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> It's weird because people compare it to the early days of the Internet... but the early Internet was useful from its beginning That really depends on where y

by darawk 8y ago

> It's weird because people compare it to the early days of the Internet... but the early Internet was useful from its beginning That really depends on where you put 'beginning'. But more to the point, blockchains are useful now, just like the internet was. They're just not useful for all the things that are being promised (yet). Also, just like the internet wasn't. > Now, all we see is rampant fraud and a complete disregard for the environment [0] with no gain in efficiency. People never tire of pointing this out. Yet it completely ignores the fact that there are solutions to this problem that are in the works, and have been planned for a long time. There are lots of problems with the crypto space. Fraud is rampant. Energy consumption is wasteful, temporarily. It's also not clear that dis-intermediating human institutions is actually what we want to do. But if you think it's all a fraud, or that there is no value, then you're just not thinking very hard.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
aboodman 8y ago
> They're just not useful for all the things that are being promised (yet). Also, just like the internet wasn't. Exactly. The early internet was full of promises of taking over retail. None of that worked, at first. Instead the internet was useful for messaging and putting up personal websites. All the responsible people at the time kept whining -- how is it going to make money?? Well, people kept working on it. For years. Business cycles came and went. Eventually the promise worked out.
- pjc50 8y ago
  > The early internet was full of promises of taking over retail. None of that worked, at first. Timeframe? The early Internet was pretty non-commercial and the commercial services were generally proprietary and/or run by telecoms (Minitel, Prestel). There were a lot of failures in the 99/00 boom, but Amazon was founded in 1994. > how is it going to make money Ironically the question was more "how am I going to give you my credit card safely, given that cryptography is a technology subject to US export control".
- rspeer 8y ago
  > Exactly. The early internet was full of promises of taking over retail. None of that worked, at first. Instead the internet was useful for messaging and putting up personal websites. All the responsible people at the time kept whining -- how is it going to make money?? What? This is nonsense alternate history. The early Internet had active, useful messaging long before anyone thought it would be useful for "retail". The arrival of commercial spam on Usenet was a shock to everyone. And personal websites came before the dot-com craze.
- anyfoo 8y ago
  The Internet was useful for a lot more things than messaging (without belittling its immense importance) and putting up "personal" websites. It allowed for efficient file transfer and retrieval of information across all distances, facilitating all sort of research and collaboration in the process. It nearly instantly provided a lever to all science and technology. Online shopping was not a "promise" on which the Internet and its predecessors were built, it was merely one of an uncountable amount of use cases on top of an already useful thing. In the early days, there were always way more users that wanted to get on the Internet at more times than possible. The scale of the Internet was never capped by interest or potential applications, but by available funding and technology. To me, that sounds like the opposite of cryptocurrency.
- jonhendry18 8y ago
  "how is it going to make money" $6.00 an hour, outside of business hours, for 300 baud access to CompuServe.
  - cubano 8y ago
    OMG...me too! Don't forget The Source as well...man did I ring up some outrageous bills back then ugh.
    - jonhendry18 8y ago
      My parents cut my modem cable.
foepys 8y ago
10 years in and still nothing to show but vague promises about "things" being worked on. Ideas men all around and some fools are still giving away money for those ideas that will never see the light of day.
tenaciousDaniel 8y ago
yep. the internet was around for years before it was viable. So were computers.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  > the internet was around for years before it was viable. So were computers. The first electronic computers were purpose built to crack wartime codes [1][2]. The problem preceded the technology. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombe [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus_computer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus_computer
  - tialaramex 8y ago
