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Amazing, this blockchain technology really just keeps on giving. I have to say, it's quite entertaining to watch. It's pretty much a car crash happening in slow

Amazing, this blockchain technology really just keeps on giving. I have to say, it's quite entertaining to watch. It's pretty much a car crash happening in slow motion at this point. At least it provides something else to nerd joke about by the watercooler that isn't brexit for once.

Klathmon 8y ago
That's like saying "this whole programming thing just keeps on giving" every time a bug is discovered in any program. Those involved have been warning of the insecurity of smaller chains for a long time now, and they aren't representative of the entire ecosystem.
- brokensegue 8y ago
  well programming is providing lots of value to humanity at the moment so it gets a pass
- kryogen1c 8y ago
  > That's like saying "this whole programming thing just keeps on giving" every time a bug is discovered in any program. No it's not. Programming is a tool to create programs with. Block chain is a technological buzzword being used (and implemented) wildly inappropriately. 51% attacks are a fundamental vulnerability in decentralization. It would be like inventing programming when everyone pretends bugs don't exist at all. Bugs are inherent to the task, just like blockchains have a very narrow set of use cases, but everyone's too busy flying too close to the sun.
  - albertgoeswoof 8y ago
    There are some cool things you can do with blockchains, they’re just a little over hyped. It’s pretty neat to send funds to someone without going via a 3rd party, it’s cool to run code on a global computer, it’s awesome to have digital assets that can’t be doled out on a whim by a central authority.
    - theamk 8y ago
      ... It's great when you can lose lots of money by spilling soda on your computer?* *more money than this computer's price
      - Klathmon 8y ago
        can we not do this here please? Nobody wants that, nobody is saying they want that, there are mitigations against that (like backups), and it's a stupid straw man that's not even trying to engage in a meaningful conversation on the topic.
        root_axis 8y ago
        Nobody wants to back up their money. Just use a bank and never worry about it.
        Klathmon 8y ago
        Like how nobody wants to have their accounts frozen with no notice? Or how people don't want a private company to be able to dictate what they are allowed to buy and sell? Or how people don't want to have to be constantly vigilant to ensure their simple 16 digit number doesn't get into the wrong hands (or that the hands they are required to give it to don't misuse it) and if/when it does they quickly report it to the credit card company so they aren't on the hook for it. All money systems have tradeoffs, cryptocurrencies are just another option.
        root_axis 8y ago
        > Like how nobody wants to have their accounts frozen with no notice? This is not a concern for 99% of people. Nobody is getting their bank accounts frozen except for high profile criminals. > Or how people don't want a private company to be able to dictate what they are allowed to buy and sell Another fake problem. 99% of people can buy and sell whatever they want. There is a very very small intersection between what is legal and prohibited by the banks. Once again, this is only a use-case for criminals. > don't want to have to be constantly vigilant to ensure their simple 16 digit number doesn't get into the wrong hands Do you not see the irony in complaining about vigilance over a credit card number in a response about the work of having to back up your bank cryptocurrency private key? If your 16 digit card number is stolen just cancel the card and any fraudulent purchases will be remedied. Crpyocurrency is clearly worse in this comparison. > All money systems have tradeoffs, cryptocurrencies are just another option Cryptocurrency is not a "money system" with "trade offs", it's a hamstrung toy that facilitates some dark-market commerce and that's about it, it is otherwise demonstrably useless and certainly not an alternative for the incumbent financial system.
  - Klathmon 8y ago
