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What Problem Blockchains Solve

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Re: What Problem Blockchains Solve

#121

Post by seanhunter »

dragonwriter wrote: post #105
seanhunter wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You will probably consider these as "financial schemes", but having worked in finance for many years my impression is there are a number of problems in financial infrastructure that are extremely annoying and costly at the moment which could be much better addressed with blockchain based solutions. Blockchain is not the only way you could solve them, it just has the potential to be much better. One example: Trade rec…

> but how do things get into the central database in the first place and how do the participants trust that the record there is good? Either party enters them as a candidate record, including identifying the counterparty, and both acknowledge it. Or one party creates and digitally signs a record, and sends it to the other, who digitally signs and records it in the central database that act also constituting acceptanc…

That's a good point that I didn't really address. Why can't you just have a centralised database?

1) If you had a centralised database, it would be extremely difficult to prevent the people operating the central database from exploiting the fact that they literally know how every bank in the financial system is positioned. It would be the juciest inside information ever.

You definitely need some kind of system where both sides can know they have agreed without anyone within the system being able to get access to all the facts globally in a timeframe where they would be able to take advantage of this knowledge.

2)Who would run it? The only feasible bodies that I could see would be the central clearing houses and they definitely haven't shown the level of operational competence that would be required given that if this thing went down pretty much all finance would stop until it was fixed. Banks use the swap rates to bootstrap their discount curves so if the swaps market disappeared for a few hours literally noone in the world would be able to accurately risk-manage any sort of trade that was dependent on future cashflows.

Re: What Problem Blockchains Solve

#122

Post by da-x »

pengwing wrote: post #70
da-x wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

However so far it's not proving to be a currency (short term stability, long term deprecation or preservation) but only an asset class (short term instability, long term preservation). So far it is only proving that it cannot be both. For assets, one can choose to invest in already existing inflation resistant assets, and many investors and even unsophisticated laypeople did that across the ages before Bitcoin was in…

BTC is already a de-facto currency in El Salvador and somewhat short term stable. As an asset class BTC solves yet another problem: It is a better version of gold due to the hard supply cap.

"Bitcoin Failed in El Salvador. The President Says the Answer Is More Bitcoin." [1]. Short term stable? A currency that falls 20% in one month is far from it.

Gold is the least good example among these kind of assets, because ownership is less bound and provable by law. Stocks and real estate are much better in that regard.

[1] https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/12/06/bitcoin-city-el-salvado...

Re: What Problem Blockchains Solve

#123

Post by gmays »

Great writeup. I don't know how big crypto/blockchains will get, but I do know 1) a lot of smart people are betting on it, and 2) I've learned not to confuse the limits of my imagination with the limits of reality.

So I've made a relatively small investment in crypto across a couple of dozen coins as an experiment. I am cautiously optimistic in the future, assuming it'll be 5-10 years until viability at any practical level for a mainstream audience.

Re: What Problem Blockchains Solve

#124

Post by Karunamon »

dmitriid wrote: post #50
Karunamon wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Provenance is a thing, so no. You're just some rando and nobody would care about your NFT. The same way you can buy or even make replicas of nearly any artwork out there. The one blessed by the creator has value that the illegitimate copies do not.

> You're just some rando and nobody would care about your NFT. Says (s)he as multiple artists see their artworks stolen and sold on OpenSea.

Plagiarism and art theft happens in the real world too.

Re: What Problem Blockchains Solve

#125

Post by throwoutway »

0x0nyandesu wrote: post #41
lmm wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm amazed that the whole thing has somehow kept going despite the same lack of legitimate use cases that it's had from the start.

It's amazing that I can transfer wealth across borders with zero bank involvement using this technology and I still have to see people like you claim the sky isn't blue. Like that's nice and all but you sound like sour grapes.

Amazing, but how often do you transfer your entire wealth across borders? Because if we’re talking about thousands of Euro then I’m not impressed

Re: What Problem Blockchains Solve

#126

Post by dmitriid »

Karunamon wrote: post #124
dmitriid wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're just some rando and nobody would care about your NFT. Says (s)he as multiple artists see their artworks stolen and sold on OpenSea.

