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Comment by xmprt | Hacker News Reader

I feel like even after zooming out and seeing the big picture, it's hard to imagine blockchain solving real world problems. Blockchains are good when there's a lack of trust and decentralization is absolutely necessary. There are very few problems that actually need a blockchain. Anything that has the government in the loop (like buying houses or property) is a non starter and anything that runs on centralized servers (like game NFTs) also doesn't make sense.

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You're right. And bitcoiners have been saying this from the very beginning of the crypto madness.

A global, government agnostic money like bitcoin that no group of insiders and early adopters have unassailable control over, seems like the only likely candidate for something that needs a truly decentralized and trustless blockchain.

The rest is hype.

I believe this characterization fails to engage with what money actually is and does. It sounds good in print but fails in practice.

Except for bitcoin's current "monetary" uses, like money laundering and tax evasion.

I personally prefer a money that isn't explicitly designed to encourage hyper consumption and short term thinking.

Better for the planet.

But what do I know? I'm just a dumb ape.

I'm genuinely not sure whether this statement is pro-crypto or anti-crypto... I assume it's anti- based on the reference to it being better for the planet?

Or is the "designed for hyper consumption" a reference to inflation in fiat currencies? Sorry, perhaps I've confused myself.

Pro bitcoin. Don't confuse crypto with bitcoin.

Our inflationary currencies that are in vogue in the modern era are explicitly designed to psychologically encourage people to go out and consume more than they actually need to, because their money is terrible at preserving it's value long term.

Inflationary currencies might be great at keeping the economy red hot, but I'm of the opinion that they're terrible for the long term sustainability of our planet.

Money isn't designed to do that.

Money is just an exchange token.

It has no control over what it is used for.

And in practise not government or central bank controlled money is not practically desirable. The gold-bugs and crypto people might think it is, but there are very good reasons why no one is using gold standard anymore. It makes modern fiscal and financial policies impossible and probably leads to massive issues for everyone.

> Blockchains are good when there's a lack of trust and decentralization is absolutely necessary. There are very few problems that actually need a blockchain.

How about the current status quo of the Internet? Do you think being mined, sold, and endlessly tracked is OK?

No. But you don't need blockchain to solve that. Things like BitTorrent work perfectly fine without the needless blockchain element.

BitTorrent is wonderful for sharing information, but it's not really a platform to build on. Something like Ethereum on the other hand is literally a decentralized computer that no single entity controls. The blockchain part enables this.

a "decentralized"[0] ""computer"" which is less powerful than a 9 year old rasberry pi. is this not the definition of hype?

[0]: https://thenextweb.com/news/ethereum-nodes-cloud-services-am....

It's not, but blockchains don't magically fix that. And the "web3" stuff built so far is still pretty centralized and could include that same tracking if the incumbents so chose.

Of course a blockchain doesn't magically fix anything, it's a distributed log. But a decentralized distributed log is a great building block for something that isn't owned by FAANG.

Right... and based on the second half of my comment, I don't believe anyone has actually successfully done the second half of your comment.

I don't want to be tracked so I'm going to put everything in a public ledger.

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