8 ms·

Because they still don't get that the blockchain only works as a currency.

rexpop 10y ago
It does? I am hoping I'll be able to use it as a public, distributed ledger, and so, too, are many major financial institutions — if they can be said to "hope". Are you suggesting that this aspiration is naive?
- tigershark 10y ago
  Ethereum worked very well with the DAO...for the hacker that stole several million and that forced them to fork. I will never trust a system where they can decide arbitrarily to void all the transactions that everyone made after several days.
  - nickonline 10y ago
    So, the current banking system?
    - stonogo 10y ago
      You can get insurance with the current banking system.
      - vxNsr 10y ago
        As long as you have the money to prove the law is on your side.
        stonogo 10y ago
        That's not relevant. A bank account is an insurable device. An ethereum implementation is not. Until that changes, nobody will take it seriously.
    - tigershark 10y ago
      I never heard that all the transactions in the world got rollbacked after days, and I don't think it is even technically possible. Doing that in ethereum and all the other similar currencies is as easy as pressing a button.
      - patrickk 10y ago
        > Doing that in ethereum and all the other similar currencies is as easy as pressing a button. The rollback was (and still is) very controversial. It required the agreement of the large mining pools to support the fork, which they eventually agreed to. It wasn't quite as simple as "pressing a button". Banks get hacked all the time, eat the loss, keep it quiet and move on, e.g. http://www.businessinsider.de/how-to-hack-a-bank-mikko-hypponen-f-secure-mandiant-fireeye-bangladesh-swift-banking-north-korea-2016-6?r=UK&IR=T http://www.businessinsider.de/how-to-hack-a-bank-mikko-hyppo... http://www.dataiq.co.uk/news/20141107/banks-keeping-quite-despite-swathe-customer-data-breaches http://www.dataiq.co.uk/news/20141107/banks-keeping-quite-de...
  - pYQAJ6Zm 10y ago
    The way I recall it, they didn’t void past transactions; they added “irregular state changes” that would “return” the “stolen” funds to their “legitimate“ owners. Nor were they forced to fork; it was a voluntary decision of a group of people with enough social power over the platform. Now this is more a matter of dispute, but I wouldn’t say the hacker stole the funds. They simply followed the DAO contract (not the “smart-contract”, mind you, but the one put forward by the Slock.it team on their page), according to which everything that went on the blockchain according to the DAO code was legitimate.
    - mannykannot 10y ago
      >Now this is more a matter of dispute, but I wouldn’t say the hacker stole the funds... Verification is Ethereum's Achille's heel. Everyone seems to trust that someone else will verify that the contracts they participate in will work securely as intended, and the DAO showed how well that works. If Ethereum ever gets used as its proponents imagine, with multiple interacting contracts in progress at any given time, rolling back an error will not be nearly as easy as it was in the DAO case (and that was not particularly easy.)
      - aminok 10y ago
        That's every system's Achille's Heel. It's a human fault.
        mannykannot 10y ago
        The point is that in Ethereum's case, the extent of the problem is vastly underestimated by almost all of the participants. In most other cases, it is a risk that can be mitigated or accepted, but in Ethereum's case, it undermines the fundamental premise ('trustless' contracts.)
        aminok 10y ago
        It's something that will change with experience.
  - vertex-four 10y ago
    Nobody forced anything. A bunch of people agreed to use new rules with old data, which is why the new chain is in common use. Democracy in action. The same could happen to literally any cryptocurrency you could think up, unless you can come up with a way of invalidating past state to a point where nobody can use it with a new set of rules - which is impossible unless you can somehow cryptographically encode the rules into the chain to a point where you can't access the data without adhering to the rules. (I think a zkSNARK could help with this if it's something that people actually desire.)
