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Your assessment of affairs is drenched in obvious bias. The downsides of these new technologies get plenty of airtime (your post included), but completely fail

Your assessment of affairs is drenched in obvious bias. The downsides of these new technologies get plenty of airtime (your post included), but completely fail to acknowledge the genuine and useful innovations that are now possible (yes, there are many). Why was there no similar outcry from the technology community over the invention and proliferation of machine learning? It can be used for good or evil (there are plenty of cases of the latter that I'm sure the crowd can think of). It's extremely early days for groundbreaking technologies that have a lot of potential beyond the obvious scams we can all point to. We shouldn't banish a technology merely because it has the potential to harm (almost all technology does). What we should do is educate folks so they can decide whether they want to participate for themselves, rather than telling them how to think.

thrwn_frthr_awy 5y ago
> the genuine and useful innovations that are now possible (yes, there are many) Not trying to troll, but can you explain some of them? Not in the abstract, but in end-user/product terms.
- cuteboy19 5y ago
  As a crypto critic, monero is basically the only useful innovation to come out of crypto. Unfortunately, most people buy crypto on exchanges so the idea of decentralised, uncensorable etc are really oversold
  - thrwn_frthr_awy 5y ago
    Can you explain that more? I'm not familiar with Monero. What apps couldn't be made without it?
    - exdsq 5y ago
      Monero is a privacy-focused cryptocurrency. It obfuscates transactions while keeping the technical perks of a decentralized ledger.
      - thrwn_frthr_awy 5y ago
        Thank you. Would it correct to compare it to using cash in person, but online?
        cuteboy19 5y ago
        Yes, it is the international cash for drug dealers and the like
        exdsq 5y ago
        Yes! It’s a currency that’s probably closest to peoples intuitive ideas of what a cryptocurrency is. It absolutely can be used for criminal transactions but people who are very pro-privacy also argue for it.
  - riskneutral 5y ago
    > As a crypto critic, monero is basically the only useful innovation to come out of crypto. I sort of agree with this assessment. I think it depends on what you mean by useful. Unfortunately, the only real-world, practical use of Monero is money laundering. I wouldn't want to trade a currency or work on a technology whose best use case is helping violent drug cartels conduct their financial transactions.
- thisisbrians 5y ago
  My favorite example of late is http://royal.io http://royal.io. You can purchase a token (NFT) that represents fractional ownership in the licensing rights of a musician's song or album, and also comes along with other perks (such as free or discounted merch and concert tickets). The proceeds from the NFT sales help fund the artist's project, and then you participate in the upside by receiving a share of royalties for holding the token.
  - thrwn_frthr_awy 5y ago
    Thanks for the reply. Royal looks interesting, but I may be missing why an NFT is needed for this. Fractional ownership was existed for a long time before crypto. What does the part NFT provide?
    - thisisbrians 5y ago
      Where else can you go purchase the rights to the work of an artist you like as a consumer?
    - spopejoy 5y ago
