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There's no "application" of blockchain. You'd be rather thanking thoses schemes because they are feeding the hype of what would be seems as a useless techno oth

There's no "application" of blockchain. You'd be rather thanking thoses schemes because they are feeding the hype of what would be seems as a useless techno otherwise. I mean come on, anything can be done without it and using blockchain just bring unessential minor improvements like decentralization that no one cares about. Prove me wrong ...

adamnemecek 9y ago
It allows you to opt out of the monetary system that's been imposed on you by your govt. This might be less of a big deal if you live in a developed country but it's a big deal if you live in an unstable country.
- empath75 9y ago
  Instead you can put your money into a pyramid scheme run by gangsters.
  - adamnemecek 9y ago
    Kinda like the banking system?
    - buttcoinslol 9y ago
      Better the devil you know. FDIC and SIPC instill a lot more confidence in me (and every single rational investor) than uh Bitfinex or Kraken.
      - adamnemecek 9y ago
        Store it in an offline wallet.
- troels 9y ago
  So does foreign currency
- bradleyjg 9y ago
  Why not just hold most of your savings in dollars, euros, swiss franks, or whatever? Doesn't that just as effectively opt you opt?
  - adamnemecek 9y ago
    Let’s say you have to leave the country with all your saving. I’d much more comfortable carrying it in btc than cash.
    - bradleyjg 9y ago
      You don't need to hold physical cash to hold USD. You could have a bank account in London, Geneva, Paris, or New York with your pounds, franks, euros, or dollars. If you need to leave the country, your savings are already outside of it. Just like your bitcoins. The answer seems to be that repressive countries haven't yet put in place effective mechanisms to be repressive with respect to bitcoins. But there's zero reason intrinsic to bitcoin to expect that to continue. On the contrary, since everything is digital the choke points are easier to control, not harder.
      - adamnemecek 9y ago
        ofc But even opening an account abroad could be tricky. The thing is that restricting bitcoin is really hard.
      - aaomidi 9y ago
        How are you opening a bank account in a foreign country as a citizen from Iran? There are use cases for big money transfer and just "storing" money in BTC, not really for daily transactions.
      - lixtra 9y ago
        Good luck opening a bank account in Geneva as a US citizen. Unless you bring really a lot of cash they won't touch you with a 5 ft pole.
- philipov 9y ago
  You can't opt out of the monetary system that's been imposed on you by your govt, because your govt's desires are backed by the use of force[0]. Short of moving to a different country, paying off the enforcers, or going into open rebellion, everything else is a fantasy. [0]: https://xkcd.com/538/ https://xkcd.com/538/
  - tim333 9y ago
    You can opt out to an extent by doing stuff offshore even without crypto.
    - acdha 9y ago
      That’s not an option for most people and it has huge risks. Try buying anything big with no disclosed income sources or living well beyond your means and you’ll be getting caught by the people looking for drugs dealers, smugglers, etc. Most countries are pretty good at that.
    - philipov 9y ago
      Yes, the gist of it is, you are not beholden to the monetary system if you have a lot of money. Tautological isn't quite the right word for this.
kevinthew 9y ago
Yeah, crypto hype in fake technological improvements is part of this mess. People actually think there is intrinsic value in a public ledger (there isn't).
tim333 9y ago
Cryptocurrencies have proved popular for drug dealing, extortion and speculation/gambling. They will probably also help with tax evasion and money laundering. Those are applications of a sort if not very positive ones. The decentralization is necessary to put the above outside government control.
- malmsteen 9y ago
  Yeah but you're not seriously saying that the killer app that everybody is waiting for in crypto is " being useful for criminals ". If so it will be banned everywhere soon like in China and blockchain is just dead.
simias 9y ago
I can think of one use for blockchains that can't easily be replicated otherwise (at least not with the same amount of security), it's proving that you knew something at some point in time. Putting something in the blockchain is like taking a picture of it with today's newspaper next to it so to speak, except you can't photoshop it. If I made a groundbreaking discovery today, putting a sha-256 of it into the blockchain would be a very good proof later on that I actually owned it at this time. But beyond that I agree with you. My (non-technical) girlfriend is looking into cryptocurrencies lately and she watches tons of youtube videos about it while doing her research (TEDx talks and the like). Easily 90% of the claims of "blockchain is going to revolutionize X" are easily dismissed either because the blockchain can't do what the person claims or there's an other, often simpler solution to this same issue. "Use the blockchain for food traceability", "use the blockchain to validate critical equipment firmware" etc... It sounds good as long as you don't think about it for more than 10 seconds. The problem is that in order to realize that you need to have a rather deep technical knowledge about how the blockchain works, something 99% of people investing in crypto probably lack.
- acdha 9y ago
  That still doesn’t require a full blockchain: 90s PGP with multiple signatures is all you need, or going really old school, mailing a copy to yourself using registered mail. Imagine if a notary, post office, etc. set up a signing service: relational database, basic signatures for user-submitted hashes, etc. Not quite as good but much cheaper to run and much easier to have trusted by a court — I suspect most users would see no additional advantage by adding a blockchain.
  - malmsteen 9y ago
    Exactly, most people have done so for centuries. Of course with 99% reliability only, but no one cares about the 1% possibly added by blockchain (with a retarded additional computing burden to deal witg).
  - oarsinsync 9y ago
    The change is in the trust model. The centralised approach described requires that one trusts the database administrator. For a lot of things (probably the vast majority), this is good enough. For the rest, there's decentralised distributed immutable ledgers.
tetrahedr0n 9y ago
The applications are projects that require immutable data and wide distribution. Those developments haven't really been made yet. Most of the discussion today about crypto developments is centered around bitcoin. But just because something utilizes a blockchain doesn't mean it has anything to do with bitcoin. Bitcoin was the first popular application built on top of a blockchain, and arguably the most radical.

