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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 ma

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
  - acdha 8y ago
    > censorship resistant, pseudonymous e-cash/e-gold (Bitcoin) Bitcoin not only doesn’t deliver on those claims, it’s actively dangerous because it leaves an immutable public record of your activities, as numerous court cases have shown. There’s a reason why the mob doesn’t publish their ledgers. “Censorship resistant” is also a complex claim since the network is trivially blocked as a whole, and the inability to comply with legal demands means that anyone legitimate faces risks which will encourage them to stop participating, reducing the defense for allowing it at all and removing the traffic everyone else is hoping to hide behind.
    - jki275 8y ago
      He said pseudonymous, not anonymous... It's censorship resistant in its use. It only becomes an issue in terms of actually cashing out -- but that's not necessarily required.
      - acdha 8y ago
        > He said pseudonymous, not anonymous... That's why I said it's dangerous: telling people a word which sounds like anonymous but actually means “irrepudiable proof of identity” is setting them up to make decisions under the belief that they are closer to anonymous than they actually are. Given how proponents like to proclaim benefits for people in countries with repressive governments, that's just irresponsible. > It's censorship resistant in its use. It only becomes an issue in terms of actually cashing out -- but that's not necessarily required. What does that even mean? A government can block it easily because the design requires you to be on the network and the lack of anonymity means that anyone who attempts to bypass those restrictions has valid reasons to fear reprisal.
        jki275 8y ago
        Well, they're two concepts with quite different meanings -- I'm not sure how you do better than explaining it that way. I've always explained bitcoin that way, and I think most people understand it that way now. "the network" is a concept that doesn't necessarily mean "the public internet". Also, it really doesn't require everyone to be on the network -- it requires a network to exist. And pseudonymity can be "good enough". The point was that the entire ecosystem can exist independent of cashing it out to fiat -- that point can be somewhat controlled, but it's not necessarily required.

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
- acdha 8y ago
  > censorship resistant, pseudonymous e-cash/e-gold (Bitcoin) Bitcoin not only doesn’t deliver on those claims, it’s actively dangerous because it leaves an immutable public record of your activities, as numerous court cases have shown. There’s a reason why the mob doesn’t publish their ledgers. “Censorship resistant” is also a complex claim since the network is trivially blocked as a whole, and the inability to comply with legal demands means that anyone legitimate faces risks which will encourage them to stop participating, reducing the defense for allowing it at all and removing the traffic everyone else is hoping to hide behind.
  - jki275 8y ago
    He said pseudonymous, not anonymous... It's censorship resistant in its use. It only becomes an issue in terms of actually cashing out -- but that's not necessarily required.
    - acdha 8y ago
      > He said pseudonymous, not anonymous... That's why I said it's dangerous: telling people a word which sounds like anonymous but actually means “irrepudiable proof of identity” is setting them up to make decisions under the belief that they are closer to anonymous than they actually are. Given how proponents like to proclaim benefits for people in countries with repressive governments, that's just irresponsible. > It's censorship resistant in its use. It only becomes an issue in terms of actually cashing out -- but that's not necessarily required. What does that even mean? A government can block it easily because the design requires you to be on the network and the lack of anonymity means that anyone who attempts to bypass those restrictions has valid reasons to fear reprisal.
      - jki275 8y ago
        Well, they're two concepts with quite different meanings -- I'm not sure how you do better than explaining it that way. I've always explained bitcoin that way, and I think most people understand it that way now. "the network" is a concept that doesn't necessarily mean "the public internet". Also, it really doesn't require everyone to be on the network -- it requires a network to exist. And pseudonymity can be "good enough". The point was that the entire ecosystem can exist independent of cashing it out to fiat -- that point can be somewhat controlled, but it's not necessarily required.