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Why blockchain is not yet working (2018)

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Re: Why blockchain is not yet working (2018)

#191

Post by mrharrison »

UncleMeat wrote: post #161
mrharrison wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More transparent than the opaque financial industry. You as a user completely own your assets, with your public key. Yes blockchain wallets/public keys are bad UX, but at the same time they give you actual ownership of your securities/index funds. A person can have access to the same financial products that banks have access to, because they cost a fraction of a price to run then they normally do on CEX and instead o…

> You as a user completely own your assets, with your public key. Cool. Why is this a thing tons of people want? > A person can have access to the same financial products that banks have access to, because they cost a fraction of a price to run then they normally do on CEX and instead of waiting for 3 days for a transaction to complete, it completes in 5 minutes. Which financial products? How many people want those t…

They don't know they want it, till they know what it means. It means independence from central exchanges, it means the money in your savings account of .01% interest account can now be directly leveraged by loans on Aave, which return 5-9% interest. No middleman managing your money. Your assets can be directly accessed by people who need it.

Re: Why blockchain is not yet working (2018)

#192

Post by mrharrison »

kergonath wrote: post #167
rrrazdan wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disrupt but how? Can you point to a specific example or use case?

Anytime now. We’ve been told the revolution was around the corner for years.

It turned into a 1 trillion dollar market three weeks ago. DeFi has been on an upward trend for the past 6 months. It is happening. Banks were just allowed in January to start interacting with public blockchains, so give that a year. The regulatory walls are dropping and accessibility is increasing with the likes of Visa and Mastercard.

Re: Why blockchain is not yet working (2018)

#193

Post by mrharrison »

hanniabu wrote: post #170
ashtonkem wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it very entertaining how suddenly Visa is a good thing, the moment they wanted to offer a crypto card. All this after how many articles decrying Visa and other “legacy” financial institutions? Also, the idea that Visa is going to help the Blockchain finally scale is ... well, let’s just say that you’re not supposed to enthusiastically endorse what the detractors have been saying for years.

It's a stepping stone to create adoption.

Yes, I went from Coinbase to managing my own wallet. Coinbase was my stepping stone, but now with my own wallet I have access to so many other products without Coinbase taking a fee and products that Coinbase doesn't offer. Coinbase helped me understand what was possible, now I have graduated to liquidity pools, staking and DEX's.

Re: Why blockchain is not yet working (2018)

#194

Post by slim »

jokethrowaway wrote: post #78

Bitcoin is the mongodb of finance: You like its features but in reality most people don't need them. Mongo's scalability sounds great until you find yourself reimplementing a relational database for your 1000 users app. Bitcoin decentralisation sounds great but must people don't need it. You just need a less evil and less corrupt government and better fintech. You're curing the symptoms, not the cause.

  Bitcoin decentralisation sounds great but must people don't need it. You just need a less evil and less corrupt government and better fintech.
your second sentence inadvertently convinced me I need bitcoin

Re: Why blockchain is not yet working (2018)

#195

Post by AngrySkillzz »

hanniabu wrote: post #170
ashtonkem wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it very entertaining how suddenly Visa is a good thing, the moment they wanted to offer a crypto card. All this after how many articles decrying Visa and other “legacy” financial institutions? Also, the idea that Visa is going to help the Blockchain finally scale is ... well, let’s just say that you’re not supposed to enthusiastically endorse what the detractors have been saying for years.

It's a stepping stone to create adoption.

Where "creating adoption" means "hopefully the price of the speculative assets I own goes up"

Re: Why blockchain is not yet working (2018)

#196

Post by AngrySkillzz »

mrharrison wrote: post #191
UncleMeat wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You as a user completely own your assets, with your public key. Cool. Why is this a thing tons of people want? > A person can have access to the same financial products that banks have access to, because they cost a fraction of a price to run then they normally do on CEX and instead of waiting for 3 days for a transaction to complete, it completes in 5 minutes. Which financial products? How many people want those t…

They don't know they want it, till they know what it means. It means independence from central exchanges, it means the money in your savings account of .01% interest account can now be directly leveraged by loans on Aave, which return 5-9% interest. No middleman managing your money. Your assets can be directly accessed by people who need it.

Defi loans are not actually useful though. You overcollateralize 150% of your ETH or whatever, to get say 100% back in some stablecoin.

But you could have just sold the ETH in the first place...? If it truly is a "currency" then why are you taking a currency loan on your currency? That's like putting up $150 of collateral to get a $100 loan, it makes no sense.

Unless it's not a currency, in which case this is just a margin loan - I think my speculative asset is going to go up in price, so I will take out a loan against it instead of selling it. Which has only two use cases: I need the dollars and I'm avoiding paying capital gains, OR I want this margin loan to speculate on more cryptocurrency!

That's a pretty small use case compared to like, "loans" in general. Plus if/when the ETH/USD price crashes, all of these loans will get liquidated and push the price down further. I fully expect a "portfolio insurance"-Black Monday type crash if ETH ever falls by more than 30%.

Re: Why blockchain is not yet working (2018)

#197

Post by [deleted] »

mrharrison wrote: post #191
UncleMeat wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You as a user completely own your assets, with your public key. Cool. Why is this a thing tons of people want? > A person can have access to the same financial products that banks have access to, because they cost a fraction of a price to run then they normally do on CEX and instead of waiting for 3 days for a transaction to complete, it completes in 5 minutes. Which financial products? How many people want those t…

They don't know they want it, till they know what it means. It means independence from central exchanges, it means the money in your savings account of .01% interest account can now be directly leveraged by loans on Aave, which return 5-9% interest. No middleman managing your money. Your assets can be directly accessed by people who need it.

[deleted]

Re: Why blockchain is not yet working (2018)

#198

Post by thedudeabides5 »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #189
jcfrei wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm absolutely aware of the shortcomings of the currently most popular blockchain technologies. But calling specific implementations (like Bitcoin or Ethereum) a failure when people are paying thousands of dollars each block to use it is pretty bold.

I don't think something's success or failure hinges on whether rich people like it.

Well, except for tradable financial assets...which are by their definition beauty contests for rich people’s saving/investment dollars.

Re: Why blockchain is not yet working (2018)

#199

Post by [deleted] »

Melting_Harps wrote: post #103
fractionalhare wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Something like Melvin Capital shorting 138% of GMS's stock It didn't short 138% of GME stock. GME short interest increased to 138% while Melvin and many other hedge funds were shorting it. Melvin didn't do that singlehandedly. > Naked Short selling maybe technically illegal, but that is in name only and in continues unabated to this day, hell the SEC refused to look into this obvious collusion between various hedge…

> It didn't short 138% of GME stock. GME short interest increased to 138% while Melvin and many other hedge funds were shorting it. You corrected yourself to include that they weren't alone, but whatever... but that still doesn't change the fact that this would be impossible to do if it were a blockchain based system with these parameters built in, you cannot fictitiously create more of something that exists in order…

[deleted]

Re: Why blockchain is not yet working (2018)

#200

Post by Retric »

thedudeabides5 wrote: post #198
wizzwizz4 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think something's success or failure hinges on whether rich people like it.

Well, except for tradable financial assets...which are by their definition beauty contests for rich people’s saving/investment dollars.

Success or failure of financial asset is independent of their current price, otherwise Bernie Madoff was providing a valuable financial product in 2007.

It’s individual trades that depend on the price because they have finite endpoints. However, assets are owner independent and therefore based on their long term value proposition.

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