Web3? I have my DAOts • Hacker News Board

Re: Web3? I have my DAOts

#541

Post by NicoJuicy » Tue, Dec 07, 2021, 4:58 PM UTC

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #370

boc wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One Tether is the supposed to be = to one USD which is supposed to be in Tether's bank account somewhere. They have like 16 people total and are based in a mailbox in the Caribbean and nobody in the commercial paper markets have heard of them, despite them being one of the largest buyers in the world (in theory). Their "audits" aren't really audits and there's a ton of sketchiness with the firm they chose last time t…

USDC and Tether are _not_ the same thing. They're collateralized and distributed differently; the only similarity they have is being stablecoins. That's like saying potatoes and carrots are the same thing because they're vegetables.

There are more similarities:

- Both are not really audited

- Both have retracted claims of being fully USD backed ( only tether had to do it after court and USDC changed it a bit later)

Re: Web3? I have my DAOts

#542

Post by hackingforfun » Tue, Dec 07, 2021, 5:07 PM UTC

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #218

narrator wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing I think driving Bitcoin is that all the other assets that can absorb billions of dollars in liquidity are throughly manipulated. A trillion dollars goes into Sovereign Debt. The government can issue endless sovereign debt to dilute that. A trillion dollars goes into the stock market. The companies on the stock market can issue tons and tons of new shares to dilute that. A trillion dollars goes into paper go…

But publicly traded companies don't dilute their shareholders away. Those shares either have to be sold (meaning the company takes in proportional amounts of cash, driving the value up) or issued as compensation (which you can't just unilaterally in a publicly-traded company). Your gold example is also very contrived because the futures market doesn't literally dilute away physical gold. As for Bitcoin: You're missin…

> As for Bitcoin: You're missing the fact that while Bitcoin can't be manipulated away from 21 million, the Bitcoin markets can definitely be heavily manipulated by sufficiently large players and insiders. And there does seem to be ample evidence that this is happening.

So what will the argument be when this market is regulated? Gary Gensler is obviously a fan of Bitcoin. He considers other digital assets in a different light, and seems to consider many of them to be securities. What happens when crypto exchanges are regulated and the level of manipulation is much harder, similar to traditional financial markets? The 21 million cap on Bitcoin is going to look more attractive then, I think, at least to those who aren't considering that now. Plenty of folks already consider the 21 million cap on Bitcoin very attractive, and I think this will only increase over time.

Also the other comments that I see arguing how Bitcoin could be changed tells me that those people have not followed the history of Bitcoin very closely. It seems one of Bitcoin's main goals over the past 10 years is ossification and hardening of the system, i.e. being very strict and careful about changes. This seems built into the ethos of the system. The Bitcoin Cash fork is an example of this. Bitcoin Core refused to change the block size and that led to a fork which has not done well in terms of price in comparison to Bitcoin. One could say that so far the Bitcoin Cash fork has failed in comparison.

Re: Web3? I have my DAOts

#543

Post by Nemi » Tue, Dec 07, 2021, 5:12 PM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #368

boc wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah the corporation is the rock - they aren't a market participant so them paying you and your friends a dividend isn't a net loss in the market for rocks. Instead simply holding rocks and not trading them is still generating money for the market participants. Bitcoin doesn't generate intrinsic value from a business operation - it's just a digital version of a rock. There's no money for it to pay out. Therefore you h…

> Nah the corporation is the rock - they aren't a market participant so them paying you and your friends a dividend isn't a net loss in the market for rocks. Except that it makes the rocks not worth as much. You had a corporation with a million dollar business and a million dollars in cash. It pays out the million dollars in cash as dividends. Now the rockholders have a million dollars in rocks and a million dollars…

Except that it makes the rocks not worth as much. You had a corporation with a million dollar business and a million dollars in cash. It pays out the million dollars in cash as dividends. Now the rockholders have a million dollars in rocks and a million dollars in cash, when they used to have two million dollars in rocks. Their rocks decline in value by the amount of cash no longer inside the corporation.

