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AWS and Blockchain

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Re: AWS and Blockchain

#611

Post by noelsusman »

splix wrote: post #513
noelsusman wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This just reinforces my view that the only value crypto provides is evading government financial regulations. Is it actually good that anybody can spin up a new financial firm in a few months with little oversight or regulation? >Aave is used for being able to borrow against your crypto assets, so if you need a loan you don't have to sell, this isn't a service any bank offers. Every bank offers this service, unless y…

On regulations: FTX and SBF were the main proponents of regulations. Not because it solves anything, but because it eliminates a competition and for them it gave more freedom to do a fraud. So I'm not sure it's always a good thing. On loans: Give me a bank that can loan me $100M without even asking for an ID? Without a collateral, of course. Like Aave Flashloan provides on blockchain.

>Give me a bank that can loan me $100M without even asking for an ID? Without a collateral, of course. Like Aave Flashloan provides on blockchain.

That seems like a really bad idea!

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#612

Post by jrek »

TimJRobinson wrote: post #370
bartread wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tim is dead on with this observation, this is amazing. I'm not saying Tim's wrong, but one of the problems that Ive seen a lot - to the point of being tempted to use the word "constantly" - with blockchain is this sort of gushing rhetoric that actually does a really poor job of explaining why it's amazing, and especially of explaining why it's amazing in a few short paragraphs of jargon-free plain English that anyo…

You're right, it is hard to explain. That's why I believe long term it's going to be more like AWS - it will be financial plumbing that firms build upon and most end users won't even know they're using it. I think a lot of HN doesn't get it because they don't work in finance, but everyone I've talked to who works in finance (or has to deal with their archaic systems) is really excited about the possibilities. Then ag…

Steve Jobs in a university lecture in 1991 (iirc) articulated the vision among him and his industry contemporaries of consumers using thin clients accessing data from the cloud, a reality that took two decades to really come to fruition and that had to wait for infrastructure to catch up - the point being that while some people didn’t see the value of the internet, people in the know were able to simply and quickly articulate beneficial use cases.

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#613

Post by jrek »

pjkundert wrote: post #416
ctvo wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you answer the question with use cases and examples instead of this rhetorical question? It doesn't help your credibility when you can't list off 10-20 use cases and examples for your groundbreaking technology without contorting yourself.

I'm sorry; but isn't this sort of like demanding an answer to the question "I can't see a use for the motorcar; horses work just fine"?

Not at all, in the sense that if you were asked THAT question, you’d easily be able to come up with a convincing answer.

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#614

Post by eftychis »

markdestouches wrote: post #456
themihai wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there would be value but we neeed a real currency(i.e usd) on the blockchain. It's obvious that all those pegged currencies are prone to "bank run" scenarios. Not to mention the fiat conversion ruines the whole experience. With a real currency we could have at least real open and standards based p2p payments which would be great! Just like with cash offline we would no longer need visa, paypal or banks to tra…

It's not the type of currency you have that prevents bank runs. There were plenty of bank runs with very real dollars in the beginning of the century. What stopped it was proper regulation. EDIT: I mean the beginning the 20th century, of course.

Bank runs still happen. And I will keep it strictly to banks. Abacus being one case, when the DoJ went after it just to punish someone. A lot of banks in Europe during the 2008+ crisis -- which is why "capital controls" were enforced.

People attempted runs on Chinese banks a few months ago at the beginning of the real estate collapse there.

What keeps bank runs from happening is trust. Trust that the central bank will print as much money as necessary to ensure people have them. Trust that the government will deploy people with guns to protect or stop people from doing a bank run. Trust that regulation works: even if it doesn't and causes systemic issues that lead to issues years later like the 2008 crisis.

It is good that we "believe" bank runs don't or are not going to happen and that is the whole idea.

