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The Decentralized Future

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: The Decentralized Future

#121

Post by te_chris »

rokhayakebe wrote: post #56
te_chris wrote: post #6

I’ve reacently read the Burnskie book about crypto assets in the hope that I might come away more enlightened about the market and how to assess it. The opposite was the case. After reading the book and looking into it more, it’s very hard to see these things as assets at the moment, or to see much utility in the technology. Don’t get me wrong, there certainly is some and it is certainly ‘cool’, but right now blockha…

Money transfer is still very difficult. As in right now, short of paypal, I cannot send you money easily without leaving my chair in under 1 minute regardless of where you are in the world. Send me your bitcoin address and the problem is solved. The biggest problems with Bitcoin (specifically) are: 1) it is not necessarily a store of value and 2) it fluctuates too much. If someone can solve these two problems then we…

Transferwise

Re: The Decentralized Future

#122

Post by te_chris »

cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #22
te_chris wrote: post #6

I’ve reacently read the Burnskie book about crypto assets in the hope that I might come away more enlightened about the market and how to assess it. The opposite was the case. After reading the book and looking into it more, it’s very hard to see these things as assets at the moment, or to see much utility in the technology. Don’t get me wrong, there certainly is some and it is certainly ‘cool’, but right now blockha…

The problem is not because cryptoassets are bad, it's because you read an investment book instead of technology book. (I read the cryptoassets book too and I think it's a great book, it's just that it's not a book to solve the specific problem you're talking about) I can confirm from my own experience that reading pop-sci books about blockchains--although they sound really cool and do provide motivation to look furth…

Lol, appreciate the patronising explanation, as if I'm some sort of idiot just waiting to find the road to Damascus.

I understand the technology perfectly well. I read the Cryptoassets book to try and undsetand exactly that: the value of them as 'assets'. I came away exceedingly underwhelmed.

Re: The Decentralized Future

#123

Post by te_chris »

cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #110
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Internet was a "solution in search of a problem" too Eh, the history of ARPANET involved practical use cases ( i.e. communication between specific institutions and ballistic missile defense coordination) from the start [1]. If one includes circuit switches, i.e. the telegraph/telephone system, as a blueprint Internet then the practical application reaches back earlier. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET#Crea…

And Bitcoin doesn't have a practical use case?

Please elaborate?

Re: The Decentralized Future

#124

Post by cocktailpeanuts »

mrep wrote: post #119
cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I cannot even fathom how someone would not immediately realize how that massive increase in communication would not be useful. Just like you cannot fathom how Bitcoin can be useful in February of 2018, 99.9% of the world population couldn't fathom how Internet would take off back then when it launched. That was why it was not mainstream for a long time until it took off.

> 99.9% of the world population couldn't fathom how Internet would take off back then when it launched. The dotcom bubble was fueled by speculation in how useful the internet would be. Granted, it busted but many companies survived it and some are now the biggest companies in the world. > That was why it was not mainstream for a long time until it took off. Internet growth has been incredibly fast: https://en.wikiped…

> I can see some utility in blockchains. However, my main point is that the economics of them make them terrible for 99.99% of problems.

Then we're talking about different things. My comment was specifically in response to "Internet was a solution searching for a problem".

Your point actually supports my comment because like you said it's terrible for 99.99% of problems, which means it may be great for 0.01%, which means it's a solution that's solving only a small problem for now, and looking for more problems.

Re: The Decentralized Future

#125

Post by syntaticSugar »

naasking wrote: post #93
Rhapso wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even viewing it more generically, the same scaling issues apply, and the same inevitable re-decentralization awaits it. Centralized systems trade robustness for efficiency. The drive to lower costs will always result in re-centralization.

The scaling problems aren't necessarily only a symptom of decentralization. Proof of stake scales much better than proof of work, for instance.

Your right, they can be at your secrity module cost.