Nope, that is not the way it works. When you have ownership of a company (by holding stocks), the company can pay out a dividend and the price of the stock does not go down. On the contrary, the price of the stock may go up because the company has proven that it generates cash and will pay this cash out to shareholders periodically.

This is why companies viewed as assets have “intrinsic value” and something like BTC does not. If I own stock in a company that pays out dividends and the stock does go down, at least I still get money in the form of dividends. I can be assured that if the dividends continue (not a given), then the price of the underlying stock will “correct” to match the intrinsic value of the company over time.

Contrast that with BTC - I have no real way of knowing the “real” value of BTC. If the price goes down, then it may stay down forever as there is no way of accurately pricing it based on some real-world metric. It produces nothing, therefore this is why some people say it is not a good asset to own.

Re: Web3? I have my DAOts

#544

Post by dmitriid » Tue, Dec 07, 2021, 5:21 PM UTC

darkFunction wrote: post #517

dmitriid wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The blockchain facilities standardised transfer across a decentralised medium. It hasn't. It standardised the transfer of otherwise meaningless numbers, that's true. In order for your winde order to work, a centralised, trusted party has to verify and accept those numbers, and say that, yes, they represent something meaningful to them. The same goes for every other example. "Want to trade something for an in-game w…

You may continue to consider the numbers meaningless but the market for on-chain assets disagrees with you.

> the market for on-chain assets

Ah yes. The market of on-chain assets. Self-reinforcing, self-congratulatory mass speculation and scams. There's an abyss between this, and even wine futures.

Re: Web3? I have my DAOts

#545

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Dec 07, 2021, 5:25 PM UTC

dmitriid wrote: post #310

reginold wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OpenSea is an online market for digital goods. A majority of the prices are denominated in cryptocurrencies (ie an item is priced at 1 ETH). As measured in USD, OpenSea did 8% of Amazon's volume in a month.

Had anyone tried to convert those fictional tokens to actual usable money, you'd very quickly find out that the actual volume is about 0%.

[deleted]

Re: Web3? I have my DAOts

#546

Post by Nemi » Tue, Dec 07, 2021, 5:26 PM UTC

benreesman wrote: post #446

I find both the evangelism of and the hostility towards “Web 3” kind of silly. Obviously there’s some amount of interesting stuff and obviously there’s some amount of tech bro assholes getting rich who “shouldn’t”. Just like ~2008-2012, ~1999-2002, ~1994-1996, ~1982-1986, etc. On the technology side: distributed Byzantine consensus is an open problem with some promising prototypes. It would have very cool use cases:…

I agree. I think there is something here, it is just not what proponents are currently saying it is going to be. I think we are clearly still in a protracted “hype cycle” for BTC/ETH/DAO/Web3.0, just like the early internet was as well. We have yet to hit the “trough of disillusionment” that all technologies go through. Some tech dies when it hits the trough, but most go on quietly producing value in subtle ways after they get through the trough.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gartner_hype_cycle

Re: Web3? I have my DAOts

#547

Post by reginold » Tue, Dec 07, 2021, 5:26 PM UTC

dmitriid wrote: post #391

Bayart wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Off-ramping is a non-issue. It's like saying the stock market is worthless because its value is predicated upon keeping capital tied into it. Really, you can extend the same reasoning to any market. It's fine being a nihilist, but not very realistic.

> Off-ramping is a non-issue. It is. The moment any of those fictional tokens are used for anything other than meaningless exchanges with other fictional tokens, they are worthless. For now they are only perpetuating their perceived self-worth. > It's like saying the stock market is worthless Stock market is almost entirely worthless. It's the same speculation not rooted in objective reality.

ah, nevermind. I had written a thoughtful reply to one of your other posts but it's clear the gap between us is bigger than can be solved in this medium.

