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

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

#101

Post by HeckFeck »

JaimeThompson wrote: post #33
Qasaur wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

It's much harder to do ransomware payments with non-crypto.

Ransomware would be eliminated if we just banned computers and made the internet illegal.

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

#102

Post by at_ »

ddtaylor wrote: post #15

HN really loves to hate cryptocurrency!

Clicked for me when I realised HN is compromised of the few for whom web2 has served quite nicely, so it's unsurprising that talk of web3 is received about as well as a brick through the Google bus window

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

#103

Post by goesnowhere »

meheleventyone wrote: post #56
egeozcan wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Meanwhile 1.7 billion people around the world do not have a bank account ...therefore we need bitcoin? Is this the new spin? People don't see it's a tech that was invented without a use case? Many people don't have electricity too, what are you talking about?

It also seems broadly ignorant of technology in the last decade that has done far more for unbanked people than crypto currencies.

UPI and M-Pesa have had far reaching effects to this regard. This narritive that crypto helps the unbanked is not true.

If I'm wrong about crypto helping the unbanked, please provide any context or numbers to back up this claim.

P.S. Let the poor countries solve their own problems, if you want to help donate money directly.

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

#104

Post by hiq »

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…

> Transferring your deed is a very complicated process.

For regulatory reasons, not for technical ones. You're using the word "transaction", but you should distinguish between legal transactions and what is essentially a database transaction.

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

#105

Post by RugnirViking »

Criteria for a currency I would like to use:

- Accepted by my government to pay taxes in

- Accepted by all the places I would like to buy things

- Stable price

- Easy to use

- My job pays me in this currency

- Easy to transfer

Every single one is already satisfied by current currencies. Cryptocurrencies bring nothing, "except anonymity" which isn't true (the blockchain is literally a public leger of all transactions, yes you can open a wallet anonymously but you can do that for a bank account too if you have to)

If somebody is seriously trying to suggest that people in hyperinflationary economies would prefer bitcoin, hyperdeflationary economies are just as bad, and worse than both is wildly unpredictable economies.

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

#106

Post by kybernetikos »

teekert wrote: post #84
ramoz wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fascinating cryptology work exists without cryptocurrencies, the reverse is not true.

Since fascination is subjective you should never make that statement. Edit: Scrap that, you are right, cryptography is a necessary building block of crypto-currencies. What you are actually saying is: Fascinating bricks exist without brick-houses, the reverse is not true. Which is logical.

Sure, some fascinating bricks would be created even without brick houses, but having brick houses means that many more people are thinking about and creating fascinating bricks, and using those bricks for more purposes.

It's like saying we shouldn't be pleased that pharmaceutical research is giving us greater insights into genetics because genetic science would exist even without pharmaceutical research. It's true that genetic science would exist, it's false that therefore pharmaceutical research adds no value to it.

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

#107

Post by strgcmc »

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…

Whether or not Bitcoin is going to become the "currency of the future" is certainly highly debatable (debatable in the sense that, is it likely to happen, or is it even a good idea for society), but the argument against it, is not going to boil down to "digital beanie babies"... Retail and retail adoption is not going to shape the future of Bitcoin, not past this point in history.

Do you remember seeing institutional-grade analysts and advisers issuing guidance about beanie babies? Pointing out that corporate treasuries or sovereign nations might consider a small allocation to beanie babies as a hedge against future-whatever? This is hardly the only such report, though it's a recent one looking at 2021 trends in review: https://www.fidelitydigitalassets.com/articles/2021-trends-i...

I am not saying Bitcoin is destined to win or to make anyone rich, but clearly this has moved far beyond the realm of beanie baby speculation. I mean, good or bad, it's at least reached the level of institutional speculation (see exhibits: dot-com crash, 2008 financial crisis, etc.), and at least it should be taken proportionally as seriously as other institutional financial instruments (i.e. do you take bonds seriously? gold as a financial commodity to be traded? well Bitcoin is X% of those by marketcap, so maybe deserves X% of your attention).

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

#108

Post by rocgf »

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…

You're strawmanning heavily. The energy argument is a big one, but it's not THE argument against crypto.

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

#109

Post by analog31 »

16012022 wrote: post #12
Quindecillion wrote: post #6

More bad takes from people who don't understand the point of Bitcoin and its blockchain. It's all so... tiresome. The fact that the author is comparing to services like Venmo or PayPal really goes to show how much they don't understand about what Bitcoin was built to achieve. Also goes to show that people like the author should also check their financial privilege: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/check-your-finan…

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…

Having a well articulated purpose, and being "centralized" are two sides of the same coin. We can agree on a purpose for government money because it has been deliberately molded to specific purposes: A medium of exchange, short term store of value, and instrument of economic policy. We can measure its performance against those purposes, and in fact, that measurement process is part of the technology of our money system.

Not knowing the purpose of cryptocurrency is its purpose. There's nothing wrong with having a general purpose technology, like computer programming, that is adaptable to specific purposes on demand.

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

#110

Post by vintermann »

BunsanSpace wrote: post #65
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 is being used in supply chains (IBM tradelens) for immutable record keeping, NFT's (outside of selling URLs to jpgs...) are a good application for certificates of authenticity (some artists are selling their NFTs WITH a physical copy and using the NFT as the certificate of authenticity). Any application where you need an immutable ledger is a good application for blockchain. Just because crypto enthuisiast…

Any application where you need an immutable ledger, and

1. You can't trust any single known party, or group of parties, to attest the integrity of the ledger (otherwise, you could just use plain old digital signatures)

2. You need infinite pseudonymous accounts in this ledger.

3. You need it so badly that you're willing to forgo a significant share of whatever value having this ledger creates, regularly, forever (mining fees).

There have been attempts to rebrand blockchain as anything containing a chain of digital signatures, no mining needed. In which case it's old technology - but in that case I also agree that it has a use.

Artists are by their nature known parties, as are factors in a supply chain. They may have a use for digital signatures, but they have no use for a scheme including mining.

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