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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

#941

Post by throwawaygh »

hunterb123 wrote: post #239
throwawaygh wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> chargeback free donations Are chargebacks on donations are major issue for any legitimate non-profit organization?

Virtual game currencies, controversial politics, porn, gambling etc. Basically anything Stripe / PayPal locks your account for and considers you high risk or CC companies block.

>>> ...chargeback free donations...

>> Are chargebacks on donations are major issue for any legitimate non-profit organization?

> Virtual game currencies, controversial politics, porn, gambling etc.

Paying for porn is not a donation.

Paying for in-game currency is not a donation.

Gambling is not a donation.

Giving money to someone for "controversial politics" is almost never an issue, especially if you're actually donating (which is only possible if you are, e.g., giving money to a registered candidate, a PAC, or an org that files a Form 8872). I make a lot of political donations and have never had an issue.

If you're:

1. giving money to someone for political reasons, who

2. explicitly opts out of tax-advantaged status so that they don't have to use that money in a way that's congruent with donor's intent, and

3. has a huge issue with charge-backs on unrestricted non-tax-advantaged gifts...

IDK. I'd tend to consider that a massive red flag. But I guess funding scam artists who get tons of money from identity thieves and prey on controversial politics is indeed a use-case for crypto.

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

#942

Post by throwawaygh »

erik_seaberg wrote: post #277
hunterb123 wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Virtual game currencies, controversial politics, porn, gambling etc. Basically anything Stripe / PayPal locks your account for and considers you high risk or CC companies block.

They are targets for testing stolen numbers: https://blog.sift.com/2016/card-testing-chargebacks-and-nonp... I can also imagine political orgs having foes.

That's interesting, but I don't see how it's related to OP's point. (Which was ostensibly about legitimate donations to legitimate non-profits, but was apparently actually about gambling, porn, and politics...)

Using fraud detection technology and/or swallowing the chargeback fees would probably be cheaper than the overhead of using a crpytocurrency+exchange.

Setting a minimum donation so that you're not a good target for card testing probably has a lower barrier to entry than requiring use of a crpytocurrency.

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

#943

Post by CRConrad »

landemva wrote: post #879
samhw wrote: post #869

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They are different. And sending a FAX is not sending postal mail. And sending email is not sending a FAX. Sending money as quickly as sending email is not the same as putting paper checks in envelopes in the postal system. Like free speech, bitcoin can't be censored if you hold your own keys. For some people, PayPal censorship and freezing accounts still works okay for them.

Fax. Or fax, when it's not at the beginning of the sentence.

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

#944

Post by CRConrad »

koonsolo wrote: post #888
samhw wrote: post #870

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 h…

Did you see that I presented a valid use case, and nobody responded to that part? Everybody here only tries to pick apart the details. It's been like that always here on HN. And again in your comment, no mention of the use-case, only that you don't like my tone. Talk about tribalism.

> Did you see that I presented a valid use case, and nobody responded to that part?

Did you miss that people just pointed out that it wasn't much of a use case?

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

#945

Post by CRConrad »

jakupovic wrote: post #894
giantrobot wrote: post #702

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…

So your reasoning does not deal with anything we're discussing, rather you go on describing people as cryptobros, define their characteristics and then make a conclusion, based on what you think. So you didn't bring anything to the conversation other than your wrongly held opinions. I could go on my own exploration and conclude that you, speaking in such a way, don't know what you are talking about.

You could, but you'd be wrong.

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

#946

Post by CRConrad »

vasco wrote: post #477
gambiting wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That hasn't answered my question though. Name one advantage of using a blockchain for insurance policy management over the systems that we have now.

Not having to speak to anyone to do it. I don't know if blockchain is going to go anywhere but I think there's inherent advantages in not talking to anyone (and being able to do it programatically) to do banking-like things. What you get in exchange is lack of security, no recourse when things go wrong, and possibly being in the same space as criminals. But there's a palpable advantage to not having to interact with…

> Not having to speak to anyone to do it.

