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I don't agree with this perspective. Crypto is designed to be a poor technology, the slowness, waste and scarcity are part of what lead to increasing prices, wh

I don't agree with this perspective. Crypto is designed to be a poor technology, the slowness, waste and scarcity are part of what lead to increasing prices, which is the only reason people have interest in it. If PCs were traded like beanie babies, with less regulation and bigger asset bubbles, then maybe this analogy would make sense. But PCs are designed to be useful, not only traded like commodities to increase fiat. If this take, "crypto is bad technology but we're at the very start of it, it will get faster and more efficient," shouldn't Bitcoin Cash have won a long time ago? Few seem to care about actually using cyrpto for anything other than increasing fiat. It's 90% wash trading.

redanddead 5y ago
I think we're doing a lot of speculating while most data on blockchain technology would suggest growth... I think this community could actually have a heavy weight on the future of the world, and to do well we need to go beyond black and white arguments/absolutiste (which never actually happens in real life btw). When has anything ever truly replaced anything? Telegrams have had their most successful year ever, 17 million of them sent last year. Things tend to coexist, in the same way that you have some that say "bitcoin will replace the dollar!", and those that say "bitcoin is stupid, and will never be used as currency". The future lay in the middle
- ForHackernews 5y ago
  > most data on blockchain technology would suggest growth... What data would those be? Besides price increasing? We're more than 10 years into the "blockchain revolution" and I still don't see a single meaningful problem solved by this technology (it makes ransomware and selling drugs online easier, I guess). Compare other recent technologies: the web, mobile phones, electric cars... where were they after 12 years of development?
  - thebean11 5y ago
    The same properties that make it useful for ransomware make it useful for other things as well. Irreversible transactions lower transaction costs, it reduces the risk you’ll need to go to court basically.
    - 300bps 5y ago
      Irreversible transactions lower transaction costs Blockchain transactions are not irreversible. You just need 51% of POW miners/POS stakers to agree and they can do anything they want to the blockchain. It’s the literal reason why ETC exists. Ethereum got attacked, some people thought those transactions should be reversed. So they reversed them. Others felt the hack should stay so Ethereum Classic was born. There will be more of this. Wait until the first court order and a bunch of regulation happens.
      - thebean11 5y ago
        A court order won't work to reverse a transaction on the blockchain layer, only to force someone in-jurisdiction to send the funds back. That obviously can't be helped, but having the irreversible transaction on the base layer still eliminates a whole class of issues that cost time and money to solve. The big chains really aren't susceptible to 51% attacks at this point. If one is really worried about it, you can just wait more blocks before considering the transaction finalized. The DAO fork is a different class of issue unrelated to 51% attacks. It's true that a group of people (minority or majority) can fork a chain with whatever rules they'd like, but this isn't going to happen because some company regrets some purchase they made, only systemic issues.
- stevebmark 5y ago
  I'm not speculating, 90% of crypto trading is wash trading https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1544612321000635 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S15446...
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- teucris 5y ago
  > I think this community could actually have a heavy weight on the future of the world, and to do well we need to go beyond black and white I’m a huge skeptic of web3 as it tends to be defined, but I really appreciate this viewpoint. Web3 has tons of flaws but many of the motivations and ideas are interesting, powerful, and could be molded into something really amazing for the world. And The HN community has a chance to be a part of that process. It helps that web3 is poorly defined, too.
  - redanddead 5y ago
    Yeah! Tell me more
    - teucris 5y ago
      Let’s start with Scuttlebutt. It is decentralized and append-only but doesn’t use a blockchain nor any proof systems. Could something like that be useful for other scenarios than chat to meet the goals of web3? Similar questions for IPFS and Dat.
wrnr 5y ago
Crypto just loves broken analogies, it started with the claim it solved byzantine general problem. First off it's "a" solution to that problem, and two, a decentralised system deciding on one question only is not a sufficient model for any economic system where more than one utility is traded.

redanddead 5y ago

I think we're doing a lot of speculating while most data on blockchain technology would suggest growth... I think this community could actually have a heavy weight on the future of the world, and to do well we need to go beyond black and white arguments/absolutiste (which never actually happens in real life btw). When has anything ever truly replaced anything? Telegrams have had their most successful year ever, 17 million of them sent last year. Things tend to coexist, in the same way that you have some that say "bitcoin will replace the dollar!", and those that say "bitcoin is stupid, and will never be used as currency". The future lay in the middle

ForHackernews 5y ago
> most data on blockchain technology would suggest growth... What data would those be? Besides price increasing? We're more than 10 years into the "blockchain revolution" and I still don't see a single meaningful problem solved by this technology (it makes ransomware and selling drugs online easier, I guess). Compare other recent technologies: the web, mobile phones, electric cars... where were they after 12 years of development?
- thebean11 5y ago
  The same properties that make it useful for ransomware make it useful for other things as well. Irreversible transactions lower transaction costs, it reduces the risk you’ll need to go to court basically.
  - 300bps 5y ago
    Irreversible transactions lower transaction costs Blockchain transactions are not irreversible. You just need 51% of POW miners/POS stakers to agree and they can do anything they want to the blockchain. It’s the literal reason why ETC exists. Ethereum got attacked, some people thought those transactions should be reversed. So they reversed them. Others felt the hack should stay so Ethereum Classic was born. There will be more of this. Wait until the first court order and a bunch of regulation happens.
    - thebean11 5y ago
      A court order won't work to reverse a transaction on the blockchain layer, only to force someone in-jurisdiction to send the funds back. That obviously can't be helped, but having the irreversible transaction on the base layer still eliminates a whole class of issues that cost time and money to solve. The big chains really aren't susceptible to 51% attacks at this point. If one is really worried about it, you can just wait more blocks before considering the transaction finalized. The DAO fork is a different class of issue unrelated to 51% attacks. It's true that a group of people (minority or majority) can fork a chain with whatever rules they'd like, but this isn't going to happen because some company regrets some purchase they made, only systemic issues.
stevebmark 5y ago
I'm not speculating, 90% of crypto trading is wash trading https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1544612321000635 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S15446...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
teucris 5y ago
> I think this community could actually have a heavy weight on the future of the world, and to do well we need to go beyond black and white I’m a huge skeptic of web3 as it tends to be defined, but I really appreciate this viewpoint. Web3 has tons of flaws but many of the motivations and ideas are interesting, powerful, and could be molded into something really amazing for the world. And The HN community has a chance to be a part of that process. It helps that web3 is poorly defined, too.
- redanddead 5y ago
  Yeah! Tell me more
  - teucris 5y ago
    Let’s start with Scuttlebutt. It is decentralized and append-only but doesn’t use a blockchain nor any proof systems. Could something like that be useful for other scenarios than chat to meet the goals of web3? Similar questions for IPFS and Dat.

wrnr 5y ago

Crypto just loves broken analogies, it started with the claim it solved byzantine general problem. First off it's "a" solution to that problem, and two, a decentralised system deciding on one question only is not a sufficient model for any economic system where more than one utility is traded.