5 ms·

Can someone explain the hype around crypto? Startups and even large consulting companies hyped blockchain. But they never could find an actual use for it. So ev

by capybara_2020 5y ago

Can someone explain the hype around crypto? Startups and even large consulting companies hyped blockchain. But they never could find an actual use for it. So even places like IBM silently closed their departments. It is like crypto is a solution looking for a problem. It feels like the whole blockchain hype all over again. More noise than actual substance. Anyone know of an example for a lay user where crpto has a huge benefit compared to other tech in the space?

weq 5y ago
Here is something your programmer brain can get its nureons around. https://github.com/git-token https://github.com/git-token
- Tom4hawk 5y ago
  I have this thing called salary that I get for contributing code (it's even better - I also get it for doing other things!).
HamburgerEmoji 5y ago
Well, on Ethereum, it's possible to do things that I never anticipated would be possible, despite programming nonstop for 20-whatever years: it is now possible to deploy a smart contract that does something useful and then lock yourself and everyone else out of it, forever. If there are no bugs, then it can be expected to do its job indefinitely without it being possible for anyone to change their mind and use their privileged access to change how the program works. This is called trustlessness, and it's the basis for a new kind of confidence.
- heromal 5y ago
  This is a lot of words that say absolutely nothing.
  - HamburgerEmoji 5y ago
    If you think so, I don't think you understand what has been achieved. Sorry I couldn't help you with that.
    - mousepilot 5y ago
      there are plenty of resources available to read up on smart contracts that can be had, you don't have to help anybody really.
    - Apocryphon 5y ago
      I don't think you gave a very clear explanation, despite your effusiveness.
ATsch 5y ago
Cryptocurrency is much better understood as a social phenomenon than a technical one. The reason for the hype is very simple, people who have already bought into it greatly benefit financially from creating more hype. They also have a lot to lose from the bubble bursting (savings, jobs, companies, friendships). So from just a few free market extremists who think this is a good idea for ideological reasons, it can sustain itself indefinitely as long as it keeps roping in more people. Hence nfts for artists, web3 for web devs etc. Disclosure: I own ~$1 in cryptocurrency I forgot the password to years ago
mattdesl 5y ago
There is a ton of useless hype and noise in crypto/blockchain/web3, and this is what the average person is probably exposed to. There are also some new and interesting paradigms however, that enable different systems and possibilities on the web than what we can achieve with our traditional, centralized walled gardens and payment services. See here for an idea: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28816818 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28816818
- acdha 5y ago
  That’s just describing things we already have better, cheaper, and more sustainable versions of. Digital artwork is not magic: someone holds the copyright and needs to pay for hosting. NFTs don’t help the first problem because blockchains are too inefficient; IPFS helps only if you find value in paying for your hosting using that protocol rather than something else — nobody is hosting DRMed content for free so it’s just a question of what storage characteristics fit your budget. Since blockchains are inefficient, more expensive, and require you to maintain a complex operating network coordinated with other people just to use them, that’s unlikely to be a preservation success. Rights is similar: NFTs are a distraction by people trying to get you to buy their