Why blockchain is not yet working (2018)

Post by hanniabu » Sun, Feb 14, 2021, 5:15 PM UTC

space_rock wrote: post #150

ignoramous wrote: post #112

I genuinely think HN is subject to what Clay Christensen put as "disruptive innovation" when it comes to Blockchain and friends (strange to say that for a community as opposed to a company). I understand that many on HN think of the many ICOs as Ponzi schemes, and other tech (like identity, DBs, VPNs, apps, or even alternate WWW) built on top as smokes and mirrors; but the industry being built around it is very real…

An ICO is a framework for a criminal conspiracy to defraud. As outlined in the evidence gathered by the SEC on Ripple. Make some outrageous sales pitch that experts in technology would describe as vaporware Sell your utility tokens. A worthless type of token Buy some fake articles and pump the price. Dump on the suckers that bought your tokens Pay for a exchange listing on a junk exchange. Pump the token and dump on…

Post by zaphar » Sun, Feb 14, 2021, 5:16 PM UTC

jcfrei wrote: post #77

nexthash wrote: post #11

I think the #1 reason blockchain doesn't work is very simple - the technology is broken beyond fixability. This article is two years old, but the same variations of these excuses always come up when the crypto ideologues are grilled on why their utopiaic vision hasn't come about, for all of blockchain's existence. Blockchain is awful for most things compared to a centralized or distributed database: it is inefficient…

This is the typical argument on a very technical board such as HN where blockchain is synonymous with a specific implementation. But that's an outdated way to think about blockchains. Yes, Bitcoin's implementation is a huge resource hog and slow. But for most newer projects "blockchain" just means an auditable trail of state changes. Whether you implement this with the shiniest newest db paradigm or some simple SQL d…

Post by space_rock » Sun, Feb 14, 2021, 5:18 PM UTC

hanniabu wrote: post #171

space_rock wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An ICO is a framework for a criminal conspiracy to defraud. As outlined in the evidence gathered by the SEC on Ripple. Make some outrageous sales pitch that experts in technology would describe as vaporware Sell your utility tokens. A worthless type of token Buy some fake articles and pump the price. Dump on the suckers that bought your tokens Pay for a exchange listing on a junk exchange. Pump the token and dump on…

By your logic the stock market a scam because of penny stocks.

Post by zaphar » Sun, Feb 14, 2021, 5:19 PM UTC

mikegreenberg wrote: post #116

lottin wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ownership of digital assets that's something new and valuable Doubtful, because ownership only makes sense in a context of scarcity whereas digital assets are in infinite supply.

How are blockchain assets, whose scarcity is defined by the protocol and agreed upon by all participating node operators, infinite in supply? Edit: Arguing in good faith... you could suggest changing the protocol, sure, however you would need follow that particular blockchain's rules for gaining consensus about changing the rules first.

Post by scsilver » Sun, Feb 14, 2021, 5:20 PM UTC

loceng wrote: post #151

scsilver wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The money transfered from late adopters to early adopters is the massive amounts of old money mad from the wealth of kingdoms and colonialization. Personally I think having an infinitely divisible, fixed asset, protected by cryptography and not statutes, is a democratic upheaval of captured financial systems. You dont need blood, legacy, heritage to capture these assets, just information. Maybe having physical wealth…

I like that you brought up money of old - and find it disturbing that people are happy to repeat the same pattern - "they did it, so why can't we;" two wrongs don't make a right. So great, we have regulatory capture of financial systems - and you want to replace it with a system that can't protect against bad actors via financial punishment for known bad behaviour e.g. via the Magnitsky Act? Don't you think that's a…