    - duozerk 10y ago
      > Democracy in action For a weird definition of "democracy" where one person has 25% of the votes and the vote itself is badly/too quickly announced and organized to the point where almost no one votes. This doesn't even take into account the incredible amount of shitty actions or plain incompetence from the Ethereum Foundation guys at that time or since then. A quick (tongue in cheek and quite partial in its tone, but also pretty accurate) recap of the events leading to the HF: https://medium.com/@WhalePanda/the-complete-story-of-ethereum-so-far-b85ba182bb35 https://medium.com/@WhalePanda/the-complete-story-of-ethereu...
      - vertex-four 10y ago
        People could've kept using a continuation of the old chain without breaking anything. In fact, some did - see Ethereum Classic. People decided to use the forked Ethereum because they believed it was the correct choice, not because someone made them.
        duozerk 10y ago
        Oh, absolutely. I'm still an interested watcher/user of ETC. And indeed, people "voted" in the end with their mining power (which is why the original chain hasn't disappeared). I just believe that their actions basically destroyed any future that ETH (and likely ETC too) might've had - it's dead; if the initial hard fork wasn't enough to remove all credibility in the project, the circus since then (subsequent forks, attacks, incredibly mismanaged communication...) certainly is.
Terr_ 10y ago
> blockchain only works as a currency. Except it has not worked... Not as a currency. Instead, you're most likely to see it used as a fungible commodity that appreciates and encourages hoarding.
- ogig 10y ago
  > Except it has not worked... Not as a currency. Bitcoin is working as a currency. You might not like, or been aware of it, but plenty of drugs users and criminals use bitcoin everyday. It works.
  - abritinthebay 10y ago
    No, there it works as a tradable commodity. Different. Similar, but different. It's an important difference too.
    - TelmoMenezes 10y ago
      Because you say so? Commodities are goods or services, bitcoin is neither.
      - csomar 10y ago
        I don't want to get into this discussion but everything is an asset. Bitcoin is an asset, so is the coffee you bought today at starbucks. It doesn't really matter as long as you can bridge it for your needs.
      - abritinthebay 10y ago
        No, a commodity is a marketable item produced to satisfy wants or needs, usually fungible. Bitcoin is all of those. It's for this reason that the USCFTC ruled that Bitcoin is a commodity. So not because I say so; because the people whose job it is to say so, say so.
  - Canada 10y ago
    I can't imagine the majority of users are criminals. I've recently tried it out as a means of receiving payment for completely legitimate work. The client was in a different country. The contract was signed in USD. Client sends half at then exchange rate, which arrived very fast. After accepting the delivered work the client sends the other half, which was less BTC because the price went up by that point. But it didn't matter because the first half I was holding appreciated so it's all the same. Turned out one of my vendors likes Bitcoin so I used some of it to settle an outstanding bill with him, then sold the rest at an exchange. Opening that account for the company was a pain in the ass, though less painful that opening a typical brokerage account. I had to pay a fee to the exchange to sell and another fee for them to wire the funds to my bank. It was faster and cost less than a credit card. It was more expensive than a check, but way way way faster. It was cheaper than SWIFT overall, but a few dollars more expensive to me because I bore the costs of selling while the client only bore the tiny costs of the Bitcoin transaction fees. If the contract was for a much larger amount then SWIFT would have been better. For accounting purposes I'm just treating BTC as a foreign currency. I would accept it again, it's great to actually receive payment that fast.
eigenrick 10y ago
Not quite. _Bitcoin_ (and other coins) operate as a currency. Blockchain is a distributed ledger which can store _any_ information for all time. Contracts, fulfilments, ascii art, whatever.

