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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

#861

Post by antifa »

mattdesl wrote: post #838
antifa wrote: post #834

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really doesn't go both ways. It's "I didn't find any evidence for God, so I stopped believing." vs "I believe God is real but I can't prove it". When somebody is telling me they think God is real, they're trying to sell me something, or they think it's important to tell me. When I tell people I'm an atheist, I probably didn't want to have to tell anyone, and I genuinely don't care what you believe unless you're us…

it’s all relative, depends on your vantage point. just look at the OP thread that led to these discussions: the author is vocally decrying blockchains. if you view anti-crypto as the atheists in this analogy then they sure do make a lot of noise on HN (these kinds of posts routinely make the front page).

> they sure do make a lot of noise

What, you mean like randomly, unprompted? For no reason? What are they trying to sell you?

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

#862

Post by Zerverus »

koonsolo wrote: post #847
wackro wrote: post #815

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... 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.

Here's a thought experiment for you. How do you transfer money from US to: Venezuela, Mali, Lybia, Angolia, Tajikistan, Uruguay? I can give you a really simple answer when using crypto: you just transfer it. Can't wait to hear your answer for each of those countries, and the fees and delays associated with it. edit: some people go work in a western country and send money home to their family.

So a use case the average citizen doesn’t give a flying fuck about.

Oh gosh, I wish I could transfer money to ~ let’s sacrifice consumer protections, privacy and stability for that said nobody ever.

It’s just like ‘financial inclusion’ from the ilks of Peter Thiel is code for shoveling vulnerable and financially illiterate people into the gears of the pyramid machine

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

#863

Post by Zerverus »

edem wrote: post #571
lkrubner wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been documenting this with specific companies. A recent one that I worked with was Omnichains: https://www.omnichains.com "Omnichain CEO Pratik Soni speaks to Inbound Logistics about the growing number of blockchain use cases in the supply chain, including in reverse logistics, product authentication and sustainability." Apparently this company started with the idea that they would use the blockchain to make sup…

You're missing the point. The goal when you use blockchain is not to more easily serve. It is all the things that don't matter to you until it is too late, like censorship resistance.

Because when there is an immutable record of all transactions you ever did in perpetuity, you’ll be so much better off in a fascist run country.

The freedom to fuck your life over, forever, in record the moment you make that one transaction that connects your identity is sure worth the fact that it’s uncensorable.

Lol.

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

#864

Post by czbond »

ziml77 wrote: post #853
czbond wrote: post #661

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree, and once quantum comps are more readily available - re-analyzing the entire chain and profiling individuals will be so easy, an AWS quant rental will be able to decrypt and do it.

I don't even know if quantum is necessary for that. There's already blockchain analysis tools. All you have to do is slip up once and tie a wallet that you didn't want anyone to know about to your identity and then it's relatively easy for those tools to be used to see everything you've done. I almost paid for something with bitcoin once because they weren't taking anything else. Nothing illegal but also something I…

Great points too.

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

#865

Post by ac29 »

koonsolo wrote: post #847
wackro wrote: post #815

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... 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.

Here's a thought experiment for you. How do you transfer money from US to: Venezuela, Mali, Lybia, Angolia, Tajikistan, Uruguay? I can give you a really simple answer when using crypto: you just transfer it. Can't wait to hear your answer for each of those countries, and the fees and delays associated with it. edit: some people go work in a western country and send money home to their family.

With the exception of Libya, Western Union supports transfers to all of those countries. Fees look like $3-7 to transfer $400.

Using crypto is unlikely to be much cheaper or faster for me - my salary is paid in USD, so if I want to transfer cryptocurrency I will need to convert it from USD first, which is neither free nor instant. The same problem likely applies to whoever I'd be sending money to in the foreign country - if they need money to buy food or pay rent, its extremely unlikely they will be able to pay in cryptocurrency.

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

#866

Post by vba616 »

darawk wrote: post #312
vba616 wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you could refer to some history more specifically? Are you saying networking technology was developed in advance of a concept of what it's useful for? Or is it that a global network of networks was a qualitative step beyond simple networking that didn't have a clear justification?

> Maybe you could refer to some history more specifically? Are you saying networking technology was developed in advance of a concept of what it's useful for? I'm saying that networking technologies original intended use (resilient nuclear launch capability) is a tiny irrelevant fraction of what it is used for today. I'd argue that most transformative technologies are in fact not relegated to their original intended…

Being resilient to unreliable connections in general is a feature that was important initially and has never stopped being relevant.

