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

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141–150 of 202 posts

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

#141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd go even further than that. The mismanagement of markets by central planners set the stage for cryptocurrencies. We're living in an era of speculative mania. Savings accounts have a negative real interest rate. This currency must go somewhere. Centralized payment services are vulnerable to regulators, see eGold and Liberty Reserve. Note that BTC emerged shortly after these services were destroyed. Anti-terror legi…

> Centralized payment services are vulnerable to regulators, see eGold and Liberty Reserve. Note that BTC emerged shortly after these services were destroyed. Anti-terror legislation was used. According to Wikipedia, Liberty Reserve was used to launder over $6B stolen from offshore banks. That sounds like a pretty legitimate reason to shut a service like that down to me. You argue that central banks are incompetent a…

>a pretty legitimate reason to shut a service like that down to me

Meanwhile physical cash is preferred for criminal acts. Would you similarly blame the issuer of cash for these crimes? What about footwear? Most criminals wear shoes or boots. Running shoes can be used to evade capture. Should we hold Nike accountable?

>does anything but benefit those with the most resources in the system. As long as that remains true, how do we expect it result in a more fair system than what we already have?

If fairness is the virtue we are seeking, then how does the plunge protection team protect fairness?

If fairness is the virtue we are seeking, then how do Cantillon effects factor into your argument?

If fairness is the virtue we are seeking, then how does a central bank formed by the blue-blood oligarchy advance this cause?

If fairness is the virtue we are seeking, then why does the central bank protect financial markets at the cost of all participants in the market?

(Pseudo?) Anonymity is what protects individuals from regulatory overreach and confiscations of wealth. True to the form described by regulatory capture, the IRS disproportionately attacks the income of small business owners vs. the super rich, who can afford to keep a small army of tax accountants, lawyers and lobbyists on retainer. Meanwhile the tax code grows ever more byzantine by the year.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Cantillon#:~:text=Furt....

https://www.mdtaxattorney.com/resources/irs-targeting-small-....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_Group_on_Financial_Mar...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve#:~:text=In%20econ....

https://www.marketplace.org/2015/10/20/how-secret-meeting-je....

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

#142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I find it strange that so many cryto people get so emotional when such comments are made. It makes it rather difficult to have an actual discussion on the issues.

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

#143
Yeah, as if perpetually rising housing prices, subsidized petrol, shoving the cost of climate change over onto poor countries and responding to migration crises by interning and torturing people is a great vision for the future..

I have never made a single penny of off crypto, but I wholeheartedly appreciate it as a transactional currency in a country with extremely draconian drug laws, the highest overdose numbers and of course the inevitable resulting rise of criminal organizations primarily funded by the governments refusal to take responsibility for the drug trade in their country.

How sheltered do you really have to be to consider bloody fucking cryptocoins a bigger problem than any of this?

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

#144
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no other conceivable reason why Perhaps there is no other reason you can (or are willing to) conceive, but that does not make it fact. A major issue with cryptocurrency and blockchain discussions is that vocal proponents speak as if they’re arbiters of truth with perfect knowledge of the the world and everyone who doesn’t subscribe to their view is an envious dunce. They speak in insults and talking points…

The only fundamental difference inherent to the respective designs of blockchains and traditional banking, is censorship resistance through genuine self-custody. The former is designed to provide this quality, and the latter is not. So yes, I maintain people opposed to blockchain on principle - as opposed to problematic elements within the contemporary blockchain space - oppose individual liberty, which I characteriz…

>blockchain on principle - as opposed to problematic elements within the contemporary blockchain space

The problems are impossible to decouple from "blockchain on principle" because the problems are intrinsic to the data structure itself, not "contemporary" approaches to the data structure implementation.

I am probably aligned with you politically (if not more radical in my libertarian sentiments), and I can sympathize with the stated goals of the crypto space/bitcoin whitepaper. The problem is that the technology and computer science behind it fails completely to deliver on these goals from both an abstract and practical perspective.

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

#145
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been commenting a few times about this already, but you're just arguing for interoperability, and blockchains don't help in that regard.

