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Why would you even need Airbnb or Uber for Solana? What problem does either solve? This remains a fundamental problem with crypto: we're 13 years in and the o

Why would you even need Airbnb or Uber for Solana? What problem does either solve? This remains a fundamental problem with crypto: we're 13 years in and the only practical use cases remain speculation and money laundering. Even DeFi seems to consistent mostly of navel gazing (crypto derivatives etc) and leverage.

hestefisk 5y ago
Have a look at areas of banking where you have a lot of paper and lot of a actors / intermediaries —- eg trade finance, post-trade asset servicing. Here blockchain is seeing a pretty good adoption, although mostly in private networks.
- lalaland1125 5y ago
  If it's just a private network, why even call it a blockchain instead of a database? It's not even decentralized.
  - ejstronge 5y ago
    I agree with your comment. Perhaps the GP is also considering the use of smart contracts (see ref 1 for an example) 1. https://www.forbes.com/sites/philippsandner/2020/12/02/will-blockchain-replace-clearinghouses-a-case-of-dvp-post-trade-settlement/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/philippsandner/2020/12/02/will-...
    - ineptech 5y ago
      Smart contracts are amazing, as long as its a contract between two crypto people doing crypto stuff. But (and please, someone correct me if I'm wrong) the oracle problem still stops them from using anything in the real world as an input; I think this is what GP meant by naval gazing.
      - ejstronge 5y ago
        The example contract in the link I posted doesn't rely on third-party data sources (with the exception, perhaps, of time). Does the oracle problem still apply?
        Grustaf 5y ago
        It would seem that by definition, if you want smart contracts or anything "on the blockchain" to interact with the real world, you will need to find intermediaries you trust. Meaning you're back to square one if you want to cross the crypto-real world membrane.
  - hestefisk 5y ago
    It can be quite useful for a more complex ledger between multiple banks. Yes it’s not open like Bitcoin but it’s easy to connect multiple partners, provides immutability / transparency, deals with varied levels of trust between actors (banks, shipping companies, importers / exporters, government entities), and allows you to formalise trade finance rules in a smart contract, etc without imposing a central database / solution. It’s an closed network involving complex transactions between a range of parties and therefore blockchain / smart contracts is actually a good solution.
- qeternity 5y ago
  > Here blockchain is seeing a pretty good adoption, although mostly in private networks. No, it isn’t. There are some pilot projects but more have been abandoned than completed. And you don’t need blockchain for this.
baby 5y ago
Use cases are the same as with money btw. People use cryptocurrency today to trade and to transfer value. You can try to ignore that, or point to the low adoption, but it is there.
- albntomat0 5y ago
  How would a custom Uber on Solana app work differently than the Uber of today adapted to accept a standard cryptocurrency with sufficient throughput?
  - Grustaf 5y ago
    It would be tRUstLeSs and deCEntRALiseD, duh! Until you get into the car of course.
  - baby 5y ago
    It wouldn’t. Changing the backbone and how money transit should be transparent to the user.
- ineptech 5y ago
  by "practical use case", GP meant a case that crypto is better for, not just something it can be used for. You can buy coffee with bitcoin, sure, just like you can roller skate on a frozen lake, but most people don't, cuz that's not what it's for.
  - baby 5y ago
    I think the many decentralized exchanges and services built on top of cryptocurrencies is exactly that. It’s programmable, more interoperable, and more secure (that you won’t be able to see unless you work for a financial institution that uses a cryptocurrency).
    - ineptech 5y ago
      Sure, DeFi would be really cool if I wanted to borrow crypto, or lend crypto, or trade crypto options, or take a mortgage out on a bitcoin or whatever. But for people who need to deal with a real world asset, it has very little to offer. It still cannot (and again, correct me if I'm wrong) implement a simple option to buy stock at a certain price, and is not really any closer than it was the day ETH was crowd-funded. So, for those of us on the outside, DeFi just looks like a bunch of crypto enthusiasts finding exotic new ways to gamble with each other. It's neat and all, but I don't see how it ever really affects the rest of us.
josh2600 5y ago
Man, I know people keep saying this but like, in 1997 e-commerce was just starting to take hold. The number of people who hold crypto in the world is roughly equivalent to people with internet access in 97. Give it 25 years and watch what happens. Tons of people said the internet was a fad too and where are we now? It’s ok if you don’t get it, you will, or your kids will. The main point of crypto is that traditional finance is insanely bad ux. It’s just not internet native and never will be because of the entrenched forces. Crypto is internet native money and we’re not going back.
- Clewza313 5y ago
  Are you telling me with a straight face that the UX on crypto is better than traditional banking? FWIW, I was into crypto during the previous peak, and transferring it around involved copy-pasting strings of gibberish and sacrificing chickens to the gods so I wouldn't mess up and nuke it all. As far as I can tell things have gotten worse, not better, since.
  - TimJRobinson 5y ago
    UX has improved a LOT since 2017. I've been using ZapperFi for playing around with DeFi and it's an amazing experience. It's much easier and faster than any other financial trading app I've used (it's on par with Robinhood).
  - kybernetikos 5y ago
    > Are you telling me with a straight face that the UX on crypto is better than traditional banking? Crypto is a big space and there's a lot of variety, but yes. Not that many banks where I am offer effectively free and quick transfers with the ease of scanning a QR code, which I have done with crypto. Even better is the experience of using ripple on keybase chat, which is far superior to anything I've seen offered by a bank in my area. Sure, some cryptocurrencies are more painful, but that's not a necessary characteristic of the whole space, and perhaps even more important - we can innovate in the crypto space more easily than we can innovate in the traditional payments space. Actually traditional banking has got a lot better at payments recently, and I think it's to some extent because they realize that they need to compete.
trophycase 5y ago
idk but I keep most of my wealth in stablecoins or cryptocurrency. The yields are better than a bank and I can withdraw more from Coinbase in a day than my bank would let me wire per day anyway, so why not?
- Animats 5y ago
  Stablecoins without verifiable banking are terrible places to keep wealth. No upside, big potential downside.
  - TimJRobinson 5y ago
    DAI is pegged to the US Dollar, stabilized by algorithms and has been for a few years now without fault. The upside is 20 - 30% APY by providing liquidity to decentralized exchanges. Bank accounts are providing no where near that return on currency.
    - nlitened 5y ago
      > stabilized by algorithms and has been for a few years now without fault This is a textbook example of a "gray swan".
    - Grustaf 5y ago
      It's great that there are still people in the world paying you 20% a year for not taking on any risk. Really gives you hope for humanity, doesn't it.
- tluyben2 5y ago
  I might if the market cap would be bigger: we still need to see if it can stomach a large scale actual financial crisis. What happens when 99.99% of owners want their USDT converted to USD and sent to their bank to buy bread. Those are things that can bring btc to actual 0: we have not tested this yet as we had no significantly big crisis since 2008. People liken blockchain to the beginning of the web: that beginning had major crash in 2001 which took companies years or decades or never to recover from. And similar sounds: 'things are different now'; the favorite hodler phrase since tulipmania. Nothing goes only up and the MSFT shares and such are not healthy imho. Something must happen and the question is; how far is crypto dragged with it. The promise was that it wouldn't (safe haven in times of inflation and recession) but a little financial crisis like begin 2020 crashed crypto quite hard. So what happens with a large one?