    A Bombe is really, really not a computer. It has more in common with a clock, it's a fantastically complicated machine, but a computer it is not. Check out a video of them being used and it's more obvious. Colossus was a computer, although it's very unlike anything today because it isn't a stored programme computer. So it's more like one of those LCD watch games from the 1980s, it could do something else than what it's doing now, but only by literally taking it to pieces and rewiring it. But your main point is spot on. In the mid 1940s several machines including Colossus are built mostly by military groups and these fulfill different criteria for bring a "computer" as we'd understand it. But by 1950 companies are already selling these new "computers" for commercial use. The US Federal Government bought several in 1951.
- bduerst 8y ago
  Segway has been around for years and still isn't viable for more than tour rentals. Just because it's a technology doesn't guarantee it will be as successful as other technologies.
hudon 8y ago
1. What if we put "beginning" as in "before it was even called the Internet"? Indeed, ARPANET, which came online in 1969, saw fast growth in the United States in the 70s. Nodes came online to use it, not to make a quick buck. The government subsidized it because its potential use was obvious. Email started being used in 1972, FTP in 1973. To compare these world-changing technologies that were invented and used merely 5 years after ARPANET came online to CryptoKitties, which is the most useful thing to come out of a decade of work on blockchains, is a joke! And it's barely funny! 2. Of course the effect on the environment will continue to be pointed out: Ethereum's energy consumption is growing and the use cases are nowhere to be seen. So far, "plans" in the cryptocurrency space never go as expected. Satoshi didn't expect persistent forks and altcoins, for example. Vitalik advertised Ethereum as a "world computer" but it can barely stand when only 14k users are trading cartoon kitties on it. He also said Ethereum's "code is law", until he changed his mind and forked the network due to a hack. Please excuse skeptics for holding accountable those that do not have a history of consistent and successful results.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  > Nodes came online to use it, not to make a quick buck Thereby allowing use and feature development to proceed hand in hand. That synergy between makers and users is wholly non-existent in the crytocurrency space, which is primarily focussed on flipping a quick buck.
- darawk 8y ago
  > What if we put "beginning" as in "before it was even called the Internet"? Indeed, ARPANET, which came online in 1969, saw fast growth in the United States in the 70s. Nodes came online to use it, not to make a quick buck. People use cryptocurrency too. For value transfer, and to a more limited extent, for dapps like Augur. You seem to be criticizing the delta between the lofty hopes for it and it's actual usage. The early internet did not have such lofty hopes, so its growth was more organic. If you take away the pipe dreams from crypto, you have a remnant skeleton that i'd argue very much resembles the early internet. > Of course the effect on the environment will continue to be pointed out: Ethereum's energy consumption is growing and the use cases are nowhere to be seen. So far, "plans" in the cryptocurrency space never go as expected. Satoshi didn't expect persistent forks and altcoins, for example. Vitalik advertised Ethereum as a "world computer" but it can barely stand when only 14k users are trading cartoon kitties on it. He also said Ethereum's "code is law", until he changed his mind and forked the network due to a hack. Please excuse skeptics for holding accountable those that do not have a history of consistent and successful results. So, I said there are plans for solving the energy consumption issue. And your counter-argument is what, exactly? That sometimes people didn't foresee everything that might evolve? Help me understand the argument that you're making here.
na85 8y ago
>blockchains are useful now Honest question: for what? I've yet to hear a use case where blockchains are actually solving a problem, other than "buy things on the black market".
- eximius 8y ago
  I think that the EVM hasn't found its great use yet. But Cryptocurrencies in general are being used widely for international currency movements and as currency in distressed countries like Venezuela where the 'black market' is just the regular market due to government instability.
  - bduerst 8y ago
    The Venezuelan bolívar is not a good example of prime markets for cryptocurrencies. The forced exchange rates, runaway inflation, and general mismanagement has created a black market in which literally any other currency is better.
    - lurker456 8y ago
      How would you send fiat to a family member stuck in Venezuela ? I agree that the value of cryptocurrency is hugely inflated, but it's not zero either. It's a good fit in some scenarios.
      - sadturnip 8y ago
        How would said family member actually convert the crypto into something that can be spent in their day to day lives?
        aclsid 8y ago
        With an exchange that transfers money to your local bank account? I know at least two that do that for Venezuela.
      - herval 8y ago
madeofpalk 8y ago
> But more to the point, blockchains are useful now, just like the internet was. They're just not useful for all the things that are being promised (yet) How long do we have to wait to find a valid use case for blockchains? It's been 10 years now and we're still asking the same question.
