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I'm curious if this comment is a usual fare of shallow dismissal or if you are aware of current applications of crypto in the wild and consider them to be usele

by lhorie 5y ago

I'm curious if this comment is a usual fare of shallow dismissal or if you are aware of current applications of crypto in the wild and consider them to be useless nonetheless. One example that comes to mind is that Docusign offers a product that uses Ethereum for storing evidence of contracts in a decentralized medium. That seems like a fairly legitimate application for the technology. Another example (albeit possibly more dubious) is BitTorrent tokens as a "currency" for "buying" download speed by incentivizing people to keep nodes running within its P2P network. Do you consider these types of applications to be negative sums? If so, why? Not trying to be antagonistic here, I'm actually curious.

paxys 5y ago
Every large company (including my own) jumped on the crypto bandwagon when the tech started gaining mainstream popularity, but it was mostly to give their salespeople more content for their pitch decks instead of building features people would actually utilize. For the case you mentioned, is anyone actually using this tech for their contracts? No Docusign (or any other) document I have ever signed was written to any blockchain. Have any real legal disputes ever been resolved by looking up a public ledger?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
librish 5y ago
Those applications are not negative sum. My impression is that the total revenue for services like that is minuscule, I would be very interested if you have data showing something else.
- lhorie 5y ago
  My impression has been similar to the comment sibling to yours, that a lot of attempts at crypto-related applications were somewhat hype based. However, despite the huge amount of noise, some do seem - at least in principle - valuable. I certainly share a certain level of cynicism towards many crypto applications, but even the likes of OpenSea currently employ people and presumably pay them actual money that they can spend on stuff, in exchange for their time and effort pushing the platform forward as a digital marketplace. That, to me, looks more like creating traditional business value than hype and pyramid schemes. I'm ambivalent on whether I should consider NFTs "value". On the one hand, the NFT mania has generated quite a bit of commercially-oriented artistic output that likely would not have been created otherwise. But on the other hand, whether "artistic output" is valuable at all in the first place is kinda in the eye of the beholder, I suppose.
  - librish 5y ago
    If I'm not misunderstanding you you're saying there could be value, which I've never argued against. I'm asking if you have any evidence that there's currently any significant value created.
    - lhorie 5y ago
      I mean, if by value, we mean a "good or a service [someone] would be willing to spend USD on", then yes, all the things I mentioned are things that people have spent money on in one way or another, presumably because they felt that they were getting something in return by parting with their money. From an economic perspective, the crypto product incentivized labor of some sort, so it would arguably qualify as "creating value". My reservation for whether to call those products "value" is more along the lines of the argument about whether cigarettes are "creating value" (i.e. if one buys a "feeling" from literal puffs of smoke and punts the costs of externalities onto others, is that a net positive?)
dmitriid 5y ago
> One example that comes to mind is that Docusign offers a product that Yes, they "offer a profuct", but don't even use it themselves because it's too expensive. > BitTorrent tokens as a "currency" for "buying" download speed by incentivizing people to keep nodes running within its P2P network Incentivizing how? > Do you consider these types of applications to be negative sums? If so, why? If you "incentivize" people, it means that someone gains. If someone gains, someone loses. At best these are zero-sum games.

by lhorie 5y ago

paxys 5y ago

Every large company (including my own) jumped on the crypto bandwagon when the tech started gaining mainstream popularity, but it was mostly to give their salespeople more content for their pitch decks instead of building features people would actually utilize. For the case you mentioned, is anyone actually using this tech for their contracts? No Docusign (or any other) document I have ever signed was written to any blockchain. Have any real legal disputes ever been resolved by looking up a public ledger?

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

librish 5y ago

Those applications are not negative sum. My impression is that the total revenue for services like that is minuscule, I would be very interested if you have data showing something else.

lhorie 5y ago
My impression has been similar to the comment sibling to yours, that a lot of attempts at crypto-related applications were somewhat hype based. However, despite the huge amount of noise, some do seem - at least in principle - valuable. I certainly share a certain level of cynicism towards many crypto applications, but even the likes of OpenSea currently employ people and presumably pay them actual money that they can spend on stuff, in exchange for their time and effort pushing the platform forward as a digital marketplace. That, to me, looks more like creating traditional business value than hype and pyramid schemes. I'm ambivalent on whether I should consider NFTs "value". On the one hand, the NFT mania has generated quite a bit of commercially-oriented artistic output that likely would not have been created otherwise. But on the other hand, whether "artistic output" is valuable at all in the first place is kinda in the eye of the beholder, I suppose.
- librish 5y ago
  If I'm not misunderstanding you you're saying there could be value, which I've never argued against. I'm asking if you have any evidence that there's currently any significant value created.
  - lhorie 5y ago
    I mean, if by value, we mean a "good or a service [someone] would be willing to spend USD on", then yes, all the things I mentioned are things that people have spent money on in one way or another, presumably because they felt that they were getting something in return by parting with their money. From an economic perspective, the crypto product incentivized labor of some sort, so it would arguably qualify as "creating value". My reservation for whether to call those products "value" is more along the lines of the argument about whether cigarettes are "creating value" (i.e. if one buys a "feeling" from literal puffs of smoke and punts the costs of externalities onto others, is that a net positive?)

dmitriid 5y ago

> One example that comes to mind is that Docusign offers a product that Yes, they "offer a profuct", but don't even use it themselves because it's too expensive. > BitTorrent tokens as a "currency" for "buying" download speed by incentivizing people to keep nodes running within its P2P network Incentivizing how? > Do you consider these types of applications to be negative sums? If so, why? If you "incentivize" people, it means that someone gains. If someone gains, someone loses. At best these are zero-sum games.