      NFT for this use-case provides - the uncorruptible chain of custody. While it's well known for decades that "just a database" would solve ASCAP/BMI robbing countless artists because "it's too hard to track them down", they're not going to do it. A royalty is meaningless if there's no mechanism to enforce it, and an autonomous one is simply superior. If you're then going to say "but I could do that with XYZ" then now the rhetorical burden is yours to explain to me why it NEVER caught on. - fractional ownership is a doodad, but a particularly hard doodad to set up, especially alongside a royalty mechanism. Once again "but you can do that with" -- what? A Delaware corp? With specialized technology? Some combination of buggy lambdas on AWS? And _how_ are you going to offer this to artists and still make money? NFT for royalties just makes sense. It's no wonder it's not making anywhere near the money that art NFTs do -- but that's art: you'd have to look far and wide to find a more contemptible and corrupted marketplace than fine art. It's no wonder they like crypto :)
  - scott_s 5y ago
- thisisbrians 5y ago
  Perhaps an even more germane example for the crowd would be the use of blockchain to manage cap tables: https://balajis.com/mirrortable/ https://balajis.com/mirrortable/
  - thrwn_frthr_awy 5y ago
    Maybe I'm just too old, but I just don't understand what stuff like this is saying: > A mirrortable is a way to take a legally compliant cap table held in a system like Carta and mirror it on the blockchain. It consists of an on-chain smart contract and a bidirectional interface that syncs changes made on-chain to the off-chain cap table and vice versa. In this it is similar to a stablecoin, which similarly links an on-chain asset like USDC to a legally compliant set of off-chain USD bank accounts.
    - exdsq 5y ago
      It's basically saying the cap table is held 'offline', that is off of the blockchain, in a legally compliant digital place. There is then a copy of that cap table on the blockchain with a smart contract - an API if you will - to modify the cap table on the blockchain, which will then update the legally compliant one or vice versa. Not sure what the perks are here, but that's what it is.
  - sib301 5y ago
    Why is this useful? I assume it is, but I don’t know why…
scott_s 5y ago
BitCoin is 13 years old. The blockchain is not a new technology, and it is not extremely early days. We have over a decade of people trying to use blockchain and cryptocurrencies to solve real problems - and not just from startups, but also from large, international tech companies with research divisions. They have tried to use blockchain to solve real problems, and they have failed.
- thisisbrians 5y ago
  The transistor is 13 years old. The transistor is not a new technology...
  - scott_s 5y ago
    The transistor was invented in 1947. By 1960, 13 years later, transistors had replaced vacuum tubes as the dominant technology for electronics.
    - thisisbrians 5y ago
      Yes, and then the internet took another 20+ years.
      - scott_s 5y ago
        You made an implicit argument: it took a similar amount of time (13 years) after the invention of the transistor for them to be used to solve real problems. That is clearly wrong. What argument are you trying to make now?
- spopejoy 5y ago
  Bitcoin is also a laughably primitive blockchain, and Ethereum is holding back potential applications with it's innumerable flaws. You're right that "it's not early" as crypto hasn't been able to progress as fast as other tech because it's being hampered by its own success, in the time-honored worse-is-better tradition. Blockchains are unusual tech in that it's strangely hard to upgrade them. In 2017-18 it was a common belief that some Bitcoin fork would "win" and become the "real Bitcoin", under the moniker "it's not the network, it's the ledger". Turns out it _is_ the network AND the ledger, unfortunately. However, I maintain that the technology is still _immature_ and in that sense "it's still early": there is still some extremely low-hanging fruit in scalability, safe computing and cryptography that Bitcoin/Eth can't touch. BTC and ETH can absolutely be dethroned with better tech just like other giants that seemed unstoppable at the time.