    You won't find any disagreement from me that there is a LOT of garbage out there using blockchains and cryptocurrency tech inappropriately. The extreme vast majority is trash, manipulative, and awful in most every way. Not to mention the charlatans and fanboys that hype it as able to do everything and anything perfectly. But the few that use it well are doing fairly well, and innovation is happening. You shouldn't loop the entire ecosystem as one big unit making terrible choices together.
    - lokedhs 8y ago
      Are they though? I'm honestly curious as to what those things could be. A lot of people talk about good uses of blockchains, but all examples I've seen are either not actually good uses, or they have some flaw that makes practical implementation impossible (or at least highly unlikely). What examples of good use of blockchains are you thinking of?
      - sgeisler 8y ago
        * Trustless time stamping to proof that you had certain information at a certain point in time without revealing it https://opentimestamps.org/ https://opentimestamps.org/ * (depending on your stance on personal liberty) censorship resistant, pseudonymous e-cash/e-gold (Bitcoin)
        Applejinx 8y ago
        I may be failing to understand, but: If the whole concept is trustless decentralized (fill in the blank ???) profit, meaning that you can make currency or a timestamp or whatever else using blockchain, and a sufficiently large force can basically fork off of an earlier block, race ahead in secret and then take over the currency or timestamps or whatever else the blockchain's about, does this not render the replaced fork useless? As in, if it's money it doesn't count and you lost everything, if it's a timestamp it's not proof because it's not the blockchain anymore, etc? I guess this is one way to make it so raw power is the only thing that matters, expressed as 'ability to marshal computer resources on a massive scale', which costs money and so it becomes circular. Power/money gives you power/money and so on. Given enough power/money you can simply take over Bitcoin: could be happening right now. Nice :P
  - tuesdayrain 8y ago
    Blockchains are just another datastructure. A poor implementation of one doesn't necessarily mean the whole idea is fundamentally useleas.
    - b_tterc_p 8y ago
      But a vast majority of them being garbage does mean the vast majority of them are garbage
stcredzero 8y ago
I have to say, it's quite entertaining to watch. It's pretty much a car crash happening in slow motion at this point. At least it provides something else to nerd joke about by the watercooler... The above part pretty much applies to humanity as a whole, going back at least 200k years.
- shaki-dora 8y ago
  Yeah, except a good portion of the errors made in those 200k years at least had the excuse of being new. Blockchain stands apart as repeating every single problem the financial system solved over the last 300 years, while being driven by a community best defined by their arrogant dismissal of that very financial system they are reinventing, piece-by-piece. Turns out civil society (i. e. laws, courts, institutions, economics, shared fictions of value, and trust) cannot actually be replaced by an algorithm quiet as easily.
  - stcredzero 8y ago
    Yeah, except a good portion of the errors made in those 200k years at least had the excuse of being new. Blockchain stands apart as repeating every single problem the financial system solved over the last 300 years Forgetting then repeating the mistakes of the past is yet another long standing hallmark of human beings. In every age, in every place, the deeds of people remain the same. Turns out civil society (i. e. laws, courts, institutions, economics, shared fictions of value, and trust) cannot actually be replaced by an... An algorithm. A new religion. A new social theory. A new lifestyle. A new understanding...
    - rspeer 8y ago
      This comment sounds like Erlich Bachman on Silicon Valley.
      - stcredzero 8y ago
        Is he cynical about human progress? I've never seen SV. After I was assaulted over an iPhone project and complicated living situation, my ophthalmologist urged me to watch it. I actually stayed in a place billed as a "Hacker Hostel" when I first got to San Francisco. There is indeed a lot of fodder here for someone like Mike Judge.
acomjean 8y ago