I probably agree with a chunk of this, but there is a level at which blockchains, specifically smart contract platforms help enormously with interoperability - they force those using them to provide standard, transactionally interoperable APIs to their services. If someone provides a financial service on ethereum for example, then it will have an api that can be used by other services on ethereum. This is a shocking…

> If someone provides a financial service on ethereum for example, then it will have an api that can be used by other services on ethereum.

Not necessarily. You can have a smart contract that's completely controlled by one address, such that you need manual interaction with an external system to interact with the smart contract. You can even avoid transparency by storing information elsewhere, via an oracle. Nothing ensures that somebody providing a financial service on Ethereum will provide anything that could be considered an API.

Other than that, for the same financial service, the same regulations will apply to both the Ethereum and traditional version. If it's legally possible to offer some kind of API on Ethereum and it does bring value, the same could be achieved outside of Ethereum. But IMHO the real reasons for the absence of such APIs are regulations and incentives, for which Ethereum doesn't help.

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

#146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I find it strange that so many cryto people get so emotional when such comments are made. It makes it rather difficult to have an actual discussion on the issues.

It's difficult to have an actual discussion when the same old platitudes keep reappearing in every crypto discussion.

I can rephrase as a question: Should we stop using groundbreaking and individual-empowering technologies just because some criminals benefit? Every single technology is exploted by criminals. I fail to see how that is an argument for its disavowal. If anything, we need to normalise privacy and encryption among virtuous everyday individuals.

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

#147
post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fiat currencies are used in literally every country on the planet and have been through the largest economic booms in history. Limited/hard currencies on the other hand, have a 100% failure rate with one ongoing experiment happening right now in El Salvador. Which would I rather bet on? I bet we agree on many issues including, let people move freely between countries, have less rules, have smaller countries. But ther…

> Fiat currencies are used in literally every country on the planet and have been through the largest economic booms in history. Limited/hard currencies on the other hand, have a 100% failure rate with one ongoing experiment happening right now in El Salvador. Which would I rather bet on? Something has existed for tens of thousands of years and in the last 50 years has been supplanted by something else. Which would I…

Ill deal with the factually incorrect parts of your statement to start.

1. The earliest known currency was the shekel and it was more of a accounting instrument and it was used ~5000 years ago.

2. Fiat was invented in the 7th century https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_money#China

Regarding your claim that hard money is good.

We are talking about a system that completely floundered under pressure from economic expansion (hard money) vs a system that has been presiding over the largest economic booms in history and is currently adopted by every government in the world (fiat) and your argument is "well look which is older".

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

#148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes that's what I was saying I fully agree other tech has had way more impact on the unbanked. :)

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

#149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only fundamental difference inherent to the respective designs of blockchains and traditional banking, is censorship resistance through genuine self-custody. The former is designed to provide this quality, and the latter is not. So yes, I maintain people opposed to blockchain on principle - as opposed to problematic elements within the contemporary blockchain space - oppose individual liberty, which I characteriz…

>blockchain on principle - as opposed to problematic elements within the contemporary blockchain space The problems are impossible to decouple from "blockchain on principle" because the problems are intrinsic to the data structure itself, not "contemporary" approaches to the data structure implementation. I am probably aligned with you politically (if not more radical in my libertarian sentiments), and I can sympathi…

>>The problems are impossible to decouple from "blockchain on principle" because the problems are intrinsic to the data structure itself, not "contemporary" approaches to the data structure implementation.

If that is indeed the belief, then I concede that is an example of someone opposed to blockchains in principle, for a reason that is not an illiberal political agenda.

In any case, I like to think I am pretty well informed on blockchain technology, and I can't think of a single problem that currently afflicts the space, that cannot be solved through engineering a solution that does not involve moving away from the general blockchain architecture, or more generally, a solution that does not involve moving away from autonomous ledgers that use cryptoeconomics to maintain consensus.

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

#150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

Let's be real here.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilded_Age

> which satirized an era of serious social problems masked by a thin gold gilding.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gilded_Age:_A_Tale_of_Toda...

"The book is remarkable for two reasons—it is the only novel Twain wrote with a collaborator, and its title very quickly became synonymous with graft, materialism, and corruption in public life."

It only took me 2 seconds to find out that the term was ironic.

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