Re: Web3? I have my DAOts

#548

Post by dmitriid » Tue, Dec 07, 2021, 5:32 PM UTC

vvpan wrote: post #532

dmitriid wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are plenty of good examples of where it works And yet, no one can provide even a single one that - doesn't already exist, and works more efficiently without blockchain, or - doesn't require blockchain for any of the claimed properties and advantages - isn't relying on circular references

Did you read my comment? AMM's were impossible without blockchain. And they are more efficient than real-world counterparts.

> Did you read my comment? AMM's were impossible without blockchain.

I did. Let's see:

Me: "no one can provide even a single one that... isn't relying on circular references"

--- start quote ---

The most basic to me is the Automatic Market Maker system. For example Uniswap is a system with only a few (relatively speaking) lines of a code at its core and a team of a couple of dozen.

--- end quote ---

Oh, look. A thing that only exists to perpetuate the never ending circle of speculation and scamming using the fictional tokens, and useless for anything else. Circular references abound. But sure, it can give you an instant price between two fictional tokens. Wow. Innovation.

--- start quote ---

The system does billions of dollars worth of trades every day. If anybody can point out to me a broker that does similar volumes that would allow me to make million-dollar trades with a few lines of code

--- end quote ---

1. It does't do billions of dollars every day. It exchanges some mythical tokens for some fantasy tokens that are completely entirely useless outside their own systems of reference (a.k.a. almost entirely exclusively speculation and scams)

2. This is the description of algorithmic trading and HFT. Except, it's not high-frequency, and it's not trading.

3. The moment those "few lines of code" execute an erroneous trade (because, you know, code), these "multi-million traders" will immediately cry foul, and ask for reverts, regulations, hard forks and all that.

> As always all great projects are easy to dismiss until one can no longer do it.

There are very few great projects that are easy to dismiss, and there are many shitty ones that are all too easy to dismiss. Somehow every single crypto project views itself as the great one.

Re: Web3? I have my DAOts

#549

Post by dmitriid » Tue, Dec 07, 2021, 5:35 PM UTC

reginold wrote: post #547

dmitriid wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Off-ramping is a non-issue. It is. The moment any of those fictional tokens are used for anything other than meaningless exchanges with other fictional tokens, they are worthless. For now they are only perpetuating their perceived self-worth. > It's like saying the stock market is worthless Stock market is almost entirely worthless. It's the same speculation not rooted in objective reality.

ah, nevermind. I had written a thoughtful reply to one of your other posts but it's clear the gap between us is bigger than can be solved in this medium.

> I had written a thoughtful reply

Ah yes. The fictional thoughtful replies that are as rare as examples of projects where blockchains solve anything.

> or the gap between us is bigger than can be solved in this medium.

Or, perhaps, the reply wasn't as thoughtful as you thought it was. Or, perhaps, you could post it as a blogpost to narrow the gap.

But nope.

Re: Web3? I have my DAOts

#550

Post by rideontime » Tue, Dec 07, 2021, 5:49 PM UTC

chpmrc wrote: post #314

rideontime wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ironically that's exactly because the artwork was not (referenced) on chain. If that was the case any subsequent copy would not be recognized as the original because of the timestamp and wouldn't have nearly the same value. So the solution is that every artist mints every piece they create before showing it to anybody else. All because somebody decided that a "blockchain" is now what determines who created a piece…

The same can very well happen in the real world. I see an artwork online, upload it to my portfolio and claim it's mine. There are then many ways one can prove they are the original author and minting an NFT is just an easier one (assuming the claim doesn't get invalidated off chain). Otherwise it's like dismissing NFTs and not minting your own but then getting upset someone did it on your behalf. You can't have it b…

> You can't have it both ways.

Sure I can. I created the art, I own the copyright to it. If I choose not to sell prints of a piece, that doesn't give others the right to do so. Why would NFTs be any different?

And yes, somebody could copy my art and sell it on RedBubble. The difference is that nobody's claiming that a RedBubble shop is a definite proof of provenance. (But why not? "First RedBubble store" has the same level of credence as "first minted NFT," and it doesn't even require gas fees!)