9 ms·

Not to say your completely wrong, just that the purpose of car tokens on the blockchain is to replace perhaps your insurance, but not the keys.

by chucke 5y ago

tomputer 5y ago
I don't see why something like insurance needs a token on a decentralized blockchain. The Bitcoin blockchain needs a token because the token itself represents the value (BTC) inside the network. The token is also needed because it adds an incentive for nodes (miners) to support the network. Note: this is my current view of it. If someday it turns out it is useful, I am happy to admit that I was wrong.
- chucke 5y ago
  You're missing the forest for the trees. Bitcoin is broken and will never be more than a speculative asset with no intrinsic value. Blockchains can solve problems. Decentralisation can quickly become federation. Example: a global id system where the "miners" are countries. It removes the need of physical passports and their associated costs and delays.
  - wayoutthere 5y ago
    You’d have to get those countries to agree on a common set of governance rules, and inevitably some bloc of countries would eventually fork and go it on their own because they want a different set of rules (e.g. mandatory biometric data, inability to update passport data like gender, etc). I’m not sure it solves any problems that the diplomatic system doesn’t already solve. This also ignores that the costs and delays associated with passports are frequently the point — you can’t have a corrupt official ask for a cash payment to “expedite” your passport / visa application if it’s fast to begin with, and doling out those kinds of patronage positions to the right people is often how you build a winning political coalition domestically.
    - chucke 5y ago
      > you can’t have a corrupt official ask for a cash payment to “expedite” your passport / visa application if it’s fast to begin with And yet this happens. Theoretically the blockchain reduces the entry barrier more, while not compromising on compliance and security guarantees. You're spot on that countries would have to agree, and different blocks could form. It's no different than trade and visa agreements. The blockchain doesn't solve the problem IMO,it just reduces the cost. Trust in institutions will never be replaced by the blockchain.
      - wayoutthere 5y ago
        I’m not convinced that blockchains would actually reduce the cost or provide any benefit over a federated system where each nation (or group of nations like the EU) controls the data of its own citizens. I run into this problem with nearly every potential blockchain application I hear: it’s usually faster / cheaper / less disruptive to use a centralized or federated system governed by legal agreements that are hashed out in negotiations. Politics underpins all of it — a lot of blockchain advocates look at blockchain as a way to sidestep political squabbles, when really the politics exist at a lower level of the stack upon which blockchain governance rules are built. A nation could unilaterally cease participation in any blockchain at any time, and use political pressure in other areas (trade, defense, etc) to get other nations to join them.
        chucke 5y ago
        Blockchains can, and most likely will, be federated. Legal agreements can be managed via such a system. Bear in mind that the blockchain does not solve politics, and all the problems you mention are a problem of the currently most common implementation of a blockchain, which is cryptocurrencies.
        wayoutthere 5y ago
        But like, why? Sure, blockchain can do a lot of things, but it’s not clear that it’s better than an API for the vast majority of applications while being worse in a number of ways. You can put similar governance rules on an API without the complexity. The flexibility inherent in human interpretation of legal agreements is a key feature of a common law system like we have in the US. To echo the author’s thesis, we’re no longer in the early days of blockchain. We’re over a decade in and nobody has gained traction with a use case that isn’t purely speculative. That in and of itself should say something.
  - tomputer 5y ago
    > You're missing the forest for the trees. Bitcoin is broken and will never be more than a speculative asset with no intrinsic value. I disagree. It's off-topic so I'm not going start an endless discussion about intrinsic value. > Decentralisation can quickly become federation. Example: a global id system where the "miners" are countries. It removes the need of physical passports and their associated costs and delays. As long as humans submit the external data to the blockchain someone can cheat with the data. Actually, cheating is a nice feature if you need double passports for diplomats, spies or informants. The result is a blockchain with permanent records with data you can not fully trust because the data did not exist on the blockchain in the first place. I'm all for a digital solution instead of physical passports but I do believe this can be solved with distributed systems and international standards, instead of permanent records on a decentralized blockchain.
