The Non-Innovation of Cryptocurrency • Hacker News Board

Re: The Non-Innovation of Cryptocurrency

#151

Post by mattdesl » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 12:37 PM UTC

Traster wrote: post #147

mattdesl wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am an artist running a Shopify store (prints), and also have been selling via NFTs on Tezos and Ethereum for the last few months. If NFT continues to be profitable in the long term (even a fraction of what it is currently), there will be no need for me to continue using Shopify. Consider the fees alone: I pay monthly fees for Shopify, for art printing and shipping, pens and physical materials, hosting my domain nam…

Sorry I meant specifically, you could just sell digital copies of your artwork on shopify, along with a little pdf from you saying "Mattdesl hereby certifies this artwork as edition N of M". What value is the NFT providing? As far as I can tell the only value is that people are willing to trade in NFTs but are less willing ot accept the shopify solution. But they're both equal measures of ownership. Once you've minte…

I answered in other threads here, e.g.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27770605

Largely this question comes back to decentralization, trust, and a novel paradigm of digital ownership that is enabled by elliptic curve cryptography and blockchain tech.

The blockchain acts as a social consensus mechanism - we can all agree that "X public key owns Y unique token" - which is not the case with a centralized database record that can be mutated, or a file that can be easily copied/edited and shared.

Re: The Non-Innovation of Cryptocurrency

#152

Post by dkshdkjshdk » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 1:03 PM UTC

lottin wrote: post #81

mattdesl wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would largely agree that the use cases are niche at the moment. For example, enabling ownership of a domain name without requiring the trust of a central party. It may be worth noting, Ethereum has only been around for 6 years, and prior to it there was not a lot of focus in the blockchain space on ownerless program execution and immutable state (smart contracts).

Notice that blockchains have no notion of property rights. As far as the blockchain is concerned whoever controls the asset (i.e. has the password to the wallet) owns it. For example, if the owner loses the password, or has the password stolen, they no longer own the asset. This is a big problem. Imagine that if when someone stole your car they automatically owned it! The lack of property rights is one of the reasons…

Have you ever heard that "posession is nine-tenths of the law"? Well... this is a system in which "posession is ten-tenths of the law".

This has obvious disadvantages (as you pointed out), but it also has a clear advantage: it becomes trivial to figure out who effectively owns something within the system (whoever controls/posesses the associated key).

Just because a system doesn't encode/enforce "property laws", doesn't necessarily mean that it is useless. In fact, few systems (if any) formally encode property laws: that is always something imposed from the outside.

If someone steals your crypto keys, you can still use the (normal) court system to get your assets back (assuming you have some way of proving that you own the assets, and you know who stole them from you).

Does the Internet encode/enforce property laws? No. If someone (e.g.) copies your stuff, you're still forced to go to the court system (just like when someone "steals" crypto from you). Does that make the Internet "not suitable for almost anything", just because it doesn't automatically enforce property laws?

Re: The Non-Innovation of Cryptocurrency

#153

Post by creshal » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 1:08 PM UTC

mypastself wrote: post #149

creshal wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When already decommissioned fossil power plants get reactivated to mine bitcoin, I think it's safe to say that a ban of cryptocurrencies would have a significant impact.

I’m aware of only one case where a fossil fuel power plant partnered up with crypto miners. But I’m not denying PoW’s environmental impact, just its comparative scope and scale. Do you think we should ban other technologies reliant on dirty energy, such as motor vehicles? The Internet? Presumably you believe the benefits outweigh the drawbacks in those cases. If that’s the case, crypto (PoW, really) would then chiefl…

Yes. At the bare minimum, "crypto" "currencies" must be forced to move to Proof of Stake and stop dragging the entire world down with its madness.

Re: The Non-Innovation of Cryptocurrency

#154

Post by lottin » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 2:32 PM UTC

dkshdkjshdk wrote: post #152

lottin wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Notice that blockchains have no notion of property rights. As far as the blockchain is concerned whoever controls the asset (i.e. has the password to the wallet) owns it. For example, if the owner loses the password, or has the password stolen, they no longer own the asset. This is a big problem. Imagine that if when someone stole your car they automatically owned it! The lack of property rights is one of the reasons…

Have you ever heard that "posession is nine-tenths of the law"? Well... this is a system in which "posession is ten-tenths of the law". This has obvious disadvantages (as you pointed out), but it also has a clear advantage: it becomes trivial to figure out who effectively owns something within the system (whoever controls/posesses the associated key). Just because a system doesn't encode/enforce "property laws", does…

The internet wasn't invented to keep track of who owns what. It was invented to transmit information and it does an excellent job at that. The blockchain, on the other hand, was invented to keep track of who owns that. That's its only purpose. The fact it doesn't and can't enforce property rights, which, it could be argued, are pretty essential for that purpose, appears to indicate that blockchains do suffer from a fatal design flaw. At least that's the way I see it.

