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> But coming from a third world country, the promise of a decentralized, permissionless market seems extremely promising. Particularly if it doesn't restrict me

> But coming from a third world country, the promise of a decentralized, permissionless market seems extremely promising. Particularly if it doesn't restrict me because of my location or capital or identity. Your entire argument is about the promise of blockchain and not the actual current applications people are using. Your argument is theoretical when OP is asking for practical use cases. You mention many hypotheticals but not a single "I use blockchain for X" or "my mother uses blockchain for X" which is what actually matters. > While I won't talk about the idealized vision of blockchains As far as I'm concerned that's all you talked about, and you don't even realize it.

puranjay 5y ago
I literally gave a real world example: Curve.fi that's used to swap between stablecoins. You can literally go right now to swap between tokenized USD and EURO. Or you can go to the bank and pay their exchange rate. Maybe they'll ask you for your ID too. Another example of the second kind: www.Ape.tax, where anyone can deploy an investment strategy and beta users can try them out, and if they are successful, they can be integrated - voted on by a DAO - into Yearn.finance, the primary project with several billion $ in investment. There are existing projects already using the situations I talked about. It's not theory. It's not idealized vision. It's happening right now. Blockchain is moving so fast that Yearn.finance, the platform with billions in investment, wasn't even a thing a year ago.
- Judgmentality 5y ago
  You gave a hypothetical example, not something you use. And to answer your question in your original post - no, blockchain would not be more convenient than using my traditional bank. I can do it entirely on my phone inside an app. And every time I've compared it's significantly cheaper not to use blockchain to send someone actual money. You're giving me possible applications, not talking about you being an actual user. There are products for lots of things, that doesn't mean they have enough people using them that they're going to last. > Blockchain is moving so fast that Yearn.finance, the platform with billions in investment, wasn't even a thing a year ago. You're talking about something I've never heard of before as proof of blockchain having made it. We are on different planes here and I don't see us getting through to each other. Anyway, agree to disagree. Cheers.
  - seibelj 5y ago
    Curve did $1 billion in volume over the past 24 hours https://curve.fi https://curve.fi That isn’t hypothetical. It’s like you keep getting refuted and then ignore reality because it disagrees with you. “Blockchain is unused.” [a bunch of links with billions of dollars in actual daily usage provided] “Oh, well, I’ve never heard of that before so it doesn’t matter.” What kind of arguing is this?
    - puranjay 5y ago
      Much of HN is stuck in 2017 Blockchain era. Most haven't looked it serious since that crash. Many still think of Blockchain and can only think of BTC, LTC, Doge and ETH. DeFi is so new that it even caught HN off guard.
      - 1ark 5y ago
        Much of HN is also middle of the curve and don't care/know about finance. Finance, financial engineering and P2P is a different beast compared to deploying bloated Docker containers running React frontends. It's a shame because there are a lot of smart people here that could help working on sustainable economics for fun and profit.
      - hungryforcodes 5y ago
        This seems to be one of the problems. The other is just a weird contrarianism -- many on HN want open source software and systems, but in no way do they want an open economy or money system.
    - qeternity 5y ago
      Curve is just leverage for speculation: deposit token A, withdraw token B, earn the appreciation on both token A and B. Speculation is still the only use case. DeFi provides absolutely nothing novel. Nobody said it wasn’t used. They asked for a non speculative, “real” use case.
      - puranjay 5y ago
- lottin 5y ago
  What do you mean is happening right now? For example, you mention foreign currency exchanges. According to Wikipedia, trading in foreign exchange markets averaged $6.6 trillion per day (April 2019). [1] Is there any indication that foreign exchange markets are moving towards adopting this trading of tokenized currencies that apparently is so much better than the system they're using now? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_exchange_market https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_exchange_market
  - puranjay 5y ago
    You're being disingenuous if you're trying to compare the mature foreign exchange market with a technology that's barely half a decade old and still obscure by most standards. Curve.fi, the example I shared, was launched in Jan 2020 and peaked at a daily volume of $1B. Personally, I can't buy USD without going to the bank and filling out paperwork, submitting ID documents and clarifying why I need the USD and adhering to prescribed limits. I have no such restrictions with their tokenized variants.
    - lottin 5y ago
      But you said it was happening right now... no you say it isn't happening, okay. > I have no such restrictions with their tokenized variants. Regulations don't apply because you're trading fantasy money. Once you try to exchange these virtual tokens for real money, then you will be required to comply with the regulations.
- qeternity 5y ago
  Have you tried to convert currency these days? I do it on my credit card for 0% at the Reuters fix window. If you actually go through your process above, it is so much more expensive.

