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

It’s not still the early days of blockchain

blog.mollywhite.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

781–790 of 1001 posts

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

#781

Post by dmitriid »

Kbelicius wrote: post #768
olalonde wrote: post #753

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ah yes. The good old "just google it". There's literally not a single "dig deeper" resource on the internet that explains the need for blockchains/cryptocurrencies etc. I just named a rather massive one in my comment.

> I just named a rather massive one in my comment. You named one that was envisioned by the creator(s) of Bitcoins 13 years ago and was subsequently abandoned. Today bitcoin is marketed as a store of value, not money. Also the idea that it is a P2P money without intermediaries is laughable. What are miners other than intermediaries in a transaction?

> What are miners other than intermediaries in a transaction?

Additionally:

What is "programmable money" without programmers writing unverifiable undebuggable code in esoteric languages other than intermediaries that you have to trust?

- https://web3isgoinggreat.com?id=2021-12-04-2

- https://web3isgoinggreat.com?id=2021-12-18-0

etc.

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

#782

Post by lumost »

jcbrand wrote: post #761
lumost wrote: post #754

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, it's funny. I've worked in and around analytics for a long time now, and I've had the thought that blockchain enables the following. 1) A common "universal" transaction data source 2) A shared, readable format So the thought occurred to me that as soon as blockchain apps/currencies became popular, people would want analytics on them. There would thus be a startup opportunity for unprecedented analytics visi…

You were right, blockchain analytics was a great startup opportunity and there are already a bunch of companies, like Glassnode, doing blockchain analytics. You also seem to be missing a lot of interesting stuff happening with cryptos if you think it's exclusively price speculation.

GlassNode's tagline is "Time crypto market tops and bottoms.", I don't doubt that simply analyzing the exchanges is a valid market. But not one that I think is particularly large, particularly not when the exchanges can add their own analytics at any point.

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

#783

Post by koonsolo »

rsanheim wrote: post #52

I'm increasingly seeing "web 3.0" as basically a two headed beast: 1) a way to part greater fools from their money until the hype has died out 2) a hot topic to drive clicks and discussions for nerds and, increasingly, the tech press, from other more pressing issues that exist in terms of tech and culture and finance In other words, its a bullshit scam, can we please move on already?

It's funny how HN is negative towards crypto and web3 (see all upvoted articles on the topic, and related comments). Yet can't seem to stop talking about it.

I get it, you don't like it.

So I agree with your last point: let's all please move on.

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

#784

Post by krapp »

koonsolo wrote: post #783
rsanheim wrote: post #52

I'm increasingly seeing "web 3.0" as basically a two headed beast: 1) a way to part greater fools from their money until the hype has died out 2) a hot topic to drive clicks and discussions for nerds and, increasingly, the tech press, from other more pressing issues that exist in terms of tech and culture and finance In other words, its a bullshit scam, can we please move on already?

It's funny how HN is negative towards crypto and web3 (see all upvoted articles on the topic, and related comments). Yet can't seem to stop talking about it. I get it, you don't like it. So I agree with your last point: let's all please move on.

>let's all please move on.

We don't do that here.

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

#785

Post by olalonde »

dmitriid wrote: post #781
Kbelicius wrote: post #768

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I just named a rather massive one in my comment. You named one that was envisioned by the creator(s) of Bitcoins 13 years ago and was subsequently abandoned. Today bitcoin is marketed as a store of value, not money. Also the idea that it is a P2P money without intermediaries is laughable. What are miners other than intermediaries in a transaction?

> What are miners other than intermediaries in a transaction? Additionally: What is "programmable money" without programmers writing unverifiable undebuggable code in esoteric languages other than intermediaries that you have to trust? - https://web3isgoinggreat.com?id=2021-12-04-2 - https://web3isgoinggreat.com?id=2021-12-18-0 etc.

Sorry to be blunt, but you both demonstrate a poor technical understanding of Bitcoin. Miners are not "intermediaries" and it is possible to send/receive Bitcoin with any regular programming language.

The links you posted refer to Ethereum smart contracts which are indeed prone to programming errors. The tooling around them is improving (e.g. debuggers, verifiers) and there are a couple of multi-billion dollar smart contracts which have stood the test of time.

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

#786

Post by epinephrinios »

cuteboy19 wrote: post #107
Mistletoe wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not libertarian at all. I see cryptocurrency as a fair and transparent way out of the extreme wealth inequality we see in the world today. Decentralization gets me excited. New ways of using technology gets me excited.

cryptocurrencies are not going to solve extreme inequality. they are a transparent way to transfer wealth from new investors to early investors (aka ponzi scheme)

"A Ponzi scheme is an investment fraud that pays existing investors with funds collected from new investors"

Sorry to burst your bubble, but cryptocurrency does not work this way. Your reasoning can be applied to any asset, for example, a shitty house in California that is now worth $1M.

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

#787

Post by TomSwirly »

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…

And yet you still don't name any actual useful applications!

The Ethereum world computer has 300,000 nodes, and yet has 1/5000 the computation power of a single Raspberry Pi 4.

Except for actual cryptocurrencies, all the "web3" applications could use boring old 1980s vintage cryptography, be just as distributed, and run ten thousand times faster and cheaper.

----

So far the only way anyone has ever made any money from cryptocurrency is to sell it to someone for more fiat currency. In fact, in real terms, it has net lost money because of the huge amounts of electricity expended.

So once people such as yourself purchase cryptocurrency, they know in their hearts that the only way they will make more is if further people buy into their Ponzi scheme.

Therefore, your comment above.

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

#788

Post by TomSwirly »

tomxor wrote: post #733
saalweachter wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The parent's perspective does not come across as an evangelist's though. Quite the opposite. It's balanced, seeing the hype for hype, seeing the flaws, and yet seeing that there is still some truth and potential buried in there. The world is grey.

> seeing the flaws,

The article names none.

> yet seeing that there is still some truth and potential buried in there.

The article details none.

> The world is grey.

"Everything is true, even false things!"

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

#789

Post by TomSwirly »

mw888 wrote: post #712
saalweachter wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?”

If the comment gave any actual reasoning, it wouldn't be open to that criticism, but as it is, it's empty hype which deserves all the criticism it gets.

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

#790

Post by betwixthewires »

MaxfordAndSons wrote: post #250
betwixthewires wrote: post #15

> All that to say, a lot has changed in the technology world in the past six to twelve years It sure has. But not really that fundamentally, since 2009. A lot has changed in the blockchain space too. Just because you don't know about it doesn't mean it isn't true. A lot of those changes are on par with some of the tech advancements mentioned before my quote in the article. In 2009, you had bitcoin, so basically a dis…

> blockchains that handle incentivized file storage, alternate name lookup systems It would be a shame if IPFS and Filecoin end up in the dustbin of history if the web3 music stops. They're the only reasonable non-financial applications of blockchain tech that I've been able to wrap my head around to date.

Yep, they're great. I prefer IPFS without the incentive layer of filecoin, but it is interesting to be able to incentivize storage in protocol, and there's obvious use cases. Plenty of people pay google drive or Dropbox for extra storage. Democratizing access to the demand and supply side of that market is pretty cool.

There was a project called Golem aiming to do the same thing with compute, it was pretty cool last time I read about it. Not sure how far along it is, and I'm sure there are other projects aiming to do the same thing.

Post reply on HN