- api 8y ago
  The main use case for block chains is quite obviously to skirt government regulation: black markets, unregulated securities and quasi-securities, etc. A secondary and related use case is to avoid the hassle and complexity of old fashioned equity and other fund raising constructs and to make easier international wire transfers. Putting ethical concerns aside: these are very large market segments. Cryptocurrencies may be overvalued but there's definitely a real use case. It's just not a use case that governments, banks, or conventional VCs like. I feel like all the claims to the effect that cryptocurrencies have no use case are ignoring the obvious.
  - imesh 8y ago
    Ignoring tax evasion and other white collar crimes, selling drugs alone is a $36 trillion dollar a year industry.
    - api 8y ago
      We're probably entering an era when enforcement of these kinds of laws will be either impossible or will require draconian surveillance and extreme penalties. Anything short of "iron fist" enforcement will be skirted easily using cryptography, darknets, etc.
    - gehwartzen 8y ago
      I think maybe you mean billion. The Gross World Product is around 78T USD.
  - arisAlexis 8y ago
    the main argument of Blockchain since its a public ledger is totally the opposite. total transparency in government, voting, public expenses etc.
debt 8y ago
"...then you're just not thinking very hard." Seems with all the rampant fraud that it's the developers that aren't thinking very hard.
CaptainZapp 8y ago
But if you think it's all a fraud, or that there is no value, then you're just not thinking very hard. Seriously: Where is the actual value of crypto currencies? I can see specific (limited) applications for the blockchain. But you assert that people (who may have thought long and hard about the utility of crypto currencies) are lazy thinkers. At the very minimum you could provide an argument instead of throwing around insults.
- darawk 8y ago
  I've provided them several times in this thread, i'll link you to one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17495834 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17495834
- babaeth 8y ago
  You should look into projects like Golem (https://golem.network/home/ https://golem.network/home/), it allows people to use the blockchain to perform complex calculations such as 3d rendering or training machine learning models. This is a great use case for the blockchain but you may have missed it if you only read Techcrunch articles about CryptoKitties.
sonnyblarney 8y ago
"blockchains are useful now, just like the internet was" Where is blockchain 'useful' for any common practice?
wpietri 8y ago
> That really depends on where you put 'beginning'. It does not. In 1995 the Internet was useful for 30m people. In 1985 it was useful for 30,000. Email was better than paper mail from the get-go. Networked file transfer was way better than mailing magtapes or CDs. Remote terminal connections were way better than driving or doing long-distance dialup. The Internet was not the wonder it is today, but from very early on it had clear practical use. > But more to the point, blockchains are useful now, just like the internet was. Not really. I ask regularly here, and so far there's approximately no commercial use case where blockchains are better than some other technology. The main exceptions being hype, fraud, speculation, and some light financial crime like money laundering and capital control evasion. If you have some examples, I'll of course read them with interest. My personal bet is that blockchains will be like XML: a technology that was going to be The FUTURE for a while, got put into a bunch of things (often generating large consulting revenues), and then quietly dropped later as people discovered that there were better alternatives for almost every practical use case.
- jacobush 8y ago
  XML quietly dropped? If blockchains are dropped in the same manner, it will be around forever and ever. It will outlive Cobol.
  - wpietri 8y ago
    Fair point. I haven't seen any new use it in years, and it's down to 12% of its peak interest: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=xml https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=x... (Or less, perhaps, in that I suspect the peak was earlier.) But yes, I'm sure it's in plenty of Y2K-ish enterprise systems, spreading like kudzu.
    - Animats 8y ago
      There are many widely used data formats, such as OpenDocument files, that are XML underneath, often packaged up as .zip files. Much engineering data, such as KiCAD printed circuit board layout info, is in XML. COLLADA, for 3D animation and robotics, is XML. Open Street Map is XML. If you need to represent a large, complex tree-structured data object portably, XML is still usually the way to go.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
psergeant 8y ago
> But more to the point, blockchains are useful now For about 1/20 of the applications they are suggested for, best I can tell.

