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Hopefully this thread will be different than all the others. Someone is likely to appear here with a counterargument, which I'm looking forward to reading. How

Hopefully this thread will be different than all the others. Someone is likely to appear here with a counterargument, which I'm looking forward to reading. However, in addition to any counterarguments, please describe why standard tech and/or a 3rd_party is insufficient for your proposed use-cases. This is HackerNews after all, and we desire the deeply technical discussion and context, not propaganda.

adamnemecek 9y ago
“What’s the point of http when you can write a custom protocol”. It’s not about the single solutions themselves, it’s about the ecosystem of solutions that you can integrate relatively painlessly. Same reason why standards are important. What do you consider standard tech btw?
dreit1 9y ago
I know this isn't an answer that you will like....but blockchain allows me to invest in high risk investments that would typically only be allowed for accredited investors. Having the shares/coins in a blockchain provides for transparency and authenticity and makes legit companies act in a way that is generally favorable for the small time investor
- Daishiman 9y ago
  Which investments?
  - dreit1 9y ago
    I'm into mainly into stuff that either pays or plans to pay dividends, NEO, WTC, ARK, ETH etc.
    - zacurry 9y ago
      Off topic - I keep hearing that WTC (Walton) is a scam . How confident are u about it ?
      - dreit1 9y ago
        It is 100% not a scam. You can watch some videos where a youtube visits the office and talks to the team here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzhXncTVOzA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzhXncTVOzA Whether or not it will be a successful project or not is up for debate.
- bob2001 9y ago
  Can you explain how having shares/coins in the blockchain increases transparency/authenticity? Easily audit-able records would exist just the same if you bought your shares via wire transfer.
  - dreit1 9y ago
    So imagine an ICO company that has a premine. You know the address of all their funds that they raised, and you know all the funds that are held through their premine. You can easily track the money to make sure nothing fishy is going on. This isn't that big of a deal for a tiny company, but imagine this for a huge corporation or government body. All of them CAN produce auditable records for the consumer, but they don't, blockchains force the issue.
- chadcmulligan 9y ago
  but isn't that just taking advantage of a (temporary) loop hole? The real problem there imho is that for some reason the government has decided that oh we need to step in and protect the unwise. Strangely this is by the same people that say government shouldn't be involved in the financial markets. There is no guarantee that having an ICO makes the investment any more bullet proof.
  - adventured 9y ago
    > There is no guarantee that having an ICO makes the investment any more bullet proof. Right now it's the exact opposite. There's nothing less bullet-proof (eg in the US) than investing into an ICO, outside of perhaps junk penny stocks.
  - dreit1 9y ago
    Entire industries can be built on regulatory loopholes, Uber and Lyft come to mind. Cryptocurrencies are forcing govts to reexamine regulations that I argue are generally favorable to massive institutions/ high net worth individuals and unfavorable to the small timers
kemonocode 9y ago
How would you expect someone in a third-world country to keep money away from a hyperinflating currency, without access to international banking? And no, we-will-suspend-your-account-if-you-look-at-us-funny PayPal is not an option. Cash in foreign currencies is extremely risky.
- aaavl2821 9y ago
  jewelry is a good option, as long as you can tell real jewelry from fake: valuable, somewhat liquid, holds value reasonably well, easy to hide, portable
  - adventured 9y ago
    You get massacred on jewelry anytime you need to actually sell it. If you paid $2,000-$3,000 for that diamond ring, you'll get $150-$200 for it from a buyer in a crunch. Jewelry being resold does anything but hold its value, it's a truly epic beating you'll take to the downside. 75-90% of the value of retail jewelry is bullshit, you're almost never paying the bulk of the retail price for the actual gold / silver / diamond, you're paying the mark-up from a store (as a validated trinket, to verify by reputation sharing that it's hopefully the real deal). Take a nice engagement ring into a pawn shop to sell it, you'll get $0.10-$0.15 on the dollar if you're lucky, and that's a good scenario where you're not under pressure to move it to an even shadier buyer. The only way to go with the concept you're suggesting, is to buy actual gold (coins or similar). With something like gold coins, you'll still suffer a discount on a need-to-sell, but it won't be nearly so bad. Do not think under any circumstances that jewelry holds its value in a resale, it holds a small fraction of its value (unless we're talking a million dollar extraordinary specimen (equivalent to art in the jewelry world), but that's a super rare context, and you'll still sell it at a hefty discount in a crunch).
- hanselot 9y ago
  This is exactly what happened in Zimbabwe.
- root_axis 9y ago
  The people who are so poor that they don't have reliable access to banking services very often are lacking reliable access to internet connected computing devices and sometimes even electricity. Additionally, trading cryptocurrency for spendable money is time consuming and expensive. The idea that cryptocurrency is a viable option for the participants of third-world economies is absurd. I'm not saying that nobody in the third-world uses cryptotokens but its very uncommon.
hanselot 9y ago
It's been a while, but https://youtu.be/WnEYakUxsHU https://youtu.be/WnEYakUxsHU has some interesting thoughts on it. Essentially trust based companies are the logical product of blockchain, but they will require an essential shift in how we approach business.
wallacoloo 9y ago
It's hard to write a good counterargument to this. The article goes in so many directions that it could never cover all his points. Any counterargument I can construct boils down to a difference of opinion & values. The author trusts his bank and his government to (a) handle his money in the way that he thinks is responsible and (b) handle disputes in a way that benefits him. On the other hand, I trust myself to handle my money responsibly, and I view my government as a great uncertainty because I don't understand the limits of their power (in the least nefarious, but relevant point, who can predict by how much my government will increase the monetary supply and deflate my purchasing power over the next decades? More nefarious, if I dissent, government can trivially lock most of my digital assets that aren't cryptocurrencies - e.g. bank account or investment funds).
- richardwhiuk 9y ago
  Sure they can - put you in prison with no internet access.
  - wallacoloo 9y ago
    Sure, but there are plenty of dissenters that manage to escape being in the physical custody of their government. One might reasonably decide to leave the country before dissenting, in some scenarios. You can bet that Edward Snowden had all his US assets seized, for example. But if he had any cryptocurrency, he may have been able to take those with him.
    - mrep 9y ago
      So, for Illegal activity? The article has already consented that illegal markets are 1 of the 2 current use cases. Got any others?
      - wallacoloo 9y ago
        > So, for Illegal activity Say I'm someone like Ed Snowden (again). I own a house, a car, the clothes on my back, and Bitcoin. I up and leave one day to share government secrets with the press and hide in a different country. Did the car aid in the crime? Probably, to some degree - it let me physically make my way to the airport, and on to journalists to whom I shared secrets. Did the house aid the crime? Did the clothes on my back aid the crime? Both of those allowed me to live a safe and comfortable life. I wouldn't have made it past airport security without my clothes, after all. Did the Bitcoin aid the crime? Only in the same sense that a treadmill and a good diet aids a bank robber by making it easier for him to leave the scene in a hurry. So I think the claim that having bitcoin in your possession when committing a crime necessarily enables that crime (to a greater deal than any other everyday thing) is a bit nebulous. It didn't facilitate the crime, it just lessened the punishment. Possession of $USD cash provides a similar thing in the form of being used to pay bail.

