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AWS and Blockchain

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Re: AWS and Blockchain

#591

Post by dvt »

hailwren wrote: post #500
dvt wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can buy, sell, combine, or split their risk profiles in different manners to get properties that are useful in different scenarios. I would contend that the only reason things like options, futures, etc. are actually useful in markets like, e.g., the stock market, is, in no small part, due to the highly liquid nature of the underlying. Since the underlying is highly liquid, these derivatives are highly liquid,…

> Even though these "financial primitives" on the blockchain are neat from a technical standpoint, they tend to blow up precisely because the markets are not liquid enough (so second-order effects are amplified). I would rephrase this to say that the less liquid state of blockchain markets limits the available set of financial primitives which are resistant to manipulation. It’s true, but if liquidity is the only hur…

> I think you’ve more or less ceded that blockchain provides value. It just needs wider adoption

This is a vacuous non-sequitur. It's like saying "my new social network provides value, it just needs wider adoption"—uh, yeah, that's how social networks (or markets) work. If no one is using it, by definition, it has no value. Markets are social games (not merely "financial" ones).

And exceedingly few people are using crypto in general, but even fewer are using it as a store of value, or as a way to transfer money, or as any kind of hedge. And even if we look at the people using it, most use it merely as a casino.

I mean think about it: not even 100 million people have a BTC wallet. It took Snapchat 4 years to reach 100 million daily active users. We're now in year 14 of Bitcoin.

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#592

Post by dmitriid »

Karunamon wrote: post #573
dmitriid wrote: post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apparently, I must be dreaming this entire list. I'll say this again: "In reality there are vanishingly few goods or services that can be exchanged for crypto." > Provided was a rather substantial, yet not exhaustive, list of merchants So. What started with "money in oppressive regimes" became: here's a list of companies in first-world countries many which at one point played with crypto, but now: - don't accept cr…

An even cursory reading of the list does not disqualify all, or even most of them, so not sure what you're getting at. This is childish nit picking at this point, anyone who wants to actually spend bitcoin will have no trouble finding a place to do so.

> An even cursory reading of the list does not disqualify all

Did i ever say all. Read what I write, not what you think I write.

For the fourth time: vanishingly few goods or services that can be exchanged for crypto

> anyone who wants to actually spend bitcoin will have no trouble finding a place to do so.

A very small amount of services catering mostly to first world. Since you're incapable of following context or understanding what your opponent writes, i will not engage in this conversation further.

Adieu.

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#593

Post by habinero »

pjkundert wrote: post #586
habinero wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Central/commercial banks, Treasuries, etc. cannot abide any fire-exit that is not chained shut Ok, then call it what it actually is: tax evasion, fraud, and laundering money. You're getting caught up in an anti-government agenda and forgetting that's not a good thing to most people.

I think most reasonable people would agree that desiring the freedom to invest your personal wealth in non-government approved investments isn't "tax evasion, fraud and laundering money". Isn't such a claim a bit ... bizarre?

No? "Non-government approved" either means "unregulated" or "illegal".

Unregulated financial speculation has a lot of issues. See: FTX and NFTs

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#594

Post by habinero »

pjkundert wrote: post #588
habinero wrote: post #560

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of those are things people care about, though, outside of a tiny niche. Most people find it pretty easy to avoid getting kicked off social media, and even if they do, it doesn't affect them. Likewise, "personal control of data" is meaningless. It's not like you can prevent people from taking the data and doing things with it. I struggle to think of any actual use cases for your last three points that don't boil…

At this very moment, reasonable people are debating the very real possibility that Twitter could be removed from both the Apple and Google app stores. So, doesn't that astonishing fact deny pretty much every claim in your post? Crazies (the least perjorative term I could think of) that have the power to eject an App used by hundreds of millions of people, from those people's own platform, are dangerous -- to our libe…

No, and saying it's "astonishing" and "it's a threat to liberty" is ridiculous and incredibly overdramatic.

It's just an app. Companies rise and fall, it's how it works. We lived just fine before it, we will be just fine after.

Something will replace Twitter just like something replaced Friendster and MySpace.