by darawk 8y ago

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

aboodman 8y ago

> They're just not useful for all the things that are being promised (yet). Also, just like the internet wasn't. Exactly. The early internet was full of promises of taking over retail. None of that worked, at first. Instead the internet was useful for messaging and putting up personal websites. All the responsible people at the time kept whining -- how is it going to make money?? Well, people kept working on it. For years. Business cycles came and went. Eventually the promise worked out.

pjc50 8y ago
> The early internet was full of promises of taking over retail. None of that worked, at first. Timeframe? The early Internet was pretty non-commercial and the commercial services were generally proprietary and/or run by telecoms (Minitel, Prestel). There were a lot of failures in the 99/00 boom, but Amazon was founded in 1994. > how is it going to make money Ironically the question was more "how am I going to give you my credit card safely, given that cryptography is a technology subject to US export control".
rspeer 8y ago
> Exactly. The early internet was full of promises of taking over retail. None of that worked, at first. Instead the internet was useful for messaging and putting up personal websites. All the responsible people at the time kept whining -- how is it going to make money?? What? This is nonsense alternate history. The early Internet had active, useful messaging long before anyone thought it would be useful for "retail". The arrival of commercial spam on Usenet was a shock to everyone. And personal websites came before the dot-com craze.
anyfoo 8y ago
The Internet was useful for a lot more things than messaging (without belittling its immense importance) and putting up "personal" websites. It allowed for efficient file transfer and retrieval of information across all distances, facilitating all sort of research and collaboration in the process. It nearly instantly provided a lever to all science and technology. Online shopping was not a "promise" on which the Internet and its predecessors were built, it was merely one of an uncountable amount of use cases on top of an already useful thing. In the early days, there were always way more users that wanted to get on the Internet at more times than possible. The scale of the Internet was never capped by interest or potential applications, but by available funding and technology. To me, that sounds like the opposite of cryptocurrency.
jonhendry18 8y ago
"how is it going to make money" $6.00 an hour, outside of business hours, for 300 baud access to CompuServe.
- cubano 8y ago
  OMG...me too! Don't forget The Source as well...man did I ring up some outrageous bills back then ugh.
  - jonhendry18 8y ago
    My parents cut my modem cable.

foepys 8y ago

10 years in and still nothing to show but vague promises about "things" being worked on. Ideas men all around and some fools are still giving away money for those ideas that will never see the light of day.

tenaciousDaniel 8y ago

yep. the internet was around for years before it was viable. So were computers.

JumpCrisscross 8y ago
> the internet was around for years before it was viable. So were computers. The first electronic computers were purpose built to crack wartime codes [1][2]. The problem preceded the technology. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombe [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus_computer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus_computer
- tialaramex 8y ago
  A Bombe is really, really not a computer. It has more in common with a clock, it's a fantastically complicated machine, but a computer it is not. Check out a video of them being used and it's more obvious. Colossus was a computer, although it's very unlike anything today because it isn't a stored programme computer. So it's more like one of those LCD watch games from the 1980s, it could do something else than what it's doing now, but only by literally taking it to pieces and rewiring it. But your main point is spot on. In the mid 1940s several machines including Colossus are built mostly by military groups and these fulfill different criteria for bring a "computer" as we'd understand it. But by 1950 companies are already selling these new "computers" for commercial use. The US Federal Government bought several in 1951.
bduerst 8y ago
Segway has been around for years and still isn't viable for more than tour rentals. Just because it's a technology doesn't guarantee it will be as successful as other technologies.