adamnemecek 9y ago

“What’s the point of http when you can write a custom protocol”. It’s not about the single solutions themselves, it’s about the ecosystem of solutions that you can integrate relatively painlessly. Same reason why standards are important. What do you consider standard tech btw?

dreit1 9y ago

I know this isn't an answer that you will like....but blockchain allows me to invest in high risk investments that would typically only be allowed for accredited investors. Having the shares/coins in a blockchain provides for transparency and authenticity and makes legit companies act in a way that is generally favorable for the small time investor

Daishiman 9y ago
Which investments?
- dreit1 9y ago
  I'm into mainly into stuff that either pays or plans to pay dividends, NEO, WTC, ARK, ETH etc.
  - zacurry 9y ago
    Off topic - I keep hearing that WTC (Walton) is a scam . How confident are u about it ?
    - dreit1 9y ago
      It is 100% not a scam. You can watch some videos where a youtube visits the office and talks to the team here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzhXncTVOzA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzhXncTVOzA Whether or not it will be a successful project or not is up for debate.
bob2001 9y ago
Can you explain how having shares/coins in the blockchain increases transparency/authenticity? Easily audit-able records would exist just the same if you bought your shares via wire transfer.
- dreit1 9y ago
  So imagine an ICO company that has a premine. You know the address of all their funds that they raised, and you know all the funds that are held through their premine. You can easily track the money to make sure nothing fishy is going on. This isn't that big of a deal for a tiny company, but imagine this for a huge corporation or government body. All of them CAN produce auditable records for the consumer, but they don't, blockchains force the issue.
chadcmulligan 9y ago
but isn't that just taking advantage of a (temporary) loop hole? The real problem there imho is that for some reason the government has decided that oh we need to step in and protect the unwise. Strangely this is by the same people that say government shouldn't be involved in the financial markets. There is no guarantee that having an ICO makes the investment any more bullet proof.
- adventured 9y ago
  > There is no guarantee that having an ICO makes the investment any more bullet proof. Right now it's the exact opposite. There's nothing less bullet-proof (eg in the US) than investing into an ICO, outside of perhaps junk penny stocks.
- dreit1 9y ago
  Entire industries can be built on regulatory loopholes, Uber and Lyft come to mind. Cryptocurrencies are forcing govts to reexamine regulations that I argue are generally favorable to massive institutions/ high net worth individuals and unfavorable to the small timers

kemonocode 9y ago

How would you expect someone in a third-world country to keep money away from a hyperinflating currency, without access to international banking? And no, we-will-suspend-your-account-if-you-look-at-us-funny PayPal is not an option. Cash in foreign currencies is extremely risky.

