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Well then what's the point of this discussion? The thread is "how has it advanced? How long can you call it early days?" If you just stop reading rebuttals as s

Well then what's the point of this discussion? The thread is "how has it advanced? How long can you call it early days?" If you just stop reading rebuttals as soon as they're mentioned you're better off talking to a wall, and you'd waste less people's time that way too.

Daishiman 5y ago
Because technical minutiae are completely irrelevant if they don't eventually convert into useful features for products with at least some level of mass-market appeal. I have yet to see a single enticing idea for blockchain/web3/whatever for a consumer or business not related to finance. If that requires an ever-increasing number of technical challenges to be solved for that to happen, then we're just looking at vaporware.
- barnabee 5y ago
  > Because technical minutiae are completely irrelevant if they don't eventually convert into useful features for products with at least some level of mass-market appeal. Why? You might care about building businesses, mass-market appeal, blah blah, but many (most?) technologies were created because people thought they were cool or interesting or just because they could. Nobody knew what LASERs were for when they invented them. To me the point of tech is to invent stuff and see what people do with it, not to make money or feed the economy or whatever, that’s a byproduct. Which coin is worth more money or what will gain mass market adoption is the least exciting part of the whole thing to me. We started with bitcoin having BFT consensus and proof of work to create decentralised, permissionless value (volatile or not!) but we now have multiple chains that can execute arbitrary code, sharding, performance improvements, lightweight chains, various types of proof of stake, token standards, automated market makers, DeFI, NFTs, DAOs, data availability proofs, IPFS, etc. etc.… that’s incredibly exciting! And if you read the actual academic and published research and see the advances being made, it’s even more incredible and wide ranging, and progress is very rapid. Of course it’d be nice if _some_ of it changed the world (and maybe it already has), but there’s plenty of time for that and it may only be 1% of the interesting new tech that turns out to do so. So what? It’s incredibly cool just to learn and understand it all and think about what might be. (And sure, buy tokens or whatever if you like them or just fancy a gamble. Do your research and don’t spend what you can’t afford to lose.)
  - chx 5y ago
    > to create decentralised, permissionless value Since when do we call a Ponzi value?
    - mw888 5y ago
      Right when it wasn’t subject to centralized control which could actually, easily, and covertly scam people. Just because you say something doesn’t mean it’s true or smart. Being short in the delusion of being clever is a sin of rationality and you should repent to Hitchens as soon as you can.
      - chx 5y ago
        2015: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/06/08/bitcoin-isnt-the-future-of-money-its-either-a-ponzi-scheme-or-a-pyramid-scheme/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/06/08/bitco... More current: https://ic.unicamp.br/~stolfi/bitcoin/2020-12-31-bitcoin-ponzi.html https://ic.unicamp.br/~stolfi/bitcoin/2020-12-31-bitcoin-pon... https://www.ic.unicamp.br/~stolfi/bitcoin/2021-01-16-yes-ponzi.html https://www.ic.unicamp.br/~stolfi/bitcoin/2021-01-16-yes-pon...
        barnabee 5y ago
        Bitcoin is not a Ponzi scheme because IF it successfully achieves a certain level of adoption or usage it WILL have some intrinsic value. The current value can be seen as a view of the average expected future value. A risky bet/investment is not the same as a Ponzi scheme, even if _some_ people are talking it up like scammers. The fact that YOU do not believe that future will happen doesn't make it a Ponzi, just a bad investment in your eyes. And yes, some people talking up their book and trying to manipulate it's price — a pump and dump — is still a scam on their part, but it doesn't make the underlying asset a Ponzi scheme. At a bare minimum there are some fringe use cases (no matter how unsavoury - dark web, ransomware, etc.), so I'd argue that barring a major security flaw, even if bitcoin was banned everywhere, the floor price would be >0. (I am considerably more optimistic for long term use cases, but we're just talking about whether it's a Ponzi or not here, which doesn't require any extra optimism.) I honestly don't know if BTC will end up above the current price in 2, 5, 10, 50 years time, but I do still think it's incredibly cool that we were able to create something with a demonstrable non-zero value and no centralised control. The challenge now is to keep iterating the ideas, make new weird and wonderful things, throw them all at the wall, and see if anything sticks. Luckily plenty of people seem as excited about that research and exploration for the sake of it as me, so I think we're going to get to find out :)
- betwixthewires 5y ago
  But the things I mentioned aren't technical minutiae, they're real technological advances with real applications, today. > ...not related to finance. Why place that arbitrary restriction? If all this stuff does is improve finance is that not enough? Again, I'm not a web3 evangelist, this stuff was originally created strictly to create financial tools. All I expect any of this stuff to do is change finance. But still, the development of new cryptography, new consensus mechanisms, new routing protocols and network topologies, these are all advances that have come as a result of all this and they're not related to finance. Again, just because you don't know about an advancement doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
  - grey-area 5y ago
    What new cryptography has been invented due to cryptocurrencies?
    - betwixthewires 5y ago
      Several curves are being researched, non interactive ZKPs are getting heavy development and research due to their applicability here, interest in cryptographic accumulators is growing, people are finding novel ways to do old techniques, bulletproofs are an example, look at Mimblewimble, it's an interesting implementation of a blockchain using Schnorr signatures. That's just what I've got off the top of my head.
      - grey-area 5y ago
        Thanks.

