Blockchain is not only crappy technology but a bad vision for the future • Hacker News Board

Re: Blockchain is not only crappy technology but a bad vision for the future

#91

Post by ramoz » Tue, Jan 18, 2022, 1:45 PM UTC

thr0wawayf00 wrote: post #81

throw__away7391 wrote: post #46

Let's be real. The vast majority of pro-cryptocurrency arguments break down to something like this: "I have Bitcoin, I want it to become the currency of the future so that the price will go up an I will become rich. Here are $reasons why that should become true, which all my fellow Bitcoin hodlers agree are very good reasons". We are now many years past not only the creation of Bitcoin but also past it going "mainstr…

Crypto is essentially the modern equivalent of the pre-Federal Reserve era of US banking, commonly known as the "Free Banking" era or "Wildcat banking". Back then, states chartered their own banks, there was little cooperation between banking outfits and banks could issue their own currency. Financial crime targeting consumers was everywhere and currency stability was a major problem, two major issues that crypto fac…

I feel like this argument isn’t stated enough. I’m not financially savvy and can’t determine if crypto is just re-inventing abstractions in which we’ll ultimately see the same societal patterns develop.

Re: Blockchain is not only crappy technology but a bad vision for the future

#92

Post by globular-toast » Tue, Jan 18, 2022, 1:45 PM UTC

> There is no single person in existence who had a problem they wanted to solve, discovered that an available blockchain solution was the best way to solve it, and therefore became a blockchain enthusiast.

What is this even talking about? People have wanted trustless digital cash for a long time. Bitcoin is a solution for that. Why does it have to be a solution for other things too? Are binary trees useless because they only work for sorting and searching?

The problem with Bitcoin is, people don't even understand the problem it's trying to solve. Most people have no idea what money actually is. A big part of that is many people are positively afraid of money. They don't even want to think about it.

People who aren't afraid of money have been taking advantage of this situation for hundreds of years and most of them are not doing it for public good. Bitcoin itself doesn't appear to work, but it has got the ball rolling on monetary reform like nothing before. I'm now quite optimistic that we will be able to take the control of money away from private banks.

For Bitcoin, or its successor, I think there will always be a place. Massive instability should be a signal of how big of a shake up this is. But it will stabilise and I think become viable as a minor international currency.

For those who still don't get it, I urge you to learn about how banking works and why Bitcoin was created. Learn about why the 2008 financial crisis happened, what fractional reserve banking is (or was, as it doesn't really exist any more), and most importantly what money is. Here's a clue: it's not cash. There is no cash sitting in a safe somewhere collecting dust for that 99% of your money that you never withdraw as cash.

Re: Blockchain is not only crappy technology but a bad vision for the future

#93

Post by rjmunro » Tue, Jan 18, 2022, 1:45 PM UTC

leashless wrote: post #49

Look, this is just nonsense. It's people saying "catalogue shopping will never move online." Read this instead. This is good. https://medium.com/humanizing-the-singularity/why-global-tra...

That article says Blockchain solves the problem of speed-of-light delay by allowing transactions to be batched...

Re: Blockchain is not only crappy technology but a bad vision for the future

#94

Post by K0balt » Tue, Jan 18, 2022, 1:46 PM UTC

throw__away7391 wrote: post #46

Let's be real. The vast majority of pro-cryptocurrency arguments break down to something like this: "I have Bitcoin, I want it to become the currency of the future so that the price will go up an I will become rich. Here are $reasons why that should become true, which all my fellow Bitcoin hodlers agree are very good reasons". We are now many years past not only the creation of Bitcoin but also past it going "mainstr…

The way that blockchain tech is implemented, in many cases, does suck. But an immutable, distributed, permissionless public ledger system enables technology that can eliminate the need for many frictions and cost centers, reducing a host of parasitic costs is worth perusing. Blockchain can reduce or eliminate costs associated with enforcement, state sponsored violence and more, replacing them with a monetary system that can automatically enact taxation, insurance, social welfare and more without extraction of value, and without the possibility of corruption.