To be fair, as someone who is cynical and lived through the turn of the century dot-com crash we needed a few high profile failures after the pets.com sock puppet, myspace and cue-cats almost 20 years ago.... Thank goodness for Amazon... But honestly I missed the crypto currency expansion completely. Bitcoin when I noticed it at $50, bah.... It hasn't lived up to its promise of an alternative form of payment, but it certainly increased in value rapidly. But I wouldn't count it out completely, there may be a use case that in hindsight is obvious, that we aren't seeing yet. I doubt it but it is possible (my track record is good but mixed. I was the proud owner of buy.com stock.. that didn't work out so well.. ) Plus the algorithms are kind of interesting, and the fact it works at all is kind of miraculous.
nostrademons 8y ago
That's what it was like in 2016. I remember seeing the headline for the DAO hack on HN back then and thinking "Wow, good thing I didn't invest in this Ethereum thing". Someone had told me about it in 2015, I took a quick glance and passed thinking "Looks like a scam." Then 2017 happened and the joke was on me. Then 2018 happened and the joke was on them again. New technologies are always shitshows when they get started. I remember DoubleClick ads hanging every copy of Netscape they ran on, ActiveX controls that could pwn your computer just by viewing a webpage, and unusable college Internet because the SQL Slammer worm had infected 50% of computers on campus and would reinfect anything as soon as it was plugged back in. The last was in 2003, 14 years after the Internet was introduced - put on the Bitcoin timeline, that's 4 years in the future, assuming cryptocurrency is adopted as fast as the Internet (and there're good reasons to believe it won't be). The thing about disruptive technologies is that people continue to use them despite how shitty the technology is - they're so desperate for a solution that they put up with a solution that basically doesn't work.
- aidenn0 8y ago
  I had the XP service pack burned to a CD (or maybe DVD?) because on my college campus Code Red would infect a computer on install faster than you could download the patches.
- nickpsecurity 8y ago
  "New technologies are always shitshows when they get started. " A key difference is most of the new techs like Internet, email, Paypal, and so on improved on what people already had in a way that delivered obvious value. They also came with problems. Whereas, nobody I know in real life wants the drawbacks of these cryptocurrencies that come with giving up the benefits of their current, centralized offerings. The only folks I know out here doing crypto are speculators (esp day traders). That's the difference. Now, if they wanted to solve those problems, they'd start with whatever tech/law/orgs already worked, identify their problems, and then mitigate them using proven methods. So, we're looking at credit unions, non-profits, or public-benefit companies chartered to make sure they do specific good things and don't do specific bad things. The most important stuff at least. These can be in the licenses and contracts, too, for re-enforcement. Then, centralized systems with decentralized checking of what's exchanged a la SWIFT all using existing high-performance tech we know how to secure. Open protocols and agreements for how disputes will be resolved in situations using decentralized mode with experts from both centralized and decentralized models weighing in on that. I've been talking about that in Gerard's threads on Lobsters: https://lobste.rs/s/wxqkyj/bitcoin_s_stupendous_power_waste_is_green#c_mygfqo https://lobste.rs/s/wxqkyj/bitcoin_s_stupendous_power_waste_... https://lobste.rs/s/opge2r/electricity_consumed_by_bitcoin#c_cds5tt https://lobste.rs/s/opge2r/electricity_consumed_by_bitcoin#c... I can't find the other ones sense the search feature is limited. "they're so desperate for a solution that they put up with a solution that basically doesn't work. " That's true when there's a need. This is part of a hype cycle pushing stuff people don't need to replace stuff that would meet their needs fine. Accelerated by massive amounts of money being thrown all over this area. Totally different kind of thing. The stuff that bubbles, bankruptcies, and broken dreams are made of.
zanny 8y ago
It will be crashing when the market caps start retracing previous years. Its still ridiculously high to what it was in 2016 or any year before that. We have a good five years of "evidence" to the get rich quick scheme that attracts money into crypto so a lot of ignorant naive people will keep slowly coming in to find their money lost.