Daishiman 5y ago

Because technical minutiae are completely irrelevant if they don't eventually convert into useful features for products with at least some level of mass-market appeal. I have yet to see a single enticing idea for blockchain/web3/whatever for a consumer or business not related to finance. If that requires an ever-increasing number of technical challenges to be solved for that to happen, then we're just looking at vaporware.

barnabee 5y ago
> Because technical minutiae are completely irrelevant if they don't eventually convert into useful features for products with at least some level of mass-market appeal. Why? You might care about building businesses, mass-market appeal, blah blah, but many (most?) technologies were created because people thought they were cool or interesting or just because they could. Nobody knew what LASERs were for when they invented them. To me the point of tech is to invent stuff and see what people do with it, not to make money or feed the economy or whatever, that’s a byproduct. Which coin is worth more money or what will gain mass market adoption is the least exciting part of the whole thing to me. We started with bitcoin having BFT consensus and proof of work to create decentralised, permissionless value (volatile or not!) but we now have multiple chains that can execute arbitrary code, sharding, performance improvements, lightweight chains, various types of proof of stake, token standards, automated market makers, DeFI, NFTs, DAOs, data availability proofs, IPFS, etc. etc.… that’s incredibly exciting! And if you read the actual academic and published research and see the advances being made, it’s even more incredible and wide ranging, and progress is very rapid. Of course it’d be nice if _some_ of it changed the world (and maybe it already has), but there’s plenty of time for that and it may only be 1% of the interesting new tech that turns out to do so. So what? It’s incredibly cool just to learn and understand it all and think about what might be. (And sure, buy tokens or whatever if you like them or just fancy a gamble. Do your research and don’t spend what you can’t afford to lose.)
- chx 5y ago
  > to create decentralised, permissionless value Since when do we call a Ponzi value?
  - mw888 5y ago
    Right when it wasn’t subject to centralized control which could actually, easily, and covertly scam people. Just because you say something doesn’t mean it’s true or smart. Being short in the delusion of being clever is a sin of rationality and you should repent to Hitchens as soon as you can.
    - chx 5y ago
      2015: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/06/08/bitcoin-isnt-the-future-of-money-its-either-a-ponzi-scheme-or-a-pyramid-scheme/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/06/08/bitco... More current: https://ic.unicamp.br/~stolfi/bitcoin/2020-12-31-bitcoin-ponzi.html https://ic.unicamp.br/~stolfi/bitcoin/2020-12-31-bitcoin-pon... https://www.ic.unicamp.br/~stolfi/bitcoin/2021-01-16-yes-ponzi.html https://www.ic.unicamp.br/~stolfi/bitcoin/2021-01-16-yes-pon...
      - barnabee 5y ago
        Bitcoin is not a Ponzi scheme because IF it successfully achieves a certain level of adoption or usage it WILL have some intrinsic value. The current value can be seen as a view of the average expected future value. A risky bet/investment is not the same as a Ponzi scheme, even if _some_ people are talking it up like scammers. The fact that YOU do not believe that future will happen doesn't make it a Ponzi, just a bad investment in your eyes. And yes, some people talking up their book and trying to manipulate it's price — a pump and dump — is still a scam on their part, but it doesn't make the underlying asset a Ponzi scheme. At a bare minimum there are some fringe use cases (no matter how unsavoury - dark web, ransomware, etc.), so I'd argue that barring a major security flaw, even if bitcoin was banned everywhere, the floor price would be >0. (I am considerably more optimistic for long term use cases, but we're just talking about whether it's a Ponzi or not here, which doesn't require any extra optimism.) I honestly don't know if BTC will end up above the current price in 2, 5, 10, 50 years time, but I do still think it's incredibly cool that we were able to create something with a demonstrable non-zero value and no centralised control. The challenge now is to keep iterating the ideas, make new weird and wonderful things, throw them all at the wall, and see if anything sticks. Luckily plenty of people seem as excited about that research and exploration for the sake of it as me, so I think we're going to get to find out :)
betwixthewires 5y ago
But the things I mentioned aren't technical minutiae, they're real technological advances with real applications, today. > ...not related to finance. Why place that arbitrary restriction? If all this stuff does is improve finance is that not enough? Again, I'm not a web3 evangelist, this stuff was originally created strictly to create financial tools. All I expect any of this stuff to do is change finance. But still, the development of new cryptography, new consensus mechanisms, new routing protocols and network topologies, these are all advances that have come as a result of all this and they're not related to finance. Again, just because you don't know about an advancement doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
- grey-area 5y ago
  What new cryptography has been invented due to cryptocurrencies?
  - betwixthewires 5y ago
    Several curves are being researched, non interactive ZKPs are getting heavy development and research due to their applicability here, interest in cryptographic accumulators is growing, people are finding novel ways to do old techniques, bulletproofs are an example, look at Mimblewimble, it's an interesting implementation of a blockchain using Schnorr signatures. That's just what I've got off the top of my head.
    - grey-area 5y ago
      Thanks.