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#615

Post by halpmeh »

NovemberWhiskey wrote: post #606
halpmeh wrote: post #571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the output is guaranteed to be correct. Correct, as in what you specified in the contract, which may not be what you had intended, but that’s besides the point. Can you explain how the output would differ from the contract specification?

"The code does what it does" is not a useful statement; insisting that a smart contract is an executable specification is not helpful unless there's a really very small semantic step from how the user intentions are formed - which again is not the case here.

I think you’re moving the goal post. As I mentioned in my original post, smart contracts allow for the creation of a global computing platform we call a blockchain. Maybe you want formal verification, but not everyone cares about that.

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#616

Post by habinero »

RestlessMind wrote: post #610
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.

> and forgetting that's not a good thing to most people. you are living in a bubble to assume that governments are always good and anyone bucking their government is a bad actor. Try to learn more about Venezuela, Iran, Russia, North Korea or Syria. Or even truckers in Canada whose accounts were frozen because of peaceful protests. At this point, the best thing for crypto would be for someone like Trump to freeze all…

This ridiculous straw man comes up all the time. Stop it. Nobody said "governments are always good" or denied that dictatorships exist.

The rest of this is pure irrational FUD. Democracies are not dictatorships.

A president doesn't have the legal authority to freeze finances like that. They are not a king.

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#617

Post by habinero »

halpmeh wrote: post #571
worik wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Have you ever implemented a smart contract? No > A smart contract can be thought of as a cryptographically secure program, i.e. it cannot be modified. So you have cryptographically secure inputs (the blockchain), and a cryptographically secure program (the smart contract), which means the output is also guaranteed to be cryptographically secure. The output is not guaranteed to be correct, what you intended, or even…

No, the output is guaranteed to be correct. Correct, as in what you specified in the contract, which may not be what you had intended, but that’s besides the point. Can you explain how the output would differ from the contract specification?

Contracts are agreements between humans. Therefore, the only "correct" outcome is the intended outcome.

If your code has bugs or errors or security vulnerabilities, those will all lead to incorrect behavior.

That's why smart contracts aren't useful.

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#618

Post by TimJRobinson »

noelsusman wrote: post #611
splix wrote: post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On regulations: FTX and SBF were the main proponents of regulations. Not because it solves anything, but because it eliminates a competition and for them it gave more freedom to do a fraud. So I'm not sure it's always a good thing. On loans: Give me a bank that can loan me $100M without even asking for an ID? Without a collateral, of course. Like Aave Flashloan provides on blockchain.

>Give me a bank that can loan me $100M without even asking for an ID? Without a collateral, of course. Like Aave Flashloan provides on blockchain. That seems like a really bad idea!

It's great for levelling the playing field of finance. In traditional finance only the most capitalised players are able to do small arbitrage opportunities, and many firms make billions of dollars this way. In DeFi anyone can take advantage of them using flash loans.

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#619

Post by TimJRobinson »

habinero wrote: post #617
halpmeh wrote: post #571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the output is guaranteed to be correct. Correct, as in what you specified in the contract, which may not be what you had intended, but that’s besides the point. Can you explain how the output would differ from the contract specification?

Contracts are agreements between humans. Therefore, the only "correct" outcome is the intended outcome. If your code has bugs or errors or security vulnerabilities, those will all lead to incorrect behavior. That's why smart contracts aren't useful.

May as well say "that's why software isn't useful" which obviously isn't true.

Most contracts end in the happy case 99% of the time, it seems very worthwhile to automate that happy case and fall back to the traditional legal system in the failure case where either party isn't happy with the outcome.

Re: AWS and Blockchain

#620

Post by TimJRobinson »

habinero wrote: post #599
pjkundert wrote: post #597

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Investing in small businesses isn't legal because you need to be an accredited investor which only the top 1% of the wealth pyramid qualify for.

It's these kinds of rules to "save people from themselves" that have the bonus effect of the rich gatekeeping the best investments that make a lot of people mad and see the current system as corrupt.

Being able to spend and invest my money how I want should not be a crime.

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