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Crypto is an unproductive bubble

alexkolchinski.com

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Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#91

Post by Tijdreiziger »

mattwilsonn888 wrote: post #33
jmcgough wrote: post #19

One of the biggest drawbacks for blockchain is that transactions can't be revoked after the fact (with the only exception being costly forks of the entire ledger), and there's no additional human oversight (like I'd get when sending a large amount of money through a bank) to protect me. If someone steals my credit card, I have my credit card company to give me some level of protection. They can block transactions if…

The beauty of crypto is that those tools are exposed and not required, and that the underlying rules are universal. Banks and custodial services built off of shared liability, insurance, reversions, any useful thing a bank does are still possible with crypto - in fact they aren't even that complicated. The difference is that while allowing a (properly set up) crypto bank to transfer funds you may also at any point an…

> Crypto is FOSS finance, it works for the people as stated and expected.

A laughable statement in the face of crypto’s negative externalities. We’ll wreck the planet we all share, but at least we’ll have FOSS finance!

Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#92

Post by nl »

gonehome wrote: post #40
jmcgough wrote: post #19

One of the biggest drawbacks for blockchain is that transactions can't be revoked after the fact (with the only exception being costly forks of the entire ledger), and there's no additional human oversight (like I'd get when sending a large amount of money through a bank) to protect me. If someone steals my credit card, I have my credit card company to give me some level of protection. They can block transactions if…

Banks won’t protect you from wire fraud either. I’ve written this elsewhere when this topic routinely comes up and crypto is dismissed, but the capability of self-custody is the thing to pay attention to. Nothing else has this capability to the same extent. Today we store most of our wealth in assets (market index funds, stocks, real estate, etc.) and some (typically very little, and rarely outside of a bank account)…

I'm entirely unconvinced that self custody is an advantage for anyone except extremely sophisticated people (sophisticated in both the technical and financial sense).

I've been doing blockchain on and off since 2008. Recently I lost a few thousand dollars by sending crypto to a L1 address when I was on a L2.

I work on self-soverign identity in my day job. I've written smart contracts. I'm a careful person. Basically I think if I'm dumb enough to do this what chance do most people have of getting this right?

Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#93

Post by SubiculumCode »

Claim 1: Crypto is a Bubble (Confidence: High) Sure. All tech rushes go through a bubble.

Claim 2: Blockchain technology has no non-monetary applications (Confidence: High) Gambling is definitely a non-monetary application of smart contracts and oracles that is truly viable as a product.

*Claim 3: Future monetary use of blockchain technology will be minor (Confidence: Medium) There are many forms of crypto, and many are not immutable. Many have systems of governance that allow for changes in monetary policy, just like in a fiat currency.

Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#94

Post by javchz »

One of my big issues with (legit) Crypto it's UX VS Decentralization.

The easiest way for the regular Joe to use crypto it's with an exchange... that it's basically, just a centralized institution making changes in a private database for when transactions are made inside the exchange.

Only if the user wants to send money to a wallet the transaction enters into the blockchain, outside of that it's like a bank... without the regulation benefits.

I think the state of Crypto right now it's in similar to what HTML journals were at the start of the internet. The reason why social media won over everyone having their blog in a distributed network, was in big part to the easy-to-use experience.

I find it a little bit hard to believe that crypto will not be centralized at the end to some extent. This motto of "crypto it's a fight of the common folks against the big guy" feels like marketing made by people who control crypto now and who want to be the "big guy" this time, rather than the democratization of the banking system.

Look, I like concepts of the tech behind it and I hope to be wrong, crypto has proven useful in some scenarios like Venezuela. But seem naive to expect that, if they don't take into account the limitations of the tech itself, everyone it's going to use wallets and private keys with all the good security practices requires and never make a mistake.

Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#95

Post by dist1ll »

saghm wrote: post #48
dist1ll wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One of the biggest drawbacks for blockchain is that transactions can't be revoked after the fact You can transfer money to an escrow smart contract that reverts the transaction if a third party confirms malicious activity. > They can block transactions if they think it's stolen, and if I report it as stolen I can claw back money from fraudulent purchases. Certain DLTs allow you to secure your account with SSI/DPKI…

>> One of the biggest drawbacks for blockchain is that transactions can't be revoked after the fact (with the only exception being costly forks of the entire ledger), and there's no additional human oversight (like I'd get when sending a large amount of money through a bank) to protect me. >> With crypto, a software flaw used to steal crypto can kill an entire company. They're largely powerless to stop it once the tr…

> How is this any different than what we have, just with extra steps?

