Ask HN: Am I going insane or is there genuinely no value in blockchain tech? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Am I going insane or is there genuinely no value in blockchain tech?

#551

Post by roland35 » Wed, Apr 27, 2022, 10:41 AM UTC

davidguetta wrote: post #413

roland35 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand the appeal of a currency not controlled by a bad government, but could we honestly expect third world residents to be able to understand and use the technology required for crypto? I have been writing software for a decade and I still can barely keep up with what is going on.

What ? exchanging bitcoin in the street seemed pretty simple last time I checked on localbitcoins. you dont need to know the tech at all. Plus, you'd be surprised how moder and tech-saavy young people in developing countries are (at least in the major cities).

Ok I just looked at local Bitcoin... I need to select a currency and pick traders, then select one who accepts an actual method I can use to exchange fiat currency such as a specific bank or zelle... How is this easier exactly?

It just seems like a bunch of rigamarole for no benefit, with the added risk of scams

Re: Ask HN: Am I going insane or is there genuinely no value in blockchain tech?

#552

Post by yebyen » Wed, Apr 27, 2022, 11:13 AM UTC

yencabulator wrote: post #549

tmaly wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know I would not actually mind seeing all the gov budget spending get tracked on a blockchain. I often wonder where the trillions in budget spending goes.

A great example of something that does not need a blockchain. You're just asking for the relevant government departments to publish their books.

Don't you want some verifiable continuity in those books?

How do you guarantee that continuity breaches are easy to spot when they're "books" and you can publish as many of them as you want, or skip one if it turns out we don't want transparency somewhere because of "national security"?

This argument always seems to start with "there is no application for blockchain" and then moves the goal post to "that application doesn't NEED a blockchain" when we didn't even want ONLY that one application, we came for the whole package.

Do you really trust the government to publish accurate data if there is no transparent mechanism to keep them accountable for their accuracy? What is your alternative proposed mechanism for ensuring that the books are not cooked? (Is it another law, this time that says "books SHALL be balanced" and links to the RFC that provides specific definitions for modal verbs like MUST, SHALL, MAY, COULD?)

We certainly COULD invent another system that all tax money passes through, which ties out and all tax revenue is required to pass through, but how far will you stretch the spec in the opposite direction just to make sure that we didn't use "blockchain" which I'm assuming you consider as "scam tech" and you are apparently convinced that we don't need?

Re: Ask HN: Am I going insane or is there genuinely no value in blockchain tech?

#553

Post by kebman » Wed, Apr 27, 2022, 6:03 PM UTC

yashg wrote: post #152

kebman wrote: post #137

> there is nothing here more than you can get with traditional database technology? Here are some questions that you can test your hypothesis with: * Can you get distributed and trust-less settlement mechanisms with a centralized database? * Can you seamlessly send value across jurisdictions and closed borders without meddlers and middlemen with traditional database technology (regulation resistance and unconfiscatab…

>seamlessly send value across jurisdictions I have money. How can I get some crypto? From a middleman. Need to pay fees. Then I send it to someone. Transaction fees. The receiver wants to buy groceries or pay kid's school fees, so they need to convert the crypto to money. Again fees. So lots of middlemen and fees are involved. And most of the time, One would need to provide full KYC and need to have a bank account to…

You can buy or swap it directly from someone else who has crypto without a middleman, and there are services that provide this option for free. For instance this guy bought a car for Bitcoin in Ukraine. ^1 And it saved his life! Depending on the country you may also use it directly for groceries.

The technology is kinda like the telephone in 1880's. A lot of peeps were very sceptical towards it and thought of it as merely a toy, not least because it wasn't widespread and thus the use case for it wasn't well known.

^1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gZtDDaWvPk

Re: Ask HN: Am I going insane or is there genuinely no value in blockchain tech?

#554

Post by readonthegoapp » Thu, Apr 28, 2022, 6:51 AM UTC

yes -- but the (positive) value is to only certain parties.

you're not missing anything.

both bombs and blockchain tech are destructive for most people -- not positive/additive.

but bombs and blockchain tech can also make megafortunes for the people that own, control, and use them.

there are some edge cases where bombs and blockchain tech could theoretically be more useful than the alternatives, but a sane/decent world would save those experiments for the philosophy lecture room.

Re: Ask HN: Am I going insane or is there genuinely no value in blockchain tech?

#555

Post by laverya » Thu, Apr 28, 2022, 6:35 PM UTC

baby wrote: post #546

laverya wrote: post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A 22kb fixed size reads like transparent bullshit to me. Fundamentally you cannot store infinite information within such a block, and "participant X has the right to send Y amount" is information. To me this implies that either there is a limit to the number of participants, that there is information stored off-chain, or that there will be data loss over time - possibly all three. And the fact that you've mentioned o…

It's funny how people keep moving the goal post :) read more about it instead of spending 5min on a page and finding negative things to say about it. If you want to hate on the technology for the sake of hating it then you won't go far in life

If it takes more than 5 minutes to even mention how you're sidestepping some very basic information theory concepts, then it's probably a scam.

And speaking of moving the goalposts... You recommended Sui as a blockchain with "basically unlimited transactions per second", and then recommended Mina when I commented about chain sizes. It sure seems like you have a mutually-exclusive blockchain for each set of goalposts to me.

Re: Ask HN: Am I going insane or is there genuinely no value in blockchain tech?

