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Bitcoin is useful for evading currency controls, semi-anonymous digital payments, and speculation Blockchain is a new type of database that has larger applicat

Bitcoin is useful for evading currency controls, semi-anonymous digital payments, and speculation Blockchain is a new type of database that has larger applications that involve the tradeoff between efficiency and trust To answer your bigger question you have to ask yourself what you define as "progress" - is Bitcoin/blockchain new? Yes. Is either useful? Sure, for people who are looking to move money around semi anonymously, enforce more expensive supply chain tracking solutions, or make money selling new financial products. Is that progress? If you, like me, don't see new database/financial engineering that benefits a small group of technologists and financiers as potentially equal in value to the raise in standard of living across huge sections of the world brought by electrification, refrigeration, antibiotics, internal combustion engines, public roads, and white goods, then you may be interested in this thesis: https://www.nber.org/papers/w19895 https://www.nber.org/papers/w19895 "While no forecast of a future slowdown of innovation is needed, skepticism is offered here, particularly about the techno-optimists who currently believe that we are at a point of inflection leading to faster technological change. The paper offers several historical examples showing that the future of technology can be forecast 50 or even 100 years in advance and assesses widely discussed innovations anticipated to occur over the next few decades, including medical research, small robots, 3-D printing, big data, driverless vehicles, and oil-gas fracking."

21 8y ago
> brought by electrification, refrigeration, antibiotics, internal combustion engines, public roads, and white goods Most of that stuff required financial engineering. The most developed countries on Earth, with the best of those things, also have the most developed financial markets. Coincidence?
- Theodores 8y ago
  Sorry to mod you down... Antibiotics means Fleming, one guy worked it out, I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for him, my grandpa was one of the first to use penicillin and I don't see the bean-counters as having had anything to do with it, however, the war machine did. Henry Ford was the man that got America and the world motoring. He is an incredibly complex character however, he did not go to the city to raise money and he had no time for bean counters, hence the Jew-bashing nonsense that he got involved in. As for early motor innovation/discovery in Europe and America, it was the bicycle workshop that made it happen, not the bean counters with their 'financial engineering'. We are talking organic growth from paying customers buying bicycles from people that had workshops. The Wright Brothers also started with bicycles, hence the left/right hand thread they also lay claim to. Public roads also have a debt to the bicycle. Trains came before bicycles and roads ceased to connect towns when the trains were how people travelled. It was actually the bicycle and cyclists that got the roads paved, motorists were to come along a lot later. Your Interstate Highway System was again military-industrial complex, not some wonder brought to the world by bean-counters. Of course capitalism and the need to raise capital made a lot of things possible, the railways were obviously a massively speculative bubble at first. However, the industrial revolution is not a story of financial engineering. The bean counters had nothing to do with progress. And Henry Ford was not alone in wanting to avoid 'investors' like the plague. In the UK - cradle of the industrial revolution - the prominent industrialists tended to be Quakers with god rather than mammon on their side. (We skip over the slave trade part conveniently here - but you don't want that because that really is 'financial engineering', a.k.a. rape and pillage.)
  - kasey_junk 8y ago
    I don’t know if it counts as financial engineering but Ford took investments for both of his incarnations of the Ford company including from a banker.
  - 21 8y ago
    > Antibiotics means Fleming The discovery is one thing, the mass production and delivery all over the world quite another. > industrial revolution is not a story of financial engineering Financial engineering in general is invisible to the general public: > As well as industry, banking also developed during the Industrial Revolution as the demands of entrepreneurs in industries like steam led to a vast expansion of the financial system. https://www.thoughtco.com/development-of-banking-the-industrial-revolution-1221645 https://www.thoughtco.com/development-of-banking-the-industr...
village-idiot 8y ago
Blockchains aren’t new, they’re over a decade old at this point. And in what applications are blockchains superior to centralized applications?
- seibelj 8y ago
  Keeping track of an asset without a centralized authority? That’s the point of a blockchain - a sliding scale where increasing decentralization causes a decrease in efficiency, where the trade off makes sense.
  - tigershark 8y ago
    Bitcoin for sure doesn’t fulfill this requirement given that it is de facto controlled by China.
  - village-idiot 8y ago
    So, who signs the transactions? When an asset changes hands the transaction needs to be signed, how are those keys managed? How are blockchain transactions confirmed to match the real world? You have to make sure that physical assets or financial instruments are properly cleared. Not everything can live on the blockchain. Miners spend a ton of money on electricity, and this is necessary to protect the network from a 50% attack. What systems are in place to incentivize miners to spend the electricity to verify blocks?
    - seibelj 8y ago
      At a fundamental level, it tracks digital assets with certainty. This can be bitcoins, software licenses, whatever can be 100% digital. The link between the real world and the blockchain is an area of active research and innovation. Stablecoins backed by audited bank accounts are an area getting a lot of interest lately. Also, your previous criticism of blockchain being worthless because “it’s 10 years old” is meaningless. The first email was sent in the 1970’s. Technology takes time.
      - 8y ago
leppr 8y ago
Cryptocurrencies, thanks to their unstoppable and uncensorable properties, enable organic commerce in a frictionless and scalable way. At this time, I don't know if you can point out a single "industry" that will be revolutionized by cryptocurrencies. But what's certain to me is that there will be (subtle at first but no less powerful) lasting shifts in how human societies are organized, which today rely so much on governments for order and enforcement.

