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I don't disagree but isn't this true for the popularization of any technology. First it's just the nerds then come the less informed masses who don't fully unde

by maym86 8y ago

I don't disagree but isn't this true for the popularization of any technology. First it's just the nerds then come the less informed masses who don't fully understand the details along with the people trying to make money out of that fact.

mlinksva 8y ago
https://digitopoly.org/2018/06/21/the-paradox-of-technological-deja-vu/ https://digitopoly.org/2018/06/21/the-paradox-of-technologic... sort of takes that point of view.
eksemplar 8y ago
I think crypto is different in the way it actually doesn’t do anything. Bitcoin has been around for 9 years and you have never been able to use bitcoin as a currency fewer places than you can now.
- Taek 8y ago
  9 years is not very long for an emerging technology. AI has been around since the 60's. Arpanet was established in 1969. Electricity was relatively well understood in 1750 (we had batteries that could store electrical charge) but the electric lightbulb wasn't invented until more than 100 years later. Bitcoin is very early, it's core infrastructure, it's going to take time to get established, and once it does get established it's going to change society as much as electricity did.
  - eksemplar 8y ago
    I work in the public sector, we’ve done quite a few proof of concepts on blockchain over the years, because we have actual use cases where a decentralized system makes sense. Like land registry, keeping bi-temporal records and case flows where citizens can follow their progress from home. We’ve yet to make it work though. Decentralized voting is too vulnerable and mining is too anti-climate, so it’s really all turning out to a big pile of nothing. My colleagues in banking are running into the same issues. The only place I’ve seen blockchain put to good use is at Maersk, who runs their claims of ownership on the tech. Because of port corruption, the claim of ownership linked to a container is more expensive to ship than the container itself, even though it’s a single a4 document. Their blockchain isn’t really decentralized though. By comparison the arpanet had an instant use case, so did electricity. They took time to spread, like everything new does, but they are very different from the blockchain in the way they weren’t searching for a reason to exist.
    - catamorphismic 8y ago
      Blockchains aren't searching for a reason to exist either. Decentralized currencies/conmodities not controlled by any single entity are an obviously useful thing.
      - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
        > Decentralized currencies/conmodities not controlled by any single entity are an obviously useful thing Obviously useful things have obvious uses.
        dave7 8y ago
        Some people may take issue with morality etc, but cryptocurrencies (Bitcoin mainly) are now the default means for transferring funds back and forth to sports book / poker / casino websites for US residents, and probably elsewhere where the legal climate is oppressive.
    - Taek 8y ago
      Blockchains do have instant use cases. Remittances being one huge example, for many years blockchains were the cheapest way to send money across borders, and for many countries they still are, though they've put a lot of pressure on banks to reduce the prices of remittances. Other types of digital international payments have also been made a lot easier. You don't need to sign an agreement with a credit card company or a bank to start accepting money from a blockchain, you just run a node an you are good to go. Especially for use cases where payments are typically high risk or denied altogether (shipping expensive hardware, adult entertainment, or any business with a generally high fraud rate and chargeback rate). Blockchains also allow for completely transparent, auditable, provably fair gambling, something you simply can't achieve in the physical world. ------ A lot of the blockchain projects that have kicked off do not understand the limitations and uses of blockchain technology. For example, decentralized land ownership and decentralized voting are both things that you fundamentally can't get fully secure using a blockchain. Land is a physical asset, and it will always be a government or police force that ultimately decides who owns a property. The blockchain may say one thing, but that result has to be defended in the physical world by someone who agrees with the blockchain results. Voting is the same way. Identity is inherently centralized, there is no way to connect a physical human being to a single identity in the digital world unless there's some centralized entity like a government managing the ID system. One big