The purpose of ARPANET was to implement applications like telnet, ftp, and email, so people could benefit from remote access to computers. The first network link went up in 1969 and the basic applications were implemented by 1973.

It seems to me that people knew exactly what they wanted to do from the get-go, it was useful almost immediately, and even though we have exponentially more people, computers, and applications today, the internet itself hasn't fundamentally changed.

This is not a proof that cryptocurrency is a dead end, but I think it's as clear as it can be that it has not been developed and adopted like internetworking was.

One could argue that the internet was in fact not innovative, transformative or interesting, and identify that as where it is different from cryptocurrency. Isn't connecting existing networks to each other as obvious, mundane, and utilitarian as it gets?

There is a RAND paper from the 60s that suggests the development of the internet over the next 50 years was fairly obvious:

https://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/P3717.html

It talks about online shopping, videoconferencing, etc. There are bound to be anachronisms, but even so.

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

#867

Post by kentm »

freemanon wrote: post #404
mikeg8 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is always the defense: “you obviously don’t understand it”. Or, maybe there is a good reason this type of article pops to the top of HN every other day. The skeptics have good reason to doubt the viability of all the hype.

is calling out oversimplifcation is also oversimplifying? i'm not arguing that there is no good reason to be sceptic, i'm calling out against forming a strong opinion strongly held on little understanding

But you haven’t verified little understanding and crypto proponents never do. It’s always “skeptic of crypto = little understanding”. You’re doing that exact thing here.

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

#868

Post by samhw »

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.

I’m not a crypto fan, but I’m not sure what that example demonstrates. A company made an overengineered gimmick just to show off their street cred; nothing came of it, just as they expected, and it was a waste of the engineering. I’m lost as to how this reflects poorly on the engineering technique.

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

#869

Post by samhw »

ac29 wrote: post #865
koonsolo wrote: post #847

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a thought experiment for you. How do you transfer money from US to: Venezuela, Mali, Lybia, Angolia, Tajikistan, Uruguay? I can give you a really simple answer when using crypto: you just transfer it. Can't wait to hear your answer for each of those countries, and the fees and delays associated with it. edit: some people go work in a western country and send money home to their family.

With the exception of Libya, Western Union supports transfers to all of those countries. Fees look like $3-7 to transfer $400. Using crypto is unlikely to be much cheaper or faster for me - my salary is paid in USD, so if I want to transfer cryptocurrency I will need to convert it from USD first, which is neither free nor instant. The same problem likely applies to whoever I'd be sending money to in the foreign count…

Thank you. This hits at the essence of why “I can send money instantly!” is such an absurd argument.

It’s not money. You can’t use it as money. You have to convert it to money, at a loss.

If that counts as ‘sending money’, then hell, I can send someone an email saying “I promise to pay $100 to the bearer of this note”, and just hope that they’ll be able to exchange that for money at a reasonable loss.

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

#870

Post by samhw »

koonsolo wrote: post #857
wackro wrote: post #850

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that crypto exists without borders is great. But your idea that the only thing stopping sceptics from embracing it is fees is wrong. Also, your tone makes me think you've got a dog in this fight.

They asked for a use-case, I presented one. And to be honest, I don't give a shit what the sceptics think about it. I just wanted to prove once more that even when you present a valid use-case, "the sceptics" twist and turn to still only see the negative side of it. Keep being blind, I have absolutely no problem with that. It's nice entertainment here on HN, with all those folks frustrated of missing out on the bigge…

This constantly-in-hysterics tone is why people find it tiresome to try to understand crypto advocates. Cool - you like your new technology. That’s great. I’ve been in the same boat with countless things and I know what it’s like.

But if you respond to perfectly reasonable and polite questions about its use cases by screaming “you’re just asking these mean questions because you’re jealous!”, then it doesn’t exactly help the impression that the cryptocurrency market are predominantly driven by speculators hoping they’ll get rich like a handful of early fans did.

This saddens me, because I’ve long been a fan of digital cash and its promise. I hope Bitcoin or suchlike can fix its serious flaws and become a viable means of exchange. I’ll cheer any cryptocurrency which seems to be seriously trying to do that. But, respectfully, people like you are what I hate about the modern crypto scene: tribalistic, loudmouthed, unthinking, and obsessed with the pipe dream of getting rich off the next round of buyers, rather than improving our world.

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