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#595

Post by dmitriid »

pjkundert wrote: post #569
kitified wrote: post #546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yup. This is a web app (so, hosting is required), and it was built in a few days by a newbie and is hosted on a few machines by some randos. But, isn't that ... interesting? That something like this could be built and deployed and -- theoretically scale globally? Sure. It is interesting that someone can build a web app, host it on temporary machines, and then one day scale it into a major business model. That's not…

Because: this specific App (not "something like" it, but this one written in a few days by a newbie), could potentially scale to 1B users -- and nobody could stop it. Some static assets would need to be tuned in a real App, to be hosted by a CDN like Cloudflare (or, possibly provided by the App's hosting nodes themselves if no CDN is desired), but the App itself would scale. If a certain fraction of those users decid…

> could potentially scale to 1B users -- and nobody could stop it. Some static assets would need to be tuned in a real App, to be hosted by a CDN like Cloudflare

You've just show at least one way how it would be stopped. Who exactly is going to pay for static assets delivered to 1B users via Cloudflare?

> but the App itself would scale.

Of course it wouldn't. None of the blockchains have the required throughput. Yes, they want you to believe they have it, but they don't.

> that's "blockchain"; what you call "being on chain". They didn't solve the problems

> This is new.

So they didn't solve the problems, but somehow this "app by a newbie" is suddenly solving all these problems and "scales to 1B users" because blockchain?

Oh. And it doesn't scale because you can't even link to a post on it because "someone needs to pay for hosting". So it couldn't scale beyond a single user?

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#596

Post by habinero »

ChadNauseam wrote: post #589
habinero wrote: post #562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because "there are no regulations" is not permission to defraud others.

The fact that fraud is a crime is a form of regulation, although it's clearly not sufficient on its own (just like how smart contract code being auditable isn't sufficient on its own)

Sure, but it's not specific. I'm thinking more along the lines of requiring public SEC filings or prospectuses.

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#597

Post by pjkundert »

habinero wrote: post #593
pjkundert wrote: post #586

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think most reasonable people would agree that desiring the freedom to invest your personal wealth in non-government approved investments isn't "tax evasion, fraud and laundering money". Isn't such a claim a bit ... bizarre?

No? "Non-government approved" either means "unregulated" or "illegal". Unregulated financial speculation has a lot of issues. See: FTX and NFTs

So, no:

- savings in gold/silver bullion

- your sister's small business, back in the home country

I'm sorry; if your position basically makes ever free person a criminal, then perhaps it isn't them that are the problem?

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#598

Post by mhluongo »

nosianu wrote: post #349
mhluongo wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are certainly tx validity rules, though, and when presented with a set of equally valid txs, miners will likely choose the one that is best for them (called "MEV", miner extractable value).

Neither the OP or me said there are no rules and they have to use an RNG to make a decision, only that it does not matter. That they then go and use an algorithm that maximizes their profits is only to be expected and the rational outcome from the fact that there is no other constraint from the technical algorithm.

Just sharing for general interest / awareness, not as a "gotcha".

Though I will point out...

> only that it does not matter

... that this isn't true! MEV can destabilize consensus. There's been research around this in the Bitcoin/Lightning ecosystem, and it's been an active discussion in Ethereum for quite a while.

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#599

Post by habinero »

pjkundert wrote: post #597
habinero wrote: post #593

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No? "Non-government approved" either means "unregulated" or "illegal". Unregulated financial speculation has a lot of issues. See: FTX and NFTs

So, no: - savings in gold/silver bullion - your sister's small business, back in the home country I'm sorry; if your position basically makes ever free person a criminal, then perhaps it isn't them that are the problem?

Owning gold/silver is legal. It's also regulated - it's not legal tender.

Investing in a business is legal. It also means sending money, which is regulated by KYC/AML and you're still responsible for taxes.

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#600

Post by QuantumGood »

runeks wrote: post #167

Blockchain was invented to solve one particular problem: distributed consensus on a sequence of transactions, where the choice of which transaction to include from a set of conflicting transactions is irrelevant. The latter property here is key to understanding where blockchain is useful. It was created to solve the "double spend problem", ie. two transitions that spend the same coin but send it to different recipien…

"Absolute power corrupts absolutely", and blockchain has activated absolute greed in most, hence blockchain not really being developed for anything that is not Ponzi-like.
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