    - chucke 5y ago
      I'm thinking of a blockchain where the ledger is public read (for verifications) and write-constrained. How can you verify the.legitimacy of the introduced data? Probably some other tool. But it being federated across countries would have the nice property of non-gatekeeping. There are politics in play, but if the UN is possible, só is such a system. This is all just my theoretical assessment, anyway. And I agree that other standards and toolchain is necessary to add value. Blockchains don't do KYC nor identity verification and a lot of other things.
    - bikingbismuth 5y ago
      > As long as humans submit the external data to the blockchain someone can cheat with the data. I am glad to see someone else who realizes this point. When people were all excited about supply chain blockchains (for example, a blockchain to verify a piece of fruit is picked in a certain place at a certain time, that the transportation truck maintains a certain temperature) I kept asking what stops someone from lying and putting in bad data or tampering with any sensors along the way? There seemed to be this idea that what was on a blockchain was automatically truth just because it was on a blockchain.
      - 5y ago
  - jallen_dot_dev 5y ago
    > a global id system where the "miners" are countries. Can I mine on this blockchain? If not, what stops me? If it's some permission I need, then what's the point of using a blockchain? Why not just have countries issue digital certificates for passports? It sounds like you're in the "Blockchain not Bitcoin" phase that was all the rage around 2017 or so ("we're going to put cows on the blockchain!"). Most of us either moved on from that to purely on-chain financial chicanery (defi, nft) or became disillusioned with it.
gambiting 5y ago
But....why. What problem does it solve. How is it better than existing insurance policies that are perfectly fine being bound to my name and address
- jakupovic 5y ago
  People were asking the same questions when typewriters came out, but why we know how to write already.
  - gambiting 5y ago
    That hasn't answered my question though. Name one advantage of using a blockchain for insurance policy management over the systems that we have now.
    - vasco 5y ago
      Not having to speak to anyone to do it. I don't know if blockchain is going to go anywhere but I think there's inherent advantages in not talking to anyone (and being able to do it programatically) to do banking-like things. What you get in exchange is lack of security, no recourse when things go wrong, and possibly being in the same space as criminals. But there's a palpable advantage to not having to interact with any humans in order to do things that historically require a lot of meat space interactions that now can be automated by anyone in their home. It's like having access to a completely deregulated bank ran by the mafia that has an API anyone can use. I think there's use cases for that, though maybe not the ones the community usually mentions.
      - gambiting 5y ago
        But like.....what kind of things can you do without interacting with people when using a blockchain? Name anything. My insurance policy I bought online and I can manage entirely online, change the address, the car, the add-ons, add and remove drivers as well as cars......what exactly is blockchain allowing me to do here that I can't do already? Same with the bank. I don't think I ever had to speak to my bank in the 8 years I've been with them, or even been to their branch for that matter. You do everything online or in the app.
Grustaf 5y ago
Unless the insurance policy is somehow decentralised, it doesn't serve any purpose to decentralise the knowledge that you are insured.
- ziml77 5y ago
  It's worse than not serving any purpose. It's information about your life that is forever stored out in the open. Except for some limited cases, it's no ones business to know whether I am insured and for how much.
  - czbond 5y ago
    Agree, and once quantum comps are more readily available - re-analyzing the entire chain and profiling individuals will be so easy, an AWS quant rental will be able to decrypt and do it.
    - ziml77 5y ago
      I don't even know if quantum is necessary for that. There's already blockchain analysis tools. All you have to do is slip up once and tie a wallet that you didn't want anyone to know about to your identity and then it's relatively easy for those tools to be used to see everything you've done. I almost paid for something with bitcoin once because they weren't taking anything else. Nothing illegal but also something I wouldn't want the world to know I paid for. I ended up choosing not to because I didn't want that transaction forever stored on the blockchain.
      - czbond 5y ago
        Great points too.

