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A public ledger is not inherently valuable. A trusted ledger is valuable, but a ledger doesn't have to be public to be trusted. When I swipe my card at the gro

A public ledger is not inherently valuable. A trusted ledger is valuable, but a ledger doesn't have to be public to be trusted. When I swipe my card at the grocery store, I'm not shaking in my boots with my fingers crossed, doubting whether the transaction will be recorded as transmitted or not. If for some looney toons secret agent reason you need a transaction to be public, you can tweet a picture of the receipt. Or, even better, you can mail it to yourself, the postmark is legally binding. Bitcoin uses almost as much energy as the entire global banking system, with its associated costs in capital, emissions, and e-waste, to process less than 0.001% the transaction volume of Visa alone, while providing no additional benefit.

hunterb123 5y ago
Blockchains can be public or private, the key is they are distributed ledgers.
- hannasanarion 5y ago
  A distributed ledger is also not inherently valuable. A trusted ledger is valuable, but a ledger does not need to be distributed to be trusted. See above. If, for some looney toons secret agent reason you need a transaction to be in a lot of places, you can ship out usb sticks, put copies of it on different data centers. Or, just use a regular-ass bank. They already have distributed ledger systems for redundancy and responsiveness. What, you think that out of all of Chase's data centers there's only one server that has any transaction data on it? Blockchain adds nothing that existing database and data transfer solutions don't have, but it always comes with cost and immutability (which is not the same as correctness- the >1 billion dollars stolen out of people's crypto wallets per year since 2018 is testament to that).
- cuteboy19 5y ago
  Private blockchains are entirely useless. If you already have a permissioned system, there is not point in using a trustless and permission less database
- yashg 5y ago
  A private blockchain is pointless.
mccorrinall 5y ago
When I use $payment_processor/card_network then I need to trust a corporation again. I don’t want to do that due to bad experiences. Yes, unfortunately mining is too profitable with the current prices, we need it to go back to a much lower price. Probably won’t happen for a long time (bubbles can exist for decades). Bitcoin can in theory transact more volume than VISA while using the same energy as it is now since the block time is always 10 minutes.
- hannasanarion 5y ago
  The payment processor is the party to the transaction whose trust is least dangerous. You swipe at the grocery store, what's Visa gonna do, not record your transaction? Why is that the only part of the exchange that you're worried about? Why is it them you want to stop trusting, and not the POS terminal manufacturer who could be lying about the total on the screen? Or the grocery store you're buying from who could be selling you poison, or who could refuse to carry out a delivery you ordered after taking your money, or who could mischarge you for the items you bought? And how is your situation improved by switching away from the payment processor with legal responsibilities and administrative controls, to an immutable system that will never, ever, ever let you get the money back in the event of any of the other parties to the transaction turning out to be untrustworthy, even if a court orders it? Immutability is not correctness. In fact it is the opposite, because in any system that takes input from the real world, errors are guaranteed, whether malicious or accidental. Eliminating the possibility of error correction from the system decreases it's trustworthiness. > Bitcoin can in theory transact more volume than VISA while using the same energy as it is now since the block time is always 10 minutes. No it can't. The bitcoin block size is fixed at 10mb, and they've been full for years. It is theoretically possible for consumption to go down as people exit the network, but that won't ever happen, because the POW system is inherently a power-consumption arms race. There is not, nor can there ever be, a disincentive from buying more hardware and consuming more power. If you crunch more than the other guys you're going to win more blocks and be financially rewarded. The protocol guarantees that the ROI is always positive.
  - MrMan 5y ago
    I hope you and your machete of common sense are not allowed into any meetings to ruin any big deals! billions are being raised right now to do web3 things, which we dont know what they are. who are you to ruin this ecstasy of grift? what scares me is that I dont really have any idea of what the really good useful investable things are underlying all this bullshit, because I trained up in computer programming and time series analysis and trading and machine learning not crypto. so while I can squint and see that like in authentication maybe, or maybe tokenizing assets, or maybe that distributed name service, some of it is interesting, but why are we putting billions into all this crap instead of electrolysis or better fission reactors, or biotech to create chemicals without oil, or ammonia, we are investing in this behavioral social tech which feeds off of, and amplifies, our worst social traits? it doesn't even help us with our number one collective behavioral shortcoming which is how to reach consensus about externalized problems. it just encourages more externalization so that VCs can make money. I love money but I dont like society choosing only to solve the easy problems while neglecting everything else. I dont think we can live in crypto fantasy land for example while all the new supply chain problems create real new challenges which require trillions of investment to fix. "how I pay for things" kind of pales in comparison to "why cant we manufacture electronics" Maybe I am wrong
bobsomers 5y ago
> A trusted ledger is valuable, but a ledger doesn't have to be public to be trusted. When I swipe my card at the grocery store, I'm not shaking in my boots with my fingers crossed, doubting whether the transaction will be recorded as transmitted or not. Of course, because as the customer nothing bad happens to you if it’s not. Worst case scenario, the merchant doesn’t accept your payment and you either have to pay with cash or not buy anything. The worst case scenario for the merchant is substantially worse. If the payment doesn’t go through, they lose money. This could happen days or weeks later if the customer decides to chargeback the merchant. There are countless stories of payment processors siding with customers, placing holds on a business’s funds for extended periods of time while conducting investigations, etc. I would actually take the opposite stance. Unless a ledger is public and independently verifiable, there is no reason to trust it at all. Nearly every instance of financial fraud has relied on people trusting a private ledger.
- mewse 5y ago
  How does the ledger being public fix the scenario you’re talking about, here?
- hannasanarion 5y ago
  First of all, being public does nothing to change that scenario. Second of all, abusing chargebacks when a vendor upheld their side of an agreement is a crime, and if you can prove that you delivered the goods as the consumer requested, the chargeback can be reversed. This is not a problem with the system. The way that blockchain "solves" this non-problem is by making the transaction record immutable, so that no transaction can ever be undone, no longer how fraudulent or illegal. That's why the main users of blockchain technology these days, aside from speculators, is scammers and theives, because once you have somebody's crypto money, it is technologically impossible to ever return it to its rightful owner, even with a court order. Theft on the blockchain has already surpassed all other financial theft in the world pre-2016. Getting access to people's keys, or tricking them into authorizing a transaction, or writing malware into smart contracts has enabled a golden age of theft that cannot be undone. Immutability does not imply correctness. > Unless a ledger is public and independently verifiable You say this as if those things are connected. They are not. Your credit card transaction ledger is already independently verifiable, with the magical future technologies known as "receipts" and "bank statements".