I currently (as I understand the state of pos) see pos useful for other the other blochain ESC stuff and pow for a safe currency (BTC)

Re: The Decentralized Future

#126

Post by Buetol »

arisAlexis wrote: post #117
Buetol wrote: post #52

Or it's like all the other services we have, it evolves from decentralized to centralized: email, search, forums,...The case could be made even for governments. The only limit was technical, now you can control the cabs in all the cities from one place. The future is definitely more and more centralized, just look at the money distribution. My guess is that we're having our geeky dreams without thinking what's the re…

we can change the world. some people always don't see the vision or they don't believe in it. we should not count on them for society progression regardless if we fail or not. otherwise let's all make a big corp dystopia our dream and go sleep.

Or we could attempt to see the bigger picture (money distribution) and fix that instead, that was my point.

Re: The Decentralized Future

#127

Post by cocktailpeanuts »

te_chris wrote: post #122
cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is not because cryptoassets are bad, it's because you read an investment book instead of technology book. (I read the cryptoassets book too and I think it's a great book, it's just that it's not a book to solve the specific problem you're talking about) I can confirm from my own experience that reading pop-sci books about blockchains--although they sound really cool and do provide motivation to look furth…

Lol, appreciate the patronising explanation, as if I'm some sort of idiot just waiting to find the road to Damascus. I understand the technology perfectly well. I read the Cryptoassets book to try and undsetand exactly that: the value of them as 'assets'. I came away exceedingly underwhelmed.

If LOL'ing and making snarky comments about how you understand but it's still underwhelming makes you feel better, good for you.

But I have never seen a single person who truly "understand the technology perfectly well" say it's underwhelming.

Most of those who actually dug deep enough to "truly understand" do see the limitations, but because by that point they understand the potential, they see the limitations as problems to solve and opportunities to take.

It is those who only scraped the surface that say it's "uninteresting", "underwhelming", etc.

Ancient people thought they "understood the world perfectly well" and thought it was flat. Suit yourself.

Re: The Decentralized Future

#128

Post by freejulian »

zodiac wrote: post #114
freejulian wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Raiden is a comprehensive implementation Is the lone implementation which is still on testnet and no ecosystem surrounding it. > ERC20 tokens, something that Bitcoin doesn't even have. Bitcoin has no interest in implementing an equivalent as a layer-1 feature. This should be a surprise to no one. Off-chain scaling is the official direction of the Bitcoin community. There's no interest in adding bloat to the layer 1…

> A full archive node currently requires a 400GB SSD! You're only option is to run a light node, Uh, what about running a full archive node? The bitcoin txo set is also much larger the the utxo set

Bitcoin doesn’t need an ssd to sync. Additionally, a bitcoin full node requires just 149gb — and it’s been around much longer than Ethereum! Ethereum is broken.

Re: The Decentralized Future

#129

Post by consz »

cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #127
te_chris wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol, appreciate the patronising explanation, as if I'm some sort of idiot just waiting to find the road to Damascus. I understand the technology perfectly well. I read the Cryptoassets book to try and undsetand exactly that: the value of them as 'assets'. I came away exceedingly underwhelmed.

If LOL'ing and making snarky comments about how you understand but it's still underwhelming makes you feel better, good for you. But I have never seen a single person who truly "understand the technology perfectly well" say it's underwhelming. Most of those who actually dug deep enough to "truly understand" do see the limitations, but because by that point they understand the potential, they see the limitations as pr…

In what way is your comment different from 'No True Scotsman'?

Re: The Decentralized Future

#130

Post by xkarga00 »

rrecuero wrote: post #15
pavlov wrote: post #8

> I think the same is true with Bitcoin: traditional banking that takes days and charges high fees can be easily implemented on Bitcoin, but the opposite is not true. "Easily" here seems like major exaggeration. If that were true, projects like Lightning wouldn't exist.

This was true at different moments in time. Now, as you mentioned you would need to use lightning. You could do it with LTC right now

Once LN is established, I expect that this is going to be opaque for an end user. Example: Today, you don't need to specify http:// in order to use it in a browser.
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