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Why blockchain is not yet working (2018)

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Re: Why blockchain is not yet working (2018)

#241

Post by jeltz »

centimeter wrote: post #232
pavlov wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This claim is often made and it just makes no sense to me. Let’s say I’m invoicing someone abroad for $100k USD. Today they send me a wire transfer. It costs about 25 USD (fixed fee, but in this case 0.025% of the transaction, i.e. negligible) and normally completes the same day. The payment is made in the currency of my invoice, so I’m guaranteed to receive the right amount. (Any currency exchange is the sender’s re…

As someone who has had to make international payments in the US$20-50k range semi-frequently, Bitcoin is by far the easiest way to do it. Your story about it being easy and cheap to do via remittances or whatever is pure fiction. Any traditional mechanism is at least two of slow, expensive, and onerous.

It is not pure fiction. I also send transactions semi-frequently in those ranges and have never had an issue. Sure, I have not sent them to Africa and that might be where the differences in experiences lie.

Re: Why blockchain is not yet working (2018)

#242

Post by StavrosK »

zaphar wrote: post #240
StavrosK wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You keep moving the goalposts between "blockchain the technology" and "Bitcoin the currency". If you want a trustless auditable log, your best option is a blockchain. What's a better alternative?

Actually Bitcoin keeps moving the goalposts. First it's a currency, next it's a trustless auditable log. All I need for trustless is auditability. All I need for auditability is a public Merkle Tree. I fail to see what actual real world value the PoW and associated approaches actually add.

> You keep moving the goalposts [...] What's a better alternative?

> Actually Bitcoin keeps moving the goalposts.

Okay.

Re: Why blockchain is not yet working (2018)

#243

Post by BlackInkstoan »

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.

DEXs and PLFs still lack integration into the traditional finance infrastructure. Outside of escrowed p2p sales of cryptocurrency, centralized exchanges are the only FIAT on and off ramps.

If stablecoins, custodial or noncustodial gain widespread adoption, DeFi will remain as a niche for hardcore crypto fans.

Re: Why blockchain is not yet working (2018)

#244

Post by StavrosK »

meowkit wrote: post #209
ashtonkem wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. And people were willing to pay hundreds of dollars for plush toys with the appropriate tags preserved in plastic. Bubbles are a thing, and the crowd can be wrong. To pretend otherwise is silly. More fundamentally, the original promise of Bitcoin was that it would…

And there are cryptos like Nano that fulfill this original promise. Technology evolves over time. Just because its not perfect at the first go, doesn’t mean it should go in the trash.

I wish cryptocurrency payment processors supported many more coins, but I understand how they can't support everyone's pet coin. I do wish I could pay for more things with Nano, though, it's amazing how you can pay for things instantly without any fee.

Re: Why blockchain is not yet working (2018)

#245

Post by mrharrison »

mrharrison wrote: post #193
hanniabu wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Weird how I got so many minus points for an actual experience.

Re: Why blockchain is not yet working (2018)

#246

Post by uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh »

littlestymaar wrote: post #70
rorykoehler wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Banks are not just managing money. They are distributors of newly minted money via loans. They are not distributors of crypto and the Fed are not involved (or at least necessary) for the creation of new crypto.

Coinbase and al. also do exactly this though: when you buy bitcoin on an exchange, Coinbase gives you an IOU for bitcoin, with zero transaction recorded in the blockchain it's only when you want to actually take these bitcoins out of your Coinbase wallet, to move them to your own bitcoin wallet, that a real bitcoin transaction exist. In the meantime, there can be more bitcoins owned on Coinbase than real bitcoin in e…

so what would happen in a "bitcoin bankrun", where, for whatever reason, 100% of coinbase customers say "i'll take my coins into my own physical wallet please"

Re: Why blockchain is not yet working (2018)

#247

Post by selestify »

zaphar wrote: post #177
mikegreenberg wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Bitcoin already forked once and magically duplicated the digital assets. I profited quite handsomly as a result. The scarcity is not enforced by the protocol it's enforced by community agreement.

How is that different from the USD, the scarcity of which is enforced by the USG?

Re: Why blockchain is not yet working (2018)

#248

Post by hakfoo »

mikegreenberg wrote: post #160
lottin wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but it's an artificial scarcity. Like you say, these assets are only scarce because all the participants agree that they're scarce. This is different from physical objects, which are scarce because of the laws of nature.

I'm not sure why that distinction is important. Value is realized in use of a complete product and are not represented by the sum of its parts. (Value is not zero sum. A log and a plank together can arguably provide more value as a slope than the log and the plank can provide value on their own.) Sure, you can decompose the system to remove artificial scarcity, but that's part of the product. The market has manifeste…

I think the question is less about "can it maintain a (premise of) scarcity" and more "are the scarce tokens worth having?"

There's plenty of things that are scarce but essentially worthless. There's no robust secondary market in Penn Central Railroad timetables, the little plastic caps that SNES cartridges came with, or copies of the May 18, 1986 edition of Arizona Republic.

Having a built in utility factor is a very strong way to answer the "is it worth having?" question. It provides a stickiness to the asset, rather than just being a pump-and-dump vehicle.

Gold says "I'm worth having! I can be made into jewelry and really good connectors for premium audio cables."

The paper dollar says "I'm worth having! I can keep the IRS from sending you to jail."

Hell, even MMORPG gold says "I'm worth having, because you can trade me for a Sparkly Unicorn Rainbow Dragon of Death mount."

Different cryptocurrencies are making a wide range of cases, ranging from "I can let you transfer value cheaply and quickly across borders" to "I can let you buy contraband goods without an obvious paper trail." And a lot of these claims are still to be proven or fully realized.

It's entirely possible we're barking up the wrong tree with blockchain. Maybe there's a killer app for it that's not currency, but the current trends seem to be predominantly about it. (It feels like a lot of the supply-chain-tracking and registry-of-ownership hype died down)

Re: Why blockchain is not yet working (2018)

#249

Post by selestify »

pavlov wrote: post #90
pjkundert wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until you need international remittances or business payments. Then, Crypto at its worst is far better than international Wire Transfers, etc.

This claim is often made and it just makes no sense to me. Let’s say I’m invoicing someone abroad for $100k USD. Today they send me a wire transfer. It costs about 25 USD (fixed fee, but in this case 0.025% of the transaction, i.e. negligible) and normally completes the same day. The payment is made in the currency of my invoice, so I’m guaranteed to receive the right amount. (Any currency exchange is the sender’s re…

Why not just use a stablecoin for the transfer?

Re: Why blockchain is not yet working (2018)

#250

Post by selestify »

hobs wrote: post #75
payne92 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "The only good use cases that come to mind is if there is some particular reason for you to evade the conventional and easier systems of communication and storage." * Nailed it * I've long said the killer app for blockchain already exists: international money laundering and untraceable transfers. This also happens to be the precise use case where folks want to "evade conventional and easier systems".

The globally shared ledger is not a place for untraceable transfers.

Monero solves that problem.
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