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>In fact, it turns out gold — at least the idea that it is of intrinsically more worth than another mineral — is another myth. i always found this to be a ridi

>In fact, it turns out gold — at least the idea that it is of intrinsically more worth than another mineral — is another myth. i always found this to be a ridiculous statement. you won't do well coining non metalic minerals/elements, and many others are subject to corrosion. gold on earth is finite and it is not man made. gold is the third most metalic electrical conductor. gold is also has the oligodynamic effect of inhibiting bacterial growth. >One of the big recent risers, Ethereum, is exactly that: Ethereum is based on a blockchain, like Bitcoin, which means it has an attached currency (Ether) that incentivizes miners to verify transactions. However, the protocol includes smart contract functionality, which means that two untrusted parties can engage in a contract without a 3rd-party enforcement entity. all this effort to not pay lawyers to draft/read/interperet contracts due to "legalese" only to write contracts in programing languages no one can read and understand....see the doa contract which was misread by the founders, by the third party reviewer, and every single person who bought in (except the party that stole $150m via smart contract).

jpatokal 9y ago
Most of gold's value is indeed a "myth". Silver is the best metallic conductor, it's equally finite and not man made, yet it trades at around 1/50th of gold value, despite having considerable decorative value itself. That 50x difference is not all because gold inhibits bacterial growth (so do some plastics) or does not corrode as easily. The author's main point, though, is that perception is reality. If I accidentally offend you, your offense does not become any less real just because I didn't mean to offend you, or that you should not have been offended.
- thatcat 9y ago
  >That 50x difference is not all because gold inhibits bacterial growth. Silver also inhibits bacterial growth, which is why it's used in deodorants, silverware, etc.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
RexetBlell 9y ago
Reading any programming language in general is difficult for majority of the people. That does not mean that computers are useless. There were bugs in the early implementations of web browsers, that does not mean that the Internet is useless. There was a bug in the Mars orbiter software (I think it was in 99) where it crashed due to some miscalculation after spending hundreds of millions on development. Does this mean that using software for space exploration is a bad idea? I'll give you an example contract that I think could be useful: an escrow service. Let's say you want to pay someone for their work, but only if they do it. You deposit the payment into a contract with 3 keys. The contract can send money only to two places. Either back to you, or to the worker. Each key has a vote where to send the money. Once any 2 of the 3 keys have voted the money is sent. You give 1 key to yourself, 1 key to the worker and 1 key to the third party. If you are satisfied with the work, you and the worker both vote to send the money to the worker and the money gets sent without bothering the 3rd party. The third party only gets involved and decides how to vote ONLY if there is a disagreement, which should be infrequent. In a world without cryptocurrencies it's much harder to implement this. The third party would have to be much more involved. It would hold the funds for a while and then have to transfer the money. You also have to be concerned what if the 3rd party runs away with the money. This contract can be written once, and even formally verified. Anyone can than create an instance of it for their needs and specify the addresses of the 3 key holders. Basically you upload a "class" to the blockchain and anyone can create an instance of that class for themselves.
- lmm 9y ago
  > Reading any programming language in general is difficult for majority of the people. That does not mean that computers are useless. There were bugs in the early implementations of web browsers, that does not mean that the Internet is useless. There was a bug in the Mars orbiter software (I think it was in 99) where it crashed due to some miscalculation after spending hundreds of millions on development. Does this mean that using software for space exploration is a bad idea? But the whole point of a contract as a program was that it was supposed to be easier to debug, and that wasn't true. Whereas the point of using software for space probe navigation is that it can navigate almost as well as a human while requiring less air. > I'll give you an example contract that I think could be useful: an escrow service. Let's say you want to pay someone for their work, but only if they do it. You deposit the payment into a contract with 3 keys. The contract can send money only to two places. Either back to you, or to the worker. Each key has a vote where to send the money. Once any 2 of the 3 keys have voted the money is sent. You give 1 key to yourself, 1 key to the worker and 1 key to the third party. If you are satisfied with the work, you and the worker both vote to send the money to the worker and the money gets sent without bothering the 3rd party. The third party only gets involved and decides how to vote ONLY if there is a disagreement, which should be infrequent. In a world without cryptocurrencies it's much harder to implement this. The third party would have to be much more involved. It would hold the funds for a while and then have to transfer the money. You also have to be concerned what if the 3rd party runs away with the money. This contract can be written once, and even formally verified. Anyone can than create an instance of it for their needs and specify the addresses of the 3 key holders. Basically you upload a "class" to the blockchain and anyone can create an instance of that class for themselves. Standardised escrow contracts and escrow services already exist, and charge fairly small fees. There are published template contracts and anyone with the legal skills can use such a contract themselves, and anyone without legal skills can pay any reasonably qualified lawyer to use them. Turning this into code that anyone with programming skills can use and anyone without can pay a qualified programmer to use doesn't seem to make much difference. The problem of not having a trustworthy third party sounds difficult but it isn't really, at least in countries with a functioning legal system etc. (The hard part of running an escrow service is determining whether the thing that was supposed to be paid for has actually happened - whether the grain was of acceptable quality, whether the house was as described, etc. - and the blockchain doesn't help with that part at all)
Shorel 9y ago
> all this effort to not pay lawyers to draft/read/interperet contracts due to "legalese" only to write contracts in programing languages no one can read and understand....see the doa contract which was misread by the founders, by the third party reviewer, and every single person who bought in (except the party that stole $150m via smart contract). If that seems ludicrous to you, we can all stop using computers as well. Because of the potential bugs! In reality, there are startups that aim to process actual contracts with algorithms to avoid such ambiguities.
- will_brown 9y ago
  In reality these startups are already marketing,promoting and hyping "smart contracts" as something they are not. I have no problem with a dencentralized/distributed "if this, then that" algorithms but let be honest about its real life applications and its limits...and not call them "smart contracts" capable of replacing lawyers/courts/legal systems in order to sell the tech to investors who are uneducated about the technology or law. im not saying we should not use smart contracts (computers) because there was a bug in one, I am saying the tech is being sold as something it purports to be which it is not, and that is ripe for abuse. In the case of dao, assuming there was no bug and smart contracts really were capable of contract enforcement and preventing breaches, they never needed to collect investors money up front, yet no one ever stopped to ask why they did that, well when $150m gets stolen it becomes obvious why they wanted investor funds upfront before a single investment opportunity even existed.
  - Shorel 9y ago
    No. Using algorithmic analysis of legal contracts is an entirely different approach. This startup has nothing to do with cryptocurrencies: http://beagle.ai/ http://beagle.ai/
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]

