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Where are all the crypto use cases?

evanjconrad.com

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Re: Where are all the crypto use cases?

#131

Post by chexum »

lkrubner wrote: post #77

" Few technologies have a clear start point. Did the internet start in Tim Berners-Lee in 1990? Or in 1982 with TCP/IP? Or in the 1970's with CYCLADES? Or in 1969 with ARPANET? Or in 1965 with the invention of packet switching? Or in 1950's with time-sharing? Can you distinguish the internet from computers or information theory? Maybe it starts at radio or the telegraph. " Did you say 'over'? Nothing is over until we…

I'm quite confused, the article is supposed to be an advocacy piece, but it is just being all defensive about where the use cases are.

With TCP/IP, or packet switching, they did have an idea that it will be useful, but noone could imagine how popular it's going to be. With crypto, it seems the opposite, I'm afraid.

Noone needs a use case for a Raspberry Pi, or a Raspberry Pi Pico (the latter, many would say, borders on being useless with other, cheaper and/or more complete platforms being available). But I can just buy one, and tinker with it and voila. I don't need a use case to run a Z80 retro emulator on a Pico, I can just do it on my own, without any "industry" deciding which type of emulators should the investors have.

Why "crypto" needs a use case is exactly because people insist it's money, and had to be acquired with money.

While it was all P2P, and you could get whole bitcoins for fun, it were different times. Nowadays, you can't mine any meaningful amount of it unless you invest in thousands, or you buy them with money or credit card. And it's starting to be either illegal in some countries or in a custodial wallet, going poof when the company goes bankrupt.

Re: Where are all the crypto use cases?

#132

Post by mbar84 »

The only use case for blockchain is money. Everything else is a scam. We only need one money, the one with the most dominant network effects. Right now, if it every happens, that money looks like it will be Bitcoin. This will take a while. How long it takes depends not so much on Bitcoin itself, but on how bad the competition undermines their use case as money.

In the meantime, people may find it surprising that there is indeed no other use case for the most inefficient database man has ever conceived, other than the on e it was explicitly designed for.

Re: Where are all the crypto use cases?

#133

Post by maccard »

cowtools wrote: post #100
WatchDog wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adding to B, it's also great for money laundering and avoiding sanctions. If you are a Russian oligarch, it's great for being able to pay your superyacht crew.

I suppose, but is it that much better than cash?

I guess that depends. Would you accept payment in rubles right now?

Re: Where are all the crypto use cases?

#134

Post by tromp »

flaque wrote: post #23
tptacek wrote: post #8

If these are powerful use cases, you probably won't need to inform us about them; we'll all be using Filecoin instead of S3, or Radicle instead of Gitlab. Instead of "here are some popular use cases", you'll say "you rely on crypto every day, in order to access this structured knowledge graph thing everyone uses". If replacing S3 and Github are the strongest cases you can make, I'm dubious: I don't doubt there are pe…

> “can you come up with something that will see mainstream use that eclipses the toxic speculation that's perceived to characterize every crypto application“ This is a far better question to put to crypto. The article isn’t attempting to address that question though. My bet is “yes”, at maybe 80% confidence. I would say it’s fairly difficult to see though, because speculative projects grow very quickly and dwarf “nor…

> a “non-speculative” project doesn’t “seem” like a major project when folks attempt to compare its market cap against speculative projects.

What is a non-speculative project? How can you deter speculation? By maintaining a high supply inflation for a long time?

Re: Where are all the crypto use cases?

#135

Post by whatisweb3 »

tptacek wrote: post #8

If these are powerful use cases, you probably won't need to inform us about them; we'll all be using Filecoin instead of S3, or Radicle instead of Gitlab. Instead of "here are some popular use cases", you'll say "you rely on crypto every day, in order to access this structured knowledge graph thing everyone uses". If replacing S3 and Github are the strongest cases you can make, I'm dubious: I don't doubt there are pe…

Why does Uniswap need to replace all of our exchanges within a two year timespan in order to be seen as useful, novel, and interesting tech? When was the last time you applied this standard to the rest of our technology? HN can admit that Tor, Scuttlebutt, 3D printing, text-to-image GANs is interesting and useful tech, despite it not taking over average users daily lives.

The basic premises of crypto are to be decentralized and permissionless systems that support peer-to-peer forms of exchange and ownership, and they largely succeed in their defined goals. The goal of these protocols is to provide new tools, not to replace every corner of fiat and financial systems.

