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What Problem Blockchains Solve

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Re: What Problem Blockchains Solve

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, that's called regulatory arbitrage. It's not a [edit](unique) use case, it's basically crime, give or take. You're just skipping the AML and KYC checks that you'd ordinarily be required to take. Believe it or not sending money takes a few milliseconds in a classical system, except for, you know, regulatory and compliance checks that coiners pretend aren't actually needed. The use cases are: regulatory arbitrag…

I always tell people of how my mother was smuggling Soviet rubles stitched into her coat when she flew to NYC to immigrate to America and in the real world people are aghast at the unjust laws of the USSR while on the internet everyone is like "but the law". Fuck the law. Law != Justice. Use some critical thinking skills for once. You earned your wealth. It's not the government's.

> I always tell people of how my mother was smuggling Soviet rubles stitched into her coat when she flew to NYC to immigrate to America...

Typically people were smuggling foreign currency (US dollars) out of the Soviet Union rather than rubles. Rubles were of little use in America. But smuggling dollars was in violation of two soviet laws at one -- any operation with foreign currency was illegal (up to death penalty for currency "speculation" at scale); and transporting undeclared valuables across the border was illegal too. People in 1978 were literally risking ending up in a Siberian labor camp while trying to board an Aeroflot plane to Vienna (transit hub for immigration from the soviet union during iron curtain).

Re: What Problem Blockchains Solve

#132

There is not one actual practical problem blockchains solve. It's a get rich quick / pyramid scheme built on top of a theoretical concept that appeals to nerds but doesn't work in the world we live in. The same issues persist, they're just packaged/framed differently - and, due to lack of regulation and norms to mitigate them in the real world, can still be exploited. People were complaining that Google eats up so ma…

>There is not one actual practical problem blockchains solve.

Read the whitepaper; Bitcoin solves the problem of centralization of trust, fraud and it enables transparency. No more creative accounting and cooking the books. On top of that it enables microtransactions as small as faction of the cent. It is quite big innovation.

Re: What Problem Blockchains Solve

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plagiarism and art theft happens in the real world too.

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

No it isn't. The claim was "provenance matters". Your claim, "but NFTs of stolen art exist" is non-responsive. Stolen art isn't the norm, it's the exception, IRL and on-chain, it's not honest to imply otherwise, and you know better than that.

Re: What Problem Blockchains Solve

#134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

No it isn't. The claim was "provenance matters". Your claim, "but NFTs of stolen art exist" is non-responsive. Stolen art isn't the norm, it's the exception, IRL and on-chain, it's not honest to imply otherwise, and you know better than that.

The alleged promise of blockchain is that it solves the trust issue. But this discussion you are having proves that NFTs do not solve any trust issue what so ever, you still need to do research to see which NFTs are officially blessed by the creators.

Except ownership is difficult. Eventually the creators will die, and the ownership of their IP will transfer to their estate. Those estates have arguments. If two people, part of a hypothetical estate with a claim on some IP / Artwork / whatever make competing NFTs, how does "blockchain" resolve the issue at all?

Suddenly, we're back to courts and arguments. No technology seems to be able to magic-away the agreements we have with each other as a society.

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The other issue is: if you aren't using blockchain for trust, then blockchain is no better than a literal physical certificate. A fancy piece of paper with the signature of the artist.

Re: What Problem Blockchains Solve

#135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 do…

What if Benjamin Franklin had gotten blackouot drunk at the constitution writing after party, knocked the original and the early copies into a pile together, and just plucked one out of the stack at random? Not super relevant I just think it is a funny hypothetical. I'd say the secretly older copy doesn't have some extra significance, the 'real' Constitution is whichever one we've been displaying this whole time, I think, but there's definitely room for disagreement.

Unless Alice or Bob are minting an NFT which they claim is redeemable for the Constitution, which isn't how these things generally work I think, either of their copies has some argument for representing the Constitution. In any case these are all just mementos that represent the idea of the history of the Constitution, as is the real one, as is Ben Franklin's switcharoo copy, as would be your own privately minted copy. I think it is impossible to meaningfully get it right.

Re: What Problem Blockchains Solve

#136

There is not one actual practical problem blockchains solve. It's a get rich quick / pyramid scheme built on top of a theoretical concept that appeals to nerds but doesn't work in the world we live in. The same issues persist, they're just packaged/framed differently - and, due to lack of regulation and norms to mitigate them in the real world, can still be exploited. People were complaining that Google eats up so ma…

Please don't post generic flamewar comments to HN. It leads to generic flamewars, which are the most tedious and predictable (and usually nastiest) format of discussion. We want just the opposite here.

Arguably the greater problem is that people upvote this stuff; this subthread was at the top of the page when I saw it (I've downweighted it now—which we try to do whenever we see a generic subthread at the top of a page). But it's harder to tackle the problem at that level.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: What Problem Blockchains Solve

#137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

No it isn't. The claim was "provenance matters". Your claim, "but NFTs of stolen art exist" is non-responsive. Stolen art isn't the norm, it's the exception, IRL and on-chain, it's not honest to imply otherwise, and you know better than that.

> The claim was "provenance matters".

Here's the full claim: "Provenance is a thing, so no. You're just some rando and nobody would care about your NFT."

It turns out, that "some randos" have a jolly good time on NFT platforms selling stolen goods, and it's not an exception, considering how many of them are. NFTs provide exactly zero help with provenance that "matters".

> tolen art isn't the norm, it's the exception, IRL and on-chain, it's not honest to imply otherwise, and you know better than that.

OpenSea had so many complaints about stolen art that they decided to just remove the complaint form. Because stolen art is the norm on-chain, and NFTs provide exactly zero protection against that, no matter how much you claim that "provenance matters".

It's a norm to such a degree, that it's easy to watch this in near real-time (e.g. https://twitter.com/NFTtheft).

Re: What Problem Blockchains Solve

#138
post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

The US dollar has fallen way more than 20% in value in the last year, if my grocery and petroleum expenditures are any indication.

Or is that why Bitcoin is "worth less", too?

Re: What Problem Blockchains Solve

#139
post #8

I think a good resource to give you an idea of what blockchain can actually do comes from the "Blockchain use cases " and "Blockchain solutions" sections of IBM's Blockchain marketing page: https://www.ibm.com/blockchain This gives you an idea of some real world business problems that have been solved with the technology. Still, personally, I find the question of "when do I decide to consider using a blockchain as an…

You do know that IBM essentially shut down its blockchain division? https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ibm-blockchain-shell-former-s... .

No. I don’t really follow them closely, I just thought their marketing page was a good list of possible use cases.

The article did a good job explaining what general problem blockchain solves, but didn’t give me a very good idea of what problems one might try to solve beyond existing implementations.

Re: What Problem Blockchains Solve

#140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it isn't. The claim was "provenance matters". Your claim, "but NFTs of stolen art exist" is non-responsive. Stolen art isn't the norm, it's the exception, IRL and on-chain, it's not honest to imply otherwise, and you know better than that.

> The claim was "provenance matters". Here's the full claim: "Provenance is a thing, so no. You're just some rando and nobody would care about your NFT." It turns out, that "some randos" have a jolly good time on NFT platforms selling stolen goods, and it's not an exception, considering how many of them are. NFTs provide exactly zero help with provenance that "matters". > tolen art isn't the norm, it's the exception,…

>and it's not an exception, considering how many of them are.

Now let's have some numbers on how many legitimate mints/trades are made every day, and then this will be a useful comparison.

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