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Why blockchain is not yet working (2018)

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Re: Why blockchain is not yet working (2018)

#311

Post by HeadsUpHigh »

canoebuilder wrote: post #141
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…

> but the industry being built around it is very real even if niche. There's a lot going on (including research) What are some concrete examples? I think most of us who are critical are still interested, because we do see things that are going on, and we ask ourselves, are we missing something? But we seem to run into the same road blocks again and again. “Solutions” seem to come from people subtly or transparently “…

>What are some concrete examples?

I like how you can use a PoS blockchain to earn interest on your coins. Cardano can do this without moving your coins to another wallet, xlm can do it but you need to trust the other party. Currently there are enough people in the world without banking access that this could make a huge difference to them.

Re: Why blockchain is not yet working (2018)

#312

Post by centimeter »

pavlov wrote: post #309
centimeter wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't want to get screwed on FX, you need to use a brokerage intermediary with entities in both currency domains. Direct international wire usually causes problems. So if I'm sending FX, it looks like US Bank -> Wire -> IBKR -> Wire -> SG Bank (or whatever) Usually this takes at least 5-9 business days end-to-end. (Wire delay, withdrawal hold, wire delay on the other end.) A bitcoin transaction takes a few min…

It doesn’t make sense that you don’t want to pay FX rates but would happily accept the payment in Bitcoin whose rates fluctuate much worse. Some banks charge up to 2% for currency conversion, but surely that’s better than the 10-15% lottery involved in Bitcoin? Unless you want to have a gambling aspect to your invoices.

I am not teetering on the edge of poverty so I would rather increase my volatility a tiny bit and stay EV neutral (or, more realistically, positive, since we’re talking about BTC) than incur a guaranteed substantial EV loss.

My suspicion is that your mental model for comparing volatility and loss is incomplete, given that you didn’t mention anything about the size of the transfer compared to your wealth, or anything else about local risk-aversion/utility convexity.

Re: Why blockchain is not yet working (2018)

#313

Post by pavlov »

centimeter wrote: post #312
pavlov wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn’t make sense that you don’t want to pay FX rates but would happily accept the payment in Bitcoin whose rates fluctuate much worse. Some banks charge up to 2% for currency conversion, but surely that’s better than the 10-15% lottery involved in Bitcoin? Unless you want to have a gambling aspect to your invoices.

I am not teetering on the edge of poverty so I would rather increase my volatility a tiny bit and stay EV neutral (or, more realistically, positive, since we’re talking about BTC) than incur a guaranteed substantial EV loss. My suspicion is that your mental model for comparing volatility and loss is incomplete, given that you didn’t mention anything about the size of the transfer compared to your wealth, or anything…

So you do want the gambling aspect because you’re not poor and you believe Bitcoin mostly goes up.

That’s fine, but I don’t think it aligns with what most people want from their money transfers.

Re: Why blockchain is not yet working (2018)

#314

Post by mikegreenberg »

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.

Disagree. Bitcoin forked into other tokens, but the original token's guarantees have not changed. The other tokens are free to function independently of one another but there was never a guarantee (by the protocol or agreement) that Bitcoin would be the only token in existence.

Your profit was actually made possible by others adopting these other tokens which is entirely external to Bitcoin's protocol or community's desires. And as we've seen with some Bitcoin spinoffs, forking does not guarantee profit.

Re: Why blockchain is not yet working (2018)

#315

Post by mikegreenberg »

lottin wrote: post #184
mikegreenberg wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 have no idea what you're talking about :(

You could've focused on responding to my first sentence, but maybe you're not interested in engaging in honest discourse? Best of luck!

Re: Why blockchain is not yet working (2018)

#316

Post by xirbeosbwo1234 »

jobigoud wrote: post #301
xirbeosbwo1234 wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a cryptocurrency. The work coming from the people at Hyperledger, who are also using blockchains, is an ordinary database complete with access controls. It uses the same data structure but without any of the political goals and with many different design decisions. A blockchain is just a data structure. It isn't even a very interesting one. In common parlance "blockchain" isn't well-defined: it just refers to…

You can't remove the consensus mechanism part and still call it a blockchain.

Tell that to IBM.

