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I Looked into 34 Top Real-World Blockchain Projects So You Don’t Have To

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Re: I Looked into 34 Top Real-World Blockchain Projects So You Don’t Have To

#351

Post by simonw »

RestlessMind wrote: post #335
simonw wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear this a lot. I want details: - Which countries? - What portion of the population are benefiting from crypto? Is it a tiny portion of nerds or has it become more mainstream now? - With the crash in cryptocurrency over the last few months are these people in those countries still glad that they used this, or are they regretting it? I don't doubt that there exist individuals in countries with high inflation who ha…

Afghanistan, from a reputed source like Reuters: https://www.reuters.com/article/crypto-currency-afghanistan- idUSL8N2QU39A > I want to understand if this is a widespread, sustainable trend. Why? What if there is not widespread trend and it is only anecdotes? Why should every new technology be "widely adopted or bust" instead of simply being a new interesting tech which a hacker can tinker with just because? Blockcha…

Because if it's a widespread trend affecting real people then it's interesting to me. If it's a small group of bitcoin nerds doing what bitcoin nerds do but in another country then it's not.

I want to see evidence that the benefits of blockchains etc are outweighing the very obvious harms they are causing.

Re: I Looked into 34 Top Real-World Blockchain Projects So You Don’t Have To

#352

Post by dorgo »

cmsj wrote: post #285
upsidesinclude wrote: post #274

What a waste of time to read. Blogger randomly selects other bloggers garbage article to hand select a comprehensive list of projects no one has ever heard of and rightly bashes them. Of course, ostensibly this is representative of all projects (even those that actually have a following) Beyond a bore. A ledger is the oldest (Sumer) recorded instrument used in organized society. We now have an immutable ledger that r…

> We now have an immutable ledger that requires zero intermediaries. > How is it possible for people to fail in understanding that value? Because so far nobody has shown me a way in which an immutable ledger can let me do something desirable that I can't already do, or transform a thing I currently do into a more desirable version of it.

My hope is that it will reduce corruption. If the society is forced to play by publicly known and mathematically enforced rules there will be less room for shady backroom deals.

Re: I Looked into 34 Top Real-World Blockchain Projects So You Don’t Have To

#353

Post by halostatue »

Taek wrote: post #343
halostatue wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

…and it was clearly adding value all over the place. It wasn’t on the growth curve post-1992, but its value for technology companies and universities was not even a question.

People will look back at 2020 Blockchain and say it was also adding value all over the place. Decentralized storage exists, decentralized DNS exists, NFTs exist, remittances exist, and so on. Is the value marginal next to what the web does today? Sure. But its more than enough value for people 50 years from now to get rose tinted glasses around, as many are doing in this thread concerning the early internet

People will look back at 2020 Blockchain and either say (a) crap, how did we ever get taken in by that, or (b) boy, howdy, do you remember how foolish those people were that thought this stuff was anything but a scam?

There is nothing that can be done on blockchain that cannot be done cheaper, faster, easier, and more securely without blockchain. Blockchain has negative value, and no matter where you measure the start of the Internet from, it had more positive externalities fourteen years on than anything blockchain will ever have, not least because so-called "blockchain" has an insurmountable set of negative externalities that would need to be overcome if a single real-world productive use could be found for it.

Re: I Looked into 34 Top Real-World Blockchain Projects So You Don’t Have To

#354

Post by BlueTemplar »

Daishiman wrote: post #264
BlueTemplar wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not if you want to transfer value to the other side of the world..? (which admittedly is quite a niche use case)

There's a ton of people in those countries offering financial services that consist of triangulating operations inside and out of the country. Within the crazy insanity that's the system, it does end up working out somehow.

I literally meant countries far enough that most physical ways to do so are prohibitive.

Re: I Looked into 34 Top Real-World Blockchain Projects So You Don’t Have To

#355

Post by acdha »

dorgo wrote: post #350
acdha wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those had immediate, obvious value which were held back by the technology: every military in the world wanted flight (remember those Civil War hot air balloons?), as well as things like postal services, etc. There was zero question that as soon as the technology was functionally available, people would buy it. Similarly, the earliest photographs had unquestionable demand but were held back by the technology — again,…

In 1998 I wanted to buy a router ( or a modem ) to connect my computer to the internet. I was asked questions like: why internet? What for? what do you gain from it? Nothing was obvious.