hudon 8y ago

1. What if we put "beginning" as in "before it was even called the Internet"? Indeed, ARPANET, which came online in 1969, saw fast growth in the United States in the 70s. Nodes came online to use it, not to make a quick buck. The government subsidized it because its potential use was obvious. Email started being used in 1972, FTP in 1973. To compare these world-changing technologies that were invented and used merely 5 years after ARPANET came online to CryptoKitties, which is the most useful thing to come out of a decade of work on blockchains, is a joke! And it's barely funny! 2. Of course the effect on the environment will continue to be pointed out: Ethereum's energy consumption is growing and the use cases are nowhere to be seen. So far, "plans" in the cryptocurrency space never go as expected. Satoshi didn't expect persistent forks and altcoins, for example. Vitalik advertised Ethereum as a "world computer" but it can barely stand when only 14k users are trading cartoon kitties on it. He also said Ethereum's "code is law", until he changed his mind and forked the network due to a hack. Please excuse skeptics for holding accountable those that do not have a history of consistent and successful results.

JumpCrisscross 8y ago
> Nodes came online to use it, not to make a quick buck Thereby allowing use and feature development to proceed hand in hand. That synergy between makers and users is wholly non-existent in the crytocurrency space, which is primarily focussed on flipping a quick buck.
darawk 8y ago
> What if we put "beginning" as in "before it was even called the Internet"? Indeed, ARPANET, which came online in 1969, saw fast growth in the United States in the 70s. Nodes came online to use it, not to make a quick buck. People use cryptocurrency too. For value transfer, and to a more limited extent, for dapps like Augur. You seem to be criticizing the delta between the lofty hopes for it and it's actual usage. The early internet did not have such lofty hopes, so its growth was more organic. If you take away the pipe dreams from crypto, you have a remnant skeleton that i'd argue very much resembles the early internet. > Of course the effect on the environment will continue to be pointed out: Ethereum's energy consumption is growing and the use cases are nowhere to be seen. So far, "plans" in the cryptocurrency space never go as expected. Satoshi didn't expect persistent forks and altcoins, for example. Vitalik advertised Ethereum as a "world computer" but it can barely stand when only 14k users are trading cartoon kitties on it. He also said Ethereum's "code is law", until he changed his mind and forked the network due to a hack. Please excuse skeptics for holding accountable those that do not have a history of consistent and successful results. So, I said there are plans for solving the energy consumption issue. And your counter-argument is what, exactly? That sometimes people didn't foresee everything that might evolve? Help me understand the argument that you're making here.

na85 8y ago

>blockchains are useful now Honest question: for what? I've yet to hear a use case where blockchains are actually solving a problem, other than "buy things on the black market".

eximius 8y ago
I think that the EVM hasn't found its great use yet. But Cryptocurrencies in general are being used widely for international currency movements and as currency in distressed countries like Venezuela where the 'black market' is just the regular market due to government instability.
- bduerst 8y ago
  The Venezuelan bolívar is not a good example of prime markets for cryptocurrencies. The forced exchange rates, runaway inflation, and general mismanagement has created a black market in which literally any other currency is better.
  - lurker456 8y ago
    How would you send fiat to a family member stuck in Venezuela ? I agree that the value of cryptocurrency is hugely inflated, but it's not zero either. It's a good fit in some scenarios.
    - sadturnip 8y ago
      How would said family member actually convert the crypto into something that can be spent in their day to day lives?
      - aclsid 8y ago
        With an exchange that transfers money to your local bank account? I know at least two that do that for Venezuela.
    - herval 8y ago

madeofpalk 8y ago

> But more to the point, blockchains are useful now, just like the internet was. They're just not useful for all the things that are being promised (yet) How long do we have to wait to find a valid use case for blockchains? It's been 10 years now and we're still asking the same question.

