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Comment by lostsock | Hacker News Reader

Here[0] is a great article about what a blockchain is and isn't good for for. The tldr is that blockchains make tradeoffs that are bad for most things.

In fact, on almost every dimension, decentralized services are worse than their centralized counterparts:

They are slower

They are more expensive

They are less scalable

They have worse user experiences

They have volatile and uncertain governance

And no, this isn’t just because they are new. This won’t fundamentally change with bigger blocks, lightning networks, sharding, forks, self-amending ledgers, or any other technical solutions.

That’s because there are structural trade-offs that result directly from the primary design goal of these services, beneath which all other goals must be subordinated in order for them to be relevant: decentralization.

[0]https://blog.chain.com/a-letter-to-jamie-dimon-de89d417cb80

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They also don't require trusting a single third party processor... which is sort of the whole point. Blockchains are a tool to solve certain classes of problems, not every financial problem, or even most financial problems.

All of those points are temporary scaling and optimization issues that will be overcome.

Why is this comment being downvoted? If you disagree, please say why.

I didn't downvote, but it looks like hand wavy bullshit to me. If you're gonna dismiss fundamental blockchain tradeoffs as being minor temporary obstacles, I think the onus is on you to back it up - not the other way around.

Ok that seems fair

maybe he forgot a /s :-) While I believe that the Lightning Network is awesome and hope that Ethereum manages to get Sharding right. We don't know yet. So there is room for failure and it may turn out as disastrous.

I did not down vote it, but I would assume that it is because the comment has no sustenance, just claiming they will be overcome offers no proof that they will be overcome. I could claim that they wont, and it would be just as valid of a statement. At the moment we don't know how they will be overcome. All proposals on the table either lead to possible centralization or still don't increase the transaction volume enough for blockchain tech to become a truly global currency that can handle all payment transactions happening in the world at any moment. While I agree it will most likely be overcome in time, I can offer no proof of that, so my opinion has very little value in the context of this conversation.

It’s ironic that the blog post is an earnest response to Jamie Dimon’s comments about cryptocurrencies. I always assumed Dimon himself was testing his ability to influence pricing of cryptos with those comments. It’s an old game played by Wall Street: talk a good play down in the press, buy on the downward pressure, and then make money on the correction. This happens during almost every AAPL earnings cycle, for example.

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