Regarding the "inefficiency" point, the combination of zkrollups and sharding should reduce costs dramatically on Ethereum. Rollups without sharding are already doing it to some extent.
Crypto is an unproductive bubble
41–50 of 539 posts
Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble
#42One of the biggest drawbacks for blockchain is that transactions can't be revoked after the fact (with the only exception being costly forks of the entire ledger), and there's no additional human oversight (like I'd get when sending a large amount of money through a bank) to protect me. If someone steals my credit card, I have my credit card company to give me some level of protection. They can block transactions if…
> One of the biggest drawbacks for blockchain is that transactions can't be revoked after the fact (with the only exception being costly forks of the entire ledger), and there's no additional human oversight (like I'd get when sending a large amount of money through a bank) to protect me. I believe this is viewed as a feature in the blockchain / cryptocurrency world.
They view it as a feature, but for all the reasons this poster pointed out, the rest of us view it as an anti-feature.
Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble
#43How many times are we going to have this conversation? Yes crypto is an asset bubble, alongside equities, real estate, precious metals, you name it. Money printer go brrrr, more dollars are chasing the same amount of Apple sells iPhones.
Crypto has no intrinsic value, it pays no dividend and doesn’t give you proxy rights, just like all the tech equities.
Proof of work burns a lot of electricity, though this is complicated because it drives up demand for renewables.
I also wish I had bought BTC when it was like a basis point, and if I had I’d be a booster instead of a skeptic, like everyone else.
Can we go back to arguing about Rust vs C? This horse has been flogged into quarks at this point.
Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble
#44Claim 1: bubbles are natural, that doesn't mean that underlying solutions are wrong, just that not all speculators are right or understand the problems being solved. Claim 2: Google 'Bitcoin Spacechains' Claim 3: On a long enough time scale all discoveries are minor, this is what it means to always be optimistically solving problems at the beginning of infinity.
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Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble
#45One of the biggest drawbacks for blockchain is that transactions can't be revoked after the fact (with the only exception being costly forks of the entire ledger), and there's no additional human oversight (like I'd get when sending a large amount of money through a bank) to protect me. If someone steals my credit card, I have my credit card company to give me some level of protection. They can block transactions if…
The same flaw applies to cash. If you give someone $5 there is no way to revoke that transaction. You only can ask them to make a new transaction and give you the $5 back. Just like how additional layers were built on top of cash,new layers will be built on top of cryptocurrencies leading way to the "crypto 2.0" you are waiting for.
I don't usually mail physical cash to online retailers when I make a purchase. The context of your typical cash purchase precludes most of the outlined scenarios where being able to undo a transaction is a desirable feature.
Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
The same flaw applies to cash. If you give someone $5 there is no way to revoke that transaction. You only can ask them to make a new transaction and give you the $5 back. Just like how additional layers were built on top of cash,new layers will be built on top of cryptocurrencies leading way to the "crypto 2.0" you are waiting for.
It's not quite the same. With cash, I have to meet them in person. I probably know their name or where to find them again. I can file a lawsuit, a police report. They have incentive to make things right for me because it can have real life repercussions for them. I'm not saying that it's an impossible problem to solve, but our society and legal system aren't structured in a way that makes it easy.
You're starting a fight you can't win here
Your base assumption of knowing or finding them is not strong
Crypto means you will always know who has your money and where it goes.
We can build systems around repercussions for crypto too.
Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble
#47Bitcoin only has to be better than your local fiat currency, which isn't a very high bar. https://twitter.com/MichaelAArouet/status/147212863307459788...
Bitcoin is vastly worse than fiat. Like orders of magnitude. Bitcoin at this point isn't even currency. If it were, it would be in a cataclysmic deflationary spiral. Instead it's an investment vehicle. One backed by absolutely nothing. The Bitcoin market is 100% rents and 0% utility. Arguably negative utility because of the massive climate costs involved in mining. On the flip side, central banks managed to dig us out both a financial disaster and a pandemic and only now seeing inflation nudged a bit high. Fiat has massively outperformed crypto.
Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble
#48One of the biggest drawbacks for blockchain is that transactions can't be revoked after the fact (with the only exception being costly forks of the entire ledger), and there's no additional human oversight (like I'd get when sending a large amount of money through a bank) to protect me. If someone steals my credit card, I have my credit card company to give me some level of protection. They can block transactions if…
> One of the biggest drawbacks for blockchain is that transactions can't be revoked after the fact You can transfer money to an escrow smart contract that reverts the transaction if a third party confirms malicious activity. > They can block transactions if they think it's stolen, and if I report it as stolen I can claw back money from fraudulent purchases. Certain DLTs allow you to secure your account with SSI/DPKI…
>> One of the biggest drawbacks for blockchain is that transactions can't be revoked after the fact (with the only exception being costly forks of the entire ledger), and there's no additional human oversight (like I'd get when sending a large amount of money through a bank) to protect me.
>> With crypto, a software flaw used to steal crypto can kill an entire company. They're largely powerless to stop it once the transaction has gone through.
>> With crypto, a xss attack or a misplaced password can cost me all of my coins.
>> With crypto, I have to triple check the address I'm sending coins to because I can't undo it.
>> With crypto, I have to spend what's sometimes a significant amount of money just to complete a transaction, and transactions can take minutes or hours to complete.
> You can transfer money to an escrow smart contract that reverts the transaction if a third party confirms malicious activity.
In practice, who would you trust with such significant transactions as a company though? If you want to get anywhere close to the level of protection that you'd get in the "old" system, you'd need to thoroughly vet both the smart contract and the third party to be sure that there are no additional bugs in the contract (after all, it's just software like anything else, so there can be exploitable bugs) and that the third party won't screw you over. Some sort of neutral third party that both the buyer and seller can trust due to being known for such trusted transactions...like a bank. How is this any different than what we have, just with extra steps?
Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
The same flaw applies to cash. If you give someone $5 there is no way to revoke that transaction. You only can ask them to make a new transaction and give you the $5 back. Just like how additional layers were built on top of cash,new layers will be built on top of cryptocurrencies leading way to the "crypto 2.0" you are waiting for.
Or gold. Or any other property. Bitcoin is simply digital property. And like real world property, you can mess up and lose it irrevocably. If you give your gold to the wrong person or drop it to the bottom of the sea, you're probably not getting it back. If you under fund your military, and someone else comes in and takes control of your land, you're probably not getting it back. If you send your bitcoin to the wrong…
But bitcoin isn't being billed as a value-store like gold, it's being sold more as a replacement for payment systems like credit cards, ACH transfers, or PayPal.
There is a reason nobody goes around trading tiny bits of gold for goods and services. It is useful to have an abstraction that makes transactions easier and helps mitigate risk.
Re: Crypto is an unproductive bubble
#50Another point I’d add: isn’t it telling that we haven’t come up with use cases for crypto that aren’t in some way speculation in the last decade plus?
I mean this argument falls apart easily on the debate about use cases for crypto.
I'd stay away from making statements like this without backing them up.