Re: The Non-Innovation of Cryptocurrency

#155

Post by dkshdkjshdk » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 3:09 PM UTC

lottin wrote: post #154

dkshdkjshdk wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever heard that "posession is nine-tenths of the law"? Well... this is a system in which "posession is ten-tenths of the law". This has obvious disadvantages (as you pointed out), but it also has a clear advantage: it becomes trivial to figure out who effectively owns something within the system (whoever controls/posesses the associated key). Just because a system doesn't encode/enforce "property laws", does…

The internet wasn't invented to keep track of who owns what. It was invented to transmit information and it does an excellent job at that. The blockchain, on the other hand, was invented to keep track of who owns that. That's its only purpose. The fact it doesn't and can't enforce property rights, which, it could be argued, are pretty essential for that purpose, appears to indicate that blockchains do suffer from a f…

> The blockchain, on the other hand, was invented to keep track of who owns that. That's its only purpose.

Well.. its purpose is to enable transactions between people, and not keep track of legal ownership of things. In fact, these networks usually don't make any claim about who legally owns anything: only about who controls something (i.e. who owns it within the system, not who owns it in the legal sense).

Does physical cash keep track of who actually owns it (and not just "who posesses it")? No. Does that make it useless or fatally flawed for the purpose of "value exchange"? Not really.

If you receive a 10 USD bill from someone as payment, you have to assume that they own that bill (and didn't just steal from anyone else). The bill itself doesn't enforce property law.

Furthermore, if you have lax security and a pickpocket takes your wallet (with 500 USD inside), you also have little recourse or method to enforce your ownership of the stolen cash. In fact, you probably even have less recourse than with things on blockchains: there's no way of tracking where cash goes, after someone steals it from you.

Is the fact that "cash" doesn't encode/enforce your property rights over it a problem that prevents "cash" from being effectively used a medium of value exchange between people? As far as I can tell, no.

Just like with "blockchains", if someone steals your cash, or anything else, you need to go to a court to get things fixed.

I understand your argument and accept that such properties of the system could be seen as "design flaws" (though... how could you even fix such design flaws? "law" is not a formal system). On the other hand, if such properties were "fatal design flaws" (for the purpose of a system of value exchange between economical agents), then plain vanilla cash is just as flawed, if not more (since it does not encode or enforce your property rights, and it's even less traceable than blockchain "assets").

Re: The Non-Innovation of Cryptocurrency

#156

Post by skohan » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 3:45 PM UTC

dkshdkjshdk wrote: post #130

skohan wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am quite confident my arguments are sound. However you are posting from a brand new account, continuously splitting hairs rather than confronting the argument head-on, and generally engaging in bad-faith argumentation tactics. This might be effective on other forums, but I'm quite confident the HN audience will not be impressed.

> I am quite confident my arguments are sound. Ah, yes. Like the argument that "Tether is being investigated for fraud" thus "every stablecoin is essentially fraud". Seems like a water-tight argument you have there. > However you are posting from a brand new account, So, instead of addressing my actual arguments, you're concerned about going through my account history? Great. Note that my account is not "brand new",…

> There is exactly one such comment from my side

So you admit you were arguing in bad faith?

> Point one one single argument that you have made to me, that I did not respond to head-on. Just one. I'll wait.

> point out a single example of me engaing in bad-faith argumentation with you. A single actual example. And then.

Sure, how about this very comment?

> Ah, yes. Like the argument that "Tether is being investigated for fraud" thus "every stablecoin is essentially fraud". Seems like a water-tight argument you have there.

You're misrepresenting my statement in a way to obfuscate the very real fraud accusations against Tether and other stable-coins. I never said all stablecoins are fradulent. Why are you focused on that falsified version of my argument rather than arguing against the fact that Tether is indeed fraudulent?