#556

Post by yencabulator » Thu, Apr 28, 2022, 7:06 PM UTC

yebyen wrote: post #552

yencabulator wrote: post #549

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A great example of something that does not need a blockchain. You're just asking for the relevant government departments to publish their books.

Don't you want some verifiable continuity in those books? How do you guarantee that continuity breaches are easy to spot when they're "books" and you can publish as many of them as you want, or skip one if it turns out we don't want transparency somewhere because of "national security"? This argument always seems to start with "there is no application for blockchain" and then moves the goal post to "that application…

What's realistic is a policy of "no backsies". You can't prevent a party from lying (without remaking the world so that everything happens on your favorite blockchain, which ain't gonna happen), so what you do is you catch them in their lies.

This problem is already solved for TLS, with no bitcoin-style blockchain and no climate destruction: https://certificate.transparency.dev/

Re: Ask HN: Am I going insane or is there genuinely no value in blockchain tech?

#557

Post by aeschylus » Thu, Apr 28, 2022, 9:37 PM UTC

mmcnl wrote: post #354

dageshi wrote: post #75

You're missing the fact that it enabled purely online/digital money people will actually use. You could build an online currency with a database much more easily than blockchain but people won't use it because it relies on a central authority to maintain the database and not enough people will trust that central authority not to misuse their power. It was tried a bunch of times in the past and never worked. Fundament…

Money is just accounting. Making sure balances are in sync on sender and receiver's end. People don't have problems sending money from A to B. I fail to see the application here. I don't think money is going through a transformation at all.

> People don't have problems sending money from A to B.

Respectfully, this is a deeply ignorant and factually incorrect sentence.

This indicates to me that: you have never travelled outside a limited set of highly-developed countries; never met anyone from a developing country; never had to send anyone more than $10,000; never had to send or receive money from another country; never met anyone who sends or receives remittances; never done any cross-border business transaction requiring FX conversions.

In some of the above instances, it is technically possible to send money from A to B, but only at very high cost, slowly, and with serious privacy and, at times, physical safety tradeoffs.

I would encourage you to look into how those usecases currently function, in a nuts-and-bolts way. It is ugly. A decent book on this subject is "Check Your Financial Privilege", by Alex Gladstein.

Re: Ask HN: Am I going insane or is there genuinely no value in blockchain tech?

#558

Post by aeschylus » Thu, Apr 28, 2022, 10:07 PM UTC

pensatoio wrote: post #487

code_devil wrote: post #474

Blockchain technology helps you create applications without the need to have a trusted 3rd party. What it solves?: - Sending money from Alice to Bob without the need of a trusted party like Venmo/Paypal/Bank. - Vehicle registration / House title deeds are maintained by the local government. A decentralized application can potentially mint an NFT (ERC-721) and maintain such a DB. (Although, the physical society would…

In my opinion, none of those things are real problems that need solving. They’re fabricated to fit a technology.

I don't subscribe to Netflix because I'm not entertained by such things. That doesn't mean others don't have a need for low-cost narrative diversion.

The fact that you don't acutely feel the need for a trustless digital money is very telling of your position in the world. I would recommend you read the book "Check Your Financial Privilege", by Alex Gladstein. You will find that, as an absolute fact, the use case is in extremely dire need of solving, and Bitcoin is the solution.

Re: Ask HN: Am I going insane or is there genuinely no value in blockchain tech?

#559

Post by nosianu » Fri, Apr 29, 2022, 6:58 AM UTC

syzygyhack wrote: post #512

nosianu wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't minimize trust, you greatly increase the complexity of it. There's a lot more entities and processes involved and it becomes harder to understand. You need to trust quite a lot more things now, only that it's much harder, so many don't even try and just assume trusting many through some hard to understand and changing mechanism must be easier, which I don't quite see the logic of. As far as I can see - and…

> There's a lot more entities Yes. That's decentralization. Rather than trusting one person irrevocably, you trust cryptographic security and the rational economics that emerge from alignment of incentive. Minimal trust in all other actors in the system, rather than maximum trust in one entity. > it becomes harder to understand Not really.. The general principles underlying blockchain are relatively simple. I'd agree…

>> it becomes harder to understand

> Not really..

Oh Yes!

As usual in blockchain defense, you must make a lot of assertions.

> Yes. That's decentralization.

Please not that tone. You don't assume you need to teach me, I even did some programming when this was new to try out the new tech. The proponents always only ever have a lot of hot air and a lot of faith, but never anything real.

Re: Ask HN: Am I going insane or is there genuinely no value in blockchain tech?

#560

Post by Fnoord » Fri, Apr 29, 2022, 12:04 PM UTC

paulsutter wrote: post #19

The sole purpose of blockchain is to prevent double spending without a trusted party Other proposed applications are mostly dumb / misguided, like immutable storage, social network posts, etc, these can be done with hashing or digital signatures alone If you have a better way to avoid double spending than blockchain folks woukd get very excited. Traditional database can’t do that (requires a trusted party)

I have a better way: with a trusted party. Seriously. And if these suck, then perhaps there's not enough competition between them. I mean, Mastercard and Visa is practically a duopoly, and while a duopoly is better than a monopoly, it still sucks.

I also know a good use case for blockchain: scamming. Practically all the current use cases revolve around that. The trusted party wasn't so bad after all, eh?

But to be honest, I feel like there's one good use case for cryptocurrencies which isn't a use case for me, but is for people who live in oppressed regimes: the ability to not use the currency of the autocratic government. This would be true for some South American countries, but also nowadays for a country like Russia. Other than that, I see no use case.