Re: Blockchain is not only crappy technology but a bad vision for the future

#95

Post by nosianu » Tue, Jan 18, 2022, 1:47 PM UTC

Qasaur wrote: post #73

telxosser wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you not ever read financial history and what things were like without central banks? No one that knows what they are talking about can possibly think we were better off without central banks. It is a childish and clueless view. House Of Morgan, History of Interest Rates from Wiley. Try reading some books instead of looking up things on wiki to back up your already nonsense beliefs. You can not read those books a…

Have you? Financial crises have been more severe, longer, and more sustained since the introduction of central banking. Let us also not forget that the industrial revolution and the extraordinary growth of Western economies in the late 1800s were mostly conducted under free banking without a central buyer and lender of last resort, and in some jurisdictions where a central bank existed it was regulated to follow a st…

> Financial crises have been more severe, longer, and more sustained since the introduction of central banking.

I admit that I'm not willing to even look into your argument too deeply, although I have severe doubts about its validity. The reason is you omit one order-of-magnitudes factor: The economy has increased exponentially beginning with the industrial revolution, and world population similarly. So of course any disaster, including natural ones, without anything else impacts ever more people and is ever more complex to solve.

This is the major factor that you have to address before any other, but you simply ignore it. Like all the pro-crypto arguments, they always leave out extremely easily accessible points that are not hard to find, which I find strange, and which makes these discussions so tiresome.

And by the way, when it was new I looked into blockchains to the point of even taking programming courses for it, so it's not like I'm completely "armchair" about it. I rejected it only after doing active research.

Re: Blockchain is not only crappy technology but a bad vision for the future

#96

Post by HeckFeck » Tue, Jan 18, 2022, 1:47 PM UTC

Qasaur wrote: post #26

enlyth wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how is the track record of decentralized "currencies"? Buying drugs, money laundering, rampant speculation, rug pulls, fraud, high fees, inefficiency, horrible UX, irreversible SFYL, and destroying the climate.

>Buying drugs, money laundering, rampant speculation, rug pulls, fraud, high fees, inefficiency, horrible UX, irreversible SFYL, and destroying the climate. Every one of these charges happens every day and in some of them to a much greater scale in fiat, especially climate destruction due to inflationary monetary policy, which encourages consumption and waste and punishes thrift and savings.

This is just another form of the "we should ban encryption because criminals use it" argument.

Criminals and wrongdoers will always exist. Statists and financiers are just another category of them, who have a system that conveniently covers their crimes. I will put all my weight behind anything that weakens their power over me: I.e cryptography and cryptocurrency.

Re: Blockchain is not only crappy technology but a bad vision for the future

#97

Post by thr0wawayf00 » Tue, Jan 18, 2022, 1:48 PM UTC

teekert wrote: post #71

throw__away7391 wrote: post #46

Let's be real. The vast majority of pro-cryptocurrency arguments break down to something like this: "I have Bitcoin, I want it to become the currency of the future so that the price will go up an I will become rich. Here are $reasons why that should become true, which all my fellow Bitcoin hodlers agree are very good reasons". We are now many years past not only the creation of Bitcoin but also past it going "mainstr…

Let's be real, the anti-cryptocurrency arguments are something like this: It eats to much energy so we should ban it (just like gaming! Oh wait...) Meanwhile we suffer from a hugely incompetent global payment network that is horrible to deal with and makes some creators actually opt out of receiving donations because of the sheer annoyance and complexity of the system. Yeah, we all want it to use less energy and perh…

> Meanwhile we suffer from a hugely incompetent global payment network

Incompetence is a cop-out argument because you could argue any organization or community suffers from it given a sufficient amount of time in existence. Plus, it's not like crypto companies have a perfect record either. Look at mt gox, or more currently, the accusations against Tether. If it comes out that they've been lying about their capitalization, which many have argued that they are, it could cause major problems for the crypto industry.

True decentralization has not been achieved by the crypto industry, it's merely shifting the rent-seeking from one set of parties to another.