Re: Where are all the crypto use cases?

#136

Post by petesergeant »

redox99 wrote: post #127
petesergeant wrote: post #94

> cheap loans a loan that might double in the amount of fiat you have to pay back isn’t cheap, it’s nuts. Also there’s significant cost converting to and from fiat to take it out > filecoin https://randomoracle.wordpress.com/2019/12/07/filecoin-storj... > LabDAO Toucan Golden.xyz Why not just a centralised database though? > Radicle.xyz OK sure, if you have code that GitHub won’t accept, then this looks ok, but presu…

> Also there’s significant cost converting to and from fiat to take it out No there's not. Trades on exchanges are under 0.1% [1]. ERC20 tokens have some fees because of gas but it's a flat amount [2], which is negligible for any operation over a thousand dollars. Fiat withdrawals are generally free [3]. The most expensive part usually is the gas to interact with the DeFi smart contract, but it's also a flat fee. [1]…

> Trades on exchanges are under 0.1%

Let's say I am the type of person who needs a cheap loan, and I decide to use Coinbase. My understanding is that money into Coinbase and money out of Coinbase is going to cost me 1.49% (at least) in each direction, and that's before the additional $1-$10 gas fees in each direction. So 3% + currency risks + whatever other fees + the risk of fat-fingering my crypto and losing it to the ether forever, and also trying to figure out if I have some kind of tax liability, BEFORE the actual interest rate itself.

Or I choose a well-regulated provider to do a money-transfer[0] to and pay a one-off fee of 3-4% for several thousand pounds for a year or longer loan, even if my credit isn't perfect, and I do that with the full protection of the legal system, including bankruptcy protection, easy resolution if I type the wrong account number in, etc. Those are the rates for if I need cash too, if the thing I need to pay for can be paid for by credit-card, the rate falls to closer to 2%...

[0] https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/credit-cards/money-transfe...

Re: Where are all the crypto use cases?

#137

Post by maccard »

mrweasel wrote: post #64

Firstly: I’m annoyed that crypto now seems to be synonymous with “blockchain”, rather than cryptography. Secondly: Most of the blockchain use-case feel a little like the argument for Bittorrent. It’s not that you can’t use it for sensibel purposes, but when you do you’re solving problem most people don’t have.

Bit torrent is _great_. It allows for a massive amount of global information sharing at little to no cost to the creator. I have used bittorent professionally - we were distributing 50+GB to 150 computers in a limited time frame with a limited external internet connection but fast intercommunication. We downloaded the entire package to one computer and used BitTorrent to distribute to the other 150 computers. Niche, yes. Incredibly useful? Yes!

Re: Where are all the crypto use cases?

#138

Post by gnarula »

theshrike79 wrote: post #125
rnk wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please explain what this is a bad use case. I'd love to learn why that is.

Because you can't remove stuff from a blockchain. Change your name? Old name still there. Change your phone number? Still there. All old email addresses? Still there.

I reckon that's now how SSI solutions use a blockchain (or at least the ones I know of). AFAIK, a blockchain is only used to resolve a DID (an identifier mapping a random ID to a bunch of public keys you control, along with a URL to communicate with your device). Your personal information, as in your name, phone number, email stay in your device and are only exchanged with the party you want to authenticate against.

I'm curious to know if there's something I misunderstood in this space

Re: Where are all the crypto use cases?

#139

Post by redox99 »

woopwoop wrote: post #71
WatchDog wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The counter argument might be that Ford F-150s aren't particularly fungible. A slightly stronger example might be gold, but people don't use gold as money anymore either.

Fungible + trades at greater than one usd also includes, for example, aapl shares. Still well short of the mark.

I'm sure if trading or spending SPY was as easy as fiat, many people would sometimes prefer to pay or get paid with SPY instead of USD.

Re: Where are all the crypto use cases?

#140

Post by kaoD »

davidperrenoud wrote: post #103

Certificate Transparency. Both Chrome and Safari implement it and you will receive an e-mail from Cloudflare if someone creates a certificate for your domain: It is kind of a blockchain with proof of authority. More precisely it is a Merkle tree with certificate authorities seen as trusted nodes by the web browsers. This idea was extended in something called General Transparency and implemented in the Google Trillian…

When people refer to "crypto" they mean cryptocurrency. In a more general non-currency sense they still refer to trustless blockchains that solve the Byzantine Generals Problem.
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