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Cryptocurrency/web3 is at its core just technology. Fundamentally, the technology is still not that far advanced from the early Bitcoin days, but the little tha

by leppr 6y ago

Cryptocurrency/web3 is at its core just technology. Fundamentally, the technology is still not that far advanced from the early Bitcoin days, but the little that is currently implemented successfully allows for ponzis and gambling. Cryptocurrencies currently trade for over $2 trillion, most of that value may indeed be a net negative for society, but that doesn't say anything about the core technology in itself. If cryptocurrency didn't exist, people would be trading tulip bulbs or pumping stocks like TSLA to $700B (oh wait...). This may be a relatively lawless environment, but as for its current atmosphere, blame the world's central banks, not the crypto builders who are mostly as disgusted by the current situation as sidelined observers. Decentralized networks have the potential to resolve many of the issues we techies love to complain about. Only a tiny percentage of that $2 trillion is allocated to teams actually working on solving these issues (Binance and Coinbase definitely aren't a part of it), so please try to reserve your judgment when you see developments coming out of crypto. Most of it is under-developed, over-hyped, and just an extension of the tech-bubble ponzi, but some of it will actually change the world. In the same way Tesla is actually positive to society overall and we shouldn't shun their cars just because the company's stock is a meme used in zero-sum-game gambling.

Daishiman 6y ago
> Decentralized networks have the potential to resolve many of the issues we techies love to complain about. I continue to hear this yet I never get a _single_ convincing example from DeFi advocates.
- intotheabyss 6y ago
  Just take Uniswap for example. Now imagine that every asset on the planet could be represented by a fungible or non-fungible token. You can put a Uniswap plugin into any browser and you now have a universal way to swap between any assets you want, 24/7. You could buy real estate, bonds, gold, stocks, currencies, all from your browser. Now obviously this is not quite a a reality today. Most things exchanged on Uniswap are crypto tokens, but there are a lot of synthetic assets today, like mTSLA (which is a synthetic share of TSLA) and many more. So now I can hold stocks in my Metamask account today. Sure, it's only price exposure, it's not like TSLA has dividends anyway. And then there's the oracle problem when it comes to real world assets, but this is solvable with existing legal systems, and soon, crypto legal systems like OpenLaw. So yeah, Uniswap is my go to example of the power of DeFi.
  - Daishiman 6y ago
    > You could buy real estate, bonds, gold, stocks, currencies, all from your browser. I'm not sure what world you live in where the biggest problem with buying a six-figure investment instruments is that _I can't do it from my browser_. There's about a thousand things more important in my mind when it comes to investing. For a day trader this might be a problem. For decades-long instruments it isn't. All the things you mention have issues that go beyond a browser. You could log on to a real estate page and buy a house and that's technically possible, and digital token doesn't do a damn to improve the experience. I am a thousand times more likely to run into legal permits issues, KYC and anti-money laundering forms, getting stuck reading contractual obligations that certain assets require, etc.
    - intotheabyss 6y ago
      That's easy for you to say, but there's plenty of people on this planet that don't have access to any financial markets. Now with a smartphone, browser and internet connection, they can buy exposure to US equities without a brokerage from any country. But it's so much more than that. Have a little imagination. Digital assets could very well be the dominant forms of assets in the future, so easy access to markets to trade these is important. You just disagree that this has importance, but the market says otherwise, since people are very interested in using Uniswap, and volume will only grow from here. It's undeniable that this is a usecase, and I remember only a couple of years ago that HN would say that Ethereum is completely useless, and yet here we are.
      - mbesto 6y ago
        > Now with a smartphone, browser and internet connection, they can buy exposure to US equities without a brokerage from any country. 1. While this is technically become realer and realer every day, it's becoming less and less logistically due to regulation. 2. Eventually people will realize that the frictionless experience of crypto is also its greatest security risk[0]. Why do you think the Winklevoss twins store their wallet backup codes in...you guessed it...BANKS! ha.[1] The Winklevosses came up with an elaborate system to store and secure their own private keys. They cut up printouts of their private keys into pieces and then distributed them in envelopes to safe deposit boxes around the country, so if one envelope were stolen the thief would not have the entire key. [0] - https://gist.github.com/chitchcock/1281611 https://gist.github.com/chitchcock/1281611 [1] - https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/19/technology/bitcoin-winklevoss-twins.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/19/technology/bitcoin-winkle...
- leppr 6y ago
  Community-governed vs. advertiser-dictated networks. Free markets. It's a wide topic, I'm surprised you can't find a single usecase you would use or think makes sense. If it can help you imagine some, take the decentralized primitives: a money/value transfer network, a reputation network, a content delivery network. Starting from those, many currently gimped online services could be replicated in a way that incentivizes behaviors which benefit users, more than the platform owner. Local economies that currently function only through local, unscalable networks of trust could be brought online. Of course, if you believe everything is better done in a way that can be regulated by a central entity, then crypto as it stands won't do anything for you (although public ledgers do make investigations easier). Core to crypto is a belief that P2P networks are superior to centrally managed ones.
  - natmaka 6y ago
    > Core to crypto is a belief that P2P networks are superior to centrally managed ones. This. And maybe also that "automatic" processing (enabled by maths) is more efficient and solid than human beings, especially when it relates to trust. Any "anti-cryptocurrencies" stance has IMHO to state why cryptocurrencies affect him/her author, or anybody else. Stating that it is useless is just an opinion. Many things are judged "useless" by many, let's for example take "billiard": there is AFAIK no solid and widely accepted "anti-billiard" stance. If there is no harm, there is no reason to ban.
  - Daishiman 6y ago
    The statement that P2P networks are superior to centrally managed ones stands far from reality. There is a certain class of problems where this is true. But like in most computer science problems, distributed systems have a ton of flaws and inneficiencies. Moreover, trust isn't something mediated by computers. Trust is a question of human societies. Algorithmic trust is not arbiter of trust any more than the thousands of electronic trust schemes, which get gamed at some point or another and where human intervention is necessary for course correction given a measure of authority. Computer systems aren't outside of human law or common principles of human trust or institutions. BTC and all those other networks are just as if not more vulnerable to being gamed as any other system.
- dwild 6y ago
  Seems like the Theta token is the example that you seems to look for. Cancel culture is a recurring subject recently on HN, between Twitch which that will shutdown channels that infringed outsides of their platform and Youtube which demonetize so many kind of content... This solve both.

