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I'd call myself an enthusiast and would disagree on a few things, can agree the hype and scams are out of control. Seems like there's an ICO every 2 weeks, sell

I'd call myself an enthusiast and would disagree on a few things, can agree the hype and scams are out of control. Seems like there's an ICO every 2 weeks, selling unfinished products with little demonstrated purpose other than adding a blockchain to something. There's a deep misunderstanding in some parts of the community about what a distributed ledger is good at doing. Some counter-points though: >Pretty much everyone who got in after about 2012 is playing the role of "sucker" BTC was $20 in 2013 and under $400 at the start of 2016. >Blockchains have no use cases outside cryptocurrencies >disastrous waste of resources and effort at every level Immutable peer-to-peer ledgers have numerous use-cases, currency was the low hanging fruit. Put an Ubuntu iso checksum or your PGP key into the blockchain, its there for everyone to see, uncensorable and immutable, now compare that to hosting the checksum on the same server as the iso. All the computing resources in the world can't change the bitcoin blockchain, so while the energy usage claim has some merit, the thermodynamics of undoing all that hashing provides the security in a trustless environment. And people won't use Bitcoin if its unsecure. On top of that miners have concentrated in places where energy is cheap and plentiful, the big ones strike deals with electricity providers to soak up excess transient electricity from renewables at very cheap prices.

davidgerard 10y ago
>Immutable peer-to-peer ledgers have numerous use-cases And that's why we have git. The only good bit is the Merkle trees, which were invented in 1979. ("Why yes, Mr Buzzwordsusceptible Uppermgt, we've been using blockchain technologies for years! Even before Bitcoin was invented!" i.e. git has Merkle trees in) Seriously, I've been looking into "business blockchain". There are zero use cases except for the Merkle trees. I commend to you this blog post from the R3 project: https://www.r3cev.com/blog/2016/4/4/introducing-r3-corda-a-distributed-ledger-designed-for-financial-services https://www.r3cev.com/blog/2016/4/4/introducing-r3-corda-a-d... It details why every aspect of Bitcoin and its clones was designed to do the opposite of what financial services want. The punchline is that R3 Corda, their "blockchain" product, does not in its default configuration ... contain a blockchain.
- reddytowns 10y ago
  > And that's why we have git. The only good bit is the Merkle trees, which were invented in 1979. Explain this. How can git and merkle trees create an immutable peer-to-peer ledger? How can a peer, given ledgers A and B, know which one is fake and which is real?
  - davidgerard 10y ago
    Not with Bitcoin or Ethereum, given the centralisation of mining. (I flatly do not believe all the pools are actually operated centrally.) Even the approximate solution becomes less useful as the currency recentralises. In literally all financial and legal regulations, the ultimate answer is "at some point you have to trust someone". This doesn't work out perfectly either (far from it), but it's an approximation that's proven more robust and usable for real world purposes than literally wasting electricity computing hashes.
    - reddytowns 10y ago
      That's not an answer. You implied that git and merkle trees can be used for p2p immutable ledgers. You have yet to show how that can happen. > In literally all financial and legal regulations, the ultimate answer is "at some point you have to trust someone". This doesn't work out perfectly either (far from it), but it's an approximation that's proven more robust and usable for real world purposes than literally wasting electricity computing hashes. That doesn't prove anything. The existing infrastructure has had thousands of years of a head start. Bitcoin has only existed for 6 years and ethereum only for 2. How can you expect this new technology to develop that quickly? The internet itself was started over 35 years ago and its potential still is yet to be determined, much less realized. Also, there are a lot of PoS currencies that don't use computation power to secure their blockchain. What is your rationale for dismissing them?
      - davidgerard 10y ago
        PoW's had six years to fail to overcome objections that were raised literally in 2008 in response to the white paper. PoS has no practical examples. I'm saying "nice idea but it hasn't worked out" and you're saying "but here's this other idea that hasn't worked out!"

davidgerard 10y ago

>Immutable peer-to-peer ledgers have numerous use-cases And that's why we have git. The only good bit is the Merkle trees, which were invented in 1979. ("Why yes, Mr Buzzwordsusceptible Uppermgt, we've been using blockchain technologies for years! Even before Bitcoin was invented!" i.e. git has Merkle trees in) Seriously, I've been looking into "business blockchain". There are zero use cases except for the Merkle trees. I commend to you this blog post from the R3 project: https://www.r3cev.com/blog/2016/4/4/introducing-r3-corda-a-distributed-ledger-designed-for-financial-services https://www.r3cev.com/blog/2016/4/4/introducing-r3-corda-a-d... It details why every aspect of Bitcoin and its clones was designed to do the opposite of what financial services want. The punchline is that R3 Corda, their "blockchain" product, does not in its default configuration ... contain a blockchain.

reddytowns 10y ago
> And that's why we have git. The only good bit is the Merkle trees, which were invented in 1979. Explain this. How can git and merkle trees create an immutable peer-to-peer ledger? How can a peer, given ledgers A and B, know which one is fake and which is real?
- davidgerard 10y ago
  Not with Bitcoin or Ethereum, given the centralisation of mining. (I flatly do not believe all the pools are actually operated centrally.) Even the approximate solution becomes less useful as the currency recentralises. In literally all financial and legal regulations, the ultimate answer is "at some point you have to trust someone". This doesn't work out perfectly either (far from it), but it's an approximation that's proven more robust and usable for real world purposes than literally wasting electricity computing hashes.
  - reddytowns 10y ago
    That's not an answer. You implied that git and merkle trees can be used for p2p immutable ledgers. You have yet to show how that can happen. > In literally all financial and legal regulations, the ultimate answer is "at some point you have to trust someone". This doesn't work out perfectly either (far from it), but it's an approximation that's proven more robust and usable for real world purposes than literally wasting electricity computing hashes. That doesn't prove anything. The existing infrastructure has had thousands of years of a head start. Bitcoin has only existed for 6 years and ethereum only for 2. How can you expect this new technology to develop that quickly? The internet itself was started over 35 years ago and its potential still is yet to be determined, much less realized. Also, there are a lot of PoS currencies that don't use computation power to secure their blockchain. What is your rationale for dismissing them?
    - davidgerard 10y ago
      PoW's had six years to fail to overcome objections that were raised literally in 2008 in response to the white paper. PoS has no practical examples. I'm saying "nice idea but it hasn't worked out" and you're saying "but here's this other idea that hasn't worked out!"