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

951–960 of 1001 posts

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

#951

Post by CRConrad »

staticassertion wrote: post #345
andreskytt wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Databases have been doing that for a long time. Blockchains only add additional guarantees that matter when you have hostile participants, which only matters if you're decentralizing your system, which you probably don't want to do for a lot of things (like tracking ownership of a car).

Your username kind of goes nicely with your point here.

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

#952

Post by CRConrad »

UncleMeat wrote: post #636
Galanwe wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And literally none of it, not a single step that you mentioned requires blockchain. Then tell me, where is this wonderful centralized database that tells me who owns which car? Blockchains are not just about decentralization, it's also about publishing the actual databases in the wild for everyone to see, because you have the guarantee that no-one can fake it. Sure, a lot of the use cases could be done with central…

> it's also about publishing the actual databases in the wild for everyone to see Weird to see privacy go completely out the window in all of these discussions.

When some fuckwit runs me over and speeds away, you betcha I'm gonna want to know whom XYZ-123 belongs to. What did you think license plates are for in the first place?

If you've lived under the misapprehension that what you do with a multi-ton piece of lethal equipment hurtling through traffic belongs to your sphere of privacy, it's high time to snap out of it.

(Fortunately, of course, no blockchain silliness is needed for this; I can look up a license plate on the centralised car registry DB any time.)

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

#953

Post by CRConrad »

cuteboy19 wrote: post #518
Galanwe wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And literally none of it, not a single step that you mentioned requires blockchain. Then tell me, where is this wonderful centralized database that tells me who owns which car? Blockchains are not just about decentralization, it's also about publishing the actual databases in the wild for everyone to see, because you have the guarantee that no-one can fake it. Sure, a lot of the use cases could be done with central…

why should it be accessible to everyone? i dont want people to know which car I own

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29972711

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

#954

Post by CRConrad »

stefanfisk wrote: post #487
Galanwe wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And literally none of it, not a single step that you mentioned requires blockchain. Then tell me, where is this wonderful centralized database that tells me who owns which car? Blockchains are not just about decentralization, it's also about publishing the actual databases in the wild for everyone to see, because you have the guarantee that no-one can fake it. Sure, a lot of the use cases could be done with central…

In Sweden we use https://biluppgifter.se .

https://www.traficom.fi/en/services/vehicle-data-and-tax-pay...

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

#955

Post by CRConrad »

kikimora wrote: post #676
beertoagunfight wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. I have never gotten a satisfactory answer to how centralization is prevented in such cases.

Vote with your (imaginary) citizen token to appoint a notary. And have a right to vote against it at any time. With blockchain you can elect new notaries every day if this is how you want to manage it.

How many votes does it take to appoint a notary?

If one or a few, I can set up a corrupt notary (or several) to notarize my fake deal with you.

If many, I can't get rid of the corrupt notary (or notaries) you have set up to notarize your fake deal with me.

Is either of these particularly great?

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

#956

Post by CRConrad »

staticassertion wrote: post #348
rileyphone wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blockchain is proving a more than capable solution in the ransomware payments space, enabling a whole new class of malware.

The thing is it's not really particularly good at that. No moreso at least because of any attributes of the blockchain. It's really because of external reasons: 1. Lack of tooling and cooperation for investigating fraud 2. Lack of regulation 3. Programmatic interfaces 4. There are markets like the NFT space that are amazing for laundering But no part of why it's good for crime has to do with blockchain.

>> Blockchain is proving a more than capable solution in the ransomware payments space

> The thing is it's not really particularly good at that.

Sure, but apparently it sucks less at that than at anything else. Which would be why that's the only use case in which it's actually used as a "currency"; the law of comparative advantage and all that.

> But no part of why it's good for crime has to do with blockchain.

Well, the anonymity, one would have thought?

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

#957

Post by CRConrad »

galaxyLogic wrote: post #149
wodenokoto wrote: post #143

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…

Buying real estate with bit-coin, isn't that close to money laundering?

Strike the "close to", would be my guess.

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

#958

Post by CRConrad »

jopsen wrote: post #412
shrimpx wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you bought your bitcoin with legit money, and then you exchanged the bicoin for a house, and you're doing your taxes correctly, how could that be money laundering?

> If you bought your bitcoin with legit money How easy is it to actually buy 5M USD of bitcoin? Assuming you have legit money? And why would you move legit money out of the banking system? Assume you have 5M USD in bitcoin, can you sell it and deposit that in your bank without lots of money laundering questions that are hard to answer? My two cents is that if you have legit money, you will want to keep in the banking…

> How easy is it to actually buy 5M USD of bitcoin? Assuming you have legit money?

I was going to say, "Can't be too hard; Musk does it with hundreds of millions" (billions?).

But then again, maybe it takes three assistants two days each time; he can afford that.

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

#959

Post by CRConrad »

neiman wrote: post #229
BoiledCabbage wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm trying to understand. You're saying that you wouldn't be able to perform online votes or surveys and remotely send money without a blockchain? Could you expand more on what functionality that the blockchain provides that the other solutions in this space (online surveys and remotely send money) don't?

Sure. "Remotely send money" is a super hard thing to do. I literally just struggled for a month with a transfer that included 3 countries, none of them is English speaking. It required letters from banks, accountants, plenty of forms of different countries, translations, stuff which is lost in translation (the bank was unhappy with the word selection of a non-English speaker accountant, for example), different format…

> "Remotely send money" is a super hard thing to do. I literally just struggled for a month with a transfer that included 3 countries, none of them is English speaking. It required...

But this only shows that some (many?) places are woefully behind on online banking, not that blockchain is required. I can transfer money abroad from my bank account to, probably, yours (do you have an IBAN account number?) with just a few clicks more in my online bank than a domestic transfer. If the banks in your target countries caught up to that (not incredibly advanced) standard, you could have done that too. And I'm fairly sure neither my bank nor the ones of my recipients, nor the systems in between them, use any blockchain whatsoever for this.

So not a valid example that blockchain is actually needed.

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

#960

Post by CRConrad »

Thorrez wrote: post #282
jhrmnn wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the end, someone has power over the things in the real world, like releasing a version of the software or purchasing stuff. So everyone involved has to trust that someone at the least.

If the developer introduces a major change, it'll fork the chain. Everyone on the old version of the software will see one chain, everyone on the new version will see the new chain. If not many people switch, the old chain will be the valuable one. So it's kind of a voting system where the community as a whole votes. If the vote isn't decisive, both chains have value. As far as purchasing stuff, there's no central pu…

> If the developer introduces a major change, it'll fork the chain. Everyone on the old version of the software will see one chain, everyone on the new version will see the new chain.

Why? Can't the system keep using the same chain, or is this just convention? If any software change required a fork, you couldn't do even the most trivial of bug fixes (say, fix a typo in the UI, or whatever). But I notice you said "major change"; so who decides what's "major" and what isn't? On which grounds?

Post reply on HN