Ethereum. What actually matters is a legal statement transferring ownership – if you have an NFT and the artist says they didn’t sell the rights, you’ll get laughed out of court but the reverse is true if you have any statement from the artist saying they did – we don’t need PKI, even, a witnessed email or note will suffice. That’s important for the discussion about forking: just as nobody is offering truly free hosting, whatever “the community” says is noise — what matters is what a court accepts, and a community which tries to ignore that will get DMCAed off of the internet.
  - mattdesl 5y ago
    NFT isn’t attempting to solve DRM or copyright. Likewise, when an artist sells you a signed print, they are not giving you any copyright over the art - nor should they. Not sure what you are arguing about hosting. IPFS is already working well for many NFT projects, because the artist + collectors have an economic incentive to continue to host and maintain the media pointed to by the blockchain tokens.
marban 5y ago
The only long-term value I see are DRM-related things like reselling digital assets, artist compensation, etc. Other than that, mostly greater-fool scams and signalling for the tech elite. The 3 in Web3 is just there to wipe the slate clean in order to resell just about any original vision that previously failed.
- sorbits 5y ago
  I do like the concept that an artist can continue to get a percentage of future sales. But blockchain itself does not prevent copyright infringement of digital assets. I.e. the artist may sell his photos as NFTs, but I can still use them without permission or resell them through other channels.
  - fwip 5y ago
    And any malicious actor can sell those digital assets as "an NFT" without actually holding the copyright. See, for example, the many NFTs traced directly from artwork by real artists.
hseager 5y ago
I think a good example would be something like the Land Registry here in the UK. A use case where you need digital ownership and the records are public for all to see. The decentralised part acts as the security and it would be hard to forge records, could make the process more transparent and therefore less corruption. As a side note, I'm shocked by the amount of cynicism in this thread. It seems a lot of people have been put off from the negative media surrounding crypto rather than looking at the technology behind it with an open mind. It reminds me of when P2P file sharing was demonised by the media because of pirating.
- jon-wood 5y ago
  Is there any known corruption in the UK Land Registry though? Are there frequent reports of land that someone had bought quietly have its ownership transferred?
- acdha 5y ago
  Why wouldn’t you use traditional PKI for that? Ultimately it comes down to trusting a known authority and tamper-evidence could be provided at orders of magnitude less cost and greater reliability by either using a Merkle tree or notarization from a third-party. As for the cynicism, note that this is an audience with deep technical knowledge and the ability to reason about systems, years into salespeople making big claims which have not been delivered. Given the conflicts of interest inherent to a system which requires outsiders to put fresh money in before insiders can cash out, skepticism seems warranted.
whoisjohnkid 5y ago
The hype around crypto started with the revelation that bitcoin brought forward: digital scarcity. A lot of folks hopping on the hype train mentioning they are doing X with blockchain are missing the revelation. blockchain is just a piece of the innovation, imagine if when the car was invented and suddenly inflatable tires got all the hype … that’s pretty much the times we are in. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. All the pieces that made bitcoin were already there. Satoshi was just the first to arrange them in the right order