It does? I am hoping I'll be able to use it as a public, distributed ledger, and so, too, are many major financial institutions — if they can be said to "hope". Are you suggesting that this aspiration is naive?

tigershark 10y ago
Ethereum worked very well with the DAO...for the hacker that stole several million and that forced them to fork. I will never trust a system where they can decide arbitrarily to void all the transactions that everyone made after several days.
- nickonline 10y ago
  So, the current banking system?
  - stonogo 10y ago
    You can get insurance with the current banking system.
    - vxNsr 10y ago
      As long as you have the money to prove the law is on your side.
      - stonogo 10y ago
        That's not relevant. A bank account is an insurable device. An ethereum implementation is not. Until that changes, nobody will take it seriously.
  - tigershark 10y ago
    I never heard that all the transactions in the world got rollbacked after days, and I don't think it is even technically possible. Doing that in ethereum and all the other similar currencies is as easy as pressing a button.
    - patrickk 10y ago
      > Doing that in ethereum and all the other similar currencies is as easy as pressing a button. The rollback was (and still is) very controversial. It required the agreement of the large mining pools to support the fork, which they eventually agreed to. It wasn't quite as simple as "pressing a button". Banks get hacked all the time, eat the loss, keep it quiet and move on, e.g. http://www.businessinsider.de/how-to-hack-a-bank-mikko-hypponen-f-secure-mandiant-fireeye-bangladesh-swift-banking-north-korea-2016-6?r=UK&IR=T http://www.businessinsider.de/how-to-hack-a-bank-mikko-hyppo... http://www.dataiq.co.uk/news/20141107/banks-keeping-quite-despite-swathe-customer-data-breaches http://www.dataiq.co.uk/news/20141107/banks-keeping-quite-de...
- pYQAJ6Zm 10y ago
  The way I recall it, they didn’t void past transactions; they added “irregular state changes” that would “return” the “stolen” funds to their “legitimate“ owners. Nor were they forced to fork; it was a voluntary decision of a group of people with enough social power over the platform. Now this is more a matter of dispute, but I wouldn’t say the hacker stole the funds. They simply followed the DAO contract (not the “smart-contract”, mind you, but the one put forward by the Slock.it team on their page), according to which everything that went on the blockchain according to the DAO code was legitimate.
  - mannykannot 10y ago
    >Now this is more a matter of dispute, but I wouldn’t say the hacker stole the funds... Verification is Ethereum's Achille's heel. Everyone seems to trust that someone else will verify that the contracts they participate in will work securely as intended, and the DAO showed how well that works. If Ethereum ever gets used as its proponents imagine, with multiple interacting contracts in progress at any given time, rolling back an error will not be nearly as easy as it was in the DAO case (and that was not particularly easy.)
    - aminok 10y ago
      That's every system's Achille's Heel. It's a human fault.
      - mannykannot 10y ago
        The point is that in Ethereum's case, the extent of the problem is vastly underestimated by almost all of the participants. In most other cases, it is a risk that can be mitigated or accepted, but in Ethereum's case, it undermines the fundamental premise ('trustless' contracts.)
        aminok 10y ago
        It's something that will change with experience.
- vertex-four 10y ago
  Nobody forced anything. A bunch of people agreed to use new rules with old data, which is why the new chain is in common use. Democracy in action. The same could happen to literally any cryptocurrency you could think up, unless you can come up with a way of invalidating past state to a point where nobody can use it with a new set of rules - which is impossible unless you can somehow cryptographically encode the rules into the chain to a point where you can't access the data without adhering to the rules. (I think a zkSNARK could help with this if it's something that people actually desire.)
  - duozerk 10y ago
    > Democracy in action For a weird definition of "democracy" where one person has 25% of the votes and the vote itself is badly/too quickly announced and organized to the point where almost no one votes. This doesn't even take into account the incredible amount of shitty actions or plain incompetence from the Ethereum Foundation guys at that time or since then. A quick (tongue in cheek and quite partial in its tone, but also pretty accurate) recap of the events leading to the HF: https://medium.com/@WhalePanda/the-complete-story-of-ethereum-so-far-b85ba182bb35 https://medium.com/@WhalePanda/the-complete-story-of-ethereu...
    - vertex-four 10y ago
      People could've kept using a continuation of the old chain without breaking anything. In fact, some did - see Ethereum Classic. People decided to use the forked Ethereum because they believed it was the correct choice, not because someone made them.
      - duozerk 10y ago
        Oh, absolutely. I'm still an interested watcher/user of ETC. And indeed, people "voted" in the end with their mining power (which is why the original chain hasn't disappeared). I just believe that their actions basically destroyed any future that ETH (and likely ETC too) might've had - it's dead; if the initial hard fork wasn't enough to remove all credibility in the project, the circus since then (subsequent forks, attacks, incredibly mismanaged communication...) certainly is.

Terr_ 10y ago

> blockchain only works as a currency. Except it has not worked... Not as a currency. Instead, you're most likely to see it used as a fungible commodity that appreciates and encourages hoarding.

ogig 10y ago
> Except it has not worked... Not as a currency. Bitcoin is working as a currency. You might not like, or been aware of it, but plenty of drugs users and criminals use bitcoin everyday. It works.
- abritinthebay 10y ago
  No, there it works as a tradable commodity. Different. Similar, but different. It's an important difference too.
  - TelmoMenezes 10y ago
    Because you say so? Commodities are goods or services, bitcoin is neither.
    - csomar 10y ago
      I don't want to get into this discussion but everything is an asset. Bitcoin is an asset, so is the coffee you bought today at starbucks. It doesn't really matter as long as you can bridge it for your needs.
    - abritinthebay 10y ago
      No, a commodity is a marketable item produced to satisfy wants or needs, usually fungible. Bitcoin is all of those. It's for this reason that the USCFTC ruled that Bitcoin is a commodity. So not because I say so; because the people whose job it is to say so, say so.
- Canada 10y ago
  I can't imagine the majority of users are criminals. I've recently tried it out as a means of receiving payment for completely legitimate work. The client was in a different country. The contract was signed in USD. Client sends half at then exchange rate, which arrived very fast. After accepting the delivered work the client sends the other half, which was less BTC because the price went up by that point. But it didn't matter because the first half I was holding appreciated so it's all the same. Turned out one of my vendors likes Bitcoin so I used some of it to settle an outstanding bill with him, then sold the rest at an exchange. Opening that account for the company was a pain in the ass, though less painful that opening a typical brokerage account. I had to pay a fee to the exchange to sell and another fee for them to wire the funds to my bank. It was faster and cost less than a credit card. It was more expensive than a check, but way way way faster. It was cheaper than SWIFT overall, but a few dollars more expensive to me because I bore the costs of selling while the client only bore the tiny costs of the Bitcoin transaction fees. If the contract was for a much larger amount then SWIFT would have been better. For accounting purposes I'm just treating BTC as a foreign currency. I would accept it again, it's great to actually receive payment that fast.

eigenrick 10y ago

Not quite. _Bitcoin_ (and other coins) operate as a currency. Blockchain is a distributed ledger which can store _any_ information for all time. Contracts, fulfilments, ascii art, whatever.