jpatokal 9y ago

Most of gold's value is indeed a "myth". Silver is the best metallic conductor, it's equally finite and not man made, yet it trades at around 1/50th of gold value, despite having considerable decorative value itself. That 50x difference is not all because gold inhibits bacterial growth (so do some plastics) or does not corrode as easily. The author's main point, though, is that perception is reality. If I accidentally offend you, your offense does not become any less real just because I didn't mean to offend you, or that you should not have been offended.

thatcat 9y ago
>That 50x difference is not all because gold inhibits bacterial growth. Silver also inhibits bacterial growth, which is why it's used in deodorants, silverware, etc.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

RexetBlell 9y ago

Reading any programming language in general is difficult for majority of the people. That does not mean that computers are useless. There were bugs in the early implementations of web browsers, that does not mean that the Internet is useless. There was a bug in the Mars orbiter software (I think it was in 99) where it crashed due to some miscalculation after spending hundreds of millions on development. Does this mean that using software for space exploration is a bad idea? I'll give you an example contract that I think could be useful: an escrow service. Let's say you want to pay someone for their work, but only if they do it. You deposit the payment into a contract with 3 keys. The contract can send money only to two places. Either back to you, or to the worker. Each key has a vote where to send the money. Once any 2 of the 3 keys have voted the money is sent. You give 1 key to yourself, 1 key to the worker and 1 key to the third party. If you are satisfied with the work, you and the worker both vote to send the money to the worker and the money gets sent without bothering the 3rd party. The third party only gets involved and decides how to vote ONLY if there is a disagreement, which should be infrequent. In a world without cryptocurrencies it's much harder to implement this. The third party would have to be much more involved. It would hold the funds for a while and then have to transfer the money. You also have to be concerned what if the 3rd party runs away with the money. This contract can be written once, and even formally verified. Anyone can than create an instance of it for their needs and specify the addresses of the 3 key holders. Basically you upload a "class" to the blockchain and anyone can create an instance of that class for themselves.

