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> There already exists a common currency through which we can trade. It's called ether, and we can use it no matter which token pairs we want to trade... Exact

> There already exists a common currency through which we can trade. It's called ether, and we can use it no matter which token pairs we want to trade... Exactly. For every ICO that pops up, ask does this use case require a special token? Often ether would be sufficient or even preferable because of greater liquidity. Exchange between digital assets can be easily facilitated with something simple like Prism: https://info.shapeshift.io/blog/2017/05/21/introducing-prism-worlds-first-trustless-portfolio-market-platform https://info.shapeshift.io/blog/2017/05/21/introducing-prism...

isubkhankulov 9y ago
if you cut through the hype, Prism is an ethereum hosted CFD (contract for difference) platform. They claim that they will be taking the other side of customer bets on portfolios initially, and hedging by buying the underlying. later, they envision other market participants will short coin portfolios. With CFD's upside and downside is capped. so neither party is investing, just betting.
- Animats 9y ago
  Prism is an ethereum hosted CFD (contract for difference) platform. Is the Tel Aviv binary option crowd somehow involved with this? Having been closed down in binary options, they've been pushing "contracts for difference" and "ladders".[1] [1] https://www.spotoption.com/products https://www.spotoption.com/products
  - isubkhankulov 9y ago
    this is aimed at cryptocurrencies and designed to not have counter-party risk. self executing smart contracts. one problem is that they may be relatively expensive because they require "gas" to execute but on the plus side they can't be shut down.
- runeks 9y ago
  What's the point of a supposedly decentralized CFD market when asset prices need to be looked up outside the chain? The reason a decentralized CFD market hasn't been built on top of Bitcoin already is that the challenge is agreeing on the market price of the assets in question, in order to calculate a difference, and this process is inherently centralized. Creating a smart contract for this makes as much sense as a smart contract for betting on the next US president: we decide the outcome of the contract by the result we feed into the contract, since the contract has no way of knowing this itself. Of course, we can always use a group of trusted intermediaries, but when doing so the decentralized property is lost, and we might as well ditch the underlying blockchain, since it doesn't provide any security benefits.
  - kolinko 9y ago
    Trusted intermediaries can be decentralised. The whole system doesn't need to be wholly decentralised or trustless - it just needs to be better than the current one all in all.
    - runeks 9y ago
      > Trusted intermediaries can be decentralised. The problem is how to reach consensus. Who decides which intermediaries have the correct view of asset prices? Ultimately, these parties will be the ones who decide the profits and losses of the participants. How is that an improvement over existing systems? How do you propose solving the problem that parties with short positions in CFDs will want intermediaries who claim the asset price is lower than reality, and parties with long positions prefer claims of higher prices? How do these two parties -- who may earn immense profits from colluding with intermediaries -- reach agreement? The whole security of the system boils down to what some intermediaries claim is the truth, and this fundamental problem is hand-waved away while pretending "blockchain technology" does anything to solve it. It's not an improvement over existing systems, it has exactly the same weaknesses (colluding intermediaries), except that it runs on top of a blockchain which makes no difference except for implementation complexity being greater.
      - 9y ago
- danmaz74 9y ago
  Interesting, but... > Upon creation, a unique smart contract tracks the value of her three assets, and holding her collateral. How does the smart contract track that value, in a manipulation- and tamper-free way? The only way seems to be through data published by centralized exchanges...
tootie 9y ago
> There already exists a common currency through which we can trade. It's called ether Also, dollars.
- jbpetersen 9y ago
  Good luck making those ERC20 compliant.
  - dullgiulio 9y ago
    Is that a prerequisite for funding a company? I wonder how the economy worked so far without a blockchain...
    - ivanbakel 9y ago
      Well, there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth, from what I gather.
  - tootie 9y ago
    I'm pretty sure I could write code that implements that interface and still steals all your money.
johnnydoebk 9y ago
>> There already exists a common currency through which we can trade. It's called ether > Exactly. For every ICO that pops up, ask does this use case require a special token? Well, creators of Ether have already got their share, didn't they? What should be the motivation of "dApp" developers in your opinion if they can't earn the way Ether developers did? Do you expect them to use Ethereum for the love of humanity? Because, you don't really need Ethereum to create decentralized applications. There were decentralized (p2p) forums way before the crypto movements. There is a decentralized (p2p) search engine that works just fine without Ethereum. If not ICO, why would I pay the Ethereum network to deploy my contract, develop an app, promote it, and then convince my users that they should pay the network to use my app, too (assuming that I hold 0.0000 of Ether and don't care about the rise of its price)?
- jxf 9y ago
  > If not ICO, why would I pay the Ethereum network to deploy my contract, develop an app, promote it, and then convince my users that they should pay the network to use my app, too (assuming that I hold 0.0000 of Ether and don't care about the rise of its price)? If you want to enforce the same properties that the Ethereum network can, but you don't want to use anything associated with the Ethereum network, then you need to write something similar. And it turns out this takes work. So you could either: (1) write your own separate distributed cryptocurrency system, which is not exactly a "crush some Red Bull and hack it in a weekend" project; or (2) use Ethereum, which already exists. As you don't have to do it yourself but you still benefit from it, some people like (2) instead of (1).
  - johnnydoebk 9y ago
    >> write your own separate distributed cryptocurrency system You don't need "cryptocurrency system" for most of the cases, do you? E.g. you don't need to solve double spending problem if all you want is a decentralized forum / messaging app / video chat. I'm not a decentralization expert but it seems to me, DHT has worked so far. And its advantage over Ethereum is that users don't have to buy some currency and pay for every message. They subscribe to the content they like and support it by hosting it. It's easy as that. You need Ethereum if you want an easy ICO, but if it's a bad thing now, then I don't know why would anybody use it.

isubkhankulov 9y ago

if you cut through the hype, Prism is an ethereum hosted CFD (contract for difference) platform. They claim that they will be taking the other side of customer bets on portfolios initially, and hedging by buying the underlying. later, they envision other market participants will short coin portfolios. With CFD's upside and downside is capped. so neither party is investing, just betting.

