There's No Good Reason to Trust Blockchain Technology • Hacker News Board

Re: There's No Good Reason to Trust Blockchain Technology

#91

Post by tcrow » Wed, Feb 06, 2019, 8:29 PM UTC

Deimorz wrote: post #82

tcrow wrote: post #63

The author has demonstrated a very amateurish understanding and greatly conflated Bitcoin technology with blockchain technology in general, drawing the reader to make the same poor conclusions as the author. Just a quick example > "The second element is the consensus algorithm, which is a way to ensure all the copies of the ledger are the same. This is generally called mining;" - except that is only applicable for (p…

Which blockchain(s) are currently successfully using POS or DPOS?

EOS WAX TRON Lisk Cardano Bitshares Steemit ARK Tezos Oxycoin DASH NEO etc..

Re: There's No Good Reason to Trust Blockchain Technology

#92

Post by scott_s » Wed, Feb 06, 2019, 8:29 PM UTC

tcrow wrote: post #78

drugme wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read the Bitcoin mentions as examples, but not conflations of the overall issues with blockchains. Except that is only applicable for (proof of work POW) consensus and does not apply to proof of stake (POS) and delegated proof of stack (DPOS) which several of the top blockchain projects are currently using (even Ethereum is moving to POS) The fact that while what you just said, in attempting to "clarify" the issue,…

Except for that fact that he proceeds to use Bitcoin as the sole example of all the inherent problems of "Blockchain Technology" while providing absolutely no information about all the ways that Blockchain Technology has improved beyond what Bitcoin is doing. Bitcoin != Blockchain (in totality) He may be a respected analyst, but he is providing a completely biased and uninformed view of Blockchain technology as it cu…

He provides "supply-chain security systems" as another example.

Re: There's No Good Reason to Trust Blockchain Technology

#93

Post by afgkonionio » Wed, Feb 06, 2019, 8:33 PM UTC

darawk wrote: post #83

> What blockchain does is shift some of the trust in people and institutions to trust in technology. You need to trust the cryptography, the protocols, the software, the computers and the network. And you need to trust them absolutely, because they’re often single points of failure. This is wrong. You do not need to trust them, because you can verify their correctness yourself. You cannot similarly inspect the rectit…

>You do not need to trust them, because you can verify their correctness yourself.

I certainly cannot verify their correctness myself, and I'm a professional programmer! I don't touch cryptography with a thirteen-and-a-half foot pole. Most people wouldn't even know where to start. Only a tiny minority has the skills to singlehandedly verify the economic theory, cryptography, and implementation of a cryptocurrency.

Pretty much all the time, you're trusting other people to have caught bugs and malicious code for you. Many independent reviewers are far more trustworthy than a normal company (which is why I avoid proprietary software), but that doesn't mean you aren't taking someone else's word that the software works as advertised.

Re: There's No Good Reason to Trust Blockchain Technology

#94

Post by jayd16 » Wed, Feb 06, 2019, 8:35 PM UTC

jondubois wrote: post #58

jayd16 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>On the other hand, fiat money is constantly being secretly manipulated. Crypto can be secretly manipulated in the exact same way fiat can. The only thing different about crypto is that there's no central bank that can literally print money. Instead we get defacto authority with no legal framework in place.

But a key difference is that nobody is forced to use a specific cryptocurrency and it's much easier to see if your cryptocurrency is being manipulated. If a currency isn't working for you; you should be able to choose a different one which does. As an investor, it would make things more interesting because you will no longer be able to just sit around and wait for the capital to come to you through the same reliable…

>it's much easier to see if your cryptocurrency is being manipulated.

Specific transactions can be verified but that does not translate in to full transparency. Transactions can be obfuscated and laundered. A Swiss bank could set up a wallet to perform all BTC transactions through.

And your not being forced to use fiat. If you were, investing in crypto wouldn't even be possible.

Re: There's No Good Reason to Trust Blockchain Technology

#95

Post by splintercell » Wed, Feb 06, 2019, 8:35 PM UTC

avivo wrote: post #13

Another classic in this genre, though more focused on world impact, is Charlie Stross's "Why I want Bitcoin to die in a fire" (2013) http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/12/why-i-wa... I may not be quite as strident as either of these takes, but I agree that the proponents are significantly overselling on a variety of axes... (while also believing that distributed append-only systems with consensus mechan…

I don't see why you think this article is a case against Bitcoin. The article is saying "I don't want Bitcoin to exist", but nearly everything else is listing you reasons to invest in it (even if you dislike the reasons, it's like buying stocks in a company who will be bailed out, even though you don't agree with the bailout).

