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Comment by jazzyjackson | Hacker News Reader

I remember when it was invented, debating with friends the virtues of turing complete ethereum vs non turing complete bitcoin script - its still not clear to me why you’d want to do general purpose computation on the world’s slowest most expensive computer.

edit while i still can: no wifi, less space than a nomad.

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The main problem computation on the world's slowest most expensive computer solves is lack of trust in doing it on any other computer. The increased cost and decreased speed is worth it in some use cases for the increased insurance against the pre-determined computation not being run correctly or at all (making a payout based on certain data, usually outcomes of events, like for insurance or gambling).

> The main problem computation on the world's slowest most expensive computer solves is lack of trust in doing it on any other computer

This is an invented problem. "lack of trust" is an meaningless abstract; there is no specific concrete benefit to "solving" it.

Most of the cool business uses/potentials of Blockchain do not require decentralization and are definitely made more complex by it.

The advantage of the world-computer is that everybody agrees with your results.

There are some problem domains, like advertising, where giving every person their own reality increases net wealth. There are other problem domains, like money, where giving every person their own reality makes them utterly useless. Ethereum expands computation to problem domains where it's critical that everybody gets the same answer.

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