weq 5y ago

Here is something your programmer brain can get its nureons around. https://github.com/git-token https://github.com/git-token

Tom4hawk 5y ago
I have this thing called salary that I get for contributing code (it's even better - I also get it for doing other things!).

HamburgerEmoji 5y ago

Well, on Ethereum, it's possible to do things that I never anticipated would be possible, despite programming nonstop for 20-whatever years: it is now possible to deploy a smart contract that does something useful and then lock yourself and everyone else out of it, forever. If there are no bugs, then it can be expected to do its job indefinitely without it being possible for anyone to change their mind and use their privileged access to change how the program works. This is called trustlessness, and it's the basis for a new kind of confidence.

heromal 5y ago
This is a lot of words that say absolutely nothing.
- HamburgerEmoji 5y ago
  If you think so, I don't think you understand what has been achieved. Sorry I couldn't help you with that.
  - mousepilot 5y ago
    there are plenty of resources available to read up on smart contracts that can be had, you don't have to help anybody really.
  - Apocryphon 5y ago
    I don't think you gave a very clear explanation, despite your effusiveness.

ATsch 5y ago

Cryptocurrency is much better understood as a social phenomenon than a technical one. The reason for the hype is very simple, people who have already bought into it greatly benefit financially from creating more hype. They also have a lot to lose from the bubble bursting (savings, jobs, companies, friendships). So from just a few free market extremists who think this is a good idea for ideological reasons, it can sustain itself indefinitely as long as it keeps roping in more people. Hence nfts for artists, web3 for web devs etc. Disclosure: I own ~$1 in cryptocurrency I forgot the password to years ago

mattdesl 5y ago

There is a ton of useless hype and noise in crypto/blockchain/web3, and this is what the average person is probably exposed to. There are also some new and interesting paradigms however, that enable different systems and possibilities on the web than what we can achieve with our traditional, centralized walled gardens and payment services. See here for an idea: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28816818 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28816818

acdha 5y ago
That’s just describing things we already have better, cheaper, and more sustainable versions of. Digital artwork is not magic: someone holds the copyright and needs to pay for hosting. NFTs don’t help the first problem because blockchains are too inefficient; IPFS helps only if you find value in paying for your hosting using that protocol rather than something else — nobody is hosting DRMed content for free so it’s just a question of what storage characteristics fit your budget. Since blockchains are inefficient, more expensive, and require you to maintain a complex operating network coordinated with other people just to use them, that’s unlikely to be a preservation success. Rights is similar: NFTs are a distraction by people trying to get you to buy their Ethereum. What actually matters is a legal statement transferring ownership – if you have an NFT and the artist says they didn’t sell the rights, you’ll get laughed out of court but the reverse is true if you have any statement from the artist saying they did – we don’t need PKI, even, a witnessed email or note will suffice. That’s important for the discussion about forking: just as nobody is offering truly free hosting, whatever “the community” says is noise — what matters is what a court accepts, and a community which tries to ignore that will get DMCAed off of the internet.
- mattdesl 5y ago
  NFT isn’t attempting to solve DRM or copyright. Likewise, when an artist sells you a signed print, they are not giving you any copyright over the art - nor should they. Not sure what you are arguing about hosting. IPFS is already working well for many NFT projects, because the artist + collectors have an economic incentive to continue to host and maintain the media pointed to by the blockchain tokens.

marban 5y ago

The only long-term value I see are DRM-related things like reselling digital assets, artist compensation, etc. Other than that, mostly greater-fool scams and signalling for the tech elite. The 3 in Web3 is just there to wipe the slate clean in order to resell just about any original vision that previously failed.

sorbits 5y ago
I do like the concept that an artist can continue to get a percentage of future sales. But blockchain itself does not prevent copyright infringement of digital assets. I.e. the artist may sell his photos as NFTs, but I can still use them without permission or resell them through other channels.
- fwip 5y ago
  And any malicious actor can sell those digital assets as "an NFT" without actually holding the copyright. See, for example, the many NFTs traced directly from artwork by real artists.

hseager 5y ago

I think a good example would be something like the Land Registry here in the UK. A use case where you need digital ownership and the records are public for all to see. The decentralised part acts as the security and it would be hard to forge records, could make the process more transparent and therefore less corruption. As a side note, I'm shocked by the amount of cynicism in this thread. It seems a lot of people have been put off from the negative media surrounding crypto rather than looking at the technology behind it with an open mind. It reminds me of when P2P file sharing was demonised by the media because of pirating.

jon-wood 5y ago
Is there any known corruption in the UK Land Registry though? Are there frequent reports of land that someone had bought quietly have its ownership transferred?
acdha 5y ago
Why wouldn’t you use traditional PKI for that? Ultimately it comes down to trusting a known authority and tamper-evidence could be provided at orders of magnitude less cost and greater reliability by either using a Merkle tree or notarization from a third-party. As for the cynicism, note that this is an audience with deep technical knowledge and the ability to reason about systems, years into salespeople making big claims which have not been delivered. Given the conflicts of interest inherent to a system which requires outsiders to put fresh money in before insiders can cash out, skepticism seems warranted.

whoisjohnkid 5y ago

The hype around crypto started with the revelation that bitcoin brought forward: digital scarcity. A lot of folks hopping on the hype train mentioning they are doing X with blockchain are missing the revelation. blockchain is just a piece of the innovation, imagine if when the car was invented and suddenly inflatable tires got all the hype … that’s pretty much the times we are in. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. All the pieces that made bitcoin were already there. Satoshi was just the first to arrange them in the right order