Re: Blockchain is not only crappy technology but a bad vision for the future

#98

Post by etripe » Tue, Jan 18, 2022, 1:48 PM UTC

teekert wrote: post #71

throw__away7391 wrote: post #46

Let's be real. The vast majority of pro-cryptocurrency arguments break down to something like this: "I have Bitcoin, I want it to become the currency of the future so that the price will go up an I will become rich. Here are $reasons why that should become true, which all my fellow Bitcoin hodlers agree are very good reasons". We are now many years past not only the creation of Bitcoin but also past it going "mainstr…

Let's be real, the anti-cryptocurrency arguments are something like this: It eats to much energy so we should ban it (just like gaming! Oh wait...) Meanwhile we suffer from a hugely incompetent global payment network that is horrible to deal with and makes some creators actually opt out of receiving donations because of the sheer annoyance and complexity of the system. Yeah, we all want it to use less energy and perh…

> global payment network that is horrible to deal with

With proper regulation, banks can have maximum terms on holding money mid-transfer, limits (or even abolition!) of transfer and withdrawal fees, etc.

It is possible to designate a product as an essential service or utility. It's just that the US government has chosen to not apply that kind of regulation to a lot of essential products like banking and telecoms, much like it hasn't chosen to enforce anti-trust laws, remove tax avoidance provisions, deal with corporate capture or reform the healthcare, education and electoral systems.

In essence, it's a people problem all the way down. Technology is incapable of solving those, which is why blockchain is a solution looking for a problem.

Re: Blockchain is not only crappy technology but a bad vision for the future

#99

Post by aww_dang » Tue, Jan 18, 2022, 1:48 PM UTC

thr0wawayf00 wrote: post #81

throw__away7391 wrote: post #46

Let's be real. The vast majority of pro-cryptocurrency arguments break down to something like this: "I have Bitcoin, I want it to become the currency of the future so that the price will go up an I will become rich. Here are $reasons why that should become true, which all my fellow Bitcoin hodlers agree are very good reasons". We are now many years past not only the creation of Bitcoin but also past it going "mainstr…

Crypto is essentially the modern equivalent of the pre-Federal Reserve era of US banking, commonly known as the "Free Banking" era or "Wildcat banking". Back then, states chartered their own banks, there was little cooperation between banking outfits and banks could issue their own currency. Financial crime targeting consumers was everywhere and currency stability was a major problem, two major issues that crypto fac…

Yet this era was also known as the "Gilded Age". Literally covered in gold.

I'm not detecting nuance in this take. The Fed has created boom bust cycles and is hardly a bastion of price stability. The great depression and the continued interventions which prolonged it come to mind.

Re: Blockchain is not only crappy technology but a bad vision for the future

#100

Post by josefx » Tue, Jan 18, 2022, 1:48 PM UTC

achenatx wrote: post #85

16012022 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tbf, blockchain is the dark matter of technology. People are never allowed to criticize it without the same, repeated feedback “If that’s what you think blockchain is, then you don’t understand it.” Why doesn’t someone, then, who actually understands their almighty blockchain god, illuminate us, mere mortals, on the wonders of blockchain and how it can be good for society in the foreseeable future. You know what’s re…

blockchain allows essentially instantaneous completion of transactions between unrelated parties with no clearing house. Today there are many transactions that take days to clear. For example if you buy stock, it appears instantaneous to you, but the scenes your brokerage, the other brokerage, and the clearing house have to make sure all the money is there, the stock is there, etc Clearinghouses make a lot of money j…

> blockchain allows essentially instantaneous completion of transactions between unrelated parties with no clearing house.

Wait, aren't blockchain transactions hilariously slow and depend on an internet connection?

> Clearinghouses make a lot of money just guaranteeing transactions. That is friction in the system.

Aren't popular blockchains using transaction fees to pay for validation?

> Wire transfers, ACH, cashiers checks, etc all have the same issues.

Seems to also apply to bitcoin.