lmm 9y ago
> Reading any programming language in general is difficult for majority of the people. That does not mean that computers are useless. There were bugs in the early implementations of web browsers, that does not mean that the Internet is useless. There was a bug in the Mars orbiter software (I think it was in 99) where it crashed due to some miscalculation after spending hundreds of millions on development. Does this mean that using software for space exploration is a bad idea? But the whole point of a contract as a program was that it was supposed to be easier to debug, and that wasn't true. Whereas the point of using software for space probe navigation is that it can navigate almost as well as a human while requiring less air. > I'll give you an example contract that I think could be useful: an escrow service. Let's say you want to pay someone for their work, but only if they do it. You deposit the payment into a contract with 3 keys. The contract can send money only to two places. Either back to you, or to the worker. Each key has a vote where to send the money. Once any 2 of the 3 keys have voted the money is sent. You give 1 key to yourself, 1 key to the worker and 1 key to the third party. If you are satisfied with the work, you and the worker both vote to send the money to the worker and the money gets sent without bothering the 3rd party. The third party only gets involved and decides how to vote ONLY if there is a disagreement, which should be infrequent. In a world without cryptocurrencies it's much harder to implement this. The third party would have to be much more involved. It would hold the funds for a while and then have to transfer the money. You also have to be concerned what if the 3rd party runs away with the money. This contract can be written once, and even formally verified. Anyone can than create an instance of it for their needs and specify the addresses of the 3 key holders. Basically you upload a "class" to the blockchain and anyone can create an instance of that class for themselves. Standardised escrow contracts and escrow services already exist, and charge fairly small fees. There are published template contracts and anyone with the legal skills can use such a contract themselves, and anyone without legal skills can pay any reasonably qualified lawyer to use them. Turning this into code that anyone with programming skills can use and anyone without can pay a qualified programmer to use doesn't seem to make much difference. The problem of not having a trustworthy third party sounds difficult but it isn't really, at least in countries with a functioning legal system etc. (The hard part of running an escrow service is determining whether the thing that was supposed to be paid for has actually happened - whether the grain was of acceptable quality, whether the house was as described, etc. - and the blockchain doesn't help with that part at all)

Shorel 9y ago

> all this effort to not pay lawyers to draft/read/interperet contracts due to "legalese" only to write contracts in programing languages no one can read and understand....see the doa contract which was misread by the founders, by the third party reviewer, and every single person who bought in (except the party that stole $150m via smart contract). If that seems ludicrous to you, we can all stop using computers as well. Because of the potential bugs! In reality, there are startups that aim to process actual contracts with algorithms to avoid such ambiguities.

will_brown 9y ago
In reality these startups are already marketing,promoting and hyping "smart contracts" as something they are not. I have no problem with a dencentralized/distributed "if this, then that" algorithms but let be honest about its real life applications and its limits...and not call them "smart contracts" capable of replacing lawyers/courts/legal systems in order to sell the tech to investors who are uneducated about the technology or law. im not saying we should not use smart contracts (computers) because there was a bug in one, I am saying the tech is being sold as something it purports to be which it is not, and that is ripe for abuse. In the case of dao, assuming there was no bug and smart contracts really were capable of contract enforcement and preventing breaches, they never needed to collect investors money up front, yet no one ever stopped to ask why they did that, well when $150m gets stolen it becomes obvious why they wanted investor funds upfront before a single investment opportunity even existed.
- Shorel 9y ago
  No. Using algorithmic analysis of legal contracts is an entirely different approach. This startup has nothing to do with cryptocurrencies: http://beagle.ai/ http://beagle.ai/
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]