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I'm not a huge crypo fanboy, but I think there are a ton of "killer apps" that are kinda being sorted out. Basically think of something that has a middleman in

I'm not a huge crypo fanboy, but I think there are a ton of "killer apps" that are kinda being sorted out. Basically think of something that has a middleman in a financial transaction and remove it. Distributed Betting Markets (Transaction locked up depending on outcome of a sports game) Distributed Derivatives (financial instruments locked up based on price/date) Distributed Insurance (If I'm a farmer, I could put money up based on rainfall, price of wheat, or other metrics). These aren't simpler, but they can be cheaper. Think insurance at a true market rate based on your specific details. No paying for advertising, or other cohorts with different risk profiles bundled. Not saying that there aren't problems to be solved, or that it's worth it's current value, but there are some pretty cool stuff that you can do with it if they tech gets good enough. It's like an electric car, pretty terrible in a lot of situations previously, but if someone is able to come up with a good enough battery, the game changes.

mullingitover 5y ago
> Distributed Betting Markets (Transaction locked up depending on outcome of a sports game) Distributed Derivatives (financial instruments locked up based on price/date) Distributed Insurance (If I'm a farmer, I could put money up based on rainfall, price of wheat, or other metrics). Don't the executions of these contracts still depend on a (centralized) outside source of information which pretty much wrecks the decentralized aspect of the network?
- thebean11 5y ago
  No, the outcome is decided by the consensus of betting market participants, with mechanisms to "punish" liars/bad oracles. https://augur.net/faqs https://augur.net/faqs
  - mullingitover 5y ago
    Reading through this, I don't see any guarantee that your contract would be safe from bad oracles if the stakes are high enough and the attacker has adequate resources. If your attack is successful, you not only get steal the amount at stake in the contract, you steal what the good oracles have staked, and all with zero recourse.
    - thebean11 5y ago
      Yes, there is not a guarantee, but the goal of these consensus mechanisms is to make the cost of attack greater than the reward. In order for a successful attack, I believe you'd need to control a very large portion of all available REP. If your attack is successful, the value of your REP would likely go down (as the market is no longer trusted) so there's likely no economic incentive to do such an attack.
bob33212 5y ago
In theory crypto could cure cancer by funding a promising researcher via micro payments. But until that actually happens, crypto's use case is ransomware, buying drugs online, and being used as a way to "invest" in coins that have no cashflow.
- thebean11 5y ago
  Distributed prediction markets (in the post you replied to) already exist, it's not theoretical
  - bob33212 5y ago
    I see, what have you used it for?
    - thebean11 5y ago
      The betting market, or crypto in general? I haven't used the betting market (augur) but certainly plan to. I enjoy PredictIt but the fees are crazy high.
tfehring 5y ago
Can't speak to the others but insurance couldn't really work that way and compete on price with traditional insurers. The only way for the "policyholder" to be confident that an untrusted "insurer" will have the money to pay their claim is if the smart contract forces the "insurer" to fully collateralize it - e.g., to fund a trust or escrow account with the maximum amount of money that it could possibly be required to pay out in claims. For insurance to be attractive as a seller, you need to pool enough risks that you can generally hold a reserve that's much lower than the maximum possible loss amount because otherwise you need too much capital to fund it. You can get around this to some extent with reinsurance, but that's not eliminating risk pooling, it's just shifting it to a different balance sheet.

mullingitover 5y ago

> Distributed Betting Markets (Transaction locked up depending on outcome of a sports game) Distributed Derivatives (financial instruments locked up based on price/date) Distributed Insurance (If I'm a farmer, I could put money up based on rainfall, price of wheat, or other metrics). Don't the executions of these contracts still depend on a (centralized) outside source of information which pretty much wrecks the decentralized aspect of the network?

thebean11 5y ago
No, the outcome is decided by the consensus of betting market participants, with mechanisms to "punish" liars/bad oracles. https://augur.net/faqs https://augur.net/faqs
- mullingitover 5y ago
  Reading through this, I don't see any guarantee that your contract would be safe from bad oracles if the stakes are high enough and the attacker has adequate resources. If your attack is successful, you not only get steal the amount at stake in the contract, you steal what the good oracles have staked, and all with zero recourse.
  - thebean11 5y ago
    Yes, there is not a guarantee, but the goal of these consensus mechanisms is to make the cost of attack greater than the reward. In order for a successful attack, I believe you'd need to control a very large portion of all available REP. If your attack is successful, the value of your REP would likely go down (as the market is no longer trusted) so there's likely no economic incentive to do such an attack.

bob33212 5y ago

In theory crypto could cure cancer by funding a promising researcher via micro payments. But until that actually happens, crypto's use case is ransomware, buying drugs online, and being used as a way to "invest" in coins that have no cashflow.

thebean11 5y ago
Distributed prediction markets (in the post you replied to) already exist, it's not theoretical
- bob33212 5y ago
  I see, what have you used it for?
  - thebean11 5y ago
    The betting market, or crypto in general? I haven't used the betting market (augur) but certainly plan to. I enjoy PredictIt but the fees are crazy high.

tfehring 5y ago

Can't speak to the others but insurance couldn't really work that way and compete on price with traditional insurers. The only way for the "policyholder" to be confident that an untrusted "insurer" will have the money to pay their claim is if the smart contract forces the "insurer" to fully collateralize it - e.g., to fund a trust or escrow account with the maximum amount of money that it could possibly be required to pay out in claims. For insurance to be attractive as a seller, you need to pool enough risks that you can generally hold a reserve that's much lower than the maximum possible loss amount because otherwise you need too much capital to fund it. You can get around this to some extent with reinsurance, but that's not eliminating risk pooling, it's just shifting it to a different balance sheet.