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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?

#431

Post by yebyen »

D13Fd wrote: post #391
JulianHC wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Which is great, unless the “fees” include taxes. In which case the short version of this comment is “you can use it for tax evasion.”

We're not talking about tax evasion. If you don't have hundreds of thousands of dollars in assets, then banks have all sorts of fees that they ding you for just like the phone company when you travel, and they won't waive them as they have no incentive to keep your business. Folks with lots of money who track every penny are often unaware of the landscape for these fees, because banks actually do have an incentive to keep your business and they do waive them without even asking.

If you think there's something illicit about seeking to pay the least in fees and with the broadest reach, or if you think that paying fees to every company who comes along that gets to play middle-man is exactly the same as paying your fair share in taxes then I'm not sure what I can do to dissuade you of this notion.

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

#432

Post by tromp »

deebosong wrote: post #268
lmohseni wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you’ve ever written code, and if you’ve ever written a bug, then you will understand that code as law is terrible idea, especially when it comes to finance.

I am a laymen who is skeptical of cryptocurrency tech, mostly because of what I'm seeing (hype, greed, fomo, and apparently no real use-cases). If... crypto were to be able to reverse transactions... would that completely undermine the whole point of it and make it look absolutely stupid? Do you think the solution to irreversible transactions would be to then have some kind of algo that would then send back a mistake…

> It seems utterly anxiety inducing otherwise, where you'd have to quadruple check, then quadruple check again, and then sleep on it and then quadruple check 4 more times before you do any kind of sizable transaction.

That's mostly due to transactions being non-interactive. If the receiver has to prove their ability to spend the received funds before being allowed to receive them, then most of this anxiety disappears. Certain blockchain designs require transactions to be interactive in this way.

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

#433

Post by googlerx »

kseifried wrote: post #406

Web3 - The sequel nobody wanted but the studio had to make https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1V7UGmTw1pR6HsT8kF8dh... TL;DR: All the current stuff is flaming garbage, but that's ok, we're basically where the web was in 1995. Just with a lot more scams instead of VC pitches.

Except the web actually has value.

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

#434

Post by ashwagary »

louthy wrote: post #143
kayamon wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's supposed to be slow. That's what secures it. The production speed comes from layer 2 solutions built on top of it (analogous to how a secure VM can go faster with a JIT while still maintaining security). It's not expensive. Transaction fees are just fine and getting cheaper over time. It doesn't destroy the planet. You're thinking of the fossil-fuel industry.

> It doesn't destroy the planet. You're thinking of the fossil-fuel industry. But the fossil-fuel industry has had very real benefits (whether we like it our not!). It's surely debateable whether fuelling crime, scams, and what is tantamount to a massive casino is of any benefit to humanity. Especially when running it consumes more energy than Argentina [1] Of course there are plenty of other aspects of human existen…

>Perhaps something will come along that makes blockchain and other crypto concepts viable and valuable to society, it ain't here yet though. So I don't see how anybody can justify an Argentina's worth off energy usage.

Central banking finally has a freer market and you can choose (or create) an asset with your preferred monetary policy...

Avoiding or atleast limiting exposure to global currency debasement is now a possibility when you choose the right product/chain/coin. That's a problem that costs workers around the world 100s of trillions of dollars and it's being solved.

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

#435

Post by tsimionescu »

bitxbitxbitcoin wrote: post #403
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?

Serious answer: The supply of the digital currency. For euro/dollars that supply is dictated by a handful of individuals. For Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, that supply is dictated by code and consensus that anybody can participate in.

> For euro/dollars that supply is dictated by a handful of individuals.

The supply is dictated by the country's government (or a complex web of governments and the EU, in the case of the euro), which is ultimately controlled by the people who live in that country, at least to some extent. If the US government and the Fed decided to issue 100 new trillion dollars tomorrow, devaluing everyone's money, there would be rioting in the streets. The politicians who participated or allowed it to happen would never see office again.

In contrast, the supply of Bitcoin is dictated by the programmers that actually do the work of writing the node software, in collaboration with the largest miners. Currently I believe they are respecting the protocol laid out by Satoshi, but they are free do decide to do otherwise at some point in the future. If they decided to issue new Bitcoin, Bitcoin may or may not collapse, but they would face no personal repercussions.

So I would say I personally, and I believe you as well, have a much bigger (though minuscule, of course) say about the supply of euro/dollars than we do in the supply of Bitcoin.

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

#436

Post by tsimionescu »

lawn wrote: post #170
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?

Fiat aren't less "online/digital" than crypto, they're less "cash" than crypto in the sense that no third party can prevent you from receiving or sending it. If you use something like Monero it's also much less traceable than digital fiat.