Klathmon 8y ago

That's like saying "this whole programming thing just keeps on giving" every time a bug is discovered in any program. Those involved have been warning of the insecurity of smaller chains for a long time now, and they aren't representative of the entire ecosystem.

brokensegue 8y ago
well programming is providing lots of value to humanity at the moment so it gets a pass
kryogen1c 8y ago
> That's like saying "this whole programming thing just keeps on giving" every time a bug is discovered in any program. No it's not. Programming is a tool to create programs with. Block chain is a technological buzzword being used (and implemented) wildly inappropriately. 51% attacks are a fundamental vulnerability in decentralization. It would be like inventing programming when everyone pretends bugs don't exist at all. Bugs are inherent to the task, just like blockchains have a very narrow set of use cases, but everyone's too busy flying too close to the sun.
- albertgoeswoof 8y ago
  There are some cool things you can do with blockchains, they’re just a little over hyped. It’s pretty neat to send funds to someone without going via a 3rd party, it’s cool to run code on a global computer, it’s awesome to have digital assets that can’t be doled out on a whim by a central authority.
  - theamk 8y ago
    ... It's great when you can lose lots of money by spilling soda on your computer?* *more money than this computer's price
    - Klathmon 8y ago
      can we not do this here please? Nobody wants that, nobody is saying they want that, there are mitigations against that (like backups), and it's a stupid straw man that's not even trying to engage in a meaningful conversation on the topic.
      - root_axis 8y ago
        Nobody wants to back up their money. Just use a bank and never worry about it.
        Klathmon 8y ago
        Like how nobody wants to have their accounts frozen with no notice? Or how people don't want a private company to be able to dictate what they are allowed to buy and sell? Or how people don't want to have to be constantly vigilant to ensure their simple 16 digit number doesn't get into the wrong hands (or that the hands they are required to give it to don't misuse it) and if/when it does they quickly report it to the credit card company so they aren't on the hook for it. All money systems have tradeoffs, cryptocurrencies are just another option.
        root_axis 8y ago
        > Like how nobody wants to have their accounts frozen with no notice? This is not a concern for 99% of people. Nobody is getting their bank accounts frozen except for high profile criminals. > Or how people don't want a private company to be able to dictate what they are allowed to buy and sell Another fake problem. 99% of people can buy and sell whatever they want. There is a very very small intersection between what is legal and prohibited by the banks. Once again, this is only a use-case for criminals. > don't want to have to be constantly vigilant to ensure their simple 16 digit number doesn't get into the wrong hands Do you not see the irony in complaining about vigilance over a credit card number in a response about the work of having to back up your bank cryptocurrency private key? If your 16 digit card number is stolen just cancel the card and any fraudulent purchases will be remedied. Crpyocurrency is clearly worse in this comparison. > All money systems have tradeoffs, cryptocurrencies are just another option Cryptocurrency is not a "money system" with "trade offs", it's a hamstrung toy that facilitates some dark-market commerce and that's about it, it is otherwise demonstrably useless and certainly not an alternative for the incumbent financial system.
- Klathmon 8y ago
  You won't find any disagreement from me that there is a LOT of garbage out there using blockchains and cryptocurrency tech inappropriately. The extreme vast majority is trash, manipulative, and awful in most every way. Not to mention the charlatans and fanboys that hype it as able to do everything and anything perfectly. But the few that use it well are doing fairly well, and innovation is happening. You shouldn't loop the entire ecosystem as one big unit making terrible choices together.
  - lokedhs 8y ago
    Are they though? I'm honestly curious as to what those things could be. A lot of people talk about good uses of blockchains, but all examples I've seen are either not actually good uses, or they have some flaw that makes practical implementation impossible (or at least highly unlikely). What examples of good use of blockchains are you thinking of?
    - sgeisler 8y ago
      * Trustless time stamping to proof that you had certain information at a certain point in time without revealing it https://opentimestamps.org/ https://opentimestamps.org/ * (depending on your stance on personal liberty) censorship resistant, pseudonymous e-cash/e-gold (Bitcoin)
      - Applejinx 8y ago
        I may be failing to understand, but: If the whole concept is trustless decentralized (fill in the blank ???) profit, meaning that you can make currency or a timestamp or whatever else using blockchain, and a sufficiently large force can basically fork off of an earlier block, race ahead in secret and then take over the currency or timestamps or whatever else the blockchain's about, does this not render the replaced fork useless? As in, if it's money it doesn't count and you lost everything, if it's a timestamp it's not proof because it's not the blockchain anymore, etc? I guess this is one way to make it so raw power is the only thing that matters, expressed as 'ability to marshal computer resources on a massive scale', which costs money and so it becomes circular. Power/money gives you power/money and so on. Given enough power/money you can simply take over Bitcoin: could be happening right now. Nice :P
- tuesdayrain 8y ago
  Blockchains are just another datastructure. A poor implementation of one doesn't necessarily mean the whole idea is fundamentally useleas.
  - b_tterc_p 8y ago
    But a vast majority of them being garbage does mean the vast majority of them are garbage

stcredzero 8y ago

I have to say, it's quite entertaining to watch. It's pretty much a car crash happening in slow motion at this point. At least it provides something else to nerd joke about by the watercooler... The above part pretty much applies to humanity as a whole, going back at least 200k years.

shaki-dora 8y ago
Yeah, except a good portion of the errors made in those 200k years at least had the excuse of being new. Blockchain stands apart as repeating every single problem the financial system solved over the last 300 years, while being driven by a community best defined by their arrogant dismissal of that very financial system they are reinventing, piece-by-piece. Turns out civil society (i. e. laws, courts, institutions, economics, shared fictions of value, and trust) cannot actually be replaced by an algorithm quiet as easily.
- stcredzero 8y ago
  Yeah, except a good portion of the errors made in those 200k years at least had the excuse of being new. Blockchain stands apart as repeating every single problem the financial system solved over the last 300 years Forgetting then repeating the mistakes of the past is yet another long standing hallmark of human beings. In every age, in every place, the deeds of people remain the same. Turns out civil society (i. e. laws, courts, institutions, economics, shared fictions of value, and trust) cannot actually be replaced by an... An algorithm. A new religion. A new social theory. A new lifestyle. A new understanding...
  - rspeer 8y ago
    This comment sounds like Erlich Bachman on Silicon Valley.
    - stcredzero 8y ago
      Is he cynical about human progress? I've never seen SV. After I was assaulted over an iPhone project and complicated living situation, my ophthalmologist urged me to watch it. I actually stayed in a place billed as a "Hacker Hostel" when I first got to San Francisco. There is indeed a lot of fodder here for someone like Mike Judge.