Re: Why blockchain is not yet working (2018)

#317

Post by africanboy »

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #234
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…

> “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.” This is the number one model for valuation of Bitcoin-like cryptocurrencies. Say you live in Venezuela and dealing with custodial intermediaries in your local fiat currency is completely untenable. You can’t store money in gold or other precious metals.…

> But with Bitcoin you can drive across the border and actually buy milk or medicine, no fiat currency involved.

I still don't understand why the government of Venezuela is so bad that it's literally leaving their people without the necessary means to buy milk, where "government has been able to partially block internet access to citizens by using a system that allows them to restrict selected content that may threaten their power over the country" but allows people to use untraced bitcoins...

Re: Why blockchain is not yet working (2018)

#318

Post by mlthoughts2018 »

africanboy wrote: post #317
mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #234

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.” This is the number one model for valuation of Bitcoin-like cryptocurrencies. Say you live in Venezuela and dealing with custodial intermediaries in your local fiat currency is completely untenable. You can’t store money in gold or other precious metals.…

> But with Bitcoin you can drive across the border and actually buy milk or medicine, no fiat currency involved. I still don't understand why the government of Venezuela is so bad that it's literally leaving their people without the necessary means to buy milk, where "government has been able to partially block internet access to citizens by using a system that allows them to restrict selected content that may threat…

By what means can a government restrict use of Bitcoins that you hold in your own hardware wallet? You can run your own VPN at home. I don’t believe it would ever be practical for any government, of any size or sophistication, to prevent use of Bitcoins.

Governments are deeply incapable of stopping even just basic crimes and fraud. If they can’t stop overtly criminal acts often committed with no technology to assist in obfuscation, why would anyone believe they can (a) detect network traffic somehow related to Bitcoin and (b) trace it back to an individual and (c) prove that individual has broken some law? Let alone to do this to perfectly law-abiding citizens conducting perfectly legal purchase of Bitcoin.

Your point is very bizarre to me. Are you suggesting a government so incapable of managing fiscal activities that it descends into hyperinflation crisis is somehow magically super competent at extremely bespoke and difficult internet traffic surveillance of legal cryptocurrency transactions they have no reason to need to invest in expensive capabilities to monitor in the first place?

Re: Why blockchain is not yet working (2018)

#319

Post by africanboy »

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #318
africanboy wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But with Bitcoin you can drive across the border and actually buy milk or medicine, no fiat currency involved. I still don't understand why the government of Venezuela is so bad that it's literally leaving their people without the necessary means to buy milk, where "government has been able to partially block internet access to citizens by using a system that allows them to restrict selected content that may threat…

By what means can a government restrict use of Bitcoins that you hold in your own hardware wallet? You can run your own VPN at home. I don’t believe it would ever be practical for any government, of any size or sophistication, to prevent use of Bitcoins. Governments are deeply incapable of stopping even just basic crimes and fraud. If they can’t stop overtly criminal acts often committed with no technology to assist…

> You can run your own VPN at home.

they can block VPN traffic

> Governments are deeply incapable of stopping even just basic crimes and fraud

that's just silly

in my countries there are 270 homicides every year on a population of 60 million people

do you think it's luck?

> detect network traffic somehow related to Bitcoin

because it's stupid easy

> prove that individual has broken some law?

do you really believe that in places like Iran or North Korea they really need to prove individuals broke some law?

> Are you suggesting a government so incapable of managing fiscal activities that it descends into hyperinflation crisis is somehow magically super competent

if they are so incompetent, why are they in charge then?

if they are so incompetent, how did they manage to censor any media channel, including the internet?

remember that "poor" countries aren't really poor, regimes keep the population in poverty but they still handle a ton of money.

Re: Why blockchain is not yet working (2018)

#320

Post by hanniabu »

thecupisblue wrote: post #259
hanniabu wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UX is getting better every year. It's like saying the internet was doomed to fail because your grandma couldn't use it in 1990

No it's not. The adoption rate in 2021 is way faster than in 1990. Most people weren't required to adopt a tech in 1990 to live their normal life, while in 2021 it is a norm to constantly be adapting to new tech.

The adoption rate is faster because people can communicate easier. It's not at all comparable to the state the tech is in.
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