> Fiat aren't less "online/digital" than crypto, they're less "cash" than crypto in the sense that no third party can prevent you from receiving or sending it.

That's not what the GP was claiming, but even this is debatable. With in-person cash, it's generally impossible for anyone to prevent your from doing a transaction.

But with BTC, it's not that hard to prevent a vendor from shipping the item to you, even if they can't prevent the transfer from going through. Perhaps Monero is indeed untraceable, but as long as your buying physical goods, those need to be delivered to some physical address, and can be traced that way.

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

#437

Post by tsimionescu »

tromp wrote: post #432
deebosong wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a laymen who is skeptical of cryptocurrency tech, mostly because of what I'm seeing (hype, greed, fomo, and apparently no real use-cases). If... crypto were to be able to reverse transactions... would that completely undermine the whole point of it and make it look absolutely stupid? Do you think the solution to irreversible transactions would be to then have some kind of algo that would then send back a mistake…

> It seems utterly anxiety inducing otherwise, where you'd have to quadruple check, then quadruple check again, and then sleep on it and then quadruple check 4 more times before you do any kind of sizable transaction. That's mostly due to transactions being non-interactive. If the receiver has to prove their ability to spend the received funds before being allowed to receive them, then most of this anxiety disappears…

> If the receiver has to prove their ability to spend the received funds before being allowed to receive them

If I want to send you some crypto money in exchange for you mowing my lawn, how do you prove that you can spend the received funds? And if I accidentally send it twice, why would I care that you can spend them twice, unless I have some way to compel you to send half back?

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

#438

Post by angryasian »

baby wrote: post #184
andreskytt wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be more precise, the nature of trust shifts. In case of a central database, one must trust the organization running the database. In case of blockchain you need to trust the math behind it, its implementation _and_ that the network structure preserves the assumptions the math makes. This might be preferable for some but not for others.

The trust shift to a lower layer, which is always what you want to unless this adds a huge amount of overhead or complexity that leads to security issues. In our case it looks like blockchains are solving real world problems.

you keep repeating this mantra, but this is exactly what Op is asking... what problem is it really solving. Its not solving a tech problem, because the tech exists.

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

#439

Post by FabHK »

programmarchy wrote: post #239
FabHK wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it is a slow computer that uses the resources of about a billion modern computers. (Note that you could achieve basically any desired fault tolerance with a minuscule fraction of that with a trusted central authority.)

Your second statement presupposes central authorities can be trusted. Some presuppose that they cannot.

Let me quote from a 2012 interview with Bruce Schneier about his book Liars and Outliers:

Q: Given the dangers out there, should we trust anyone? Isn’t “trust no one” the first rule of security?

Bruce: It might be the first rule of security, but it’s the worst rule of society. I don’t think I could even total up all the people, institutions and systems I trusted today. I trusted that the gas company would continue to provide the fuel I needed to heat my house, and that the water coming out of my tap was safe to drink. I trusted that the fresh and packaged food in my refrigerator was safe to eat – and that certainly involved trusting people in several countries. I trusted a variety of websites on the Internet. I trusted my automobile manufacturer, as well as all the other drivers on the road.

I am flying to Boston right now, so that requires trusting several major corporations, hundreds of strangers – either working for those corporations, sitting on my plane or just standing around in the airport – and a variety of government agencies. I even had to trust the TSA [US Transportation Security Administration], even though I know it’s doing a lousy job – and so on. And it’s not even 9:30am yet! The number of people each of us trusts every day is astounding. And we trust them so completely that we often don’t even think about it.

We don’t walk into a restaurant and think: “The food vendors might have sold the restaurant tainted food, the cook might poison it, the waiter might clone my credit card, other diners might steal my wallet, the building constructor might have weakened the roof, and terrorists might bomb the place.” We just sit down and eat. And the restaurant trusts that we won’t steal anyone else’s wallet or leave a bomb under our chair, and will pay when we’re done. Without trust, society collapses. And without societal pressures, there’s no trust. The devil is in the details, of course, and that’s what my book is about.

https://www.schneier.com/news/archives/2012/02/bruce_schneie...

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

#440

Post by tsimionescu »

baby wrote: post #186
FabHK wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The sole purpose of blockchain is to prevent double spending without a trusted party. Yes, and avoiding the trusted party makes it more inefficient by a factor of around 100,000,000 (-ish), if you consider that BTC uses around 23 GW and can do no more (5 transactions a second) than a single trusted PC could do. What are use cases were you actually need this and the high cost is worth it?

Why use bitcoin, the slowest blockchain and most inefficient blockchain, as an example? Blockchains like Sui offer basically unlimited transactions/s

"Why use the most popular and most well-known and most used and most heavily-invested-in example of this technology, when I know of this obscure one that promises something that it certainly hasn't demonstrated yet?"
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