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Awesome Critique of Crypto/Web3

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Re: Awesome Critique of Crypto/Web3

#81

Post by lawtalkinghuman »

hunterb123 wrote: post #24

Yeah, no thank you, I don't come to Hacker News for crypto talk, the bias is comical and the talking points are recycled as a new article every week (scams!, speculation!, hype!, wasted electricity!, tether!) All of those have rebuttals, but I don't want to get into the politics of it, there's plenty of that already. Can we please talk about the fucking tech here? I'm talking about what's made with it, not some sort…

I took a look at "awesome-dapps" to see if there were indeed any awesome dapps that I could try.

OpenBazaar - Closed Jan 4, 2021. https://twitter.com/openbazaar/status/1346104369566121986

SafeMarket - the getting started link says it's alpha, tells you to go to the subreddit, which is closed. The GitHub repo last had a commit in 2016.

Livepeer - a video streaming service that has no actual evidence on the website of anyone actually using it to stream any content. All the videos they have up on the Livepeer website about Livepeer... are hosted on YouTube. All the discussion I see of it on Twitter and their subreddit is about which exchanges the coin is listed on and the likelihood of it going to the moon etc. The actual utility in transcoding seems secondary to the speculative value of the token.

CryptoPunks - I hope the person who paid $23 million is happy with their purchase.

Thousand Ether Homepage - old school web nostalgia. Okay that's nice I guess.

"An open source sample iOS dApp that demonstrates a practical use-case in biomedical research: sharing location data by interacting with a smart contract deployed on the Oasis Devnet." Trusting a smart contract with your location data sure sounds like one of those ideas that'll end perfectly. Again, not an actual app, just some demoware.

Everything else on the awesome-dapps list are educational resources—books, tutorials, blog posts—not actual examples of functioning dapps.

If these are the awesome dapps, one dare not ask what the bad ones are like.

Re: Awesome Critique of Crypto/Web3

#82

Post by throwaway392321 »

user-the-name wrote: post #78
throwaway392321 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Cryptocurrency trading is not the same as a regular market. Could you substantiate what you see here with a concrete difference? Particularly in terms of my argument that an asset price can move without actual trades being made. If positive news comes out about bitcoin, the price can immediately move without any trading, or at least without every bitcoin needing to realize a gain through trading. This would be an e…

> If positive news comes out about bitcoin, the price can immediately move without any trading I mean, it can't? The "price" is literally defined as the price of the latest trade. The mistake you are making here is the assumption that there is a "value" in a bitcoin that can change. This is true for a stock - it represent a fraction of ownership of a company, and a company has real value. That value can go up and dow…

> I mean, it can't? The "price" is literally defined as the price of the latest trade.

Check out how an order book works: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_book. I'm referring to the bid and the ask price. These often do differ substantially from the last trade price, and represent what someone is willing to pay to buy or receive to sell the asset right now. These can move without any trades actually being made. The price you are referring to is the last price.

But the broader point is that the market cap can move much faster or slower than the total traded value. It would not take exactly a 1 billion dollar buy order to move bitcoin price up 1 billion dollars in market cap, it would probably move much more than that. Same thing for stocks. So your assumption that the total cap of something represents exactly that many dollars being put in by investors is wrong, in general it will be far fewer dollars put in.

> The mistake you are making here is the assumption that there is a "value" in a bitcoin that can change.

I'm making the assumption that the value of a bitcoin is the price someone is willing to pay for it, which is supported by the evidence of what a market actually does pay for it. I tend to base my understanding of the world based on things that can actually be measured and that I can verify. You are asserting, may I add without any evidence, that its value is actually zero. I would challenge you to try to give a definition of "value" that is actually measurable, and that can lead to meaningful predictions about the world. Even if you had a perfect god's eye view of the "real value" of every asset, you'd still have to account for human behavior the irrationality of markets.

> This is not true for bitcoins. They do not represent anything, there is no ownership of anything but the bitcoin itself. It only has value inasmuch as it can be traded.

Your argument that value is only real if it represents "real" ownership would seem to imply that cash settled derivatives markets, which are some of the most liquid markets there are, also have zero value because they don't actually represent ownership of anything and are merely trading instruments. Similarly, cash itself, by your own logic, would have zero value, as it does not represent ownership in anything.

Re: Awesome Critique of Crypto/Web3

#83

Post by dang »

niahmiah wrote: post #9

Quoted post unavailable.

Would you please stop posting unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments to HN? You've been doing it a lot, unfortunately, and we ban that sort of account. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Awesome Critique of Crypto/Web3

#84

Post by dang »

freen wrote: post #34
niahmiah wrote: post #9

Quoted post unavailable.

[flagged]

Would you please stop breaking the site guidelines, regardless of how wrong someone is or you feel they are? You've been doing it a lot, unfortunately, and we ban that sort of account. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Awesome Critique of Crypto/Web3

#85

Post by user-the-name »

hunterb123 wrote: post #80
user-the-name wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? People are doing it all the time, and you are rejecting them outright. Why should I bother to do the same when the last hundred times, you would not listen?

