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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

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.
        chucke 5y ago
        Blockhains can be as simple as an API. See the 7 layer stack in the Nexus blockchain (you definitely don't need to go smart contract all the time). I think the author exaggerates a bit the tone. Sure, 10 years is a lot of Internet time. But the steam engine took 50 years to become viable. Then the industrial revolution was a period of 80 years. Put that into perspective. I guess, by speculative, you mean the cryptocurrency craze.and I can agree is a speculative bubble, an MLM scheme. But then you also have https://cyber.ee/resources/news/digital-identity-and-blockchain-what-is-the-problem-to-be-solved/ https://cyber.ee/resources/news/digital-identity-and-blockch... . You'll soon have CDBCs. And when it's here, you'll barely remember what this conversation. Your bitcoin might be worthless by then.
- 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.

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.
        chucke 5y ago
        Blockhains can be as simple as an API. See the 7 layer stack in the Nexus blockchain (you definitely don't need to go smart contract all the time). I think the author exaggerates a bit the tone. Sure, 10 years is a lot of Internet time. But the steam engine took 50 years to become viable. Then the industrial revolution was a period of 80 years. Put that into perspective. I guess, by speculative, you mean the cryptocurrency craze.and I can agree is a speculative bubble, an MLM scheme. But then you also have https://cyber.ee/resources/news/digital-identity-and-blockchain-what-is-the-problem-to-be-solved/ https://cyber.ee/resources/news/digital-identity-and-blockch... . You'll soon have CDBCs. And when it's here, you'll barely remember what this conversation. Your bitcoin might be worthless by then.
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.