It's declarative. There's no vagueness about the state of the transaction, and settlement can be cryptographically proven. This creates transparency and accountability. It's also sovereign. Not every transaction NEEDS this level of customer protection. Paying in person at a restaurant or supermarket can be done with a simple transaction.

Also, some transactions like subscriptions (which are very common) need a cancel functionality that follows strict rules: perfect for a smart contract.

And finally, even your bank won't be able to protect you in many cases.

Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#96

Post by danuker »

Aunche wrote: post #54
benreesman wrote: post #43

How many times are we going to have this conversation? Yes crypto is an asset bubble, alongside equities, real estate, precious metals, you name it. Money printer go brrrr, more dollars are chasing the same amount of Apple sells iPhones. Crypto has no intrinsic value, it pays no dividend and doesn’t give you proxy rights, just like all the tech equities. Proof of work burns a lot of electricity, though this is compli…

>Crypto has no intrinsic value, it pays no dividend and doesn’t give you proxy rights, just like all the tech equities. Tech companies return money to their investors via buybacks. Most investors prefer this as they get to choose when they get taxed.

A better comparison would have been national currency.

A piece of paper has no intrinsic value, pays no dividend, and gets diluted over time.

Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#97

Post by jka »

pornel wrote: post #61
jka wrote: post #27

Cryptocurrencies and web3 demonstrate promise as ways to escape from the VC-funded walled gardens that are more typical of previous eras of the web. Ironically that means that excessive amounts of money are being thrown at them in order to obtain any kind of small angular velocity towards funders that believe they can capture the next generation of the market -- or simply to prevent it from happening, for those with…

You’re merely replacing old masters with new. There’s a ton of VC money flowing into “web3”, because they’re replaying the same game of adding a service on top of an open protocol to capture and centralize it.

I think they're the old masters and they want to become the new ones over a larger landscape.

They know the "limitations" of the existing model (the ways in which it is not centralized) -- as do many others -- but they want to lay a claim to some of the solution.

To do so requires twisting reality in ways that involve huge sums of money to create distortion fields.

Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#98

Post by lamontcg »

benreesman wrote: post #43

How many times are we going to have this conversation? Yes crypto is an asset bubble, alongside equities, real estate, precious metals, you name it. Money printer go brrrr, more dollars are chasing the same amount of Apple sells iPhones. Crypto has no intrinsic value, it pays no dividend and doesn’t give you proxy rights, just like all the tech equities. Proof of work burns a lot of electricity, though this is compli…

> This horse has been flogged into quarks at this point.

HackerNews Crypto Thread Discovers Unconfined Equine Quarks (theregister.com)

Forum Boffins Observe Physics Beyond Large Hadron Collider: New Use For Blockchain in Repeatedly Smashing Dumb Ideas Together

Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#99

Post by exdsq »

nl wrote: post #92
gonehome wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Banks won’t protect you from wire fraud either. I’ve written this elsewhere when this topic routinely comes up and crypto is dismissed, but the capability of self-custody is the thing to pay attention to. Nothing else has this capability to the same extent. Today we store most of our wealth in assets (market index funds, stocks, real estate, etc.) and some (typically very little, and rarely outside of a bank account)…

I'm entirely unconvinced that self custody is an advantage for anyone except extremely sophisticated people (sophisticated in both the technical and financial sense). I've been doing blockchain on and off since 2008. Recently I lost a few thousand dollars by sending crypto to a L1 address when I was on a L2. I work on self-soverign identity in my day job. I've written smart contracts. I'm a careful person. Basically…

You've been doing blockchain on-and-off since before the genesis of Bitcoin? What were you doing?

Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble

#100

Post by diego_moita »

jhatemyjob wrote: post #75
benreesman wrote: post #43

How many times are we going to have this conversation? Yes crypto is an asset bubble, alongside equities, real estate, precious metals, you name it. Money printer go brrrr, more dollars are chasing the same amount of Apple sells iPhones. Crypto has no intrinsic value, it pays no dividend and doesn’t give you proxy rights, just like all the tech equities. Proof of work burns a lot of electricity, though this is compli…

Rust is an incredibly difficult language to be productive in and I don't think it will stand the test of time. C has been around for half a century and is a perfectly fine language to use today. Rust is popular because people these days are too risk averse, "unsafe" code is really not that bad.

> people these days are too risk averse

And they should be. Software has become much bigger than it was "half a century" ago. We need to scale up on C.

> "unsafe" code is really not that bad.

Wow,... I only hope I never need to maintain your code.

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