> maybe, we can continue the conversation

Not interested in continuing it, thank you!

Re: The Non-Innovation of Cryptocurrency

#157

Post by dave_sullivan » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 3:53 PM UTC

skohan wrote: post #58

dave_sullivan wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"This technology is only used by criminals and perverts" is a common refrain that almost always turns out to be wrong. People should relax.

It's an easily falsifiable claim if it is indeed false.

Yes, that's what I said, it's false. Easily.

Re: The Non-Innovation of Cryptocurrency

#158

Post by sneak » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 4:09 PM UTC

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #37

sneak wrote: post #13

> Ending this scourge on civilization is one of most important political problems facing the international community these days, and marks a new era of global cooperation on financial regulation that now necessarily transcends borders and nations. A very neutral, objective viewpoint. > However bitcoin is a technology which did not arise out of an engineering effort directed towards a specific problem or market ineffi…

>> However bitcoin is a technology which did not arise out of an engineering effort directed towards a specific problem or market inefficiency, but instead out of a anarchist political narrative that views democratic control of the money supply and law enforcement as the problem. >A completely false claim. my admittedly not in depth understanding of the history is that it should be written as: Bitcoin as a technology…

There is no available information about bitcoin's creator(s) or their political viewpoints.

Re: The Non-Innovation of Cryptocurrency

#159

Post by kemonocode » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 4:33 PM UTC

creshal wrote: post #118

mypastself wrote: post #44

> Ending this scourge on civilization is one of most important political problems facing the international community these days What is it about this topic that always brings out the most extreme voices on either side? It seems like both proponents and detractors wildly overestimate the technology’s importance. This particular blog post drops the above quoted bomb right at the start, and then goes on to argue the com…

PoW undermines our attempts to fight climate change, there's tons of examples of fossil fuel power plants being used for the sole purpose of running "crypto" "currencies". That is a very direct threat to our survival as a species. Additionally, unregulated currency in general undermines the international political system itself, by allowing rogue states and terrorist organisations to completely bypass attempts at emb…

>PoW undermines our attempts to fight climate change, there's tons of examples of fossil fuel power plants being used for the sole purpose of running "crypto" "currencies".

No. There's literally one single concrete example of this happening [0] and a lot of moral busybodies wasting time with rounding errors instead of focusing on the big global climate disasters going on right now.

[0] https://www.wsj.com/articles/bitcoin-miners-are-giving-new-l...

Re: The Non-Innovation of Cryptocurrency

#160

Post by lottin » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 4:41 PM UTC

dkshdkjshdk wrote: post #155

lottin wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The internet wasn't invented to keep track of who owns what. It was invented to transmit information and it does an excellent job at that. The blockchain, on the other hand, was invented to keep track of who owns that. That's its only purpose. The fact it doesn't and can't enforce property rights, which, it could be argued, are pretty essential for that purpose, appears to indicate that blockchains do suffer from a f…

> The blockchain, on the other hand, was invented to keep track of who owns that. That's its only purpose. Well.. its purpose is to enable transactions between people, and not keep track of legal ownership of things. In fact, these networks usually don't make any claim about who legally owns anything: only about who controls something (i.e. who owns it within the system , not who owns it in the legal sense). Does phy…

Property rights are a social construct. They are recognised in a certain social context and enforced by state institutions by use of force. They are separate from the actual objects of ownership. Cash is like any other physical object. If stolen, the owner can demand that the courts act on their behalf and get the stolen cash back. Sure, it may be difficult, in some situations, to prove ownership of the stolen cash or to recover it, and maybe this explains why many people seem to prefer electronic payments over cash. It might indicate that indeed cash is perceived as being less safe.

Now, back to blockchains. Blockchains are very inefficient and expensive to run. This is so, because they have to do a whole lot of extra work in order to avoid relying on a central authority that ultimately has the final say on who owns what. If blockchain users have to go to court to have property rights enforced, that means that the courts do have the final say on who owns what, and so the entire purpose of the blockchain, which was to avoid a central authority, is defeated. Not only that. The other problem is there can be no enforcement without the ability to exert force, and by design a blockchain cannot be changed by use of force, only by "consensus". So the courts would be powerless to enforce anything on a blockchain, even if they wanted. In short, blockchains are designed in a manner that makes them antithetical to property rights. I think most people want property rights and therefore will steer clear of blockchains.