71–80 of 330 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm having your same exact doubts. The quality of the conversation about cryptocurrencies here on HN is abysmal. Misinformation, or outdated information, is rampant. Maybe that's the case for everything else that is discussed here, but I just don't have enough domain knowledge to be able to tell...
This is ironic, because your posts are part of the problem.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Disingenuous. That's not the only argument that is being presented.
There's some muddled thinking going on there. The source doesn't make the argument that Bitcoin isn't energy intensive. If that's an issue for you, you should re-evaluate your views on Bitcoin, but denying it doesn't change the fact. Otherwise we're just arguing that "water isn't wet" and what the definition of "is" is.
I think the #1 reason blockchain doesn't work is very simple - the technology is broken beyond fixability. This article is two years old, but the same variations of these excuses always come up when the crypto ideologues are grilled on why their utopiaic vision hasn't come about, for all of blockchain's existence. Blockchain is awful for most things compared to a centralized or distributed database: it is inefficient…
> "The only good use cases that come to mind is if there is some particular reason for you to evade the conventional and easier systems of communication and storage." * Nailed it * I've long said the killer app for blockchain already exists: international money laundering and untraceable transfers. This also happens to be the precise use case where folks want to "evade conventional and easier systems".
Then, Crypto at its worst is far better than international Wire Transfers, etc.
Even Ethereum 2.0 will have shards which will do away with this anomaly. The only reason flash loans even work with no collateral is because you can be sure nothing else is running on the “world computer” while your transaction runs, so you can roll it back with no risk except gas fees. Vitalik himself acknowledges this, the guy is quite honest and straightforward about its limitations:
Vitalik Buterin: Using Ethereum is expensive, and its blockchain is ‘almost full’ He also said blockchain's 'problem' is that every computer verifies every transaction
Actually blockchains are a first-generation technology that do global consensus for every block, which literally means all transactions in the world must go through one computer in the world (the miner) although it’s a different one each time. And the situation is actually worse, since you don’t know who would mine the next block in advance, every transaction must be sent to every potential miner! Imagine if BitTorrent had every computer store and seed every movie instead of using DHT.
The ability to send or loan arbitrarily large amounts for a fixed fee is a symptom of centralization. In a fully distributed network, transaction fees would have to be proportional to transaction size!
Almost every other protocol on the Internet does not have such bottlenecks in its design. No one asks how many emails or websites can be served per second. Blockchain is trying to secure every transaction using the entire network! That is why so much electricity is wasted just to do 7 transactions per second. The next generation of crypto will actually be able to power payments using embarrasingly parallel architecture. Until then, we have blockchain.
Ethereum is nicknamed the “world computer” for a reason. Gas fees are super high for small transactions like paying for coffee or voting in a secure election. Just one app KryptoKitties can clog up the entire network.
As one example, we built Intercoin apps on top of Ethereum (https://intercoin.org/applications) but we are not going to wait around for Ethereum 2.0 - which is blockchain also. Kik Messenger and others have long gotten off. Ripple, MaidSAFE and Solana use different technologies.
I think the #1 reason blockchain doesn't work is very simple - the technology is broken beyond fixability. This article is two years old, but the same variations of these excuses always come up when the crypto ideologues are grilled on why their utopiaic vision hasn't come about, for all of blockchain's existence. Blockchain is awful for most things compared to a centralized or distributed database: it is inefficient…
> "The only good use cases that come to mind is if there is some particular reason for you to evade the conventional and easier systems of communication and storage." * Nailed it * I've long said the killer app for blockchain already exists: international money laundering and untraceable transfers. This also happens to be the precise use case where folks want to "evade conventional and easier systems".
I think the #1 reason blockchain doesn't work is very simple - the technology is broken beyond fixability. This article is two years old, but the same variations of these excuses always come up when the crypto ideologues are grilled on why their utopiaic vision hasn't come about, for all of blockchain's existence. Blockchain is awful for most things compared to a centralized or distributed database: it is inefficient…
> the technology is broken beyond fixability [citation needed] Crypto ideologues are a strawman. Anyone working on the actual tech agrees that blockchains are useful if, and only if, you can't rely on a single party and need a decentralized, trustless append-only database. Otherwise, why bother with the extra complexity? That's the whole point of blockchains, after all. Technology choices are complex set of trade-off…
I think the #1 reason blockchain doesn't work is very simple - the technology is broken beyond fixability. This article is two years old, but the same variations of these excuses always come up when the crypto ideologues are grilled on why their utopiaic vision hasn't come about, for all of blockchain's existence. Blockchain is awful for most things compared to a centralized or distributed database: it is inefficient…
Mongo's scalability sounds great until you find yourself reimplementing a relational database for your 1000 users app.
Bitcoin decentralisation sounds great but must people don't need it. You just need a less evil and less corrupt government and better fintech.
You're curing the symptoms, not the cause.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The market cap is a counter argument because it shows the trust people, and lately corporations put into Bitcoin as a store of wealth and a hedge against inflation. The market cap proves that bitcoin/blockchain/cryptocurrency enthusiasts put their money where their mouth is.
Market cap means nothing. I can create 10^32 coins out of thin air, sell one coin at 1$ to one customer. And the next thing I have is a coin with higher marketcap than bitcoin.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm having your same exact doubts. The quality of the conversation about cryptocurrencies here on HN is abysmal. Misinformation, or outdated information, is rampant. Maybe that's the case for everything else that is discussed here, but I just don't have enough domain knowledge to be able to tell...
This is ironic, because your posts are part of the problem.