hestefisk 5y ago

Have a look at areas of banking where you have a lot of paper and lot of a actors / intermediaries —- eg trade finance, post-trade asset servicing. Here blockchain is seeing a pretty good adoption, although mostly in private networks.

lalaland1125 5y ago
If it's just a private network, why even call it a blockchain instead of a database? It's not even decentralized.
- ejstronge 5y ago
  I agree with your comment. Perhaps the GP is also considering the use of smart contracts (see ref 1 for an example) 1. https://www.forbes.com/sites/philippsandner/2020/12/02/will-blockchain-replace-clearinghouses-a-case-of-dvp-post-trade-settlement/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/philippsandner/2020/12/02/will-...
  - ineptech 5y ago
    Smart contracts are amazing, as long as its a contract between two crypto people doing crypto stuff. But (and please, someone correct me if I'm wrong) the oracle problem still stops them from using anything in the real world as an input; I think this is what GP meant by naval gazing.
    - ejstronge 5y ago
      The example contract in the link I posted doesn't rely on third-party data sources (with the exception, perhaps, of time). Does the oracle problem still apply?
      - Grustaf 5y ago
        It would seem that by definition, if you want smart contracts or anything "on the blockchain" to interact with the real world, you will need to find intermediaries you trust. Meaning you're back to square one if you want to cross the crypto-real world membrane.
- hestefisk 5y ago
  It can be quite useful for a more complex ledger between multiple banks. Yes it’s not open like Bitcoin but it’s easy to connect multiple partners, provides immutability / transparency, deals with varied levels of trust between actors (banks, shipping companies, importers / exporters, government entities), and allows you to formalise trade finance rules in a smart contract, etc without imposing a central database / solution. It’s an closed network involving complex transactions between a range of parties and therefore blockchain / smart contracts is actually a good solution.
qeternity 5y ago
> Here blockchain is seeing a pretty good adoption, although mostly in private networks. No, it isn’t. There are some pilot projects but more have been abandoned than completed. And you don’t need blockchain for this.

baby 5y ago

Use cases are the same as with money btw. People use cryptocurrency today to trade and to transfer value. You can try to ignore that, or point to the low adoption, but it is there.