by leppr 6y ago

Daishiman 6y ago

> Decentralized networks have the potential to resolve many of the issues we techies love to complain about. I continue to hear this yet I never get a _single_ convincing example from DeFi advocates.

intotheabyss 6y ago
Just take Uniswap for example. Now imagine that every asset on the planet could be represented by a fungible or non-fungible token. You can put a Uniswap plugin into any browser and you now have a universal way to swap between any assets you want, 24/7. You could buy real estate, bonds, gold, stocks, currencies, all from your browser. Now obviously this is not quite a a reality today. Most things exchanged on Uniswap are crypto tokens, but there are a lot of synthetic assets today, like mTSLA (which is a synthetic share of TSLA) and many more. So now I can hold stocks in my Metamask account today. Sure, it's only price exposure, it's not like TSLA has dividends anyway. And then there's the oracle problem when it comes to real world assets, but this is solvable with existing legal systems, and soon, crypto legal systems like OpenLaw. So yeah, Uniswap is my go to example of the power of DeFi.
- Daishiman 6y ago
  > You could buy real estate, bonds, gold, stocks, currencies, all from your browser. I'm not sure what world you live in where the biggest problem with buying a six-figure investment instruments is that _I can't do it from my browser_. There's about a thousand things more important in my mind when it comes to investing. For a day trader this might be a problem. For decades-long instruments it isn't. All the things you mention have issues that go beyond a browser. You could log on to a real estate page and buy a house and that's technically possible, and digital token doesn't do a damn to improve the experience. I am a thousand times more likely to run into legal permits issues, KYC and anti-money laundering forms, getting stuck reading contractual obligations that certain assets require, etc.
  - intotheabyss 6y ago
    That's easy for you to say, but there's plenty of people on this planet that don't have access to any financial markets. Now with a smartphone, browser and internet connection, they can buy exposure to US equities without a brokerage from any country. But it's so much more than that. Have a little imagination. Digital assets could very well be the dominant forms of assets in the future, so easy access to markets to trade these is important. You just disagree that this has importance, but the market says otherwise, since people are very interested in using Uniswap, and volume will only grow from here. It's undeniable that this is a usecase, and I remember only a couple of years ago that HN would say that Ethereum is completely useless, and yet here we are.
    - mbesto 6y ago
      > Now with a smartphone, browser and internet connection, they can buy exposure to US equities without a brokerage from any country. 1. While this is technically become realer and realer every day, it's becoming less and less logistically due to regulation. 2. Eventually people will realize that the frictionless experience of crypto is also its greatest security risk[0]. Why do you think the Winklevoss twins store their wallet backup codes in...you guessed it...BANKS! ha.[1] The Winklevosses came up with an elaborate system to store and secure their own private keys. They cut up printouts of their private keys into pieces and then distributed them in envelopes to safe deposit boxes around the country, so if one envelope were stolen the thief would not have the entire key. [0] - https://gist.github.com/chitchcock/1281611 https://gist.github.com/chitchcock/1281611 [1] - https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/19/technology/bitcoin-winklevoss-twins.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/19/technology/bitcoin-winkle...
leppr 6y ago
Community-governed vs. advertiser-dictated networks. Free markets. It's a wide topic, I'm surprised you can't find a single usecase you would use or think makes sense. If it can help you imagine some, take the decentralized primitives: a money/value transfer network, a reputation network, a content delivery network. Starting from those, many currently gimped online services could be replicated in a way that incentivizes behaviors which benefit users, more than the platform owner. Local economies that currently function only through local, unscalable networks of trust could be brought online. Of course, if you believe everything is better done in a way that can be regulated by a central entity, then crypto as it stands won't do anything for you (although public ledgers do make investigations easier). Core to crypto is a belief that P2P networks are superior to centrally managed ones.
- natmaka 6y ago
  > Core to crypto is a belief that P2P networks are superior to centrally managed ones. This. And maybe also that "automatic" processing (enabled by maths) is more efficient and solid than human beings, especially when it relates to trust. Any "anti-cryptocurrencies" stance has IMHO to state why cryptocurrencies affect him/her author, or anybody else. Stating that it is useless is just an opinion. Many things are judged "useless" by many, let's for example take "billiard": there is AFAIK no solid and widely accepted "anti-billiard" stance. If there is no harm, there is no reason to ban.
- Daishiman 6y ago
  The statement that P2P networks are superior to centrally managed ones stands far from reality. There is a certain class of problems where this is true. But like in most computer science problems, distributed systems have a ton of flaws and inneficiencies. Moreover, trust isn't something mediated by computers. Trust is a question of human societies. Algorithmic trust is not arbiter of trust any more than the thousands of electronic trust schemes, which get gamed at some point or another and where human intervention is necessary for course correction given a measure of authority. Computer systems aren't outside of human law or common principles of human trust or institutions. BTC and all those other networks are just as if not more vulnerable to being gamed as any other system.
dwild 6y ago
Seems like the Theta token is the example that you seems to look for. Cancel culture is a recurring subject recently on HN, between Twitch which that will shutdown channels that infringed outsides of their platform and Youtube which demonetize so many kind of content... This solve both.