Animats 9y ago
Prism is an ethereum hosted CFD (contract for difference) platform. Is the Tel Aviv binary option crowd somehow involved with this? Having been closed down in binary options, they've been pushing "contracts for difference" and "ladders".[1] [1] https://www.spotoption.com/products https://www.spotoption.com/products
- isubkhankulov 9y ago
  this is aimed at cryptocurrencies and designed to not have counter-party risk. self executing smart contracts. one problem is that they may be relatively expensive because they require "gas" to execute but on the plus side they can't be shut down.
runeks 9y ago
What's the point of a supposedly decentralized CFD market when asset prices need to be looked up outside the chain? The reason a decentralized CFD market hasn't been built on top of Bitcoin already is that the challenge is agreeing on the market price of the assets in question, in order to calculate a difference, and this process is inherently centralized. Creating a smart contract for this makes as much sense as a smart contract for betting on the next US president: we decide the outcome of the contract by the result we feed into the contract, since the contract has no way of knowing this itself. Of course, we can always use a group of trusted intermediaries, but when doing so the decentralized property is lost, and we might as well ditch the underlying blockchain, since it doesn't provide any security benefits.
- kolinko 9y ago
  Trusted intermediaries can be decentralised. The whole system doesn't need to be wholly decentralised or trustless - it just needs to be better than the current one all in all.
  - runeks 9y ago
    > Trusted intermediaries can be decentralised. The problem is how to reach consensus. Who decides which intermediaries have the correct view of asset prices? Ultimately, these parties will be the ones who decide the profits and losses of the participants. How is that an improvement over existing systems? How do you propose solving the problem that parties with short positions in CFDs will want intermediaries who claim the asset price is lower than reality, and parties with long positions prefer claims of higher prices? How do these two parties -- who may earn immense profits from colluding with intermediaries -- reach agreement? The whole security of the system boils down to what some intermediaries claim is the truth, and this fundamental problem is hand-waved away while pretending "blockchain technology" does anything to solve it. It's not an improvement over existing systems, it has exactly the same weaknesses (colluding intermediaries), except that it runs on top of a blockchain which makes no difference except for implementation complexity being greater.
    - 9y ago
danmaz74 9y ago
Interesting, but... > Upon creation, a unique smart contract tracks the value of her three assets, and holding her collateral. How does the smart contract track that value, in a manipulation- and tamper-free way? The only way seems to be through data published by centralized exchanges...

tootie 9y ago

> There already exists a common currency through which we can trade. It's called ether Also, dollars.

jbpetersen 9y ago
Good luck making those ERC20 compliant.
- dullgiulio 9y ago
  Is that a prerequisite for funding a company? I wonder how the economy worked so far without a blockchain...
  - ivanbakel 9y ago
    Well, there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth, from what I gather.
- tootie 9y ago
  I'm pretty sure I could write code that implements that interface and still steals all your money.

johnnydoebk 9y ago

>> There already exists a common currency through which we can trade. It's called ether > Exactly. For every ICO that pops up, ask does this use case require a special token? Well, creators of Ether have already got their share, didn't they? What should be the motivation of "dApp" developers in your opinion if they can't earn the way Ether developers did? Do you expect them to use Ethereum for the love of humanity? Because, you don't really need Ethereum to create decentralized applications. There were decentralized (p2p) forums way before the crypto movements. There is a decentralized (p2p) search engine that works just fine without Ethereum. If not ICO, why would I pay the Ethereum network to deploy my contract, develop an app, promote it, and then convince my users that they should pay the network to use my app, too (assuming that I hold 0.0000 of Ether and don't care about the rise of its price)?

jxf 9y ago
> If not ICO, why would I pay the Ethereum network to deploy my contract, develop an app, promote it, and then convince my users that they should pay the network to use my app, too (assuming that I hold 0.0000 of Ether and don't care about the rise of its price)? If you want to enforce the same properties that the Ethereum network can, but you don't want to use anything associated with the Ethereum network, then you need to write something similar. And it turns out this takes work. So you could either: (1) write your own separate distributed cryptocurrency system, which is not exactly a "crush some Red Bull and hack it in a weekend" project; or (2) use Ethereum, which already exists. As you don't have to do it yourself but you still benefit from it, some people like (2) instead of (1).
- johnnydoebk 9y ago
  >> write your own separate distributed cryptocurrency system You don't need "cryptocurrency system" for most of the cases, do you? E.g. you don't need to solve double spending problem if all you want is a decentralized forum / messaging app / video chat. I'm not a decentralization expert but it seems to me, DHT has worked so far. And its advantage over Ethereum is that users don't have to buy some currency and pay for every message. They subscribe to the content they like and support it by hosting it. It's easy as that. You need Ethereum if you want an easy ICO, but if it's a bad thing now, then I don't know why would anybody use it.