I don’t know where that was but it’s at least a decade late for the United States - by 1998, Amazon was profitable in multiple markets (that year they reported $610M in revenue) and a ton of other companies, non-profits, and government agencies were seeing plenty of traffic. Here’s a list even earlier:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_founded_befor...

In 1998, I was working for a web design business which had a mix of startups and established companies (a couple of F100s and some F500s, as well as smaller local companies). None of those were “web” companies - they sold things like pet supplies or knives, offered financial services, did biomedical research, etc. but what they all had in common was that they benefited from being on the web because their customers were moving there and they could offer them a better experience and/or lower costs this way.

That still hasn’t happened for cryptocurrencies despite a much larger potential customer base, lower barriers to entry, and twice as much time. If Bitcoin abruptly halted today, almost no businesses outside of the field would even notice and the few who did would mostly be removing the least used payment option on their site. That’s the difference: there’s been just as much marketing, the same level of squandering VC money on Super Bowl ads and stadium naming rights, etc. but there doesn’t seem to be anything more than that sizzle this time.

Re: I Looked into 34 Top Real-World Blockchain Projects So You Don’t Have To

#356

Post by RestlessMind »

simonw wrote: post #351
RestlessMind wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Afghanistan, from a reputed source like Reuters: https://www.reuters.com/article/crypto-currency-afghanistan- idUSL8N2QU39A > I want to understand if this is a widespread, sustainable trend. Why? What if there is not widespread trend and it is only anecdotes? Why should every new technology be "widely adopted or bust" instead of simply being a new interesting tech which a hacker can tinker with just because? Blockcha…

Because if it's a widespread trend affecting real people then it's interesting to me. If it's a small group of bitcoin nerds doing what bitcoin nerds do but in another country then it's not. I want to see evidence that the benefits of blockchains etc are outweighing the very obvious harms they are causing.

What are the "very obvious" harms?

A genuine one I am concerned about is the energy consumption of Proof of Work chains. But the tide is shifting towards Proof of Stake, with Ethereum network achieving 2 significant milestones towards that recently (Ropsten, Sepolia) and a third penultimate one (Goerli) planned in the week of Aug 6th. So the main chain's transition towards Proof of Stake is likely to happen in September and Ethereum's energy consumption drops 99% or even more.

Other purported disadvantages (gambling, sucking in capital and brains etc etc) are totally non-obvious and highly debatable.

Re: I Looked into 34 Top Real-World Blockchain Projects So You Don’t Have To

#357

Post by davidguetta »

simonw wrote: post #56
chrisabrams wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What country do you live in? Because I know plenty of folks in certain countries with massive inflation and projects such as bitcoin are their refuge from 100-1000% inflation a year. When you say “in 10 years” when did that 10 year time frame start and end? Are talking about the 1960s or the 1990s? Because most people I knew didn’t start using the internet regularly until the mid to late 90s or about 30 or so years a…

I hear this a lot. I want details: - Which countries? - What portion of the population are benefiting from crypto? Is it a tiny portion of nerds or has it become more mainstream now? - With the crash in cryptocurrency over the last few months are these people in those countries still glad that they used this, or are they regretting it? I don't doubt that there exist individuals in countries with high inflation who ha…

At least Argentina, venezuela, turkey, lebanon, pakistan and probably sri lanka by now.

Half of the world currencies has done worse than crypto even on small time scales.

Re: I Looked into 34 Top Real-World Blockchain Projects So You Don’t Have To

#359

Post by andirk »

inversalAutoDoc wrote: post #346
andirk wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money, sure. Fraud? No. That is too broad of a topic to require its inclusion with BTC. Almost every scam/phish/SPAM I receive is USD-desiring. And you are aware of this yet insist BTC is the main fraud coin.

The mapping is the other way around. That most fraud requests USD is indisputable, but looking at it the other way, a disproportionate amount of the movement of Crypto (incl. bitcoin) is fraud-related compared to traditional currencies [assuming we define fraud separately from corruption.] This disproportionate share may be less than it appears when you take into account all of the things that Crypto is typically not…

Yes one of BTC's main features _and_ biggest issue is: decentralization. Reminds me of when people go full libertarian and suggest no government intervention whatsoever, and then someone suggests they move to the governmentless land of Somalia that is anything but freedom and paradise.

With great power comes great responsibility; decentralization is a loaded gun. Use at your own risk!

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