use case that's around the corner but needs more foundational technology work is point of sale payments. It seems like the adoption curve has been going backwards on those for blockchain, however this is because layer 1 fees have been getting more expensive, and attackers have finally started exploiting weaknesses like zero confirmation payments, something that originally a lot of blockchain proponents asserted was secure (core developers never endorsed this notion, however core developers rarely had control of the blockchain narrative). As more user friendly, more secure, and more scalable solutions like the lightning network come online, we will see point of sale payments using blockchain technology pick up again. We're still probably 1-2 years out from the lightning network being production ready, so merchants are still generally discouraged from using it for daily business. But it's going to get there and when it's ready the scalability will be on the order of tens of millions of daily users. We have the cryptography and technology to get from tens of millions to hundreds of millions, but again that's technology and research which is just now coming out, won't be in production for another 5-8 years by my estimations. Whether or not you choose to believe it, there are tens of thousands of businesses out there today tackling markets and buyers that would be completely unavailable to them without the use of blockchains. And that's because blockchains make payment rails viable that simply aren't viable when you are stuck with traditional systems like credit cards, paypal, stripe, and bank transfers.
- tluyben2 8y ago
  Any data to back that up ? I know anecdotal, but I can buy beers, taxi & coffee with crypto which I could not 9 years ago and I see quite a lot of ATMs appearing; NL/UK/JP/HK. I think the main point is that I can get a coffee with crypto, which is an important milestone.
  - eksemplar 8y ago
    Maybe it’s because I’m European, but 8 years ago I could buy coffee with crypto in both Copenhagen and Berlin and today I can’t.
    - SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
      Because it’s not a currency anymore it’s a commodity. That first time you had to explain to your mom or aunt what Bitcoin is becsuse they saw it on TV news or radio - that’s the time it became too risky for retailers to trust it.
    - tluyben2 8y ago
      Did they ban it in Copenhagen and Berlin? In general? Or just not enough demand so they threw it out?
      - eksemplar 8y ago
        It’s not illegal, it’s just really inconvenient. Today we’ve linked instant payment methods to our credit cards, if the card isn’t rfid enabled on its own. So you just swipe your payment method and you’re done. We even have a banking app that lets you instantly transfer funds between you, between banks as well, for free. Called mobile pay. So smaller stores that can’t afford to have a credit card system, use that. So that’s on the payment side. It’s also extremely tedious, and expensive, to turn the bitcoin into actual cash + taxation makes selling a coffee with crypto a bad business case. Honestly though, I think it’s mostly down to a complete lack of demand.
        sparkie 8y ago
- awt 8y ago
  Government bonds have been around for hundreds of years but I can't buy coffee with them. Thus they don't do anything.
  - herrokan 8y ago
    Government bonds aren't meant to be a currency, cryptocurrencies are.
    - awt 8y ago
      I don't see the relationship between "meant to be" and "is" here. Doesn't it only matter what it actually is rather than what some people thought it might be?
      - herrokan 8y ago
        Well, what are cryptocurrencies then? Besides a hyper speculative "asset" for gamblers of course.
  - Abidarn 8y ago
    Not a great analogy. Government bonds were never meant to be a currency. Bitcoin was advertised as a currency. Yet its adoption for that purpose, despite the massive network available for its propagation, has yet to materialize.
    - awt 8y ago
      What it was "meant to be" hardly matters. What it actually is is more important than the misrepresentations presented by various misinformed parties.
      - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
        > What it actually is is more important than the misrepresentations presented by various misinformed parties Fair enough. Government bonds let countries deficit spend. They are also a stable store of value. These attributes make them useful. Bitcoin is neither of these. Like government bonds, it does not behave like money.
agumonkey 8y ago
Except this time it's not "tech" it's money, and money is wired quite deep in your mind as the force of anything. So many people are spending time on btc (I was, and it made me feel all kind of weirds listening to these people and following their games)