acomjean 8y ago

To be fair, as someone who is cynical and lived through the turn of the century dot-com crash we needed a few high profile failures after the pets.com sock puppet, myspace and cue-cats almost 20 years ago.... Thank goodness for Amazon... But honestly I missed the crypto currency expansion completely. Bitcoin when I noticed it at $50, bah.... It hasn't lived up to its promise of an alternative form of payment, but it certainly increased in value rapidly. But I wouldn't count it out completely, there may be a use case that in hindsight is obvious, that we aren't seeing yet. I doubt it but it is possible (my track record is good but mixed. I was the proud owner of buy.com stock.. that didn't work out so well.. ) Plus the algorithms are kind of interesting, and the fact it works at all is kind of miraculous.

nostrademons 8y ago

That's what it was like in 2016. I remember seeing the headline for the DAO hack on HN back then and thinking "Wow, good thing I didn't invest in this Ethereum thing". Someone had told me about it in 2015, I took a quick glance and passed thinking "Looks like a scam." Then 2017 happened and the joke was on me. Then 2018 happened and the joke was on them again. New technologies are always shitshows when they get started. I remember DoubleClick ads hanging every copy of Netscape they ran on, ActiveX controls that could pwn your computer just by viewing a webpage, and unusable college Internet because the SQL Slammer worm had infected 50% of computers on campus and would reinfect anything as soon as it was plugged back in. The last was in 2003, 14 years after the Internet was introduced - put on the Bitcoin timeline, that's 4 years in the future, assuming cryptocurrency is adopted as fast as the Internet (and there're good reasons to believe it won't be). The thing about disruptive technologies is that people continue to use them despite how shitty the technology is - they're so desperate for a solution that they put up with a solution that basically doesn't work.

aidenn0 8y ago
I had the XP service pack burned to a CD (or maybe DVD?) because on my college campus Code Red would infect a computer on install faster than you could download the patches.
nickpsecurity 8y ago
"New technologies are always shitshows when they get started. " A key difference is most of the new techs like Internet, email, Paypal, and so on improved on what people already had in a way that delivered obvious value. They also came with problems. Whereas, nobody I know in real life wants the drawbacks of these cryptocurrencies that come with giving up the benefits of their current, centralized offerings. The only folks I know out here doing crypto are speculators (esp day traders). That's the difference. Now, if they wanted to solve those problems, they'd start with whatever tech/law/orgs already worked, identify their problems, and then mitigate them using proven methods. So, we're looking at credit unions, non-profits, or public-benefit companies chartered to make sure they do specific good things and don't do specific bad things. The most important stuff at least. These can be in the licenses and contracts, too, for re-enforcement. Then, centralized systems with decentralized checking of what's exchanged a la SWIFT all using existing high-performance tech we know how to secure. Open protocols and agreements for how disputes will be resolved in situations using decentralized mode with experts from both centralized and decentralized models weighing in on that. I've been talking about that in Gerard's threads on Lobsters: https://lobste.rs/s/wxqkyj/bitcoin_s_stupendous_power_waste_is_green#c_mygfqo https://lobste.rs/s/wxqkyj/bitcoin_s_stupendous_power_waste_... https://lobste.rs/s/opge2r/electricity_consumed_by_bitcoin#c_cds5tt https://lobste.rs/s/opge2r/electricity_consumed_by_bitcoin#c... I can't find the other ones sense the search feature is limited. "they're so desperate for a solution that they put up with a solution that basically doesn't work. " That's true when there's a need. This is part of a hype cycle pushing stuff people don't need to replace stuff that would meet their needs fine. Accelerated by massive amounts of money being thrown all over this area. Totally different kind of thing. The stuff that bubbles, bankruptcies, and broken dreams are made of.

zanny 8y ago

It will be crashing when the market caps start retracing previous years. Its still ridiculously high to what it was in 2016 or any year before that. We have a good five years of "evidence" to the get rich quick scheme that attracts money into crypto so a lot of ignorant naive people will keep slowly coming in to find their money lost.