7 ms·

> always been a community made up of shady folks That's not fair. Shady folks are just getting more publicity. Noone talks about people who created stuff that

by dpc_pw 9y ago

> always been a community made up of shady folks That's not fair. Shady folks are just getting more publicity. Noone talks about people who created stuff that works and doesn't scam people. And there's a lot of such stuff. This space is growing because of such people, despite the shady folks.

root_axis 9y ago
I didn't say they were evil, but most of the early activity around bitcoin was swirling around in the dark markets which I think is totally fair to describe as shady.
- darawk 9y ago
  Those were the users, not the creators.
  - freeflight 9y ago
    To this day nobody knows who Satoshi Nakamoto actually is, while that's not super shady it also ain't exactly transparent.
  - root_axis 9y ago
    I wasn't referring to the users, but the creators and the users are inextricable, someone "created" all those dark markets where the users participated.
Sangermaine 9y ago
>Noone talks about people who created stuff that works and doesn't scam people. And there's a lot of such stuff. No, there isn't. It's always been nebulous talk of "potential" without any concrete uses beyond scams and criminal activity. There have just been iterations of tools for those areas. Then you have the near-religious libertarian True Believers who promote as a matter of faith, regardless of what the reality is. This article remains ever-so-relevant: >Ten years in, nobody has come up with a use for blockchain https://hackernoon.com/ten-years-in-nobody-has-come-up-with-a-use-case-for-blockchain-ee98c180100 https://hackernoon.com/ten-years-in-nobody-has-come-up-with-...
- AlexCoventry 9y ago
  > It's always been nebulous talk of "potential" without any concrete uses beyond scams and criminal activity. I suppose it might count as criminal activity, but as far as I know, it's the only way to donate to Sci Hub. http://sci-hub.tw/#donate http://sci-hub.tw/#donate
  - Stranger43 9y ago
    Part of why bitcoin was semi viable before it's intentional scarcity killed all of growth potential is that any society needs a gray market of things that are illegal but often essential for social mobility(like pirated textbooks and academic papers, or unmonitored cross border communication). The problem for bitcoin arrived when people begun to see it as something that could be more then an underground activity and started treating it like an investment object and essentially reinvented the old failed concept of "wildcat currencies" with an intentional scarce currency, something made viable by the libertarian refusal to even look at the real world history of economics. What we now have is a bitcoin economy thats hit a hard(intentional) limit of growth forcing people to branch away from bitcoin as the revolutionary application of blockchain in a world where some minor advances are made in actually using the underlying theory for something other then scams, creating a market ripe for new wildcat currencies pretenting to be be "what bitcoin failed to become".
- sametmax 9y ago
  True democratic and transparent electronic voting system is a legitimate use case for the block chain. The fact it's hard to not only implement correctly, but to promote to society does not mean it's not relevant. Good things take time. Remember that people thought for some time that general relativity and the Law of large Numbers would never have practical applications.
  - shkkmo 9y ago
    > True democratic and transparent electronic voting system is a legitimate use case for the block chain. Full public transparency isn't that great a property of a voting system. And it's hard to call it a "legitimate use case" before it's successful.
Waterluvian 9y ago
I would love to see a list of CONCRETE examples of cryptocoins that are doing good, productive things TODAY.
- richardw 9y ago
  Not a list but: "UN’s World Food Programme Builds on Ethereum Blockchain Money Transfers" https://www.ccn.com/banks-begone-uns-world-food-programme-builds-ethereum-blockchain-money-transfers/ https://www.ccn.com/banks-begone-uns-world-food-programme-bu... "The pilot alone is said to save the agency $150,000 a month while eliminating a staggering 98% of bank-related transfer fees, according to Munich WFP innovation lab chief Bernhard Kowatsch."
  - gowld 9y ago
    I don't see how blockchain is relevant to that solution. Couldn't they do the same thing with any database-backed web app tracking account balances?
- flashmob 9y ago
  There you go if you want a list of concrete examples: https://pineapplefund.org/ https://pineapplefund.org/

by dpc_pw 9y ago

root_axis 9y ago

I didn't say they were evil, but most of the early activity around bitcoin was swirling around in the dark markets which I think is totally fair to describe as shady.

darawk 9y ago
Those were the users, not the creators.
- freeflight 9y ago
  To this day nobody knows who Satoshi Nakamoto actually is, while that's not super shady it also ain't exactly transparent.
- root_axis 9y ago
  I wasn't referring to the users, but the creators and the users are inextricable, someone "created" all those dark markets where the users participated.

Sangermaine 9y ago

>Noone talks about people who created stuff that works and doesn't scam people. And there's a lot of such stuff. No, there isn't. It's always been nebulous talk of "potential" without any concrete uses beyond scams and criminal activity. There have just been iterations of tools for those areas. Then you have the near-religious libertarian True Believers who promote as a matter of faith, regardless of what the reality is. This article remains ever-so-relevant: >Ten years in, nobody has come up with a use for blockchain https://hackernoon.com/ten-years-in-nobody-has-come-up-with-a-use-case-for-blockchain-ee98c180100 https://hackernoon.com/ten-years-in-nobody-has-come-up-with-...

AlexCoventry 9y ago
> It's always been nebulous talk of "potential" without any concrete uses beyond scams and criminal activity. I suppose it might count as criminal activity, but as far as I know, it's the only way to donate to Sci Hub. http://sci-hub.tw/#donate http://sci-hub.tw/#donate
- Stranger43 9y ago
  Part of why bitcoin was semi viable before it's intentional scarcity killed all of growth potential is that any society needs a gray market of things that are illegal but often essential for social mobility(like pirated textbooks and academic papers, or unmonitored cross border communication). The problem for bitcoin arrived when people begun to see it as something that could be more then an underground activity and started treating it like an investment object and essentially reinvented the old failed concept of "wildcat currencies" with an intentional scarce currency, something made viable by the libertarian refusal to even look at the real world history of economics. What we now have is a bitcoin economy thats hit a hard(intentional) limit of growth forcing people to branch away from bitcoin as the revolutionary application of blockchain in a world where some minor advances are made in actually using the underlying theory for something other then scams, creating a market ripe for new wildcat currencies pretenting to be be "what bitcoin failed to become".
sametmax 9y ago
True democratic and transparent electronic voting system is a legitimate use case for the block chain. The fact it's hard to not only implement correctly, but to promote to society does not mean it's not relevant. Good things take time. Remember that people thought for some time that general relativity and the Law of large Numbers would never have practical applications.
- shkkmo 9y ago
  > True democratic and transparent electronic voting system is a legitimate use case for the block chain. Full public transparency isn't that great a property of a voting system. And it's hard to call it a "legitimate use case" before it's successful.

Waterluvian 9y ago

I would love to see a list of CONCRETE examples of cryptocoins that are doing good, productive things TODAY.

richardw 9y ago
Not a list but: "UN’s World Food Programme Builds on Ethereum Blockchain Money Transfers" https://www.ccn.com/banks-begone-uns-world-food-programme-builds-ethereum-blockchain-money-transfers/ https://www.ccn.com/banks-begone-uns-world-food-programme-bu... "The pilot alone is said to save the agency $150,000 a month while eliminating a staggering 98% of bank-related transfer fees, according to Munich WFP innovation lab chief Bernhard Kowatsch."
- gowld 9y ago
  I don't see how blockchain is relevant to that solution. Couldn't they do the same thing with any database-backed web app tracking account balances?
flashmob 9y ago
There you go if you want a list of concrete examples: https://pineapplefund.org/ https://pineapplefund.org/