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It’s not still the early days of blockchain

blog.mollywhite.net

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

#811

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…

Yes, but how is this different from charging a credit-card or publishing an IBAN? The webshop exposes some way of receiving value tokens, be that USD, EUR or BTC, and has some way to tell which user transferred how many tokens. So technically there is no difference. The difference is, I can be pretty sure that EUR won't lose 20% of their value overnight.

If you want to take a credit card, you need to open a bank account, sign up with a payment processor and integrate with them (stripe makes this easy, what if you can’t or don’t want to use stripe?), handle chargebacks, etc.

If you want to accept bitcoin, you run a piece of software and write a few lines of code.

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

#812
post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Dubai, buying real estate with bitcoin is a real thing, and by the looks of it also a big thing. If nothing else, it shows that crypto has succeed in one of its goals: moving money between countries, without being detected/hindered by governments. I mean, I don't know who buys real estate with crypto, but I am assuming that people who live in dubai and have large crypto values are bullish on crypto, and won't wast…

Doesn't Dubai have anti money laundering laws? It doesn't matter if you pay with seashells, don't they ask you where the money is from?

Plenty of countries don't. I was just asking a friend if it would be difficult for an American to open a bank account in Thailand or Vietnam because of the reporting requirements. He said that with the proper introduction, there would no problem at all. Doesn't matter if you want to deposit $500 or $5 million. There might be an extra "service charge" for the larger amounts, but there will be no questions about its origin.

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

#813

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you inagine "giving you bitcoins" will work without you doing something equivalent to sending bills or charging credit cards? Sure, you can publish your wallet address and tell them to send you money. How do you give them access to your content after they have sent their money? How is Bitcoin helping compared to you publishing your IBAN account number and asking for money to be sent directly there?

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…

Yep. Want to accept onchain bitcoin? When a customer wants to pay, generate a fresh address. Store that address in a dab associated with the customer id. When they come for the service, see if that address has received payment. Easy peasy. You can run your own node and do this all yourself, or you can use services that run the software for you and work on callbacks or api calls.

Want to accept lightning (bitcoin over a low cost and high speed payment network)? It’s an api call to generate an invoice and another api call to see if that invoice has been paid. Again you can run everything yourself or use a managed service. Bitcoin make programmatic payment processing SO MUCH EASIER than traditional payment rails.

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

#814
post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brave has micropayments for creators. It achieved 50M MAU last year. In a few years it will surpass Firefox.

That's a very energy-inefficient way of rewarding content creators. Given that most users are going to go through Coinbase et al, it's no different from any of the other similar schemes (anyone remember Flatr?) except that you have a volatile wallet and a payment mechanism that somehow manages to be even more expensive than Amex!

Cashing out BAT happens with either Uphold or Gemini. Coinbase isn’t supported.

But you don’t have to do that. I earn BAT and donate it to creators.

It’s not perfect. Neither are the solutions we have now that don’t compensate users for their attention. Over time it will improve.

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

#815

The central problem in this entire debate is two groups talking past each other. The skeptics say "what is it for?" expecting a detailed answer, and the response from crypto enthusiasts is vague and high level; most of what I hear is heavy on words like "revolutionize" and "decentralize" but very, very short on specifics. Or I get argument by analogy to other technologies. If I heard a single use case where blockchai…

Of course there are awesome use-cases, but the real problem of the skeptics is that they can't let go of their fiat. Take Nano for example: sub-second, 0-fee transactions, of any amount, to any (unbanked) person in the world. Of course, there is no way that any other (fiat) system can achieve this (due to operation costs, regulation, etc) But the response of skeptics will always be "but I have to convert my fiat mone…

> ... but the real problem of the skeptics is that they can't let go of their fiat.

>But the response of skeptics will always be "but I have to convert my fiat money".

Here's a thought experiment for you. Your mother/father/neighbour's entire wealth is converted, at no cost to them, into BTC/ETH/whatever. What is their reaction?

Is it, 'thank god we didn't have to pay those conversion fees!'

I think not.

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

#816
post #754
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…

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…

There is no future in third party analytics because any "blockchain" that is globally adopted and used for more than shitcoin speculation will be zero knowledge

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

#818
post #811

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but how is this different from charging a credit-card or publishing an IBAN? The webshop exposes some way of receiving value tokens, be that USD, EUR or BTC, and has some way to tell which user transferred how many tokens. So technically there is no difference. The difference is, I can be pretty sure that EUR won't lose 20% of their value overnight.

If you want to take a credit card, you need to open a bank account, sign up with a payment processor and integrate with them (stripe makes this easy, what if you can’t or don’t want to use stripe?), handle chargebacks, etc. If you want to accept bitcoin, you run a piece of software and write a few lines of code.

Yes, and for these extra steps the money I earn is realistically not in danger of losing 20% of value overnight, can't be lost because the harddrive that held my password-safe got corrupted, the transactions are done instantaneously instead of whenever some miner feels like including them in his block, and the amount of energy required to process the payment, is probably not much more than I currently use to write and send this post.

I am okay with that.

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

#819
post #726

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Typewriters had immediate value The GP pulled one of the cryptobro rhetorical scams: X existing technology took Y years to catch on! Besides the statements rarely actually being true they're nonsensical. A typewriter (or whatever technology they point out) has obvious utility. No honest assessment of whatever they can bring up will say that X technology is useless. Maybe at the time typewriters we're released fount…

> The cryptobros can't seem to fathom that they got sold on a bunch of useless shit. I think it’s more that they can’t afford to acknowledge it: the only way cryptocurrency has meaning is if they can line up a buyer, and as soon as you allow that to be questioned those big dreams about becoming as rich as the people selling them on “web3” start to look pretty unlikely. A lot of these people have built their vision of…

Gotta pay the upline.

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

#820
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…

The big question in my mind: is this the internet in 1997 or expert systems in 1982? It could be the next big thing. Or it could be an interesting idea that was oversold and overhyped, that never really disappeared but became irrelevant as its real value became a commodity that found its way into the software of established companies.
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