hunterb123 5y ago

Blockchains can be public or private, the key is they are distributed ledgers.

hannasanarion 5y ago
A distributed ledger is also not inherently valuable. A trusted ledger is valuable, but a ledger does not need to be distributed to be trusted. See above. If, for some looney toons secret agent reason you need a transaction to be in a lot of places, you can ship out usb sticks, put copies of it on different data centers. Or, just use a regular-ass bank. They already have distributed ledger systems for redundancy and responsiveness. What, you think that out of all of Chase's data centers there's only one server that has any transaction data on it? Blockchain adds nothing that existing database and data transfer solutions don't have, but it always comes with cost and immutability (which is not the same as correctness- the >1 billion dollars stolen out of people's crypto wallets per year since 2018 is testament to that).
cuteboy19 5y ago
Private blockchains are entirely useless. If you already have a permissioned system, there is not point in using a trustless and permission less database
yashg 5y ago
A private blockchain is pointless.

mccorrinall 5y ago

When I use $payment_processor/card_network then I need to trust a corporation again. I don’t want to do that due to bad experiences. Yes, unfortunately mining is too profitable with the current prices, we need it to go back to a much lower price. Probably won’t happen for a long time (bubbles can exist for decades). Bitcoin can in theory transact more volume than VISA while using the same energy as it is now since the block time is always 10 minutes.