api 8y ago
The main use case for block chains is quite obviously to skirt government regulation: black markets, unregulated securities and quasi-securities, etc. A secondary and related use case is to avoid the hassle and complexity of old fashioned equity and other fund raising constructs and to make easier international wire transfers. Putting ethical concerns aside: these are very large market segments. Cryptocurrencies may be overvalued but there's definitely a real use case. It's just not a use case that governments, banks, or conventional VCs like. I feel like all the claims to the effect that cryptocurrencies have no use case are ignoring the obvious.
- imesh 8y ago
  Ignoring tax evasion and other white collar crimes, selling drugs alone is a $36 trillion dollar a year industry.
  - api 8y ago
    We're probably entering an era when enforcement of these kinds of laws will be either impossible or will require draconian surveillance and extreme penalties. Anything short of "iron fist" enforcement will be skirted easily using cryptography, darknets, etc.
  - gehwartzen 8y ago
    I think maybe you mean billion. The Gross World Product is around 78T USD.
- arisAlexis 8y ago
  the main argument of Blockchain since its a public ledger is totally the opposite. total transparency in government, voting, public expenses etc.

debt 8y ago

"...then you're just not thinking very hard." Seems with all the rampant fraud that it's the developers that aren't thinking very hard.

CaptainZapp 8y ago

But if you think it's all a fraud, or that there is no value, then you're just not thinking very hard. Seriously: Where is the actual value of crypto currencies? I can see specific (limited) applications for the blockchain. But you assert that people (who may have thought long and hard about the utility of crypto currencies) are lazy thinkers. At the very minimum you could provide an argument instead of throwing around insults.

darawk 8y ago
I've provided them several times in this thread, i'll link you to one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17495834 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17495834
babaeth 8y ago
You should look into projects like Golem (https://golem.network/home/ https://golem.network/home/), it allows people to use the blockchain to perform complex calculations such as 3d rendering or training machine learning models. This is a great use case for the blockchain but you may have missed it if you only read Techcrunch articles about CryptoKitties.

sonnyblarney 8y ago

"blockchains are useful now, just like the internet was" Where is blockchain 'useful' for any common practice?

wpietri 8y ago

> That really depends on where you put 'beginning'. It does not. In 1995 the Internet was useful for 30m people. In 1985 it was useful for 30,000. Email was better than paper mail from the get-go. Networked file transfer was way better than mailing magtapes or CDs. Remote terminal connections were way better than driving or doing long-distance dialup. The Internet was not the wonder it is today, but from very early on it had clear practical use. > But more to the point, blockchains are useful now, just like the internet was. Not really. I ask regularly here, and so far there's approximately no commercial use case where blockchains are better than some other technology. The main exceptions being hype, fraud, speculation, and some light financial crime like money laundering and capital control evasion. If you have some examples, I'll of course read them with interest. My personal bet is that blockchains will be like XML: a technology that was going to be The FUTURE for a while, got put into a bunch of things (often generating large consulting revenues), and then quietly dropped later as people discovered that there were better alternatives for almost every practical use case.

jacobush 8y ago
XML quietly dropped? If blockchains are dropped in the same manner, it will be around forever and ever. It will outlive Cobol.
- wpietri 8y ago
  Fair point. I haven't seen any new use it in years, and it's down to 12% of its peak interest: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=xml https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=x... (Or less, perhaps, in that I suspect the peak was earlier.) But yes, I'm sure it's in plenty of Y2K-ish enterprise systems, spreading like kudzu.
  - Animats 8y ago
    There are many widely used data formats, such as OpenDocument files, that are XML underneath, often packaged up as .zip files. Much engineering data, such as KiCAD printed circuit board layout info, is in XML. COLLADA, for 3D animation and robotics, is XML. Open Street Map is XML. If you need to represent a large, complex tree-structured data object portably, XML is still usually the way to go.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

psergeant 8y ago

> But more to the point, blockchains are useful now For about 1/20 of the applications they are suggested for, best I can tell.