aaavl2821 9y ago
jewelry is a good option, as long as you can tell real jewelry from fake: valuable, somewhat liquid, holds value reasonably well, easy to hide, portable
- adventured 9y ago
  You get massacred on jewelry anytime you need to actually sell it. If you paid $2,000-$3,000 for that diamond ring, you'll get $150-$200 for it from a buyer in a crunch. Jewelry being resold does anything but hold its value, it's a truly epic beating you'll take to the downside. 75-90% of the value of retail jewelry is bullshit, you're almost never paying the bulk of the retail price for the actual gold / silver / diamond, you're paying the mark-up from a store (as a validated trinket, to verify by reputation sharing that it's hopefully the real deal). Take a nice engagement ring into a pawn shop to sell it, you'll get $0.10-$0.15 on the dollar if you're lucky, and that's a good scenario where you're not under pressure to move it to an even shadier buyer. The only way to go with the concept you're suggesting, is to buy actual gold (coins or similar). With something like gold coins, you'll still suffer a discount on a need-to-sell, but it won't be nearly so bad. Do not think under any circumstances that jewelry holds its value in a resale, it holds a small fraction of its value (unless we're talking a million dollar extraordinary specimen (equivalent to art in the jewelry world), but that's a super rare context, and you'll still sell it at a hefty discount in a crunch).
hanselot 9y ago
This is exactly what happened in Zimbabwe.
root_axis 9y ago
The people who are so poor that they don't have reliable access to banking services very often are lacking reliable access to internet connected computing devices and sometimes even electricity. Additionally, trading cryptocurrency for spendable money is time consuming and expensive. The idea that cryptocurrency is a viable option for the participants of third-world economies is absurd. I'm not saying that nobody in the third-world uses cryptotokens but its very uncommon.

hanselot 9y ago

It's been a while, but https://youtu.be/WnEYakUxsHU https://youtu.be/WnEYakUxsHU has some interesting thoughts on it. Essentially trust based companies are the logical product of blockchain, but they will require an essential shift in how we approach business.

wallacoloo 9y ago

It's hard to write a good counterargument to this. The article goes in so many directions that it could never cover all his points. Any counterargument I can construct boils down to a difference of opinion & values. The author trusts his bank and his government to (a) handle his money in the way that he thinks is responsible and (b) handle disputes in a way that benefits him. On the other hand, I trust myself to handle my money responsibly, and I view my government as a great uncertainty because I don't understand the limits of their power (in the least nefarious, but relevant point, who can predict by how much my government will increase the monetary supply and deflate my purchasing power over the next decades? More nefarious, if I dissent, government can trivially lock most of my digital assets that aren't cryptocurrencies - e.g. bank account or investment funds).

richardwhiuk 9y ago
Sure they can - put you in prison with no internet access.
- wallacoloo 9y ago
  Sure, but there are plenty of dissenters that manage to escape being in the physical custody of their government. One might reasonably decide to leave the country before dissenting, in some scenarios. You can bet that Edward Snowden had all his US assets seized, for example. But if he had any cryptocurrency, he may have been able to take those with him.
  - mrep 9y ago
    So, for Illegal activity? The article has already consented that illegal markets are 1 of the 2 current use cases. Got any others?
    - wallacoloo 9y ago
      > So, for Illegal activity Say I'm someone like Ed Snowden (again). I own a house, a car, the clothes on my back, and Bitcoin. I up and leave one day to share government secrets with the press and hide in a different country. Did the car aid in the crime? Probably, to some degree - it let me physically make my way to the airport, and on to journalists to whom I shared secrets. Did the house aid the crime? Did the clothes on my back aid the crime? Both of those allowed me to live a safe and comfortable life. I wouldn't have made it past airport security without my clothes, after all. Did the Bitcoin aid the crime? Only in the same sense that a treadmill and a good diet aids a bank robber by making it easier for him to leave the scene in a hurry. So I think the claim that having bitcoin in your possession when committing a crime necessarily enables that crime (to a greater deal than any other everyday thing) is a bit nebulous. It didn't facilitate the crime, it just lessened the punishment. Possession of $USD cash provides a similar thing in the form of being used to pay bail.