Not to say your completely wrong, just that the purpose of car tokens on the blockchain is to replace perhaps your insurance, but not the keys.

by chucke 5y ago

Not to say your completely wrong, just that the purpose of car tokens on the blockchain is to replace perhaps your insurance, but not the keys.

tomputer 5y ago

I don't see why something like insurance needs a token on a decentralized blockchain. The Bitcoin blockchain needs a token because the token itself represents the value (BTC) inside the network. The token is also needed because it adds an incentive for nodes (miners) to support the network. Note: this is my current view of it. If someday it turns out it is useful, I am happy to admit that I was wrong.

chucke 5y ago
You're missing the forest for the trees. Bitcoin is broken and will never be more than a speculative asset with no intrinsic value. Blockchains can solve problems. Decentralisation can quickly become federation. Example: a global id system where the "miners" are countries. It removes the need of physical passports and their associated costs and delays.
- wayoutthere 5y ago
  You’d have to get those countries to agree on a common set of governance rules, and inevitably some bloc of countries would eventually fork and go it on their own because they want a different set of rules (e.g. mandatory biometric data, inability to update passport data like gender, etc). I’m not sure it solves any problems that the diplomatic system doesn’t already solve. This also ignores that the costs and delays associated with passports are frequently the point — you can’t have a corrupt official ask for a cash payment to “expedite” your passport / visa application if it’s fast to begin with, and doling out those kinds of patronage positions to the right people is often how you build a winning political coalition domestically.
  - chucke 5y ago
    > you can’t have a corrupt official ask for a cash payment to “expedite” your passport / visa application if it’s fast to begin with And yet this happens. Theoretically the blockchain reduces the entry barrier more, while not compromising on compliance and security guarantees. You're spot on that countries would have to agree, and different blocks could form. It's no different than trade and visa agreements. The blockchain doesn't solve the problem IMO,it just reduces the cost. Trust in institutions will never be replaced by the blockchain.
    - wayoutthere 5y ago
      I’m not convinced that blockchains would actually reduce the cost or provide any benefit over a federated system where each nation (or group of nations like the EU) controls the data of its own citizens. I run into this problem with nearly every potential blockchain application I hear: it’s usually faster / cheaper / less disruptive to use a centralized or federated system governed by legal agreements that are hashed out in negotiations. Politics underpins all of it — a lot of blockchain advocates look at blockchain as a way to sidestep political squabbles, when really the politics exist at a lower level of the stack upon which blockchain governance rules are built. A nation could unilaterally cease participation in any blockchain at any time, and use political pressure in other areas (trade, defense, etc) to get other nations to join them.
      - chucke 5y ago
        Blockchains can, and most likely will, be federated. Legal agreements can be managed via such a system. Bear in mind that the blockchain does not solve politics, and all the problems you mention are a problem of the currently most common implementation of a blockchain, which is cryptocurrencies.
        wayoutthere 5y ago
        But like, why? Sure, blockchain can do a lot of things, but it’s not clear that it’s better than an API for the vast majority of applications while being worse in a number of ways. You can put similar governance rules on an API without the complexity. The flexibility inherent in human interpretation of legal agreements is a key feature of a common law system like we have in the US. To echo the author’s thesis, we’re no longer in the early days of blockchain. We’re over a decade in and nobody has gained traction with a use case that isn’t purely speculative. That in and of itself should say something.
- tomputer 5y ago
  > You're missing the forest for the trees. Bitcoin is broken and will never be more than a speculative asset with no intrinsic value. I disagree. It's off-topic so I'm not going start an endless discussion about intrinsic value. > Decentralisation can quickly become federation. Example: a global id system where the "miners" are countries. It removes the need of physical passports and their associated costs and delays. As long as humans submit the external data to the blockchain someone can cheat with the data. Actually, cheating is a nice feature if you need double passports for diplomats, spies or informants. The result is a blockchain with permanent records with data you can not fully trust because the data did not exist on the blockchain in the first place. I'm all for a digital solution instead of physical passports but I do believe this can be solved with distributed systems and international standards, instead of permanent records on a decentralized blockchain.
  - chucke 5y ago
    I'm thinking of a blockchain where the ledger is public read (for verifications) and write-constrained. How can you verify the.legitimacy of the introduced data? Probably some other tool. But it being federated across countries would have the nice property of non-gatekeeping. There are politics in play, but if the UN is possible, só is such a system. This is all just my theoretical assessment, anyway. And I agree that other standards and toolchain is necessary to add value. Blockchains don't do KYC nor identity verification and a lot of other things.
  - bikingbismuth 5y ago
    > As long as humans submit the external data to the blockchain someone can cheat with the data. I am glad to see someone else who realizes this point. When people were all excited about supply chain blockchains (for example, a blockchain to verify a piece of fruit is picked in a certain place at a certain time, that the transportation truck maintains a certain temperature) I kept asking what stops someone from lying and putting in bad data or tampering with any sensors along the way? There seemed to be this idea that what was on a blockchain was automatically truth just because it was on a blockchain.
    - 5y ago
- jallen_dot_dev 5y ago
  > a global id system where the "miners" are countries. Can I mine on this blockchain? If not, what stops me? If it's some permission I need, then what's the point of using a blockchain? Why not just have countries issue digital certificates for passports? It sounds like you're in the "Blockchain not Bitcoin" phase that was all the rage around 2017 or so ("we're going to put cows on the blockchain!"). Most of us either moved on from that to purely on-chain financial chicanery (defi, nft) or became disillusioned with it.

