means neces…

"distributed group of participants to take it upon themselves to temporarily and physically enforce" Do you think I should risk my life to enforce your property rights? I have two kids and I want to watch them grow up, I can't die because someone with a gun claimed ownership of a stranger's house. Without an organized government of some kind, society does not scale beyond about 200 people. We just cannot keep track o…

> Do you think I should risk my life to enforce your property rights?

I have no expectations of you personally if you wanted to protect my property rights (if i had claims on such and had a tx posted for someone to secure such), but I cannot control if an address controlled by a multisig of psuedoanons sends a tx to a contract where they provide proof that something has been secured according the rules of decentralized AMM market settlement contract and they get their payout. I cannot also control whether people make leveraged side bets on that happening or not, and I cannot control if those making leveraged side bets try to collude with the multisig that submitted the a tx for settlement.

> I live in metropolitan area with a population of 25 million people; a distributed group of vigilantes enforcing property rights is not even remotely workable here, and this is not even the largest city in the world. My in-laws live in a suburban area with a lower population density -- their town has a population around 20 thousand, and that disorganized group is not going to work there either.

I'm pretty sure that if they pay is high enough for the people that controls the multisig, and they have the skills and resources to execute, they can get where they need to be, and be gone when its finished, while accepting some risk that who they are up against may be prepared for it.