albntomat0 5y ago
How would a custom Uber on Solana app work differently than the Uber of today adapted to accept a standard cryptocurrency with sufficient throughput?
- Grustaf 5y ago
  It would be tRUstLeSs and deCEntRALiseD, duh! Until you get into the car of course.
- baby 5y ago
  It wouldn’t. Changing the backbone and how money transit should be transparent to the user.
ineptech 5y ago
by "practical use case", GP meant a case that crypto is better for, not just something it can be used for. You can buy coffee with bitcoin, sure, just like you can roller skate on a frozen lake, but most people don't, cuz that's not what it's for.
- baby 5y ago
  I think the many decentralized exchanges and services built on top of cryptocurrencies is exactly that. It’s programmable, more interoperable, and more secure (that you won’t be able to see unless you work for a financial institution that uses a cryptocurrency).
  - ineptech 5y ago
    Sure, DeFi would be really cool if I wanted to borrow crypto, or lend crypto, or trade crypto options, or take a mortgage out on a bitcoin or whatever. But for people who need to deal with a real world asset, it has very little to offer. It still cannot (and again, correct me if I'm wrong) implement a simple option to buy stock at a certain price, and is not really any closer than it was the day ETH was crowd-funded. So, for those of us on the outside, DeFi just looks like a bunch of crypto enthusiasts finding exotic new ways to gamble with each other. It's neat and all, but I don't see how it ever really affects the rest of us.

josh2600 5y ago

Man, I know people keep saying this but like, in 1997 e-commerce was just starting to take hold. The number of people who hold crypto in the world is roughly equivalent to people with internet access in 97. Give it 25 years and watch what happens. Tons of people said the internet was a fad too and where are we now? It’s ok if you don’t get it, you will, or your kids will. The main point of crypto is that traditional finance is insanely bad ux. It’s just not internet native and never will be because of the entrenched forces. Crypto is internet native money and we’re not going back.

Clewza313 5y ago
Are you telling me with a straight face that the UX on crypto is better than traditional banking? FWIW, I was into crypto during the previous peak, and transferring it around involved copy-pasting strings of gibberish and sacrificing chickens to the gods so I wouldn't mess up and nuke it all. As far as I can tell things have gotten worse, not better, since.
- TimJRobinson 5y ago
  UX has improved a LOT since 2017. I've been using ZapperFi for playing around with DeFi and it's an amazing experience. It's much easier and faster than any other financial trading app I've used (it's on par with Robinhood).
- kybernetikos 5y ago
  > Are you telling me with a straight face that the UX on crypto is better than traditional banking? Crypto is a big space and there's a lot of variety, but yes. Not that many banks where I am offer effectively free and quick transfers with the ease of scanning a QR code, which I have done with crypto. Even better is the experience of using ripple on keybase chat, which is far superior to anything I've seen offered by a bank in my area. Sure, some cryptocurrencies are more painful, but that's not a necessary characteristic of the whole space, and perhaps even more important - we can innovate in the crypto space more easily than we can innovate in the traditional payments space. Actually traditional banking has got a lot better at payments recently, and I think it's to some extent because they realize that they need to compete.

trophycase 5y ago

idk but I keep most of my wealth in stablecoins or cryptocurrency. The yields are better than a bank and I can withdraw more from Coinbase in a day than my bank would let me wire per day anyway, so why not?

Animats 5y ago
Stablecoins without verifiable banking are terrible places to keep wealth. No upside, big potential downside.
- TimJRobinson 5y ago
  DAI is pegged to the US Dollar, stabilized by algorithms and has been for a few years now without fault. The upside is 20 - 30% APY by providing liquidity to decentralized exchanges. Bank accounts are providing no where near that return on currency.
  - nlitened 5y ago
    > stabilized by algorithms and has been for a few years now without fault This is a textbook example of a "gray swan".
  - Grustaf 5y ago
    It's great that there are still people in the world paying you 20% a year for not taking on any risk. Really gives you hope for humanity, doesn't it.
tluyben2 5y ago
I might if the market cap would be bigger: we still need to see if it can stomach a large scale actual financial crisis. What happens when 99.99% of owners want their USDT converted to USD and sent to their bank to buy bread. Those are things that can bring btc to actual 0: we have not tested this yet as we had no significantly big crisis since 2008. People liken blockchain to the beginning of the web: that beginning had major crash in 2001 which took companies years or decades or never to recover from. And similar sounds: 'things are different now'; the favorite hodler phrase since tulipmania. Nothing goes only up and the MSFT shares and such are not healthy imho. Something must happen and the question is; how far is crypto dragged with it. The promise was that it wouldn't (safe haven in times of inflation and recession) but a little financial crisis like begin 2020 crashed crypto quite hard. So what happens with a large one?