21 8y ago

> brought by electrification, refrigeration, antibiotics, internal combustion engines, public roads, and white goods Most of that stuff required financial engineering. The most developed countries on Earth, with the best of those things, also have the most developed financial markets. Coincidence?

Theodores 8y ago
Sorry to mod you down... Antibiotics means Fleming, one guy worked it out, I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for him, my grandpa was one of the first to use penicillin and I don't see the bean-counters as having had anything to do with it, however, the war machine did. Henry Ford was the man that got America and the world motoring. He is an incredibly complex character however, he did not go to the city to raise money and he had no time for bean counters, hence the Jew-bashing nonsense that he got involved in. As for early motor innovation/discovery in Europe and America, it was the bicycle workshop that made it happen, not the bean counters with their 'financial engineering'. We are talking organic growth from paying customers buying bicycles from people that had workshops. The Wright Brothers also started with bicycles, hence the left/right hand thread they also lay claim to. Public roads also have a debt to the bicycle. Trains came before bicycles and roads ceased to connect towns when the trains were how people travelled. It was actually the bicycle and cyclists that got the roads paved, motorists were to come along a lot later. Your Interstate Highway System was again military-industrial complex, not some wonder brought to the world by bean-counters. Of course capitalism and the need to raise capital made a lot of things possible, the railways were obviously a massively speculative bubble at first. However, the industrial revolution is not a story of financial engineering. The bean counters had nothing to do with progress. And Henry Ford was not alone in wanting to avoid 'investors' like the plague. In the UK - cradle of the industrial revolution - the prominent industrialists tended to be Quakers with god rather than mammon on their side. (We skip over the slave trade part conveniently here - but you don't want that because that really is 'financial engineering', a.k.a. rape and pillage.)
- kasey_junk 8y ago
  I don’t know if it counts as financial engineering but Ford took investments for both of his incarnations of the Ford company including from a banker.
- 21 8y ago
  > Antibiotics means Fleming The discovery is one thing, the mass production and delivery all over the world quite another. > industrial revolution is not a story of financial engineering Financial engineering in general is invisible to the general public: > As well as industry, banking also developed during the Industrial Revolution as the demands of entrepreneurs in industries like steam led to a vast expansion of the financial system. https://www.thoughtco.com/development-of-banking-the-industrial-revolution-1221645 https://www.thoughtco.com/development-of-banking-the-industr...

village-idiot 8y ago

Blockchains aren’t new, they’re over a decade old at this point. And in what applications are blockchains superior to centralized applications?

seibelj 8y ago
Keeping track of an asset without a centralized authority? That’s the point of a blockchain - a sliding scale where increasing decentralization causes a decrease in efficiency, where the trade off makes sense.
- tigershark 8y ago
  Bitcoin for sure doesn’t fulfill this requirement given that it is de facto controlled by China.
- village-idiot 8y ago
  So, who signs the transactions? When an asset changes hands the transaction needs to be signed, how are those keys managed? How are blockchain transactions confirmed to match the real world? You have to make sure that physical assets or financial instruments are properly cleared. Not everything can live on the blockchain. Miners spend a ton of money on electricity, and this is necessary to protect the network from a 50% attack. What systems are in place to incentivize miners to spend the electricity to verify blocks?
  - seibelj 8y ago
    At a fundamental level, it tracks digital assets with certainty. This can be bitcoins, software licenses, whatever can be 100% digital. The link between the real world and the blockchain is an area of active research and innovation. Stablecoins backed by audited bank accounts are an area getting a lot of interest lately. Also, your previous criticism of blockchain being worthless because “it’s 10 years old” is meaningless. The first email was sent in the 1970’s. Technology takes time.
    - 8y ago

leppr 8y ago

Cryptocurrencies, thanks to their unstoppable and uncensorable properties, enable organic commerce in a frictionless and scalable way. At this time, I don't know if you can point out a single "industry" that will be revolutionized by cryptocurrencies. But what's certain to me is that there will be (subtle at first but no less powerful) lasting shifts in how human societies are organized, which today rely so much on governments for order and enforcement.