So it's only good for circumventing crippling social phobia? How many people suffer from those? And, hey, I've been using non-Blockchain-based online banking since around the turn of the century; can't recall when I last spoke to a bank teller, but it must have been well over a decade ago[1]. So even that use case is adequately solved without Blockchain.

___

[1]: Except for buying some foreign cash before going on vacation, that may have been in 2012. Do the clerks at Forex count as bank tellers?

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

#947

Post by CRConrad »

aflag wrote: post #556
Vespasian wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, and while the government database "land registry" could, of course, be replaced with a government "HouseChain" it wouldn't actually solve any Problem but would introduce a ton of new ones.

However, if you have no government, the housechain could be a way for a decentralized society to implement the concept of a land registry. Once everyone agrees that the housechain is proof of ownership, then measures can be taken to enforce that without necessarily evoking a central government. I'm not sold on the idea of a society without a central government, but I think the blockchain would help — or even enable —…

> if you have no government, the housechain could be a way for a decentralized society to implement the concept of a land registry. Once everyone agrees that the housechain is proof of ownership, then measures can be taken

Once everyone agrees on anything, they can agree to have a centralised real estate ownership registry. Or a whole centralised government.

Your idea seems to be a thought experiment with weird priors. (Feels like that makes it rather meaningless.)

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

#948

Post by CRConrad »

aflag wrote: post #637
betterunix2 wrote: post #599

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people in charge of enforcement would become a de facto government. What distinguishes a government from any other organization is the monopoly on violence (more precisely, the monopoly on deciding when and how violent measures can be employed), and enforcing property rights sometimes requires violence (e.g. if someone refuses to leave your home, eventually the police will have to physically remove them against t…

In a decentralized society, there may be multiple organizations deciding on when and how violent measures can be employed — and they could be as small as one person. If each organization thinks a different person is the owner of a property, that would be very unstable. However, if they all agree that a certain blockchain implementation of deeds is what decides ownership, then they can co-exist more peacefully. Not sa…

> In a decentralized society, there may be multiple organizations deciding on when and how violent measures can be employed [...] a system that allows people to all agree in things like currency and ownership without giving that power to one specific organization

What, did you read Snow Crash as u- in stead of dystopian? What's to say they'll all agree?!?

The important point is what happens when two of those organisations disagree. What happens when I have Mr Chen's Robot Dog Republic saying I own a property -- because they have the blockchain to prove it -- and evicting you on my behalf, while you have the Cosa Nostra Pizza Delivery Co. saying you own it -- because they have the blockchain to prove that -- and evicting me on your behalf?

Civil war, that's what happens.

Decentralising stuff that everyone needs to agree on sucks.

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

#949

Post by CRConrad »

Vespasian wrote: post #600
giaour wrote: post #574

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the absence of a governing authority, property disputes would revert to being settled by violence or the threat thereof. Why should my band of armed thugs defer to what it says on the blockchain when they could instead hit you with a $5 wrench until you vacate the premises? https://xkcd.com/538

My band of thugs however would offer people the ability to buy protection from your band of thugs. I may even be inclined to write down some rules and introduce a process to resolve conflicts without unnecessary damage to people and property. (In this hypothetical scenario any form of land registry is only as valid as I say it is.)

Exactly: Blockchain equals warring bands of thugs. Great improvement on the status quo.

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

#950

Post by CRConrad »

andreskytt wrote: post #294
tomputer wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Use cases like storing the history of a car on-chain, transparent supply chains, public voting... this all sounds interesting but never made it to product-market fit. Anything that does not exist natively on the blockchain doesn't need a blockchain at all. If a token on the blockchain would represent you as the owner of a car and one day someone steals your private key which represents your car ownership, that pers…

That said, blockchain-like technologies (ksi, more specifically) can be used to assure the integrity of databases storing the relationship between you and your car.

Can't a simple checksum or hash do the same (and without burning as much electricity as all of Argentina)?
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