thrwn_frthr_awy 5y ago

> the genuine and useful innovations that are now possible (yes, there are many) Not trying to troll, but can you explain some of them? Not in the abstract, but in end-user/product terms.

cuteboy19 5y ago
As a crypto critic, monero is basically the only useful innovation to come out of crypto. Unfortunately, most people buy crypto on exchanges so the idea of decentralised, uncensorable etc are really oversold
- thrwn_frthr_awy 5y ago
  Can you explain that more? I'm not familiar with Monero. What apps couldn't be made without it?
  - exdsq 5y ago
    Monero is a privacy-focused cryptocurrency. It obfuscates transactions while keeping the technical perks of a decentralized ledger.
    - thrwn_frthr_awy 5y ago
      Thank you. Would it correct to compare it to using cash in person, but online?
      - cuteboy19 5y ago
        Yes, it is the international cash for drug dealers and the like
      - exdsq 5y ago
        Yes! It’s a currency that’s probably closest to peoples intuitive ideas of what a cryptocurrency is. It absolutely can be used for criminal transactions but people who are very pro-privacy also argue for it.
- riskneutral 5y ago
  > As a crypto critic, monero is basically the only useful innovation to come out of crypto. I sort of agree with this assessment. I think it depends on what you mean by useful. Unfortunately, the only real-world, practical use of Monero is money laundering. I wouldn't want to trade a currency or work on a technology whose best use case is helping violent drug cartels conduct their financial transactions.
thisisbrians 5y ago
My favorite example of late is http://royal.io http://royal.io. You can purchase a token (NFT) that represents fractional ownership in the licensing rights of a musician's song or album, and also comes along with other perks (such as free or discounted merch and concert tickets). The proceeds from the NFT sales help fund the artist's project, and then you participate in the upside by receiving a share of royalties for holding the token.
- thrwn_frthr_awy 5y ago
  Thanks for the reply. Royal looks interesting, but I may be missing why an NFT is needed for this. Fractional ownership was existed for a long time before crypto. What does the part NFT provide?
  - thisisbrians 5y ago
    Where else can you go purchase the rights to the work of an artist you like as a consumer?
  - spopejoy 5y ago
    NFT for this use-case provides - the uncorruptible chain of custody. While it's well known for decades that "just a database" would solve ASCAP/BMI robbing countless artists because "it's too hard to track them down", they're not going to do it. A royalty is meaningless if there's no mechanism to enforce it, and an autonomous one is simply superior. If you're then going to say "but I could do that with XYZ" then now the rhetorical burden is yours to explain to me why it NEVER caught on. - fractional ownership is a doodad, but a particularly hard doodad to set up, especially alongside a royalty mechanism. Once again "but you can do that with" -- what? A Delaware corp? With specialized technology? Some combination of buggy lambdas on AWS? And _how_ are you going to offer this to artists and still make money? NFT for royalties just makes sense. It's no wonder it's not making anywhere near the money that art NFTs do -- but that's art: you'd have to look far and wide to find a more contemptible and corrupted marketplace than fine art. It's no wonder they like crypto :)
- scott_s 5y ago
thisisbrians 5y ago
Perhaps an even more germane example for the crowd would be the use of blockchain to manage cap tables: https://balajis.com/mirrortable/ https://balajis.com/mirrortable/
- thrwn_frthr_awy 5y ago
  Maybe I'm just too old, but I just don't understand what stuff like this is saying: > A mirrortable is a way to take a legally compliant cap table held in a system like Carta and mirror it on the blockchain. It consists of an on-chain smart contract and a bidirectional interface that syncs changes made on-chain to the off-chain cap table and vice versa. In this it is similar to a stablecoin, which similarly links an on-chain asset like USDC to a legally compliant set of off-chain USD bank accounts.
  - exdsq 5y ago
    It's basically saying the cap table is held 'offline', that is off of the blockchain, in a legally compliant digital place. There is then a copy of that cap table on the blockchain with a smart contract - an API if you will - to modify the cap table on the blockchain, which will then update the legally compliant one or vice versa. Not sure what the perks are here, but that's what it is.
- sib301 5y ago
  Why is this useful? I assume it is, but I don’t know why…

scott_s 5y ago

BitCoin is 13 years old. The blockchain is not a new technology, and it is not extremely early days. We have over a decade of people trying to use blockchain and cryptocurrencies to solve real problems - and not just from startups, but also from large, international tech companies with research divisions. They have tried to use blockchain to solve real problems, and they have failed.

thisisbrians 5y ago
The transistor is 13 years old. The transistor is not a new technology...
- scott_s 5y ago
  The transistor was invented in 1947. By 1960, 13 years later, transistors had replaced vacuum tubes as the dominant technology for electronics.
  - thisisbrians 5y ago
    Yes, and then the internet took another 20+ years.
    - scott_s 5y ago
      You made an implicit argument: it took a similar amount of time (13 years) after the invention of the transistor for them to be used to solve real problems. That is clearly wrong. What argument are you trying to make now?
spopejoy 5y ago
Bitcoin is also a laughably primitive blockchain, and Ethereum is holding back potential applications with it's innumerable flaws. You're right that "it's not early" as crypto hasn't been able to progress as fast as other tech because it's being hampered by its own success, in the time-honored worse-is-better tradition. Blockchains are unusual tech in that it's strangely hard to upgrade them. In 2017-18 it was a common belief that some Bitcoin fork would "win" and become the "real Bitcoin", under the moniker "it's not the network, it's the ledger". Turns out it _is_ the network AND the ledger, unfortunately. However, I maintain that the technology is still _immature_ and in that sense "it's still early": there is still some extremely low-hanging fruit in scalability, safe computing and cryptography that Bitcoin/Eth can't touch. BTC and ETH can absolutely be dethroned with better tech just like other giants that seemed unstoppable at the time.