adamnemecek 9y ago

It allows you to opt out of the monetary system that's been imposed on you by your govt. This might be less of a big deal if you live in a developed country but it's a big deal if you live in an unstable country.

empath75 9y ago
Instead you can put your money into a pyramid scheme run by gangsters.
- adamnemecek 9y ago
  Kinda like the banking system?
  - buttcoinslol 9y ago
    Better the devil you know. FDIC and SIPC instill a lot more confidence in me (and every single rational investor) than uh Bitfinex or Kraken.
    - adamnemecek 9y ago
      Store it in an offline wallet.
troels 9y ago
So does foreign currency
bradleyjg 9y ago
Why not just hold most of your savings in dollars, euros, swiss franks, or whatever? Doesn't that just as effectively opt you opt?
- adamnemecek 9y ago
  Let’s say you have to leave the country with all your saving. I’d much more comfortable carrying it in btc than cash.
  - bradleyjg 9y ago
    You don't need to hold physical cash to hold USD. You could have a bank account in London, Geneva, Paris, or New York with your pounds, franks, euros, or dollars. If you need to leave the country, your savings are already outside of it. Just like your bitcoins. The answer seems to be that repressive countries haven't yet put in place effective mechanisms to be repressive with respect to bitcoins. But there's zero reason intrinsic to bitcoin to expect that to continue. On the contrary, since everything is digital the choke points are easier to control, not harder.
    - adamnemecek 9y ago
      ofc But even opening an account abroad could be tricky. The thing is that restricting bitcoin is really hard.
    - aaomidi 9y ago
      How are you opening a bank account in a foreign country as a citizen from Iran? There are use cases for big money transfer and just "storing" money in BTC, not really for daily transactions.
    - lixtra 9y ago
      Good luck opening a bank account in Geneva as a US citizen. Unless you bring really a lot of cash they won't touch you with a 5 ft pole.
philipov 9y ago
You can't opt out of the monetary system that's been imposed on you by your govt, because your govt's desires are backed by the use of force[0]. Short of moving to a different country, paying off the enforcers, or going into open rebellion, everything else is a fantasy. [0]: https://xkcd.com/538/ https://xkcd.com/538/
- tim333 9y ago
  You can opt out to an extent by doing stuff offshore even without crypto.
  - acdha 9y ago
    That’s not an option for most people and it has huge risks. Try buying anything big with no disclosed income sources or living well beyond your means and you’ll be getting caught by the people looking for drugs dealers, smugglers, etc. Most countries are pretty good at that.
  - philipov 9y ago
    Yes, the gist of it is, you are not beholden to the monetary system if you have a lot of money. Tautological isn't quite the right word for this.

kevinthew 9y ago

Yeah, crypto hype in fake technological improvements is part of this mess. People actually think there is intrinsic value in a public ledger (there isn't).

tim333 9y ago

Cryptocurrencies have proved popular for drug dealing, extortion and speculation/gambling. They will probably also help with tax evasion and money laundering. Those are applications of a sort if not very positive ones. The decentralization is necessary to put the above outside government control.

malmsteen 9y ago
Yeah but you're not seriously saying that the killer app that everybody is waiting for in crypto is " being useful for criminals ". If so it will be banned everywhere soon like in China and blockchain is just dead.

simias 9y ago

I can think of one use for blockchains that can't easily be replicated otherwise (at least not with the same amount of security), it's proving that you knew something at some point in time. Putting something in the blockchain is like taking a picture of it with today's newspaper next to it so to speak, except you can't photoshop it. If I made a groundbreaking discovery today, putting a sha-256 of it into the blockchain would be a very good proof later on that I actually owned it at this time. But beyond that I agree with you. My (non-technical) girlfriend is looking into cryptocurrencies lately and she watches tons of youtube videos about it while doing her research (TEDx talks and the like). Easily 90% of the claims of "blockchain is going to revolutionize X" are easily dismissed either because the blockchain can't do what the person claims or there's an other, often simpler solution to this same issue. "Use the blockchain for food traceability", "use the blockchain to validate critical equipment firmware" etc... It sounds good as long as you don't think about it for more than 10 seconds. The problem is that in order to realize that you need to have a rather deep technical knowledge about how the blockchain works, something 99% of people investing in crypto probably lack.

acdha 9y ago
That still doesn’t require a full blockchain: 90s PGP with multiple signatures is all you need, or going really old school, mailing a copy to yourself using registered mail. Imagine if a notary, post office, etc. set up a signing service: relational database, basic signatures for user-submitted hashes, etc. Not quite as good but much cheaper to run and much easier to have trusted by a court — I suspect most users would see no additional advantage by adding a blockchain.
- malmsteen 9y ago
  Exactly, most people have done so for centuries. Of course with 99% reliability only, but no one cares about the 1% possibly added by blockchain (with a retarded additional computing burden to deal witg).
- oarsinsync 9y ago
  The change is in the trust model. The centralised approach described requires that one trusts the database administrator. For a lot of things (probably the vast majority), this is good enough. For the rest, there's decentralised distributed immutable ledgers.

tetrahedr0n 9y ago

The applications are projects that require immutable data and wide distribution. Those developments haven't really been made yet. Most of the discussion today about crypto developments is centered around bitcoin. But just because something utilizes a blockchain doesn't mean it has anything to do with bitcoin. Bitcoin was the first popular application built on top of a blockchain, and arguably the most radical.