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Ask HN: Am I going insane or is there genuinely no value in blockchain tech?

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Re: Ask HN: Am I going insane or is there genuinely no value in blockchain tech?

#301

Post by dangerwill »

dageshi wrote: post #154
tsimionescu wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People were using money online just fine well before Bitcoin, and even today, actually using BTC for non-investment purposes is a tiny minority. What exactly makes a dollar or euro less "online/digital" than a bitcoin?

Speed of iteration/development/experimentation. You can't fork EUR/USD, experiment with it and see if it works better than the existing EUR/USD. You can with online currencies and people are doing just that. Most will be failures in the same way that most new businesses/startups are ultimately failures. BUT the difference is there is actual experimentation with money now in a way that there never was before.

None of these are experiments with the concept of money. You still transact in the exact same fundamental way as with traditional online payments, just 1000x worse.

99.9% of this "experimentation" is simply companies tying ownership of a token to a permission to access a web service. And the remainder of it are clueless tech brained morons finding ways to re-invent financial instruments (like residuals, profit splitting, and derivation) that have been around for hundreds of years. You don't have any new insights into financial systems, you just want to be at the top of the financial system and collect rents

Re: Ask HN: Am I going insane or is there genuinely no value in blockchain tech?

#302

Post by gravitycorn »

ak_111 wrote: post #26
armada651 wrote: post #20

A lot of people pushing Blockchain technology have a vested interest in making it a more pervasive technology. Because Blockchain applications drive up the value of their crypto assets and offer more opportunities for speculation using crypto. Blockchain applications don't necessarily need to use existing cryptocurrencies. However in that case you need to find some other incentive to get people to mine your blockchai…

The funny thing is that I don't believe there is a "blockchain lobby" that is driving hype similar to bitcoin and other fads, that would at least make it more compressible. In fact it is not clear who benefits if it gets "adapted", whatever that means. It just seems collective delusion in pushing the technology by people who have little stake in it if at all, and sensible people have just given up trying to point out…

Adaption benefits those who adapted earlier.

It’s always funny to see early adopters’ criticisms of inflation politics and power to the 99% rhetoric when all they want to do is flip the curve around and apply the same “upward distribution” to their monetary system, but in reverse (timewise) and worse (distribution wise).

Re: Ask HN: Am I going insane or is there genuinely no value in blockchain tech?

#303

Post by smitty1e »

nsotelo wrote: post #292
geoduck14 wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love it: Do you need ? No -> consider DATABASE

Future historians will laugh and cry knowing we invested trillions and boiled the oceans for the sake of a useless append-only log.

It was shiny.

Re: Ask HN: Am I going insane or is there genuinely no value in blockchain tech?

#304

Post by nonameiguess »

paulsutter wrote: post #80
YetAnotherNick wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Preventing double spending is possible even without trust. A centralised authority could publish the transactions in a signed append only log. Independent verifiers could pull the log with some frequency and verify that no one spent twice.

Good point - blockchain also prevents transaction censorship (your proposal prevents double spend but allows the central authority to block transactions) Central authorities might do wild stuff like block Folks They Don’t Like (certain truck drivers, etc). Some people think that’s really good, others feel the opposite (edited for clarity)

In practice, I'm not sure this is entirely true. Banks largely don't care who they're dealing with and are glad to sponsor transactions among terrorists and Nazis and what not, just like a blockchain. Governments lean on them by spot checking records and punishing when they can identify transgressions of law. Even with a blockchain, the same governments can tell anyone within the reach of its gun or goons that it is going to punish you if you transact with some forbidden party. Not having a single narrow waist at which they can stop it doesn't mean they can't stop it, just that it got harder. Further, the transaction that is censorship resistant, not censorship proof, is the public mapping of wallet id to coin id. Usually, supplier and purchaser are really interested in the movement of physical goods at some point, not just the transfer of digital coin. Whether that be drugs, slaves, or just food, governments can still find ways to stop delivery of those goods even if an immutable ledger somewhere says the party that currently possesses them is supposed to give them to you.

Re: Ask HN: Am I going insane or is there genuinely no value in blockchain tech?

#306

Post by baobabKoodaa »

roonyh wrote: post #265
petesergeant wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm blockchain skeptical, but I think you're slightly throwing out the baby with the bathwater here. > the trusted party isn't eliminated by blockchain, because someone has to code the implementation of the software I don't think is relevant in practice, and I think the blockchain does solve this problem regarding double-spending. Yes, there's a centralized set of developers, but that does not seem to be a problem in…

Why the set of developers is considered centralised? I can write an implementation according to the specification and have no relationship with developers of another implementation.

You can write an implementation according to what specification? Bitcoin? Where is the specification for Bitcoin? There isn't one.

Re: Ask HN: Am I going insane or is there genuinely no value in blockchain tech?

#307

Post by jccalhoun »

I think there are theoretically some benefits. If music, movies, or games were sold as nfts then you could resell an album if you didn't want it any more like you can with physical media. But the major labels won't do it since that could eat into their profits.

So right now we are stuck with the scammy nfts of jpgs we have now.

Re: Ask HN: Am I going insane or is there genuinely no value in blockchain tech?

#308

Post by [deleted] »

JulianHC wrote: post #298
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But even 'digital cash' doesn't need this, for most definitions and use cases. Even if we're talking about smuggling money out of authoritarian regimes, or buying soft drugs, or hiring hitmen online, I'm not sure it makes any actual sense compared with alternatives. Feels like a way for people who've been convinced that government doesn't work to feel like they're re-inventing government with extra steps, mixed with…

You can also use it to buy goods from oversea retailers without paying exorbitant fees, bad conversion rate. If you live outside of America and Europe, banks charge a hefty amount of fees for international transactions. The world is volatile. Syria, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Russia, and in the future who know if China and Taiwan won't become a crappy place to be. The needs to store your wealth and get out of the country…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Am I going insane or is there genuinely no value in blockchain tech?

#309

Post by j3th9n »

petesergeant wrote: post #194
stkdump wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A database does this. The trusted party isn't eliminated by blockchain, because someone has to code the implementation of the software. Unless you checked the software for bugs or backdoors camouflaged as bugs and compile it yourself, you trust someone else. The trust 'problem' is overrated, because nothing in this world works without trust.

I'm blockchain skeptical, but I think you're slightly throwing out the baby with the bathwater here. > the trusted party isn't eliminated by blockchain, because someone has to code the implementation of the software I don't think is relevant in practice, and I think the blockchain does solve this problem regarding double-spending. Yes, there's a centralized set of developers, but that does not seem to be a problem in…

Machine 2 machine payments are a massive problem you can solve with a blockchain. Which can solve a whole lot of other problems, like automation. Which can solve another set of problems.

Re: Ask HN: Am I going insane or is there genuinely no value in blockchain tech?

#310

Post by smitty1e »

paulsutter wrote: post #19

The sole purpose of blockchain is to prevent double spending without a trusted party Other proposed applications are mostly dumb / misguided, like immutable storage, social network posts, etc, these can be done with hashing or digital signatures alone If you have a better way to avoid double spending than blockchain folks woukd get very excited. Traditional database can’t do that (requires a trusted party)

I thought that the blockchain (itself) afforded some anonymity, while still preserving trust, through cryptographic signing.

Which sounded beautiful, until I realized that there must needs still be some other market around the blockchain, in order to interface with reality and older currency systems. There, all privacy bets are off.

Thus, even if one wanted to conduct and election, and put all votes on a block chain, maintaining a secret ballot seems impossible, as far as I can tell.

Sometimes, a primitive solution like a paper ballot has crucial superior aspects.

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