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I don't 'hate' blockchain. At various points, I've tried to use blockchain technology to solve various supply chain, ecommerce and even worked for a startup tha

by hluska 9y ago

I don't 'hate' blockchain. At various points, I've tried to use blockchain technology to solve various supply chain, ecommerce and even worked for a startup that wanted to apply blockchain technology to user authentication. So, I definitely don't hate blockchain, however, my experience with the technology has lead me to be extremely skeptical for these reasons: 1.) The technology feels too immature for its age. Whenever I work with a blockchain, I feel like I'm working with bleeding edge technology that was theorized months ago and released weeks ago. Yet, blockchain is about a decade old. 2.) For all the hype, blockchain is just a distributed database. 3.) There are more mature, cheaper ways to solve the vast majority of problems that distributed databases are useful for solving. This always killed off my blockchain dreams. Once I got past the (often self inflated) hype, I was always left with the actuality that I could solve each problem without a blockchain in less than half the time it would take me to solve it with a blockchain. 4.) I've been collecting data off cryptocurrency exchanges for long enough that I can make some conclusions about the market. My conclusion is that I'm significantly better at predicting results from hands of blackjack than I am from predicting results from crypto trading. Cryptocurrency is the one killer application I've found for blockchain, but it's too irrational for me to ever get involved. Long story short, in my experience, blockchain is a solution looking for a problem. This could be solved by more mature tooling, since often, as an implementor, I'm struck by how much more efficient it would be to solve distributed problems with tools other than a bc. And, the one space where bc is a great solution makes too little sense for me to get involved in.

arisAlexis 9y ago
but cryptocurrency is not for making profit. It's a killer application because its censorship resistant peer to peer digital money without counterfeiting and fungible (some of the coins). That you can't predict the price is totally irrelevant of the application and societal changes this can bring.
- cctt23 9y ago
  This is a great example of what people here hate, while not hating the underlying technology. In the midst of a ludicrous series of ICO scams and proliferation of get-rich-quick coins, it’s very clearly false. For those of us who like our Libertarianism grounded in reality, the fantastical, counterfactual version peddled in cryptocurrency circles is almost offensive.
- hluska 9y ago
  I completely agree with everything you say. In fact, those exact arguments propelled my initial interest in Bitcoin! Unfortunately though, all those good things about cryptocurrency depend on it being as easy to trade as fiat currency. That wasn't true five or six years ago, but then that could be excused because it was a new technology. But, it's still not true and that's why I'm getting more skeptical as time goes by. It isn't true for several reasons. The biggest is that value fluctuates too wildly and is highly unpredictable, so it works best as a currency if suppliers constantly change their prices and you convert your cryptocurrency to fiat as quickly as possible. But if you do quick crypto-fiat conversions, you often run into either slow transaction times or transaction fees many times higher than the most expensive payment processors. (I genuinely hope that I'm wrong and feel like a Luddite when I read this in five years.)
- AnimalMuppet 9y ago
  That may have been the initial motivation and intent. But it's not true of the reality, and hasn't been for several years. > That you can't predict the price is totally irrelevant... For something that aspires to be "money", that is highly relevant.
  - arisAlexis 9y ago
    not if the base currency is Bitcoin (I know...)

by hluska 9y ago

arisAlexis 9y ago

but cryptocurrency is not for making profit. It's a killer application because its censorship resistant peer to peer digital money without counterfeiting and fungible (some of the coins). That you can't predict the price is totally irrelevant of the application and societal changes this can bring.

cctt23 9y ago
This is a great example of what people here hate, while not hating the underlying technology. In the midst of a ludicrous series of ICO scams and proliferation of get-rich-quick coins, it’s very clearly false. For those of us who like our Libertarianism grounded in reality, the fantastical, counterfactual version peddled in cryptocurrency circles is almost offensive.
hluska 9y ago
I completely agree with everything you say. In fact, those exact arguments propelled my initial interest in Bitcoin! Unfortunately though, all those good things about cryptocurrency depend on it being as easy to trade as fiat currency. That wasn't true five or six years ago, but then that could be excused because it was a new technology. But, it's still not true and that's why I'm getting more skeptical as time goes by. It isn't true for several reasons. The biggest is that value fluctuates too wildly and is highly unpredictable, so it works best as a currency if suppliers constantly change their prices and you convert your cryptocurrency to fiat as quickly as possible. But if you do quick crypto-fiat conversions, you often run into either slow transaction times or transaction fees many times higher than the most expensive payment processors. (I genuinely hope that I'm wrong and feel like a Luddite when I read this in five years.)
AnimalMuppet 9y ago
That may have been the initial motivation and intent. But it's not true of the reality, and hasn't been for several years. > That you can't predict the price is totally irrelevant... For something that aspires to be "money", that is highly relevant.
- arisAlexis 9y ago
  not if the base currency is Bitcoin (I know...)