puranjay 5y ago

I literally gave a real world example: Curve.fi that's used to swap between stablecoins. You can literally go right now to swap between tokenized USD and EURO. Or you can go to the bank and pay their exchange rate. Maybe they'll ask you for your ID too. Another example of the second kind: www.Ape.tax, where anyone can deploy an investment strategy and beta users can try them out, and if they are successful, they can be integrated - voted on by a DAO - into Yearn.finance, the primary project with several billion $ in investment. There are existing projects already using the situations I talked about. It's not theory. It's not idealized vision. It's happening right now. Blockchain is moving so fast that Yearn.finance, the platform with billions in investment, wasn't even a thing a year ago.

Judgmentality 5y ago
You gave a hypothetical example, not something you use. And to answer your question in your original post - no, blockchain would not be more convenient than using my traditional bank. I can do it entirely on my phone inside an app. And every time I've compared it's significantly cheaper not to use blockchain to send someone actual money. You're giving me possible applications, not talking about you being an actual user. There are products for lots of things, that doesn't mean they have enough people using them that they're going to last. > Blockchain is moving so fast that Yearn.finance, the platform with billions in investment, wasn't even a thing a year ago. You're talking about something I've never heard of before as proof of blockchain having made it. We are on different planes here and I don't see us getting through to each other. Anyway, agree to disagree. Cheers.
- seibelj 5y ago
  Curve did $1 billion in volume over the past 24 hours https://curve.fi https://curve.fi That isn’t hypothetical. It’s like you keep getting refuted and then ignore reality because it disagrees with you. “Blockchain is unused.” [a bunch of links with billions of dollars in actual daily usage provided] “Oh, well, I’ve never heard of that before so it doesn’t matter.” What kind of arguing is this?
  - puranjay 5y ago
    Much of HN is stuck in 2017 Blockchain era. Most haven't looked it serious since that crash. Many still think of Blockchain and can only think of BTC, LTC, Doge and ETH. DeFi is so new that it even caught HN off guard.
    - 1ark 5y ago
      Much of HN is also middle of the curve and don't care/know about finance. Finance, financial engineering and P2P is a different beast compared to deploying bloated Docker containers running React frontends. It's a shame because there are a lot of smart people here that could help working on sustainable economics for fun and profit.
    - hungryforcodes 5y ago
      This seems to be one of the problems. The other is just a weird contrarianism -- many on HN want open source software and systems, but in no way do they want an open economy or money system.
  - qeternity 5y ago
    Curve is just leverage for speculation: deposit token A, withdraw token B, earn the appreciation on both token A and B. Speculation is still the only use case. DeFi provides absolutely nothing novel. Nobody said it wasn’t used. They asked for a non speculative, “real” use case.
    - puranjay 5y ago
lottin 5y ago
What do you mean is happening right now? For example, you mention foreign currency exchanges. According to Wikipedia, trading in foreign exchange markets averaged $6.6 trillion per day (April 2019). [1] Is there any indication that foreign exchange markets are moving towards adopting this trading of tokenized currencies that apparently is so much better than the system they're using now? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_exchange_market https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_exchange_market
- puranjay 5y ago
  You're being disingenuous if you're trying to compare the mature foreign exchange market with a technology that's barely half a decade old and still obscure by most standards. Curve.fi, the example I shared, was launched in Jan 2020 and peaked at a daily volume of $1B. Personally, I can't buy USD without going to the bank and filling out paperwork, submitting ID documents and clarifying why I need the USD and adhering to prescribed limits. I have no such restrictions with their tokenized variants.
  - lottin 5y ago
    But you said it was happening right now... no you say it isn't happening, okay. > I have no such restrictions with their tokenized variants. Regulations don't apply because you're trading fantasy money. Once you try to exchange these virtual tokens for real money, then you will be required to comply with the regulations.
qeternity 5y ago
Have you tried to convert currency these days? I do it on my credit card for 0% at the Reuters fix window. If you actually go through your process above, it is so much more expensive.