Is Blockchain Really the Killer App? • Hacker News Board

Re: Is Blockchain Really the Killer App?

#101

Post by IkmoIkmo » Fri, Feb 27, 2015, 1:50 PM UTC

lmm wrote: post #80

IkmoIkmo wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why do people keep trying to argue that dogecoin/litecoin/etc/etc don't have value, when people trade them for other currencies every day on open markets? They have value but it's much more based on speculation. If you look at Bitcoin, there's an ecosystem of millions of users, over 100 thousand merchants including some of the world's biggest companies like Microsoft, hundreds of bitcoin-focused VC-backed startups…

Dogecoin offers innovation in the form of a more equitable long-term mining curve and lower transaction fees.

Transaction fees: no, again anything dogecoin can do can be built on top of bitcoin. You can build sidechains, treechains or indeed off-chain payment systems on top of bitcoin that are cheaper than Dogecoin or even free.

Dogecoin is not cheaper because of some innovation, it's cheaper because there are fewer mining revenues and thus it's less secure. That's not a pure benefit, it's a cost-benefit, bitcoin could be set to have 0 transaction fees tomorrow if it was wanted. Instead a dynamic pricing system is in development, a free market for transaction fees, which is the best and most elegant system of pricing conceived. Dogecoin doesn't have that innovation.

As for long-term equitable mining, that's not really an innovation, is it? It's just another choice. Today Dogecoin's inflation is 5% or so, for bitcoin it's 10% or so. A larger percentage of bitcoins are newly distributed than dogecoin, which I assume is what you consider more equitable. And this will remain true for years.

And in the long-term? In the long term they want to have a fixed supply forever, but if you have 100 coins and you add 5 per year, in 50 years that's less than 0.4% yearly inflation, i.e. next to nothing. A few decades later it's puny, it might as well not be there. In the long term their inflation is approaching that of bitcoin's long-term inflation: 0%. It's not all that much different.

To say it's more equitable because long-term dogecoin has slightly higher inflation than bitcoin is like saying Kenyan shilling are more equitable than dollars, and dollars more equitable than dogecoins.

If those are the two best examples of innovation of the 1st or 2nd most popular cryptocurrency after bitcoin, I think that's very telling on the lack of long-term value for anything but bitcoin.

Re: Is Blockchain Really the Killer App?

#102

Post by vidarh » Mon, Mar 02, 2015, 3:30 PM UTC

jarek wrote: post #70

vidarh wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find this line of thinking unconvincing. There is a vast difference between voluntary centralisation from which you can withdraw at any time, and forced centralisation from which there is no practical way to withdraw without huge sacrifices. Many socialist and anarchist ideologists are/were perfectly fine with centralisation of production, as long as decision making is decentralised, and participation is a result o…

> The capability of decentralisation in Bitcoin is important because it acts as a safeguard against forced centralisation and coercion. As long as the capability remains, whether or not people for practical/efficiency reasons opts for centralisation ought not cause most anarchists any major concern. I'm probably misunderstanding something, but isn't it more that blockchain technology allows decentralisation, while do…

There are two "levels" here: Centralisation to more than 51% means you have to trust the central "authority". The safeguard there is that if the central authority starts misbehaving, the technology is out there, and everyone can start using it one a new blockchain as you suggest, while agreeing on a blacklist.

The lower level is centralisation into a small-ish pool of large services where no service exceeds 51%. That's what I was mainly thinking about.

We've seen in the past how Bitcoin has adjusted to the threat of 51% with people withdrawing capacity from large pools etc. in response.

In either case the point is that the existence and open availability of the technology acts as a deterrence to coercion because the act of trying to take advantage of a 51% attack will send people running for the hills (and the existence of altcoins makes that even easier).

We've seen people willingly pull back from potentially even "accidentally" exceeding 51% of the Bitcoin network in the past for that very reason.

The point is not absolute decentralisation at all cost (though some anarchist tendencies do want to maximise decentralisation), but the ability to withdraw consent and unilaterally decentralise.

Re: Is Blockchain Really the Killer App?

#103

Post by lmm » Tue, Mar 10, 2015, 8:25 AM UTC

IkmoIkmo wrote: post #101

lmm wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dogecoin offers innovation in the form of a more equitable long-term mining curve and lower transaction fees.

Transaction fees: no, again anything dogecoin can do can be built on top of bitcoin. You can build sidechains, treechains or indeed off-chain payment systems on top of bitcoin that are cheaper than Dogecoin or even free. Dogecoin is not cheaper because of some innovation, it's cheaper because there are fewer mining revenues and thus it's less secure. That's not a pure benefit, it's a cost-benefit, bitcoin could be se…

> Transaction fees: no, again anything dogecoin can do can be built on top of bitcoin. You can build sidechains, treechains or indeed off-chain payment systems on top of bitcoin that are cheaper than Dogecoin or even free.

In theory, sure. But defaults are important, simplicity is important.

> To say it's more equitable because long-term dogecoin has slightly higher inflation than bitcoin is like saying Kenyan shilling are more equitable than dollars, and dollars more equitable than dogecoins.

Both those things are true. Look at the Gini coefficient for wealth held in each currency. (There are downsides to high inflation, but not at the USD level).