Comment by teekert | Hacker News Reader

Comment by teekert | Hacker News Reader

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Well, fwiw, imho it's good criticism and skepticism is warranted and I agree with it. But it's early days.

I always warn here on HN that we should not throw the baby away with the bathwater, meaning, don't kill (or over-regulate) blockchain before it can grow into something nice (from the monster it is now). Imho these are the seeds of something nice, but it's not there yet. I can feel it coming though, because of things like Podcasting 2.0.

But again, podcasting 2.0 also enables (as you probably heard many times by now ;)) life streams right in the podcast app. It just displays a badge that your fav podcast is now life-streaming and you can participate. I think that is just really cool.

Using the blockchain again though, you can make instant donations through BTC lightning, and have your value 4 value boosts live-read as you listen. I mean, that is at least a bit cool right? The equivalent of throwing some cash... Hmm, this is going in the wrong direction again...

It's not still early days. Bitcoin was created 13 years ago, it was useless for payments back then and it's still useless for payments now. Every direction that anyone takes it will be in the direction of some kind of pure money-making thing, usually in the form of a ponzi or pyramid scheme. This has happened over and over again for 13 years. There's simply no one else interested in building on this because everyone else can see that the technology is useless. The only way the scheme even works is because the miners are continually promised profits just for doing the useless "work" of running a node. If you take that away, you're left with an ordinary distributed database, and you can't use that to get VCs all excited with buzzwords and promises of instant profit, so nobody in the bubble does it.

We should absolutely throw away the bathwater. There's no baby. I'll say it right out. Cryptocurrency should be completely banned by every country on the planet. They have no purpose that isn't outright fraud and theft. Everything described in Podcasting 2.0 can be done with regular old Web 2.0 technology, and it can be done more efficiently that way too.

Edit to those downvoting: I will gladly retract this entire comment if you can demonstrate a single real, non-fraudulent usage of blockchains. I've been asking this for years and never gotten a straight answer. Everything is always "just around the corner" but every time I look around the corner all I see is more fraud and scams. If you really think there's something salvageable here, then let blockchains live on as a theoretical research project until somebody figures it out. In the meantime, please stop encouraging the general public to put their money into this. It's irresponsible to raise money this way.

(note: I didn't downvote, but have been working with blockchain and thought I would answer since you haven't gotten any yet)

https://www.hyperledger.org/learn/case-studies

Hyperledger is a set of open-source distributed ledger related technologies, the most well-known being Fabric, which is a framework for creating blockchain networks.

The most interesting cases are S&P Global and Walmart, who use it to keep track of data for various auditing purposes. The idea is that since data on a blockchain can't be modified on a whim without that change being observed, it protects the integrity of the data being stored. Basically it is being treated as a sort of database.

I've seen those and I wouldn't describe them as "blockchains" in the same sense that cryptocurrencies use it. The word seems to only be used for marketing purposes. Those are just an ordinary ledger with some sharding/mirroring.

Blockchain itself just refers to a linked list (the chain) of cryptographically hashed items such as a timestamp and the data it is time-stamping (the block), which is based on previous elements in the chain. This is also how how it is also described in the original Bitcoin paper.

Blockchain doesn't rely on crypto, crypto was implemented using blockchain. Blockchain was invented long before crypto in the early 90s at Bellcore. Crypto may emphasize transactions and combating double-spending (due to nodes being on a public network), but no one is held to crypto's use of blockchain to be blockchain. The Bitcoin paper cites both the original Bellcore paper and its follow-up discussing the use of Merkle Trees, and the Bellcore paper cites patent documents as a potential use-case. So I think what S&P Global and Walmart are doing are valid use of the technology.

Now whether or not cryptocurrency itself or the networks they run on have value is a different story. For what it's worth, one of the use-cases for Corda that I found basically advertised itself as "we are better than transacting with paper" lol.

> The idea is that since data on a blockchain can't be modified on a whim without that change being observed, it protects the integrity of the data being stored.

Audit logs are not a new thing. Immutable data stores are not a new thing. This can be done in any number ways, each of them more efficient.

Moreover, it doesn't help with data entry. Yes, data cannot be modified. And still someone orders bananas and ends up with mouldy tomatoes.

> S&P Global and Walmart, who use it

I very much doubt they use it. All these "use cases" fall apart within a year or two after initial starry-eyed announcements

> Basically it is being treated as a sort of database.

Indeed. Treated like a database. When people treat Kafka as a database, those people are derided and there are entire articles on why you shouldn't treat a read-only append-only log as a database. But sure. Once it's blockchain, it's amazing and the bee's knees.

tired and copypasta-like impulsive response written in hysterics is why you're getting downvoted

That makes no sense. I wouldn't have to keep repeating myself if crypto people didn't also do the same thing. Also, please don't describe the act of disagreeing as being "in hysterics", that's bad discussion.

ok

It's only tired and copypasta-like because it can't be refuted. He's right. Cryptocurrency had it's shot, here's what we got out of it:

1. People trying to make a currency or interoperable token that they can directly or indirectly profit from

2. People trying to replace traditional object-relational databases or P2P networking with the Blockchain

Neither of those are particularly meaningful to the average person. They buy their Cherry Pepsi with a Mastercard and then listen to Podcasts on Spotify or the preinstalled iPhone app. People won't care about this stuff until it's meaningfully integrated into our lives, which is something all of these cryptocurrencies have failed to do. There is no killer app, there is no data revolution. People have been beating this decentralization drum for decades, and nothing happened. If you think that Cryptocurrency is going to deliver us from surveillance capitalism into another digital golden age, then you're failing to see the entire picture. Luckily, proving this thesis right is simple: we just have to wait and watch as cryptocurrency values continue to plummet, and as VC interest in Blockchain-backed technology dries up. It's looking increasingly correct with every passing day.

It's fun being starry-eyed about cool tech, but the Blockchain is a failed experiment. Our suspected fears are true: running an anonymous, distributed and append-only ledger where anyone can be an operator is a bad idea.

ok

It was obvious the moment Freicoin died. That currency quite literally couldn't be used for speculation. It's only potential use case was as a medium of exchange and that didn't happen.

Right, only that one proved this theory of yours — not the other 3000 competitors just like it, by your metric

I mean, they could expand their sample size and the situation wouldn't be any different. Shitcoins come and go, but even the most benevolent of cryptocurrencies don't have a real shot at widespread success.

Don't you want a money that people can't fuck with by printing according to politicians will?

Honestly why would anyone care about that? I am genuinely curious to hear what reason you have to want that other than rent seeking e.g increasing personal wealth without having to create more wealth.

From what I can tell people who want a fixed supply currency basically just want to sit on it, wait for idiots who actually create wealth to do so and then take an undeserved cut. In other words they want to take the economy hostage for their own special interests and turn the rest of the population into debt slaves and finally reinstate feudalism.

What do you do with your salary in the end of month? I bet you invest part of it. Why do you do that? Are you an investor? Do you think you have enough information to beat the market?

I imagine you don't. You probably invest because you don't want to lose your purchasing power. That's all. This is what fiat system makes us do.

I just want a currency that doesn't push me to have to invest my money all the time only to keep my monetary power. That's it. Simple as that.

No. Obviously not. Money is not an arbitrary or objective thing. It is inextricably coupled to the power invested in sovereign governments. This is not a flaw. It is the product of thousands of years of human progress.

That's a pretty harsh criticism of the federal reserve system and "modern monetary theory" but well-deserved.

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