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Blockchain Is Dangerous Nonsense

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Re: Blockchain Is Dangerous Nonsense

#161

Post by Grustaf »

HWR_14 wrote: post #149
jychang wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Purchases, perhaps. Money transfer, definitely not. Bitcoin is a pretty cheap way to transfer money across international borders. A person probably wouldn't use bitcoin at the grocery store to buy milk, but it works better for sending grandma (located in a third world country) a bunch of money.

Bitcoin is still more expensive than the banking system among first-world countries. How much can it be worth to send money to third-world countries of no banks are willing to set up there?

You could always use the crypto currency as the store of value there, just as people did with MPesa. You don't necessarily ever have to convert it to a local currency.

Re: Blockchain Is Dangerous Nonsense

#162

Post by ChrisLomont »

mike_d wrote: post #51
mightyRodri wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no baby. The technology does not solve technical problems that havent been solved better. The only thing bchains does is give ppl with a lot of money to become stakeholders, the possibility to comodify even more parts of the internet. Thats the only upside of the technology, scam ppl for their money. https://www.stephendiehl.com/blog/against-crypto.html https://web3isgoinggreat.com/

What technical solution do you have for multiple parties needing to transact where they do not trust each other and cannot depend on a third party or the court system for dispute resolution? I'll wait.

So you're claiming this is a rare case for which Blockchain is useful, but outside this rare, niche case normal banking is better?

Re: Blockchain Is Dangerous Nonsense

#163

Post by jedimind »

5h wrote: post #153
z3c0 wrote: post #114

Blockchains are cool. Very, very cool. Merkle trees on their own are pretty cool, and blockchains are just a Merkle tree hashed into a chain-like structure to create work for decentralized verification. This is a very clever concept, and it is the only known solution to the Byzantine Generals problem that doesn't involve a centralized authority (that I'm aware of). What about this is intrinsically "dangerous nonsense…

You've set yourself up for a question: Please give an example, with a deeper-lever perspective, of a real-world use-case for (non-crypto) blockchain that isn't better solved with non-blockchain technology. Edit to answer this question: > What about this is intrinsically "dangerous nonsense"? The article isn't about the tech itself, it's about the interfaces of the tech and the real world. The problems there are shame…

"it is the only known solution to the Byzantine Generals problem that doesn't involve a centralized authority"

Did you skip that one on purpose? How do non-blockchain technologies solve the the Byzantine General's problem without relying on a (corrupt) central authority? Address this before you make more demands.

Re: Blockchain Is Dangerous Nonsense

#165

Post by Grustaf »

junofan wrote: post #151
Grustaf wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean you don't need people to manually make money transfers anymore, but I don't think many people do that. Banks have a lot of different jobs, very few of them are obsoleted by crypto, at least so far.

That’s the opportunity, right? Some code does the work.

As I said, little or no manual labour is involved when you pay your bills or transfer money. Bank employees meet customers, set up mortgages, program the payment infrastructure, make deals with other banks, help hide money in shady jurisdictions etc.

Re: Blockchain Is Dangerous Nonsense

#166

Post by rgallagher27 »

plaguepilled wrote: post #108

>The idea to get rid of having to trust centralized organizations might sound tempting, but it doesn’t work: Blockchains don’t get rid of “trust”, they just change, who has to be trusted. More people need to read this. Developers can betray trust too, and I'm a little tired of reading "In a shocking turn of events, new cryptocurrency previously supported by Seemingly Trustworthy Source is actually a pump-and-dump. Mo…

The classic crypto phrase "choose the team".

When the team consists of one person with a monkey as their profile picture and no other details other than he's rich, another is a 20year old 10x dev who's been creating smart contracts "for years", one's the cool looking marketing genius who posts on twitter a 1000 times per hour and the rest is made up of stock imagery of middle age white men who are the "advisory board"

Re: Blockchain Is Dangerous Nonsense

#167

Post by RandomLensman »

anonymoushn wrote: post #157

Recently on Odd Lots, SBF offered to race to transfer $100,000 to the person sitting at the next desk over. The opponent could use tools such as wire transfers or checks or walking to a bank to ask to withdraw 1,000 $100 bills to send dollars, and SBF would use USDC. The person whose recipient receives the $100,000 earlier would win the race. A variation of this exercise where the money must be sent to someone in a f…

Depending where you live, can do that in traditional banking mobile phone apps pretty fast. The instant transfers with the European SEPA are up to €100k, I think, and they need maybe a few seconds (max. 10s AFAIK).

Not sure what the use cases for high frequency cash transfer in sub second space are.

Re: Blockchain Is Dangerous Nonsense

#168

Post by quickthrower2 »

The main benefit of cryptocurrency is you cannot be prevented from transacting by governments. This is also a big downside as it provides a mechanism for all kinds of crime we would rather not encourage.

But crypto brings too many other problems: climate change; local pollution; scams; gambling addiction; sucks up tech talent that could be working on something else;

Re: Blockchain Is Dangerous Nonsense

#169

Post by nicbou »

cloutchaser wrote: post #96
nicbou wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But it is also likely to be most effective at delivering progress to humanity How so? So far, crypto seems to amplify its worst trait: greed. It takes its destructive properties to new levels. > you have the crowd obsessed with control These controls are there for a reason. Controls create trust, and trust removes friction. Creating a stable currency and protecting people's money from scammers has nothing to do wit…

Every innovation has had this pattern of behaviour. Steam railways, dotcom bubble etc. Part of new technology is many scammers entering it and exploiting the situation. Of course in many cases this isn't actually planned scamming, just taking risks in a new market and losing money. What most here in this thread are basically arguing is blockchain is evil and shouldn't exist. Well, then neither should the internet or…

There's nothing about railways or the dot com bubble that facilitate scams. New frontiers attract greedy people. Greedy people attract scammers.

However these eventually become regulated. Lawlessness was a bug that was progressively fixed. In the case of crypto, it's a feature.

> Of course these are also the people against free speech

Leave those strawmen alone. Be the HN user you want HN to have.

Re: Blockchain Is Dangerous Nonsense

#170

Post by tkfu »

mattdesl wrote: post #78
mightyRodri wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no baby. The technology does not solve technical problems that havent been solved better. The only thing bchains does is give ppl with a lot of money to become stakeholders, the possibility to comodify even more parts of the internet. Thats the only upside of the technology, scam ppl for their money. https://www.stephendiehl.com/blog/against-crypto.html https://web3isgoinggreat.com/

> technology does not solve technical problems that havent been solved better Critics like Diehl repeat this often, but without ever referencing the solutions. What non-blockchain solution solves the double spend problem when transferring digital assets in a peer-to-peer network? Or, in the case of Ethereum, providing solutions to general-purpose decentralized computation and state (rather than only peer-to-peer paym…

You're being willfully obtuse here.

> What non-blockchain solution solves the double spend problem when transferring digital assets in a peer-to-peer network?

Literally any trusted central authority or database.

> Or, in the case of Ethereum, providing solutions to general-purpose decentralized computation and state (rather than only peer-to-peer payments) with such strong public consensus?

You haven't actually stated a problem here, you've described a solution in search of a problem.

> User A holds digital asset X (such as a valuable domain name "xyz.eth")

You're mentioning a .eth domain name being bought with cryptocurrency as an example, which is entirely circular. "Hurr durr, betcha can't swap one blockchain thing (.eth domain) for another blockchain thing (cryptocurrency tokens) without using a blockchain" isn't as strong an argument as you think it is. If we were talking about a .com domain name, no blockchain in the world will help you with that transaction.

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