hannasanarion 5y ago
The payment processor is the party to the transaction whose trust is least dangerous. You swipe at the grocery store, what's Visa gonna do, not record your transaction? Why is that the only part of the exchange that you're worried about? Why is it them you want to stop trusting, and not the POS terminal manufacturer who could be lying about the total on the screen? Or the grocery store you're buying from who could be selling you poison, or who could refuse to carry out a delivery you ordered after taking your money, or who could mischarge you for the items you bought? And how is your situation improved by switching away from the payment processor with legal responsibilities and administrative controls, to an immutable system that will never, ever, ever let you get the money back in the event of any of the other parties to the transaction turning out to be untrustworthy, even if a court orders it? Immutability is not correctness. In fact it is the opposite, because in any system that takes input from the real world, errors are guaranteed, whether malicious or accidental. Eliminating the possibility of error correction from the system decreases it's trustworthiness. > Bitcoin can in theory transact more volume than VISA while using the same energy as it is now since the block time is always 10 minutes. No it can't. The bitcoin block size is fixed at 10mb, and they've been full for years. It is theoretically possible for consumption to go down as people exit the network, but that won't ever happen, because the POW system is inherently a power-consumption arms race. There is not, nor can there ever be, a disincentive from buying more hardware and consuming more power. If you crunch more than the other guys you're going to win more blocks and be financially rewarded. The protocol guarantees that the ROI is always positive.
- MrMan 5y ago
  I hope you and your machete of common sense are not allowed into any meetings to ruin any big deals! billions are being raised right now to do web3 things, which we dont know what they are. who are you to ruin this ecstasy of grift? what scares me is that I dont really have any idea of what the really good useful investable things are underlying all this bullshit, because I trained up in computer programming and time series analysis and trading and machine learning not crypto. so while I can squint and see that like in authentication maybe, or maybe tokenizing assets, or maybe that distributed name service, some of it is interesting, but why are we putting billions into all this crap instead of electrolysis or better fission reactors, or biotech to create chemicals without oil, or ammonia, we are investing in this behavioral social tech which feeds off of, and amplifies, our worst social traits? it doesn't even help us with our number one collective behavioral shortcoming which is how to reach consensus about externalized problems. it just encourages more externalization so that VCs can make money. I love money but I dont like society choosing only to solve the easy problems while neglecting everything else. I dont think we can live in crypto fantasy land for example while all the new supply chain problems create real new challenges which require trillions of investment to fix. "how I pay for things" kind of pales in comparison to "why cant we manufacture electronics" Maybe I am wrong

bobsomers 5y ago

> A trusted ledger is valuable, but a ledger doesn't have to be public to be trusted. When I swipe my card at the grocery store, I'm not shaking in my boots with my fingers crossed, doubting whether the transaction will be recorded as transmitted or not. Of course, because as the customer nothing bad happens to you if it’s not. Worst case scenario, the merchant doesn’t accept your payment and you either have to pay with cash or not buy anything. The worst case scenario for the merchant is substantially worse. If the payment doesn’t go through, they lose money. This could happen days or weeks later if the customer decides to chargeback the merchant. There are countless stories of payment processors siding with customers, placing holds on a business’s funds for extended periods of time while conducting investigations, etc. I would actually take the opposite stance. Unless a ledger is public and independently verifiable, there is no reason to trust it at all. Nearly every instance of financial fraud has relied on people trusting a private ledger.

mewse 5y ago
How does the ledger being public fix the scenario you’re talking about, here?
hannasanarion 5y ago
First of all, being public does nothing to change that scenario. Second of all, abusing chargebacks when a vendor upheld their side of an agreement is a crime, and if you can prove that you delivered the goods as the consumer requested, the chargeback can be reversed. This is not a problem with the system. The way that blockchain "solves" this non-problem is by making the transaction record immutable, so that no transaction can ever be undone, no longer how fraudulent or illegal. That's why the main users of blockchain technology these days, aside from speculators, is scammers and theives, because once you have somebody's crypto money, it is technologically impossible to ever return it to its rightful owner, even with a court order. Theft on the blockchain has already surpassed all other financial theft in the world pre-2016. Getting access to people's keys, or tricking them into authorizing a transaction, or writing malware into smart contracts has enabled a golden age of theft that cannot be undone. Immutability does not imply correctness. > Unless a ledger is public and independently verifiable You say this as if those things are connected. They are not. Your credit card transaction ledger is already independently verifiable, with the magical future technologies known as "receipts" and "bank statements".