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Since the ICO craze in 2017 I've seen countless ideas and millions spent trying to use blockchain and crypto for everything you could possibly imagine, and yet

by mad182 5y ago

Since the ICO craze in 2017 I've seen countless ideas and millions spent trying to use blockchain and crypto for everything you could possibly imagine, and yet I don't see anything meaningful has ever came out of it, apart from get rich quick schemes, ponzis and some virtual novelty items. Bitcoin has been around for 12 years, but in real life I don't know anyone who has ever used something crypto related for anything else than risky investment, or basically gambling. I'm very skeptical.

corobo 5y ago
Drugs too, don't forget drugs!
chrisco255 5y ago
I've never met anyone who's ever used their stock certificates for anything other than speculation. However, I have participated in a multisig that controls six figures of funds with a handful of strangers on the internet. I have used my governance tokens to vote on DAO proposals regarding new product lines and features. I have created and sold NFT artwork. I have registered a domain name and set an immutable record on a smart contract linking to a website and an Ethereum wallet. I have used it for logging in to software. I've built software that gates access based on ownership of a particular NFT. I've stored data on Filecoin and archived it on Arweave. I've borrowed money on-chain. I've commissioned artwork and paid in ETH. I've bought gold with Bitcoin. I've helped raise a million dollars for charity with a major celebrity. I've contributed to Gitcoin grants for public goods software funding. Your skepticism just closes your mind and blinds you to what's possible.
- bp0017 5y ago
  and none of these things were impossible before. what's the value add of doing it in this way opposed to the old way?
  - ausbah 5y ago
    the big argument you'll likely hear is that everything the OP did was "decentralized", a virtue worthy in and into itself
- yeezyszn 5y ago
  Sure - and these are all great examples of what you can do with crypto. Where I see parent pushing back is that all of these things were already possible before. You could buy jpg's with credit cards, you could buy gold with the dollar. Before the spreadsheet it was extremely difficult to do arithmetic at scale. After the spreadsheet it was much, much quicker. What's the killer feature that cannot be replicated easily without crypto?
  - ericd 5y ago
    My understanding of these things is limited, but I think the most interesting thing about them is that open APIs seem to be the default way to interact with them, not something tacked on after the fact, and you don't have to beg for an API key for each one, contact a salesperson, or whatever. If these things proliferate, it seems like one could compose mashups of services to build online things relatively quickly. Also, for bitcoin in particular, the lightning network makes it possible to pay a fraction of a cent for something, which is not possible with a credit card, and it potentially offers a uniform location/country-agnostic way to pay for things online. Stripe has made that much less of a problem than it used to be, but I'm not sure it's quite 100% global coverage yet, and afaik they have no solution for micropayments.
    - yeezyszn 5y ago
      appreciate the response - your second point especially rings true for me and has set off some thoughts of my own: I would say my 'theory of crypto' is that they're rediscovering the financial system. The financial system can do everything crypto can and more. The fact it does not is due almost entirely to regulation. This implies crypto will be most useful in environments where you can skirt regulation the longest. I imagine cross-border payment systems(esp to emerging market countries) are the most promising examples of where this would be useful, and i know there are some groups working on this already. This also implies that in the developed world, crypto has capped upside. The point at which it's big enough to matter is the point at which its regulated. It will rapidly converge to 'Trad Fi' without the institutional support the financial world already has. Just some thoughts bouncing around my head that your comment spurred...
- noselfpromote 5y ago
  Do you have an email I could write to ?
- jakear 5y ago
  Links would be more compelling than grandstanding.
- ShamelessC 5y ago
  > [DAO, NFT, gold] Pretty bold stuff! Thought people had generally accepted DAO's and NFT's as likely scams. Do you want to actually share the URL's for these things? Shit, does web 3.0 even use proper URL's? Where is this magic land of highly democratized services? And why isn't a URL, perhaps the most fundamental tenet of the "web", _ever_ shared in these discussions? Perhaps it would illuminate the fact that this stuff is all highly centralized already? With most services requiring personally identifying information in order to use them? Wonder what that's needed for...

by mad182 5y ago

corobo 5y ago

Drugs too, don't forget drugs!

chrisco255 5y ago

I've never met anyone who's ever used their stock certificates for anything other than speculation. However, I have participated in a multisig that controls six figures of funds with a handful of strangers on the internet. I have used my governance tokens to vote on DAO proposals regarding new product lines and features. I have created and sold NFT artwork. I have registered a domain name and set an immutable record on a smart contract linking to a website and an Ethereum wallet. I have used it for logging in to software. I've built software that gates access based on ownership of a particular NFT. I've stored data on Filecoin and archived it on Arweave. I've borrowed money on-chain. I've commissioned artwork and paid in ETH. I've bought gold with Bitcoin. I've helped raise a million dollars for charity with a major celebrity. I've contributed to Gitcoin grants for public goods software funding. Your skepticism just closes your mind and blinds you to what's possible.

bp0017 5y ago
and none of these things were impossible before. what's the value add of doing it in this way opposed to the old way?
- ausbah 5y ago
  the big argument you'll likely hear is that everything the OP did was "decentralized", a virtue worthy in and into itself
yeezyszn 5y ago
Sure - and these are all great examples of what you can do with crypto. Where I see parent pushing back is that all of these things were already possible before. You could buy jpg's with credit cards, you could buy gold with the dollar. Before the spreadsheet it was extremely difficult to do arithmetic at scale. After the spreadsheet it was much, much quicker. What's the killer feature that cannot be replicated easily without crypto?
- ericd 5y ago
  My understanding of these things is limited, but I think the most interesting thing about them is that open APIs seem to be the default way to interact with them, not something tacked on after the fact, and you don't have to beg for an API key for each one, contact a salesperson, or whatever. If these things proliferate, it seems like one could compose mashups of services to build online things relatively quickly. Also, for bitcoin in particular, the lightning network makes it possible to pay a fraction of a cent for something, which is not possible with a credit card, and it potentially offers a uniform location/country-agnostic way to pay for things online. Stripe has made that much less of a problem than it used to be, but I'm not sure it's quite 100% global coverage yet, and afaik they have no solution for micropayments.
  - yeezyszn 5y ago
    appreciate the response - your second point especially rings true for me and has set off some thoughts of my own: I would say my 'theory of crypto' is that they're rediscovering the financial system. The financial system can do everything crypto can and more. The fact it does not is due almost entirely to regulation. This implies crypto will be most useful in environments where you can skirt regulation the longest. I imagine cross-border payment systems(esp to emerging market countries) are the most promising examples of where this would be useful, and i know there are some groups working on this already. This also implies that in the developed world, crypto has capped upside. The point at which it's big enough to matter is the point at which its regulated. It will rapidly converge to 'Trad Fi' without the institutional support the financial world already has. Just some thoughts bouncing around my head that your comment spurred...
noselfpromote 5y ago
Do you have an email I could write to ?
jakear 5y ago
Links would be more compelling than grandstanding.
ShamelessC 5y ago
> [DAO, NFT, gold] Pretty bold stuff! Thought people had generally accepted DAO's and NFT's as likely scams. Do you want to actually share the URL's for these things? Shit, does web 3.0 even use proper URL's? Where is this magic land of highly democratized services? And why isn't a URL, perhaps the most fundamental tenet of the "web", _ever_ shared in these discussions? Perhaps it would illuminate the fact that this stuff is all highly centralized already? With most services requiring personally identifying information in order to use them? Wonder what that's needed for...