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Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against blockchain technologies

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against blockchain technologies

#281

Post by unemphysbro »

kyle-rb wrote: post #130
unemphysbro wrote: post #19

why? i think it's the coolest thing ever. anyone can write a contract to automate taking out a loan, investing it, and pulling out the money, develop exotic securities, and bespoke arbitration. anyone can do it regardless of credentials or connections; just a month of learning. pretty darn cool to have unbridled access to a distributed computer.

Who is offering automated loans? "Regardless of credentials or connections" sounds like I don't need any credit history or anything, how do they trust me with this free money? And I already have unbridled access to my own computer, which seems to have more compute power than the EVM.

https://docs.aave.com/developers/v/2.0/guides/flash-loans

have fun :) play around on the testnets first.

Re: Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against blockchain technologies

#282

Post by unemphysbro »

JaimeThompson wrote: post #113
unemphysbro wrote: post #19

why? i think it's the coolest thing ever. anyone can write a contract to automate taking out a loan, investing it, and pulling out the money, develop exotic securities, and bespoke arbitration. anyone can do it regardless of credentials or connections; just a month of learning. pretty darn cool to have unbridled access to a distributed computer.

Except humans haven't developed ways to write bug free code except in a very few limited circumstances none of which crypto uses.

hence the recent renaissance in formal methods

eg.

https://www.certik.com/

Re: Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against blockchain technologies

#284

Post by api »

sudosysgen wrote: post #67
ohazi wrote: post #32

Like many people back then, I also found the whole proof-of-work / blockchain concept to be interesting from a theoretical computer science / distributed systems perspective. But these days, I can't help but think that we've inadvertently created a paperclip maximizer without even bothering to create an AGI first. Humans are the AGI, and we're going to happily use more and more energy to play this stupid game for as…

Capital in general is a paperclip maximizer, not just Bitcoin. All investors are slaves to their capital that takes a mind of its own, a sort of real-world Egregore. Bitcoin is a flagrant example of this property of capital.

Cryptocurrency started as a challenge to financial capitalism and ended up becoming an absurdist parody of it.

Re: Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against blockchain technologies

#285

Post by api »

prox wrote: post #147
valdiorn wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok. Who is the arbitrator then? A centralised party? If not, then maybe people who stake the most? Because that way you can literally pay for the right to decide what is "truth".

It reminds me of the democratic bus analogy. A bus with no driver and everyone with a steering wheel. All the input gets averaged out. Such a bus would get nowhere.

Has anyone ever tried this? Sounds like a fascinating experiment. Of course it's basically all game theory. If a critical mass of people cooperated it could work.

Re: Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against blockchain technologies

#286

Post by dqpb »

nus07 wrote: post #16

I mean I graduated top 5% of my class and make early 6 figures. My friend who graduated bottom 5% is now a crypto millionaire living in Dubai. Meanwhile I can write complex Scala code but I have no idea what blockchain , NFT , crypto is all about apart from the fact that it made my friend rich and made early adopters rich . How , why , when I don’t know . What’s the gain, purpose of it - I don’t know . Then again I d…

Ah, so you’ve learned how meaningless it is to graduate top 5% in your class.

Re: Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against blockchain technologies

#287

Post by exdsq »

scott_s wrote: post #277
thisisbrians wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favorite example of late is http://royal.io . You can purchase a token (NFT) that represents fractional ownership in the licensing rights of a musician's song or album, and also comes along with other perks (such as free or discounted merch and concert tickets). The proceeds from the NFT sales help fund the artist's project, and then you participate in the upside by receiving a share of royalties for holding the t…

You’ve described a share in a private company. Not only do you not need an NFT for that, using an NFT provides you no additional guarantees.

Cool! How would you like to open a private company and manage that, including accounts and taxes, for every song?

Re: Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against blockchain technologies

#288

Post by exdsq »

thrwn_frthr_awy wrote: post #258
thisisbrians wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps an even more germane example for the crowd would be the use of blockchain to manage cap tables: https://balajis.com/mirrortable/

Maybe I'm just too old, but I just don't understand what stuff like this is saying: > A mirrortable is a way to take a legally compliant cap table held in a system like Carta and mirror it on the blockchain. It consists of an on-chain smart contract and a bidirectional interface that syncs changes made on-chain to the off-chain cap table and vice versa. In this it is similar to a stablecoin, which similarly links an…

It's basically saying the cap table is held 'offline', that is off of the blockchain, in a legally compliant digital place. There is then a copy of that cap table on the blockchain with a smart contract - an API if you will - to modify the cap table on the blockchain, which will then update the legally compliant one or vice versa. Not sure what the perks are here, but that's what it is.

Re: Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against blockchain technologies

#289

Post by exdsq »

thrwn_frthr_awy wrote: post #225
cuteboy19 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a crypto critic, monero is basically the only useful innovation to come out of crypto. Unfortunately, most people buy crypto on exchanges so the idea of decentralised, uncensorable etc are really oversold

Can you explain that more? I'm not familiar with Monero. What apps couldn't be made without it?

Monero is a privacy-focused cryptocurrency. It obfuscates transactions while keeping the technical perks of a decentralized ledger.

Re: Tell HN: We have a responsibility to speak out against blockchain technologies

#290

Post by beaconstudios »

mattwilsonn888 wrote: post #207
Victerius wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What Bitcoin has brought to the table: - More convenient ways for malicious individuals to conduct ransomware attacks - Fraudulent exchanges - Persistent and global GPU shortages - Anonymity to criminals - Staggering consumption of real-life energy supplies, produced mostly with fossil fuels What Bitcoin has not brought to the table: - A store of value - A trusted unit of account - A widespread medium of exchange

Classic. Bitcoin is not a store of value or trusted unit of account despite its massive market cap. The primary objective measure of value is invalidated because you disagree with it and believe everyone else is wrong. You are a Kafka character.

something being used for massive financial speculation doesn't make it a store of value or a trusted unit of account.
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