Re: There's No Good Reason to Trust Blockchain Technology

#96

Post by mihaifm » Wed, Feb 06, 2019, 8:37 PM UTC

companyhen wrote: post #38

baxtr wrote: post #8

I hate blockchain so much and I can’t even exactly say why. Not because of the technology itself. I care about it as much as any other technology. I think it’s because of the sleazy non-tech people that suddenly turned into “experts” raising money for their BC startup, people organizing meetups, becoming “consultants” and of course the whole crypto craze... I really wish it will die soon.

I don't think it will die, newer blockchain protocols like MimbleWimble are highly interesting and pure math and cryptography. The ICO shillers are disappointing, I was younger in the dot-com era so I do not remember much, but I assume there was a similar vibe around that time with everyone getting rich with any website idea. For example, the recent BitTorrent ICO disappointed me, although it pumped 10x from ICO pric…

Thanks for sharing this, I haven't heard of MimbleWimble before but indeed it looks interesting. Here's the original whitepaper if anyone is interested: https://github.com/mimblewimble/docs/wiki/MimbleWimble-Origi...

I wasn't there during the dot-com era, but from what I read it was the same situation: lots of scammers and cool kids raising millions from investors driven by FOMO (fear of missing out), and lots of money ending up in the wrong hands.

Re: There's No Good Reason to Trust Blockchain Technology

#97

Post by dkonofalski » Wed, Feb 06, 2019, 8:39 PM UTC

fdggdfsvscvsd wrote: post #57

Maybe with Bitcoin I have to trust the software a little bit, but at least if it turns out to be faulty, I can switch to another app. That's much harder to do with governments controlling fiat money. Or with banks. What is a person supposed to do, who is denied financial transactions by the established financial service providers (paypal, credit cards,...)? There have now been several cases where paypal and others ha…

Isn't that the central problem with something like Bitcoin and currencies that can be (read: have to be) mined, though? You gain units of the currency for underpinning the integrity of the system. The average person will never be able to build up a mining system to compete with the likes of China and India where they're mining Bitcoin in farms that potentially devalue the currency every single second.

Edit: For clarity, yes, I understand that there is a finite amount of Bitcoin that can be mined. I'm talking about the value of what's constantly being mined. The US would never use Bitcoin as a currency when other countries already have more of it than we do.

Re: There's No Good Reason to Trust Blockchain Technology

#98

Post by arisAlexis » Wed, Feb 06, 2019, 8:41 PM UTC

baxtr wrote: post #8

I hate blockchain so much and I can’t even exactly say why. Not because of the technology itself. I care about it as much as any other technology. I think it’s because of the sleazy non-tech people that suddenly turned into “experts” raising money for their BC startup, people organizing meetups, becoming “consultants” and of course the whole crypto craze... I really wish it will die soon.

that's just irrational and come from envy because you didn't gain money from the hype. quite common in psychology

Re: There's No Good Reason to Trust Blockchain Technology

#99

Post by threeseed » Wed, Feb 06, 2019, 8:42 PM UTC

Kiro wrote: post #51

baxtr wrote: post #8

I hate blockchain so much and I can’t even exactly say why. Not because of the technology itself. I care about it as much as any other technology. I think it’s because of the sleazy non-tech people that suddenly turned into “experts” raising money for their BC startup, people organizing meetups, becoming “consultants” and of course the whole crypto craze... I really wish it will die soon.

You hate it because you missed out on the gold rush. It's called jealousy. Simple as that. I hate it too for the same reason but at least I'm honest about it.

I don't hate it out of jealousy.

I hate it because so many good people have been scammed and because it is dreadful for the environment. Wasting power for seemingly no purpose.

Re: There's No Good Reason to Trust Blockchain Technology

#100

Post by arisAlexis » Wed, Feb 06, 2019, 8:42 PM UTC

jondubois wrote: post #42

baxtr wrote: post #8

I hate blockchain so much and I can’t even exactly say why. Not because of the technology itself. I care about it as much as any other technology. I think it’s because of the sleazy non-tech people that suddenly turned into “experts” raising money for their BC startup, people organizing meetups, becoming “consultants” and of course the whole crypto craze... I really wish it will die soon.

Nobody deserves anything. You get whatever life gives you and it's all about luck. I have as much respect for a lottery winner as a self-made business person. As a human being, I would prefer the lottery winner though because they don't have as many false ideas about what kind of person they are and what kind of world we live in.

if you think like that investing in any technology early enough is gambling and luck. is it now..