gambiting 5y ago

But....why. What problem does it solve. How is it better than existing insurance policies that are perfectly fine being bound to my name and address

jakupovic 5y ago
People were asking the same questions when typewriters came out, but why we know how to write already.
- gambiting 5y ago
  That hasn't answered my question though. Name one advantage of using a blockchain for insurance policy management over the systems that we have now.
  - vasco 5y ago
    Not having to speak to anyone to do it. I don't know if blockchain is going to go anywhere but I think there's inherent advantages in not talking to anyone (and being able to do it programatically) to do banking-like things. What you get in exchange is lack of security, no recourse when things go wrong, and possibly being in the same space as criminals. But there's a palpable advantage to not having to interact with any humans in order to do things that historically require a lot of meat space interactions that now can be automated by anyone in their home. It's like having access to a completely deregulated bank ran by the mafia that has an API anyone can use. I think there's use cases for that, though maybe not the ones the community usually mentions.
    - gambiting 5y ago
      But like.....what kind of things can you do without interacting with people when using a blockchain? Name anything. My insurance policy I bought online and I can manage entirely online, change the address, the car, the add-ons, add and remove drivers as well as cars......what exactly is blockchain allowing me to do here that I can't do already? Same with the bank. I don't think I ever had to speak to my bank in the 8 years I've been with them, or even been to their branch for that matter. You do everything online or in the app.

Grustaf 5y ago

Unless the insurance policy is somehow decentralised, it doesn't serve any purpose to decentralise the knowledge that you are insured.

ziml77 5y ago
It's worse than not serving any purpose. It's information about your life that is forever stored out in the open. Except for some limited cases, it's no ones business to know whether I am insured and for how much.
- czbond 5y ago
  Agree, and once quantum comps are more readily available - re-analyzing the entire chain and profiling individuals will be so easy, an AWS quant rental will be able to decrypt and do it.
  - ziml77 5y ago
    I don't even know if quantum is necessary for that. There's already blockchain analysis tools. All you have to do is slip up once and tie a wallet that you didn't want anyone to know about to your identity and then it's relatively easy for those tools to be used to see everything you've done. I almost paid for something with bitcoin once because they weren't taking anything else. Nothing illegal but also something I wouldn't want the world to know I paid for. I ended up choosing not to because I didn't want that transaction forever stored on the blockchain.
    - czbond 5y ago
      Great points too.