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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

#791

Post by shrimpx »

tsimionescu wrote: post #545
shrimpx wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Of course, the public can mistrust a paper vote, for good or bad reasons. But, it's not possible to reasonably trust an electronic voting system - the people installing and maintaining the system have myriad ways to manipulate the vote that are almost impossible to discover or prove (at least as long as you don't accept public voting, which has different issues).

But why wouldn't ballot handlers swap out paper votes, etc.? You can rig anything with improper safeguards.

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

#792

Post by donmcronald »

bufferoverflow wrote: post #745
nly wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> everyone needs to agree on a single medium of exchange No, everyone does not. You can easily exchange the coins you don't like for the coins you do. It's that simple.

It’s a taxable event in Canada AFAIK, so I wouldn’t call it simple.

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

#793

Post by freemanon »

mohanmcgeek wrote: post #671
freemanon wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blockchain and crypto are related yet distinct concepts. I was lining up for a PCR test in Thailand the other day, and it was a huge mess. The lack of streamlined systems between invoicing, identity verification, etc means very long queues, people running back and forth to get their documents printed. The testing scheme is private run but I assume it needs to interface with governmental departments (i.e. Immigration…

Or, the provider, namely the government, can write the code to orchestrate these API calls even if these APIs are managed by disparate entities. It's not pretend like it's not a solved problem. It's just that you're trying to eliminate the central provider in this case and you want to replace that with a blockchain which is excruciatingly slow

A colleague of mine once disagreed to use git because it was easier for him to copy paste the project's folder every now and then to keep "versions" of his work.

There are trade offs, but having data and core business logic in an open and transparent network would allow for better interoperability imo. Not saying there aren't fundamental issues to be solved with using blockchains, but it's a new path to be explored.

The speed of the blockchain doesn't necessarily have to be slow. It depends on how decentralised and safe it needs to be. It's possible to create a "private" blockchain for some use cases. I don't see web3 as open in the sense of open to the whole world, but open to whoever the stakeholders are.

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

#794

Post by dmitriid »

olalonde wrote: post #785
dmitriid wrote: post #781

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> but you both demonstrate a poor technical understanding of Bitcoin.

No, we don't

> smart contracts which are indeed prone to programming errors.

Indeed. So. In the context of "potential to be a programmable money without government or central authority" you literally have to depend on an intermediary to write a smart contract and depen on that intermediary to write this contract correctly.

> 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.

Either all this is "too early" or "it has stood the test of time". You can't have both.

The fact that some contract exists, and handles "multiple billions" in no way, shape, or form disprove my original statement: "Programmable money" relies on intermediaries in the form of programmers writing unverifiable undebuggable code in esoteric languages

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

#795

Post by shrimpx »

yashg wrote: post #453
shrimpx wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If I am in a country from where I can legally send money to Dubai to buy property, should I still convert money to BTC for buying property? Common sense says no. It may be legal but I don't need to add another layer of complexity. If I am in a country from where I cannot legally buy a property in Dubai, would buying a property via BTC route be legal? Definitely not. The only scenario in which it makes sense to buy pr…

The core scenario in which it makes sense to buy property in bitcoin is if you already hold a ton of bitcoin. Then, selling the bitcoin in order to pay fiat for a house is the more cumbersome route to take.

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

#796

Post by Kbelicius »

olalonde wrote: post #785
dmitriid wrote: post #781

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Sorry to be blunt, but you both demonstrate a poor technical understanding of Bitcoin.

Sorry to be blunt but you are demonstrating your poor reading skills.

> Miners are not "intermediaries"

I have some bitcoin. How do I send them to you without miners?

> it is possible to send/receive Bitcoin with any regular programming language.

dmitriid was talking about, what you called, "programmable money" and not about sending/receiving bitcoin. You don't need knowledge of any programming language to do that.

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

#797

Post by sweetbitter »

tootie wrote: post #759
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…

Changes in the implementations are not the question. It's application that she's skeptical of. Who has found a reason to use Blockchain for anything other than cryptocurrency? I actually witnessed one attempt. An actual Fortune 100 built a Blockchain for their public communications. Mostly just an excuse to show off their street cred. It landed with an absolute thud. Nobody cared.

One idea that I am fond of is Nym, an implementation of the high-latency mix network Loopix[0], but with incentives for nodes to act as mixnodes and message providers, using a model in which users pay nodes for their bandwidth. The goal being to provide strong anonymity in the face of a global passive adversary.

[0] - https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.00536

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

#798

Post by ricardobeat »

oneoff786 wrote: post #747
benreesman wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have wondered for awhile why the crypto mega-whales in my vicinity are trading USDT at par or better over the last year or two. My conspiracy theory is that when insiders trade a distressed asset at par or better it’s often a bailout expectation that’s really being traded. Who has unimaginable access to financing, a “stablecoin” going so/so, and a primary line of business critically dependent on Tether, like, I don…

It’s not that hard. When Bitcoin goes down, people like tether because it’s “safe” at $1. So bitfinex makes more tethers and trades them for bitcoins. When Bitcoin goes up, bitfinex sells the Bitcoin and gets dollars. It’s fractional reserve banking swapped around, with no reserve requirements. The market is the bank. And because bitfinex is not obligated to redeems tokens for $1 they have no risk. It’s in their inte…

This is like giving central-bank levels of power to private entities. Which obviously follow from de-centralization. It’s insane.

The only way this could be a reliable replacement for our existing financial systems, would be with strong oversight from.. some kind of central entity that acts on behalf of society’s collective best interests.. staffed by people chosen through popular voting..

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

#799

Post by grey-area »

betwixthewires wrote: post #772
Daishiman wrote: post #218

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. I have yet to see a single enticing idea for blockchain/web3/whatever for a consumer or business not related to finance. If that requires an ever-increasing number of technical challenges to be solved for that to happen, then we're just looking at vapo…

But the things I mentioned aren't technical minutiae, they're real technological advances with real applications, today. > ...not related to finance. Why place that arbitrary restriction? If all this stuff does is improve finance is that not enough? Again, I'm not a web3 evangelist, this stuff was originally created strictly to create financial tools. All I expect any of this stuff to do is change finance. But still,…

What new cryptography has been invented due to cryptocurrencies?

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

#800

Post by bawolff »

While i agree, ultimately i don't think it would matter if it was.

Either you have a product that does something interesting or you don't. I don't think it matters at what stage you have the interesting thing at.

(Fwiw, i don't find recent blockchain interesting)

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