by maym86 8y ago

mlinksva 8y ago

https://digitopoly.org/2018/06/21/the-paradox-of-technological-deja-vu/ https://digitopoly.org/2018/06/21/the-paradox-of-technologic... sort of takes that point of view.

eksemplar 8y ago

I think crypto is different in the way it actually doesn’t do anything. Bitcoin has been around for 9 years and you have never been able to use bitcoin as a currency fewer places than you can now.

Taek 8y ago
9 years is not very long for an emerging technology. AI has been around since the 60's. Arpanet was established in 1969. Electricity was relatively well understood in 1750 (we had batteries that could store electrical charge) but the electric lightbulb wasn't invented until more than 100 years later. Bitcoin is very early, it's core infrastructure, it's going to take time to get established, and once it does get established it's going to change society as much as electricity did.
- eksemplar 8y ago
  I work in the public sector, we’ve done quite a few proof of concepts on blockchain over the years, because we have actual use cases where a decentralized system makes sense. Like land registry, keeping bi-temporal records and case flows where citizens can follow their progress from home. We’ve yet to make it work though. Decentralized voting is too vulnerable and mining is too anti-climate, so it’s really all turning out to a big pile of nothing. My colleagues in banking are running into the same issues. The only place I’ve seen blockchain put to good use is at Maersk, who runs their claims of ownership on the tech. Because of port corruption, the claim of ownership linked to a container is more expensive to ship than the container itself, even though it’s a single a4 document. Their blockchain isn’t really decentralized though. By comparison the arpanet had an instant use case, so did electricity. They took time to spread, like everything new does, but they are very different from the blockchain in the way they weren’t searching for a reason to exist.
  - catamorphismic 8y ago
    Blockchains aren't searching for a reason to exist either. Decentralized currencies/conmodities not controlled by any single entity are an obviously useful thing.
    - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
      > Decentralized currencies/conmodities not controlled by any single entity are an obviously useful thing Obviously useful things have obvious uses.
      - dave7 8y ago
        Some people may take issue with morality etc, but cryptocurrencies (Bitcoin mainly) are now the default means for transferring funds back and forth to sports book / poker / casino websites for US residents, and probably elsewhere where the legal climate is oppressive.
  - Taek 8y ago
    Blockchains do have instant use cases. Remittances being one huge example, for many years blockchains were the cheapest way to send money across borders, and for many countries they still are, though they've put a lot of pressure on banks to reduce the prices of remittances. Other types of digital international payments have also been made a lot easier. You don't need to sign an agreement with a credit card company or a bank to start accepting money from a blockchain, you just run a node an you are good to go. Especially for use cases where payments are typically high risk or denied altogether (shipping expensive hardware, adult entertainment, or any business with a generally high fraud rate and chargeback rate). Blockchains also allow for completely transparent, auditable, provably fair gambling, something you simply can't achieve in the physical world. ------ A lot of the blockchain projects that have kicked off do not understand the limitations and uses of blockchain technology. For example, decentralized land ownership and decentralized voting are both things that you fundamentally can't get fully secure using a blockchain. Land is a physical asset, and it will always be a government or police force that ultimately decides who owns a property. The blockchain may say one thing, but that result has to be defended in the physical world by someone who agrees with the blockchain results. Voting is the same way. Identity is inherently centralized, there is no way to connect a physical human being to a single identity in the digital world unless there's some centralized entity like a government managing the ID system. One big use case that's around the corner but needs more foundational technology work is point of sale payments. It seems like the adoption curve has been going backwards on those for blockchain, however this is because layer 1 fees have been getting more expensive, and attackers have finally started exploiting weaknesses like zero confirmation payments, something that originally a lot of blockchain proponents asserted was secure (core developers never endorsed this notion, however core developers rarely had control of the blockchain narrative). As more user friendly, more secure, and more scalable solutions like the lightning network come online, we will see point of sale payments using blockchain technology pick up again. We're still probably 1-2 years out from the lightning network being production ready, so merchants are still generally discouraged from using it for daily business. But it's going to get there and when it's ready the scalability will be on the order of tens of millions of daily users. We have the cryptography and technology to get from tens of millions to hundreds of millions, but again that's technology and research which is just now coming out, won't be in production for another 5-8 years by my estimations. Whether or not you choose to believe it, there are tens of thousands of businesses out there today tackling markets and buyers that would be completely unavailable to them without the use of blockchains. And that's because blockchains make payment rails viable that simply aren't viable when you are stuck with traditional systems like credit cards, paypal, stripe, and bank transfers.
tluyben2 8y ago
Any data to back that up ? I know anecdotal, but I can buy beers, taxi & coffee with crypto which I could not 9 years ago and I see quite a lot of ATMs appearing; NL/UK/JP/HK. I think the main point is that I can get a coffee with crypto, which is an important milestone.
- eksemplar 8y ago
  Maybe it’s because I’m European, but 8 years ago I could buy coffee with crypto in both Copenhagen and Berlin and today I can’t.
  - SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
    Because it’s not a currency anymore it’s a commodity. That first time you had to explain to your mom or aunt what Bitcoin is becsuse they saw it on TV news or radio - that’s the time it became too risky for retailers to trust it.
  - tluyben2 8y ago
    Did they ban it in Copenhagen and Berlin? In general? Or just not enough demand so they threw it out?
    - eksemplar 8y ago
      It’s not illegal, it’s just really inconvenient. Today we’ve linked instant payment methods to our credit cards, if the card isn’t rfid enabled on its own. So you just swipe your payment method and you’re done. We even have a banking app that lets you instantly transfer funds between you, between banks as well, for free. Called mobile pay. So smaller stores that can’t afford to have a credit card system, use that. So that’s on the payment side. It’s also extremely tedious, and expensive, to turn the bitcoin into actual cash + taxation makes selling a coffee with crypto a bad business case. Honestly though, I think it’s mostly down to a complete lack of demand.
      - sparkie 8y ago
awt 8y ago
Government bonds have been around for hundreds of years but I can't buy coffee with them. Thus they don't do anything.
- herrokan 8y ago
  Government bonds aren't meant to be a currency, cryptocurrencies are.
  - awt 8y ago
    I don't see the relationship between "meant to be" and "is" here. Doesn't it only matter what it actually is rather than what some people thought it might be?
    - herrokan 8y ago
      Well, what are cryptocurrencies then? Besides a hyper speculative "asset" for gamblers of course.
- Abidarn 8y ago
  Not a great analogy. Government bonds were never meant to be a currency. Bitcoin was advertised as a currency. Yet its adoption for that purpose, despite the massive network available for its propagation, has yet to materialize.
  - awt 8y ago
    What it was "meant to be" hardly matters. What it actually is is more important than the misrepresentations presented by various misinformed parties.
    - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
      > What it actually is is more important than the misrepresentations presented by various misinformed parties Fair enough. Government bonds let countries deficit spend. They are also a stable store of value. These attributes make them useful. Bitcoin is neither of these. Like government bonds, it does not behave like money.

agumonkey 8y ago

Except this time it's not "tech" it's money, and money is wired quite deep in your mind as the force of anything. So many people are spending time on btc (I was, and it made me feel all kind of weirds listening to these people and following their games)