Simply asking you to pick your favorite critique and defend it. Unless you're just parroting others and you don't have a view? I cannot prove a negative, or in this case an undefined, you need to present an issue to debate.

I have plenty of views. But you declared right from the start that you have chosen to blind yourself from the truth, and I know exactly how pointless it is to try to argue with someone in that position, so I simply will not.

Re: Awesome Critique of Crypto/Web3

#86

Post by user-the-name »

throwaway392321 wrote: post #82
user-the-name wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If positive news comes out about bitcoin, the price can immediately move without any trading I mean, it can't? The "price" is literally defined as the price of the latest trade. The mistake you are making here is the assumption that there is a "value" in a bitcoin that can change. This is true for a stock - it represent a fraction of ownership of a company, and a company has real value. That value can go up and dow…

> I mean, it can't? The "price" is literally defined as the price of the latest trade. Check out how an order book works: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_book . I'm referring to the bid and the ask price. These often do differ substantially from the last trade price, and represent what someone is willing to pay to buy or receive to sell the asset right now. These can move without any trades actually being made. T…

No, that is obviously not the only kind of value you can have. That is one. I am saying bitcoin has none of them.

And, again, mathematically, bitcoin trading is negative sum. This has nothing to do with what the price is. It can go up, down, or stay the same. The game is still negative sum in the end.

Re: Awesome Critique of Crypto/Web3

#87

Post by user-the-name »

tromp wrote: post #27
user-the-name wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no safe way to wind down mining. As mining becomes unprofitable, mining equipment will be shut down. But it will still exist, and it will be in the hands of people desperate for cash. This means that the price of 51% attack will drop massively, and that completely undermines the safety that PoW provides. A large drop in price followed by a large drop in mining completely destroys the security of bitcoin.

The price of a 51% relative to the total marketcap won't change drastically (only moderately due to wider availability of hardware), and that's what security is based on, not the absolute cost of a 51% attack.

The "total market cap" is a completely fictional number that represents nothing real whatsoever. It makes no sense to compare anything to this number.

Re: Awesome Critique of Crypto/Web3

#88

Post by throwaway392321 »

user-the-name wrote: post #86
throwaway392321 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I mean, it can't? The "price" is literally defined as the price of the latest trade. Check out how an order book works: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_book . I'm referring to the bid and the ask price. These often do differ substantially from the last trade price, and represent what someone is willing to pay to buy or receive to sell the asset right now. These can move without any trades actually being made. T…

No, that is obviously not the only kind of value you can have. That is one. I am saying bitcoin has none of them. And, again, mathematically, bitcoin trading is negative sum. This has nothing to do with what the price is. It can go up, down, or stay the same. The game is still negative sum in the end.

> No, that is obviously not the only kind of value you can have. That is one. I am saying bitcoin has none of them.

Please elucidate me on the "kind of value" that cash or cash settled derivatives have, and that that bitcoin would not have.

> And, again, mathematically, bitcoin trading is negative sum. This has nothing to do with what the price is. It can go up, down, or stay the same. The game is still negative sum in the end.

The price is absolutely relevant. If the price were to only increase no one would ever realize a loss on an investment on bitcoin. (I don't think this has any chance of happening, I'm just illustrating why price does matter "mathematically").

Re: Awesome Critique of Crypto/Web3

#89

Post by hunterb123 »

user-the-name wrote: post #85
hunterb123 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simply asking you to pick your favorite critique and defend it. Unless you're just parroting others and you don't have a view? I cannot prove a negative, or in this case an undefined, you need to present an issue to debate.

I have plenty of views. But you declared right from the start that you have chosen to blind yourself from the truth, and I know exactly how pointless it is to try to argue with someone in that position, so I simply will not.

Yeah I guess that's why I'm asking you for one of your plenty views, I'm choosing to blind myself, lol.

Clearly you don't want to share it so I guess we're done here.

Re: Awesome Critique of Crypto/Web3

#90

Post by hunterb123 »

lawtalkinghuman wrote: post #81
hunterb123 wrote: post #24

Yeah, no thank you, I don't come to Hacker News for crypto talk, the bias is comical and the talking points are recycled as a new article every week (scams!, speculation!, hype!, wasted electricity!, tether!) All of those have rebuttals, but I don't want to get into the politics of it, there's plenty of that already. Can we please talk about the fucking tech here? I'm talking about what's made with it, not some sort…

I took a look at "awesome-dapps" to see if there were indeed any awesome dapps that I could try. OpenBazaar - Closed Jan 4, 2021. https://twitter.com/openbazaar/status/1346104369566121986 SafeMarket - the getting started link says it's alpha, tells you to go to the subreddit, which is closed. The GitHub repo last had a commit in 2016. Livepeer - a video streaming service that has no actual evidence on the website of…

Wow, you have some really selective reading if those are the only apps you saw.

awesome-dapps is the smallest list, check out the ones below since you seemed to miss them:

https://github.com/gdamdam/awesome-decentralized-web

https://github.com/redecentralize/alternative-internet

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