Plagiarism and art theft happens in the real world too.

They do. However, I was responding to your claim which is objectively, probably wrong.

Re: What Problem Blockchains Solve

#127

Post by tarboreus »

arcticbull wrote: post #90
hrhrhrhrhr wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People in USSR were kept inside against their will and were used as a forced labor. They absolutely earned their wealth, not the nomenklatura.

Money is representation of value within a society, but it only has value within that society - and to the extent it can be traded abroad. The value is protected by the legal system, by the army, facilitated by the roads, bridges and infrastructure. Just because you get a "dollar" or "ruble" in exchange for work doesn't intrinsically mean that you are owed anything. That obligation comes from the system in which you,…

Eh. Obviously we need governments for game theoretic reasons. We need soldiers because other people have soldiers, we need governments because other people have governments. But in practice the government is often a huge bully. The fact that we can't spend money we make within these systems without getting snooped on for every transactions stinks. And, guess what, rich people and billionaires are not subject to the same limitations. So yes, while we need a government, there is a tension between individual autonomy and the government, and methods of exercising autonomy outside of the government's ability to count beans and snoop on you are just fine in my book.

Re: What Problem Blockchains Solve

#128

Post by dmitriid »

wtsnz wrote: post #102
dmitriid wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They also allow for micro transactions in a way we’ve not been able to do so far. Yes. Extremely slow, inefficient and expensive. We really haven't been able to do micro transactions this way before.

They don’t have to be what you described. The BSV network does more transactions each day than any other network at a magnitude less cost. Less cost in both user end and CO2. https://coincarboncap.com/

> They don’t have to be what you described. The BSV network

There's always a "not true blockchain" in these discussions, isn't there

> more transactions each day than any other network at a magnitude less cost.

So. It maybe, barely approached real world. It's a far cry from "allow for micro transactions in a way we’ve not been able to do so far"

> Less cost in both user end and CO2.

I don't buy "we only run on clean energy" claims

Re: What Problem Blockchains Solve

#129

Post by dragontamer »

bee_rider wrote: post #84
dragontamer wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if I made an NFT of the Constitution, does that make me the owner of the Constitution?

NFT's are pretty dumb IMO. But I think there is something interesting in this question. What's the Constitution? It is a piece of paper with ink on it. The paper and ink aren't that valuable, actually I have many better pieces of paper and some better ink. So that isn't where the real value is. I could also buy a modern copy of the Constitution which would be, practically, much better than the original (in the sense…

I think its simpler than that.

If Alice makes a Constitution NFT, and Bob makes a Constitution NFT, which NFT is the legitimate one? I'm not sure how using "Blockchain" to track the trust issue helps at all.

If you say "The first one to file the NFT wins" (lets ignore the fact that this only works if both Alice and Bob are using the same blockchain with the same concept of time), then what if Bob files the NFT but doesn't in fact, have ownership of the Constitution? What if Alice is the true owner, but heard about NFTs later and thus does the filing process after Bob?

Re: What Problem Blockchains Solve

#130

Post by xboxnolifes »

m3adow wrote: post #17
xboxnolifes wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can we quit beating this straw horse?

I don't see how that's a straw horse. It's even mentioned in the blog post as the "Enforcement problem". Nobody can (or should) take NFTs for Real-Life goods seriously until this problem is solved for good. I myself doubt it can be solved properly without a centralised authority which would contradict the whole "trustless" selling point. But I'd be glad to hear approaches how this and the Oracle problem could be solv…

NFTs only assure ownership of the NFT data itself, not what the data may represents off of the chain or otherwise. The only people who think/claim that you now own a PNG or a lease by storing a link to one in a blockchain are idiots or people trying to sell things to idiots.

Assuring ownership of the data itself in a decentralized way has value outside of this current fake / grifted meme of owning a random PNG. It's tiring that a community that seemingly prides itself on technical understanding gets so hung up on an overused fake use case.

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